“Who Is Mark Obenshain Serving?” — Calling Him Out on His Con

I’d like to share with you a major part of my approach in my campaign challenging Mark Obenshain for the SD-26 seat in the Virginia State Senate.

As I indicated at the outset of my campaign, in a district like ours where Republicans have generally enjoyed a 70-30 advantage, there’s obviously no way for a Democrat to win without winning over Republican voters.

That’s what I’m working to accomplish in a series of newspaper ads.

I am putting a lot of emphasis on such advertising because experience has amply shown that Republican voters are not going to attend a Democratic candidate’s events. So if a Democrat wants to get their attention, she is compelled to go to them: e,g, to put a newspaper ad in front of their eyes at the breakfast table, or to place a radio ad on the station they listen to.

Here’s my first newspaper ad. It will be part of a series dealing with different issues. In this case, the issue is health care, but there will be others ads dealing with such issues as a livable wage, climate change, and the right-to-work con job.

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But with all these issues, there will be one overriding theme: Who Is Mark Obenshain Serving? With each issue, I will try to persuade the readers: Obenshain is not serving you, but other masters.

That’s the truth, it’s an important truth, and I believe that it is the message that has the best chance of prying Republican voters away from my incumbent Republican opponent. For Mark Obenshain has been a typical Republican in pretending to be their champion while serving the interests of Big Money — often at the expense of the people he relies on for his power.

Obenshain’s conduct on health care illustrates well his apparent indifference to the well-being of the people he represents. And health care is also the issue that Democrats showed in 2018 was most powerful in getting voters to support them and reject the health-care-denying Republicans.

To Those Liberals Who Say, “Be Positive!”

Let me say something about why I’m going after my opponent, an approach that has led some of my fellow Democrats to implore me to “Be positive!”

I have no difficulty being positive: I’m running because I have a vision of the better Virginia that we can and should be a) providing good health care to all our people, b) getting our children a first-rate education, and c) acting responsibly on climate change to protect our future.

As a candidate, I will indeed do my best to inspire us to strive toward the best Virginia we might be.

But if I’m going to hope to get Republican votes, experience indicates that my positive vision will not even be heard by those voters so long as they’re attached to Obenshain and to that Republican world.

Anyone who thinks that Republican voters will be moved to change their habit of voting Republican by some positive vision eloquently presented by some Democratic candidate does not understand the nature of the Republican “tribe” of our times. The Republican Party has built up a political culture in which their supporters are trained to ignore what liberals and Democrats try to say to them.

So those Republican voters whose support I am seeking will not even listen to me until something happens that loosens the bonds of their habitual loyalty—including and especially their loyalty to their incumbent Republican Senator, Mark Obenshain.

Step one is to get through to them with something—and to design that something to get them to reconsider that loyalty. Like showing them that Obenshain is serving other masters in ways that injure them.

Hence this series of “Who Is Mark Obenshain Serving?” ads to deliver that message.

This advertising campaign, of course, takes money. To wage that campaign effectively, therefore, I need all the help I can get. You can support this effort to defeat Mark Obenshain, and his typical Republican con job, by donating here.