Against Geary Higgins and the Glory of Old Virginny

It looks like I have an opponent for the Virginia House of Delegates, District 30. His name is Geary Higgins, and he has been in Loudoun County forever. It’s funny, when I first began checking out local politics and his name came up, I thought “Who is this old coot?” Turns out, I am older than he is.

At any rate, Higgins, as the saying goes, knows every mountain and molehill in the region. He can tell you how he fixed Route 15, how he beautified Lovettsville Park, how he funded the Waterford Fair. His political problem is that the Loudoun that has elevated him to past elective local office is itself a thing of the past.

His campaign website is here. I invite you to scan his Twitter feed, a cavalcade of MAGA grievances. He previously ran against and lost to the Democratic candidate for state senate, John Bell, notwithstanding an endorsement from His Treasonable Excellency, a.k.a. the Mango Mussolini himself.

Trump-endorsed and lost anyway in 2021. Where have we heard that before.

Higgins is also buddies with our local MAGA leader, one Dave LaRock, presently in the Virginia House of Delegates and now running for state senate. LaRock made his mark boosting the “Stop the Steal” deplorables who sacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, 2021.

As I mentioned, Loudoun is changing, as we speak. It’s growing rapidly. National neo-fascist Fox TV celebrity Tucker Carlson said Loudoun used to be “reasonable.” Now it’s apparently getting uppity. All these new folks from strange foreign lands, like the Peoples Republic of Montgomery County, Md. Federal retirees (hello!). Asians. Hispanics with their taco trucks. What got Tucker spun up? It was an outbreak of Critical Race Theory! (I’ll be starting a series on praiseworthy CRT scholarship. Watch this space.)

Issue #1 for Higgins this year, whether he likes it or not, will be his unambiguous pro-life stance, while his fellow Virginia Republicans are busy trying to restrict reproductive rights. Higgins also pledges to be “Fighting for Women,” though the fighting in question has nothing to do with said rights. Rather, he suggests women most need defending from transgender predators in their bathrooms.

Issue #2 and less obvious, remember fast-growing Loudoun? Mr. Higgins would prefer it not grow quite as fast. That’s the meaning of his commitment to preservation of “the rural character, beauty and the history of our counties and state.” “Rural” means keep new folks away by holding down population density. Block expansion of affordable housing (a big problem in the richest county in the U.S., Loudoun is). Rather than being chosen by voters, Republicans like to choose their voters.

The “history” part is more problematic. What about “the history of our counties and state” might that refer to? One clue is from the above-mentioned Twitter feed.

The name review in question is happening a lot in Virginia these days. Many names need changing. The traitor Robert E. Lee is all over the place. In this case, two local K-12 schools were named after a slaveowner and a member of the Daughters of the Confederacy. Some would replace those names. One is led to infer that Mr. Higgins scoffs at such modest gestures of disapproval of Old Virginny. (Loudoun County did not desegregate its public schools for ten years after the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Ed decision.)

Overt racism is no longer respectable, even though it’s made a bit of a comeback. The more subtle efforts in that vein dwell on the teaching of history and purported bias in school admission, not to mention the CRT panic. That’s why the modern Republican Party of Geary Higgins, Glenn Youngkin, Donald Trump, and Ron DeSantis focus their abuse on the most marginalized, politically isolated, and popularly misunderstood portion of the population — transgender people. It’s the cowards option.

This shit is why I decided to run for office. Help me! Send me some damn money. If you’re local, volunteer (email me at delegatemax@maxspeak.net).