SALEM, Va. — Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) sat next to an American flag and a huge sign reading “Parents Matter” as a woman in the audience complained at length that social media and college had “brainwashed” her daughter to believe that a person could be both Christian and gay.
When it was his turn to reply before a friendly Republican crowd at the public library here, Youngkin was brief. Parents should “be engaged” with their kids’ lives, he said, and educate themselves about social media. Next question.
In this year of crucial legislative elections, with control of the General Assembly at stake on the November ballot, Youngkin is betting his party’s political fortunes partly on the theme that swept him into office: Parents Matter. But where the 2021 version catered to a Republican base fired up about schoolhouse issues such as critical race theory, transgender bathroom privileges and pandemic mask policies, this year’s edition is decidedly more middle-of-the-road.
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Now Youngkin’s top themes are the perils of social media and safeguarding children’s mental health. He is holding “conversations” in battleground districts across the state alongside Republican legislative candidates trying to woo suburban voters. Treading carefully around the red meat occasionally served up by his audiences, Youngkin steers comments back toward the catchall idea of parents being involved in their kids’ lives.
“It’s an issue that resonates with voters across the political spectrum,” said Dave Rexrode, Youngkin’s top political adviser. “I think there is a broad consensus across the state that parents matter and need to be more involved in their kids’ education and lives.”
Youngkin is banking on it in an all-out quest to try to flip control of the state Senate — which has a 22-18 Democratic majority — and protect the 52-48 GOP edge in the House of Delegates. With full control, Youngkin could enact a conservative agenda that includes further tax cuts, charter schools and a 15-week ban on abortion, with exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother. Not to mention burnish his national status as a potential last-minute Republican presidential contender, a flirtation that has enabled him to raise enormous amounts of campaign cash.
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Some voters in the Republican base have noticed Youngkin’s shifting rhetoric and don’t like it. Stacy Langton, a self-described “ultra-MAGA” Republican from Fairfax once featured in a Youngkin campaign ad crusading against sexually explicit books in schools, said she worries that he’s watering down his approach to woo voters.
“Everybody has a collective eye-roll every time they hear him say ‘parents matter’ because it just is starting to sound very politician,” she said.
Democrats attack Youngkin as being cynical, pointing out that they have sought more education funding than Republicans and that Youngkin has rolled back protections for transgender youths and purged the term “racial equity” from school policy guidance.
The Parents Matter agenda “focuses on dividing people and leads to policies like book censorship [and] attacks on teachers,” said Del. Schuyler T. VanValkenburg (D-Henrico), a high school civics teacher running for a state Senate seat against incumbent Sen. Siobhan S. Dunnavant (R-Henrico). Youngkin hosted Dunnavant at a Parents Matter event in August.
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Earlier this year, state Sen. T. Montgomery “Monty” Mason (D-Williamsburg), battling in one of the most closely contested districts in Virginia, was recorded at an event referring to the “parental crap” spouted by Youngkin and other Republicans. Mason could not be reached for comment for this story, but has said the quote was taken out of context, that he was referring to Youngkin’s politics and not the concerns of parents.
Rexrode said Democrats dismiss the Parents Matter brand “at their own political peril.” After all, many pundits believe former governor Terry McAuliffe (D) cost himself the 2021 gubernatorial race when he said in a debate with Youngkin that “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”
Youngkin “is wise to continue to talk about the parental agenda,” University of Mary Washington political scientist Stephen Farnsworth said. “It allows him to present himself as a conservative …[while demonstrating that] the current version of the ‘parents matter’ agenda is more inclusive than the previous version.”
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Softening the message, he said, could help distract from efforts by Democrats to paint Republicans as extremists on another issue that is politically hot at the moment: abortion.
“Republicans are on the defensive pretty much everywhere in the wake of Roe versus Wade being reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court,” Farnsworth said. “If Republicans want to spend 2023 going all-in on the culture wars, they look forward to spending 2024 in the minority.”
Youngkin’s ability to carry a trending-blue state in 2021 was based partly on the way he tapped into the culture war of the moment — a movement of parental grievance arising from the school shutdowns of the pandemic. His election offered a template for other Republicans around the country to run on issues related to schools and parents.
Among his first actions in office, Youngkin delivered on campaign promises by issuing an executive order to ban “inherently divisive” topics from school curriculums and winning support from a handful of Democrats to allow parents to opt out from mask mandates.
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But while his rhetoric energized the GOP base, Youngkin sometimes faltered in execution. Last year, he opened a tip line for parents to report teachers who discuss “divisive” concepts in the classroom, only to quietly shut it down after just a few months.
Virginia’s education department was under fire earlier this year for a glitch in the state’s tool for calculating education funding that left schools with a more than $200 million shortfall. And the department drew sharp criticism for “whitewashing” history after a draft of standards for history and social studies curriculums included a characterization of Indigenous people as “immigrants” and omitted references to Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth.
