The Lincoln Project has confirmed it was behind a political stunt in which five members posed as white supremacists carrying tiki torches at a campaign stop for Glenn Youngkin, the Republican candidate for governor in Virginia, in Charlottesville ahead of election day next week.
Members of the anti-Trump Republican group stood in front of Youngkin’s campaign bus on Friday wearing white shirts, khaki pants and sunglasses.
They were attempting to evoke an infamous far-right torchlit march at the University of Virginia in August 2017, a day before a self-described neo-Nazi killed a counter-protester with his car. As the Lincoln Project mounted the stunt, jurors in a civil lawsuit over the rally were beginning to hear testimony.
Days ahead of polling day, in a state where Joe Biden beat Donald Trump by 10 points last year, McAuliffe and Youngkin are neck-and-neck.
Biden, Vice-President Kamala Harris, former president Barack Obama and other senior Democrats have turned out for McAuliffe, fearing defeat might foreshadow reverses in next year’s midterm elections.
In comments to NBC29 after the incident but before the Lincoln Project claimed responsibility, Youngkin said he thought his opponent, Terry McAuliffe, a former Virginia governor seeking to return to the role, had sent the men.
“They’ll do anything to win,” he said, “and he’s doing anything to win, and so he’s paying people to show up and act silly at our rallies.”
McAuliffe disavowed the Lincoln Project’s actions.
“What happened today in Charlottesville is disgusting and distasteful and the McAuliffe campaign condemns it in the strongest terms,” the Democrat’s campaign manager said in a tweet. “Those involved should immediately apologise.”
The Lincoln Project said: “The demonstration was our way of reminding Virginians what happened in Charlottesville four years ago, the Republican party’s embrace of those values, and Glenn Youngkin’s failure to condemn it.”
The group also said it meant to highlight Trump’s famous refusal to condemn the far-right marchers in 2017, including his remark that there were “very fine people” on “both sides” of the rally.
Youngkin, the group said, wanted “Virginians to forget that he is Donald Trump’s candidate.
“Glenn Youngkin has said: ‘President Trump represents so much of why I am running.’ Youngkin proves it every day by trying to divide Virginians using racial code words like ‘critical race theory’ and supporting a ban on teaching the works of America’s only Black Nobel laureate,” it said.
That was a reference to attempts involving Republican operatives to remove Beloved, Toni Morrison’s classic novel of slavery in the American south, from Virginia schools.
“We will continue to hold Glenn Youngkin accountable,” the Lincoln Project said. “If he will denounce Trump’s assertion that the Charlottesville rioters possessed ‘very fine’ qualities, we’ll withdraw the tiki torches. Until then, we’ll be back.”
Progressive commentators condemned a stunt which one activist, Elizabeth McLaughlin, called “disrespectful, dangerous and dumb”.
“No one who actually understands what’s at stake in Virginia,” McLaughlin added on Twitter, “let alone the threat of white supremacist terrorism and the ACTUAL death and destruction at Charlottesville, could do this.”
Consultants to the Lincoln Project were among those defending its actions. Lauren Windsor, an activist who has used a hidden camera to catch senior Republicans expressing controversial opinions, and who was involved in the Charlottesville stunt, retweeted a message from Joe Trippi.
“It’s why I joined the Lincoln Project,” the veteran Democratic operative wrote. “Trump Republicans go low … [the Lincoln Project] will go where Democrats won’t and risk it all to … expose Youngkin and his winking and nodding.”