RICHMOND — A group of Republican legislators, angry with Gov. Glenn Youngkin and his political team for spotlighting a 15-week abortion ban ahead of Tuesday’s elections, said they will try to overthrow House Speaker Todd Gilbert for failing to push back against a strategy that they say cost the GOP control of the House, according to three delegates involved in the effort.
At a closed-door meeting in Richmond on Sunday, just days after Democrats flipped the House of Delegates and held onto the state Senate, House Republicans plan to elect their caucus leadership. As speaker, Gilbert (R-Shenandoah) was in line to become minority leader given his party’s loss of the majority.
But some Republican delegates want to remove Gilbert from leadership, saying he should have rebuffed Youngkin and leaders of the governor’s Spirit of Virginia political action committee, which in late September launched a $1.4 million TV campaign based on the governor’s plan to ban most abortions after 15 weeks.
Abortion appeared to be a motivating force for Democrats and female voters in Virginia, the only Southern state that has not imposed new restrictions on the procedure since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year.
The three delegates, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share private caucus deliberations, said the governor’s PAC did not consult them about the ad buy or the flurry of mailers on the same theme that the PAC sent to some districts. They also said the PAC ignored their concerns and made last-minute demands for them to appear at Youngkin-led rallies and other events, which they said were primarily meant to promote his potential last-minute bid for president.
“We literally ran on one of the third rails of politics,” said one of the delegates, who said he raised questions about the strategy to Gilbert months ago. “We told them, this is the year to run on inflation, grocery bills, gas bills, fuel costs, freakin’ child care. … If we’re not providing an answer or a solution to those things, then the people are looking at us, ‘Why are you talking about abortion?’”
Youngkin’s office did not respond to a request for comment, as did Gilbert’s spokesman. Spirit of Virginia officials also declined to comment, but PAC Chairman Dave Rexrode defended the PAC’s work on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“Despite difficult odds from the outset & an onslaught of Democratic spending, in excess of at least $50m, Governor Youngkin’s PAC contributed to these races in an unprecedented way, providing a roadmap for Republican success even in competitive or difficult environments,” Rexrode wrote in a long thread that also noted House and Senate Republicans won 13 districts that President Biden won in 2020 and seven where congressional Democratic candidates prevailed last year.
Matthew Moran, the PACs executive director, wrote on X that he looked forward to addressing any criticism at a panel discussion Monday night, called After Virginia Votes, put on annually by the nonpartisan Virginia Public Access Project.
“Losing sucks, and I’m never afraid to wear anything on my chin,” Moran wrote. “You can’t be prepared to take the credit if you’re not also prepared to take the criticism. … I expect a good discussion on the effect of the Secure Your Vote Virginia program, the role of abortion and the thoughts behind our strategy to combat the attacks (most of them completely false), and why we invested in certain races. I look forward to all of that.”
The infighting within the Virginia GOP suggests that Youngkin, at the midpoint of his four-year term, could have trouble with his own party as he faces a General Assembly controlled by Democrats.
More immediately, the strife pits Gilbert against Del. Terry Kilgore (R-Scott), a veteran legislator from the state’s far southwest corner, who is challenging him for minority leader. Kilgore has served as majority leader under Gilbert for the past two years.
As majority leader, Kilgore was familiar with the abortion strategy and approved of it, according to two people familiar with the “coordinated campaign,” the term for the House, Senate and PAC’s campaign efforts. One of the delegates disputed that claim and said Kilgore opposed the strategy.
“I have worked with the Governor and support his agenda whole heartedly," Kilgore said in a written statement to The Washington Post. "However, this isn’t about the Governor — it’s about the future of leadership in the House of Delegates, and making the changes we need to make to be successful in the long term for the Virginians we represent.”
He has sought to lead House Republicans before, with unsuccessful bids for minority leader after the party lost control in 2019 and for the speakership after Republicans retook control of the chamber in 2021.
In a letter to fellow House Republicans, Kilgore said he was best suited to help the caucus rebound in the next elections, in 2025. “While we are at a crossroads that we neither wanted nor expected, now is the time to come together and move forward,” he said in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post.
The letter made a broad pitch for Kilgore, thanked Gilbert for his leadership and did not criticize the speaker’s decisions on abortion or anything else. The delegates said the strategy dispute was a big part of the attempted ouster.
With prospects for his conservative agenda and potential White House bid on the line, Youngkin and his team made abortion a central theme with all 140 House and Senate seats on the ballot and both narrowly divided chambers up for grabs.
The strategy was a notable shift for Virginia Republicans, who have tended to play up kitchen table issues — such as the economy, schools and crime — and downplay abortion. After wooing GOP caucus voters with a vow to “protect the life of every Virginia child born and unborn,” Youngkin himself said little about abortion in the 2021 general election. He was captured on video saying he had to downplay the issue to win swing voters but promising to “go on offense” against the procedure once elected.
But Youngkin and his team tried something new after the Supreme Court gave states the right to outlaw abortion last year and a backlash to the ruling hurt Republicans across the country in midterm elections months later.
Youngkin embraced what he billed as a compromise between total bans adopted in some states and the laws on Virginia’s books, which allow abortion for any reason through the second trimester (about 26 weeks) and in the third only if three doctors agree it’s needed to preserve the mother’s life or health.
He proposed banning abortion after 15 weeks, with exceptions for rape, incest and when the life of the mother is at risk.
Several Republicans backing Kilgore said they had no beef with Youngkin for staking out that position for himself, but said they objected to aggressive TV and mail ads promoting that in their districts. Some said they agreed with the message but not the intense emphasis on it or the timing; the TV ad rolled out after some delegates believed they had sufficiently responded to Democrats’ attacks on that topic and had turned the page to new issues, such as crime.
Youngkin’s approach initially drew some favorable national reviews, with neutral political observers speculating that by proposing limits less severe than those adopted in the rest of the South since the fall of Roe, he might have found a way to stave off an abortion rights blue wave.
Even after Tuesday, some observers say he might have done just that.
“VA-Dems went all out on abortion against the GOP and only won the legislature by 1% of the vote after a favorable redistricting map for them,” conservative Erick Erickson wrote on X. “The VA-GOP compromise probably mitigated the attacks.”
RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel claimed on the Ruthless podcast the day after the election that the party did not put enough emphasis on abortion.
“I watched all the ads in Virginia, the candidates on our side did not address [abortion],” she said, prompting sharp pushback from Spirit staffers, who tweeted headlines about Youngkin’s focus on the issue.
“Apparently the RNC doesn’t even do press clips anymore,” Spirit of Virginia spokesman Zack Roday wrote on X. “Add it to the list of things they’ve stopped doing.”
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