Amanda Chase (with context)
When insurgent QAnon candidates rattle an already-weakening political party.
Even after the tense election that just took place, some Virginia voters are already looking ahead at the race for governor. But, with the inclusion of some extreme, insurgent candidates — like Sen. Amanda Chase, R-Chesterfield — many voters are fearing a predictably messy electoral process in the Old Dominion.
Chase placed her bid for Virginia’s 2021 gubernatorial election on Feb. 17, 2020. Some believe Chase’s candidacy is a sign of weakening republican influence in Virginia, as conservatives continue to allow more room in the party for extremism rather than disavowing it. But, with a newly-passed ballot measure for redistricting, in addition to the U.S. Census Bureau having recently completed its decennial population assessment, the future of Virginia’s electoral landscape temporarily remains in the throes of uncertainty.
Nonetheless, candidates like Chase provide a brilliant avenue for insight on a phenomenon that is happening around the country, and is likely to be a thorn in the side of both democrats and republicans for years to come.
Tensions continue to rise amidst a harrowing pandemic; confidence in the American political system continues to plummet as a lame duck president sews seeds of distrust across his voter base. American democracy is currently in a very fragile state, and what’s worse is that some leaders are looking to capitalize on that.
Protecting the 2nd
The cornerstone of Chase’s public platform is protecting the 2nd Amendment, which she does so quite aggressively — such as strapping a handgun to her waist during General Assembly in January.
Chase said in an interview on Fox and Friends that she did this because she believes open carry laws “empower women”. However, that same month, Chase voted against the Equal Rights Amendment and SB240 — a Red Flag Law, which have been shown to reduce the rate of homicides against women by their spouses or ex-partners.
Yet, this sometimes-hypocritical stonewalling of any and all restrictions on firearms has also helped Chase gain admiration from a handful of conservatives. In particular, it has attracted a crowd noticeably consisting of anti-government militia groups.
Kristopher Goad, a Virginia Commonwealth University alumnus of political science and independent reporter, frequently discusses the far-right and has followed Chase’s career for over a year. Goad believes Chase holds many similarities to state representative Matt Shea, R-Wa.
“If there is anybody in this country like Matt Shea, it’s Amanda Chase,” Goad said. “That if there was a militia group doing deliberate paramilitary stuff, Amanda Chase would forward information over to them.”
Shea was found to have assisted militia groups that in 2016 were involved in a weeks-long armed standoff at the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon. Shea has since been repeatedly linked with the Bundy family; Ammon Bundy, the chief organizer of the 2016 standoff, and Ammon’s father, Cliven, who led a similar armed occupation over federal land usage in 2014. An independent review published in 2019 determined Shea’s role in the armed standoff amounted to an “act of terrorism against the U.S.”
Similarly to Shea, Chase has no gripes with befriending extremists. In July, Chase made an appearance at a Reopen Virginia Rally, where the state senator marched with a rifle in hand around the Virginia Capitol Building alongside Boogaloo Bois; a rising militant movement based mostly in libertarian ideals, with a central belief in the coming of a second civil war.
At the rally, Chase broke bread with the event’s organizer, Mike Dunn — a 22 year old from South Boston, Virginia, who is a self-proclaimed Boogaloo Boi. Dunn was arrested in October this year for trespassing charges while illegally open carrying a firearm at Newport News Park. Chase’s personal attorney, Tim Anderson, of the Virginia Beach law firm Anderson & Associates, is representing Dunn in his case.
And Chase’s attachment to Dunn’s criminal case goes on. Lauren Fulcher, who has worked as a personal senate aide to Chase since 2018, is working for Anderson on Dunn’s case, according to a post from Fulcher’s personal Facebook page.
Anderson and Fulcher both did not respond to a request for an interview.
“To have somebody that self-describes himself as a Boogaloo Boi who now has connections — like yeah, this should be a lot of red flags towards Amanda Chase working with paramilitary groups,” Goad said.
When Chase announced her candidacy for governor, the president for the Virginia chapter of American Guard — a somehow more-violent wing of the Proud Boys hate group — was in attendance, according to Goad.
“If people from American Guard are showing up for your announcement, that’s demonstrating who you are as a candidate,” Goad said.
Armed and dangerous
Chase has also been repeatedly accused of being enwrapped in QAnon — the baseless conspiracy theory that suggests high-ranking members in the democratic party are engaged in a worldwide, demon-worshipping cabal for child sex trafficking.
Central to the conspiracy theory is the belief that the Trump Administration is the bellwether of a “storm” that will “drain the swamp” by exposing the cabal. The conspiracy theory has been shown by experts at the Southern Poverty Law Center to be a major gateway for radicalization, particularly anti-LGBTQ and antisemitic ideologies. QAnon also frequently instills an immense distain for the upper echelons of society, particularly those on the political left, such as Hillary Clinton or George Soros.
“QAnon is so bizarre and fascinating,” said Dr. Amanda Wintersieck, an associate professor of political science at VCU, who has researched how misinformation and disinformation impacts voter decisions. “What’s fascinating about QAnon is its history.”