Youngkin’s first appointed superintendent of public instruction, who carried the blame for many of the department’s stumbles, abruptly resigned in March.
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Last month, the administration enacted a set of model policies for the treatment of transgender students in K-12 schools that rolled back protections put into place by Democrats. The education department spent 10 months reviewing more than 70,000 public comments submitted on the topic; LGBTQ+ advocates and students have argued that the resulting policies endanger vulnerable youths struggling with difficult questions of identity.
Youngkin also signed a partnership with colleges and universities around the state to open “lab schools,” a type of public school run through a partnership with a higher education institution. The first lab school, a partnership between CodeRVA Regional High School in Richmond and Virginia Commonwealth University, was approved earlier this summer.
Langton, the Fairfax parent who regularly speaks at county school board meetings about books she finds inappropriate, said she thinks Youngkin has gone “soft” on subjects related to parents and education and isn’t committed enough to his conservative base.
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“It’s not like I’m totally dissatisfied — he’s done some good things,” Langton said. “But it’s just that it’s weak.”
Ian Prior, a Loudoun-based former Trump administration official who started the parents’ rights group Fight for Schools, said he has heard that criticism from the right but believes it’s misplaced.
“I think you have to look at the realities of the situation he’s dealing with, which is a state Senate that refuses to pass anything that doesn’t cater to their ideological base,” Prior said.
Youngkin has been careful to frame his Parents Matter conversations in an open-ended, pragmatic tone, in keeping with the friendlier side of the balancing act he regularly performs as a Trump-era Republican in a state that rejected Trump.
“We’re going to have a conversation today. And I think it’s an incredibly important conversation — about being a parent,” he said to kick off the July 7 event in Salem, mentioning that he and his wife, Suzanne, have four children. “I constantly am reminded that when we sit down in rooms like this we learn a lot, and when we learn a lot, it helps us do our jobs better.”
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The need to better address children’s mental health “is something that we are incredibly focused on fixing,” he told about 150 people at the outset of another such event at Crestview Elementary in Henrico County on Aug. 8. Youngkin went on to tout bills the legislature passed “on a bipartisan basis” toward transforming the behavioral health system.
He rattled off statistics about Virginia children being consumed with social media, calling it “a phenomenon that we have to be fully aware of.” Youngkin introduced Dunnavant, who was sharing the stage with him and is battling to hang onto a suburban Senate seat that tilted slightly blue during last year’s Virginia redistricting.
“I would just encourage you to share views,” Youngkin told the audience, explaining that he would take notes and might ask questions of his own. “Questions that might probe a little deeper about how comfortable you are having discussions with your children around social media and other topics. These are the kind of things that really help us understand how we best represent you.”
The conversations are notable for what they don’t address. While several lines of discussion have featured smartphones as objects that are dangerous to children and should be rigidly controlled, the events so far have left out mention of guns or gun violence despite high-profile school-related shootings in Virginia, including the Newport News shooting of a teacher by a 6-year-old.
On the other end of the political spectrum, the events have not featured extensive discussions about the availability of sexually explicit materials in schools, a viral topic among conservatives nationally.
Rexrode played down the degree to which Youngkin has moderated the tone of his Parents Matter brand. “I think what he has said in 2021 continues to be what he’s saying now, which is that parents matter and should be involved in what their children are learning,” he said.
At the Henrico Parents Matter event, Neil Hutcher, 81, a retired physician, rose from the audience and went on a lengthy diatribe against books in elementary school libraries that are “the most shocking, disturbing pieces of garbage I’ve ever seen that glorify the epidemic … of gender dysphoria and gender confusion.”
Hutcher urged Youngkin to seek a Virginia version of Florida’s H.B. 1557, which critics have labeled the “don’t say gay” law, which prohibits talking about gender issues in elementary schools. The crowd applauded and cheered his remarks.
Youngkin replied by mentioning a Dunnavant bill passed last year with bipartisan support (from two Democratic senators from conservative districts) that requires schools to notify parents of sexually explicit material in classrooms and give them the opportunity to opt out.
“This was our first step in empowering parents,” Youngkin said. He went on to tout the transgender model policies, noting that they require parents to be involved in any counseling or discussion of a child’s status.
But then he cautioned that “of course there are sincere concerns about neglect or abuse at home and there are clear protections for this in federal law and in state law.” If that sounded like admitting that sometimes parents are the problem, Youngkin quickly followed up by repeating that “parents have to be at the table here.” Then he moved on.
After the session, Hutcher acknowledged that Youngkin hadn’t fully addressed his concerns. But he was willing to give the governor the benefit of the doubt. “He’s made a major initiative, but he’s faced with a very progressive Senate,” Hutcher said. “And as long as that Senate is the same composition, you have to do what’s doable … I’d love to see more done.”
This story has been updated with additional comment from the Youngkin administration.
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