This John Reid-Glenn Youngkin fight over gay porn is worth keeping an eye on

John Reid, the Republican Party nominee for lieutenant governor, is accusing the political team of Glenn Youngkin, the sitting Republican governor, of staging a “coup” against him, which, holy crap, this is out in the open?

Reid, in a video posted online on Sunday, said the leader of Youngkin’s political team called his campaign and offered to get the “lies and threats” against Reid to stop, but only if Reid were to agree to drop out of the lieutenant governor race.

“This is extortion, and it is illegal in Virginia,” said Reid, who went on to say that he would pursue all legal options against the Youngkin team.

The issue being hyped by the Youngkinistas is a trove of reposts of sexually-explicit photos of men to a social-media account using a handle associated with Reid, who is openly gay.

The real issue isn’t hot gay porn, but rather, that Reid is gay, and that he’s a gay man on a statewide ticket headlined by Winsome Earle-Sears, the sitting lieutenant governor, who is also a Black woman and immigrant, and Jason Miyares, the sitting attorney general, and the son of a Cuban refugee.

Team Trump tried, way too late in the game, to recruit a pair of MAGA deadenders, in the form of former State Sen. Amanda Chase and former State Del. Dave LaRock, to run against Earle-Sears, but neither was even competent enough to be able to get on the ballot for a June primary.

Reid, meanwhile, seemed to have been boxed in by the candidacy of Pat Herrity, a Republican member of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors.

Herrity was the clear party favorite, and he had a huge advantage in fundraising, but he had to step aside due to complications from heart surgery that he had to undergo last month.

So, yes, now Republicans have an immigrant Black woman, a gay man and a Latino as the state ticket for their dwindling red-meat MAGA base to ignore for the next six months.

I don’t get what John Reid thinks he’s getting out of having to go down in resounding defeat, except that, yeah, of course, Reid is a talk-radio host, so what he’s really looking for out of this is fodder for years of being able to play the victim for his listeners.

Cue the sad violin.

“I’m a conservative Trump supporter, and I’m gay, and everybody knows it, because I’ve told you in person and in the media for decades,” Reid said in his Sunday video. “I’m the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor, and I’m more transparent, and I’m more conservative, and I’m tougher than any of my detractors, and I’m not going anywhere, except to get back on the campaign trail, win this election and take these people to court.”