Dave LaRock, who was on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and said the mobs of Trump goons were “peaceful protestors,” is now said to be considering a run for the Republican Party nomination for governor.
Washington Post staff writer Greg Schneider tweeted on Wednesday that he had confirmed the news with LaRock, who “called himself a big DOGE/Trump fan,” according to Schneider.
Brandon Jarvis at Virginia Scope also spoke with LaRock, who told Jarvis that there is a “pretty good grassroots push” to get him on the ballot for a June primary run against Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears.
The main problem for Earle-Sears within her own party is that she is an apparently reformed Never Trumper, which isn’t going to excite the MAGA base.
She’s not getting over with the general population right now, either: Earle-Sears is running well behind presumptive Democratic Party gubernatorial nominee Abigail Spanberger in the early polling.
ICYMI
- VCU poll: Abigail Spanberger has big early lead on Winsome Earle-Sears in 2025 governor race
- Republican radio guy doesn’t like the party’s presumptive Black nominee for governor
It doesn’t help Earle-Sears that she is a Black woman in a Republican Party that is marginalizing women and people of color to appeal to its misogynistic and racist MAGA base.
You have to imagine that Team Trump itself is just waiting for someone, preferably a White male, to give them an alternative.
The sharks, indeed, smell the blood in the water.
“It’s evident that Republicans are not excited about Winsome Earle-Sears’ campaign, as it unravels into infighting and dysfunction,” Democratic Party of Virginia Chair Susan Swecker said.
Evidence of that “infighting and dysfunction” is MAGA radio host John Fredericks, the chair of the Trump campaign in Virginia in the 2016 and 2020 cycles, who reported on Tuesday that Earle-Sears had replaced Danny Laub, a media consultant who had worked on the Glenn Youngkin campaign in the 2021 cycle, with Mark Harris, who ran media operations for the Nikki Haley presidential campaign last year.
“How’d that work out? Fire winner (Youngkin), hire loser (Haley),” Fredericks wrote on Twitter.
All of this being what it is, going to Dave LaRock as a possible savior would seem to be scraping the bottom of the barrel.
The college dropout from Upstate New York served 10 years in the Virginia House of Delegates before trying to move up to the State Senate, and falling short in a Republican primary in the 2023 cycle.
LaRock was, to that point, a reliable neanderthal MAGA legislator, focusing on anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ and Second Amendment issues.
His view of Jan. 6 was predictable for a guy with his track record.
“Massive crowds in DC were law-abiding, patriotic, mom and pop, young adults pushing baby carriages. They were peaceful protesters who shared distrust in the system that asserts that Joe Biden won, an opinion shared by a growing number of members of Congress,” LaRock said in the days following the attempted insurrection, as he faced calls to resign his House seat in the immediate aftermath.
“Unfortunately, there was a small element who likely infiltrated this patriotic group for the purpose of inciting violence,” LaRock said at the time. “It is highly likely that reports of people who had the audacity to forcefully enter the Capitol building were paid provocateurs sent in to taint an otherwise orderly protest.”
“Bottom of the barrel” might be painting too kind a picture with respect to a potential LaRock statewide campaign.
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Chris Graham
