How did Gillespie almost steal Virginia’s senate seat from Warner? The key was outreach in communities outside the Republican Party’s normal comfort zone, Gillespie says, emphasizing his own experience as a first-generation American. “I am the son of an immigrant myself, and would make that point in these communities,” Gillespie recalls. “My father came here as a boy from Ireland. My grandfather was a janitor, and I got to grow up to be counselor to the president of the United States of America.” He used that experience as an entrée to these communities, emphasizing his desire to duplicate it for their families. “I want the same opportunities for future generations,” he told them during his campaign.
Gillespie also focused on themes and issues that resonated across community lines, emphasizing “upward mobility and job creation, economic growth, lifting people out of poverty, and higher wages,” as well as “education, a reform-and-replace plan for ObamaCare, energy production, and more affordable energy.” More important than the message itself was where and how Gillespie communicated it.
“I went into the black churches in Prince William, and to places a lot of Republicans have not gone,” he says. County Republican Party vice chair D. J. Jordan, a leading African American conservative in Prince William, corroborates this. “Grace Church Dumfries is a church that Ed Gillespie visited in October 2014,” Jordan recalls, “and he was very well received. They welcomed him from the pulpit and he was able to talk to those who were out in the lobby afterwards.”
Related: ‘Reeks of subtle racism’: Black Democrat omitted from campaign fliers in Virginia.
UPDATE: Gross: A Former Hillary Spokesman Published the Worst Tweet of the Week.