Video: Sen. Mark Warner’s Deputy Campaign Manager, Alice Lin Tong, Responds to Rep. Abigail Spanberger’s Comments

On VPAP’s “After Virginia Votes” panel yesterday afternoon, Alice Lin Tong, Deputy Campaign Manager for Senator Mark Warner, had some interesting comments in response to Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA07) remarks that Democrats should not “say socialism ever again,” and that “Defund police almost cost me my race.” Check out the video, below.

• “To address the remarks of what Congresswoman Spanberger said last week, I just want to be unequivocal about the fact that Black Lives Matter…in this country. Year in and year out, Black voters are the backbone of this Democratic Party, and especially Black women, and it’s up to us to continue to fight for these communities year and year out, and to address the [systemic] racism within our institutions…Let’s just be unequivocal of that statement right there.”
• “One area where I agree with Congresswoman Spanberger is where she talked about socialism, and some of the ads that were run this cycle. I saw, especially in our Vietnamese-American community and some of our Latino communities as well, is that this idea of socialism is not quite mainstream within our party. And I think that you saw some voters who would normally be galvanized to the polls kind of vote Republican this year...An older generation Vietnamese American parent is very different than someone who is a younger Vietnamese second-generation American…But I do think that that is not quite mainstream here in our party.”