Virginia's GOP Gubernatorial Candidate: I Did the Racist Ads So the Racists Would Vote For Me

It’s been just over a month since longtime GOP shitweasel Ed Gillespie lost his race to become Virginia’s next governor. And this week Gillespie seems to have taken advantage of the one thing he can do as a private citizen that he could never have gotten away with as a Republican candidate: openly admit that he was willing to exploit racism to win votes.

During a recent interview with presidential adviser-turned-podcaster David Axelrod, Gillespie fessed up about his xenophobic campaign for governor—specifically, his racist ads that stoked fears of voting felons, and an impending invasion of Salvadoran gangsters. According to Gillespie—who swears he is definitely not racist—those ads were explicitly made so racists would vote for him:

Are those the issues I would have chosen to run on as opposed to the tax cuts and frankly even the criminal justice reform innovative proposals I put forward? That’s where I rather the race have been about, but those weren’t what was indicating was going to move numbers and help me win.

Hey man, he didn’t want to be racist! But how else were the actual racists gonna know he was their guy?

“The issue that looked like it was going to move voters in the suburbs of Northern Virginia was public safety,” Gillespie added. “Clearly, [the racist ads] didn’t work. Did it create a backlash? I don’t think so. But I don’t know.”