Even In a “Big Tent” Party, VA-06 Candidate Sergio Coppola Is Not a Democrat

by Graham Weinschenk

My name is Graham Weinschenk and I am a Democrat. Among other things, I believe in a woman’s right to choose, that diversity strengthens us, that love will always win, and that protecting the environment is a necessity. These are not things that “Democratic” Congressional candidate Sergio Coppola (6^th CD) believes in.

There are a number of problems with the “Issues” page of Cappola’s website. First, he fails to actually take a position on most of the issues listed. He walks a fine line of attempting to take both sides of most issues. In the process of doing this, he reveals some pretty outrageous things, which are enumerated below:

1. Coppola Supports a “Dual Care” System to Replace Obamacare

Dual care would make drastic and terrible changes to the American healthcare system that would surely result in more uninsured Americans. To figure that out, you really need to look no farther past the fact that this plan is supported by the likes of The Heritage Foundation.

2. Coppola Does Not Support Common Sense Gun Control

Coppola’s position here is incredibly unclear. He argues that guns are essential for “the ability to form a militia” and that “access to guns is a constitutional right for self-protection”. However, he does support regulations that would prevent the mentally ill from buying guns. But that seems to be where he draws the line. Coppola then makes a non-specific statement that gun holders need to face more accountability. What does that mean?

3. Coppola is Both Pro-Life and Pro-Choice?

This one is one of the strangest because Coppola seems to make both arguments here. He says that he “believes all life is important” and that he “[does] not support abortion as a method of birth control”. Then he does an immediate 360 and says that he believes “that a woman has a right to decide what should happen to her body”. Which is it?

4. Coppola Doesn’t Understand Being LGBT

Although Coppola does say that he is against limiting access to government programs and benefits based on sexual orientation, he also says that a person’s sexual orientation is a DECISION. It’s 2017. Really. 

5. Coppola Believes that America Was Created Based on Christian Principles

Again, there are some positives and negatives here. He believes that our laws should be further separated from religion, yet he also believes that America was founded based on “Christian principles”. This is just factually incorrect. The principal behind both of these are very different.

6. Coppola Is All Over the Place on Immigration

This one just really doesn’t make sense. First, he says that immigration is key to American culture. Then, he says that immigrants must “assimilate” to American culture.

7. Coppola Wants a Flat Tax

Again, Coppola got this right out of The Heritage Foundation. Having a flat tax is extremely regressive, and would do absolutely nothing for the struggling working class. He claims that he wants a flat tax of 23%, and he says that this would lead to everyone paying their “fair share.” Really? 23% for someone making $30,000 a year is a lot different than someone making $300,000 a year, or $3,000,000 a year.

8. Coppola Is an Isolationist

Coppola apparently has an issue with the amount of money that the United States spends overseas on goodwill projects and development (a tiny percentage of the budget, by the way, with most of the money coming back to the U.S. in military sales, purchases of American goods and services, etc.). In other words, Coppola would rather see the US isolate itself than operate as the leader of the free world. We can’t afford to take a step back from our spot on the world stage. I must add that Coppola also supports cutting military spending.

There’s a lot of discussion these days about how liberal or “moderate” the Democratic Party should be. Without wading into that, surely, we can all agree that a candidate with the aforementioned as his values doesn’t even qualify as a “moderate Democrat.”

In the end, there are two things that could be going on here. The first is that someone in Coppola’s camp wrote this page, mangling and misrepresenting Coppola’s ideals through the awful quality of the writing on the page. The second is that Coppola is indeed attempting to run for the Democratic VA-06 nomination on a bunch of right-wing positions that are contrary to the beliefs of the vast majority of Democrats.

If the latter is the case, I would urge Coppola to drop out of the Democratic primary. If he fails to do so, I urge everyone reading this to support Coppola’s opponent, Democrat Peter Volosin, who is a member of the LGBT community and a real progressive. Yes, the Democratic Party should be a big tent, but not big enough for the likes of Sergio Coppola.