While the precise origin of QAnon is still undetermined, it is heavily speculated by experts, like Wintersieck, to be a result of an online-LARP (live action role play) gone horribly wrong.
Online-LARPs (sometimes referred to as an alternate reality game or ARG) are commonly found on sites like Reddit, 4Chan and 8Chan, where QAnon discussions have thrived the most. 4Chan is the same website where “Q” — a self-proclaimed high ranking military insider, and subsequent central figurehead of the movement — made his or her’s original post.
ARG’s often start with an eerie, cryptic story that entices readers to dig for clues online — a puzzle-solving game. But, readers are usually able to understand it is all just a game, and do not take the information presented in the online-LARP as truth. Though some online-LARPs can be especially convincing, most if not all of them have a distinct jumping-off point.
But, what facilitated the downward spiral is the initial post from Q having been discovered by “a bunch of boomers who don’t know how the internet works,” Wintersieck said.
Since 2016, QAnon has steadily grown into a massive movement, particularly popular with older, disenfranchised voters. Because of this, a likewise concerning phenomenon is beginning to occur — QAnon political candidates.
In 2020, more than “40 candidates [are] running on a QAnon position for the House of Representatives,” Wintersieck said. Although not having been up for reelection in this year, Chase will be one of those candidates in 2021.
“We’re seeing candidates run on this platform of, not just falsehoods, but things that don’t make any sense,” Wintersieck said. “It’s a profound movement, it’s a confusing movement, and it’s really quite dangerous.”
According to a declassified FBI bulletin from May of 2019, “anti-government, identity based, and fringe political conspiracy theories” are “very likely” to motivate individuals in carrying out criminal, sometimes violent acts. QAnon has already motivated individuals to carry out dangerous criminal actions, such as a man who barricaded himself in an armored truck on the Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge in 2018, and the notorious 2016 “Pizza-Gate” incident.
Some of the extremists Chase has befriended are also QAnon-motivated. In June, a photo of Chase surfaced online, wherein the senator posed with a rifle in front of a QAnon flag that was hitched to the side of a Hummer. In November, that same Hummer was revealed to belong to a group of QAnon extremists, who had traveled from Chesterfield to Philadelphia with intent to carry out an armed attack on the city’s convention center, where ballots were being tabulated.
But, QAnon is also a dangerous rabbit hole to fall down because of the misinformation it produces. Chase and Lauren Fulcher (the senator’s aide) both have routinely posted dangerously-false statements on Facebook, oftentimes touching on topics intersectional with QAnon — such as COVID-19 and 2020 election results.
“The misinformation about COVID-19 that [Chase] spreads is particularly dangerous,” said Grant Fox, communications director for the Democratic Party of Virginia, in an email. “She holds mask-less events, undermines common sense safety measures, and generally downplays the severity of the pandemic.”
Chase has repeatedly voiced opposition to forced vaccinations, and also made a Facebook post in July that urged the use of Hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19.
Give-and-Take Support
After having spent a few years in the financial sector, Chase was elected as a state senator for Chesterfield in 2018. Since then, Chase has routinely provoked ire from the Democratic Party of Virginia for being a notorious “far-right extremist who’s best known for spreading dangerous conspiracy theories,” Fox said.
“Our leaders shouldn’t be ratcheting up tensions or stoking fear and division,” Fox said. “But Chase has taken every chance she can get to escalate her rhetoric to the point that her supporters are starting to do dangerous things.”
But, since her 2018 victory, Chase has continuously invoked internal strife for the republican party as well. Still, Chase usually does not back down even when her own party corrects or condemns her. And, though she has an “R” next to her name, it’s somewhat of an open secret that Chase is often seen as a liability in the eyes of traditional conservatives.
Still, it is difficult to gauge just how much the GOP wants to distance itself from Chase — she has kinships with a handful of republican lawmakers and interest groups. Moreover, the active Treasurer for the Republican Party of Virginia, John G. Selph, is signed-on to her campaign and has even been paid by Chase, through her campaign, for consulting.
But, at the same time, there are several instances of public condemnation from fellow republican lawmakers.
In late November, three republican senators took to social media, criticizing a race-baiting remark that Chase had made on Facebook. Chase’s post was in response to demands from the public that Richmond city registrar, Kirk Showalter, be fired over numerous accusations regarding issues with racism and transparency. Chase said in the post that she believes the reason Showalter had been lambasted was because Virginia democrats “hate white people”.
“Conservatives don’t stand for fueling division and hate, no matter what the other side tries to do to us, or says about us,” wrote Bill Stanley, R-Franklin County, who has criticized Chase in the past. “We are the party of Lincoln, not of Chase.”
Since then, Chase has left the Republican caucus in the Virginia legislature. Last week, Chase announced she would be leaving, claiming her reason was the reappointment of Tommy Norment, R-James City, as Senate minority leader.
“If we continue down the same path under the same leadership it will not be good for the Commonwealth, as it has just been proven by a complete party flip of the Senate and the House,” Chase wrote in a statement on her decision.
In early December, a republican-backed political action committee launched to rebuke Chase’s campaign — Unfit Virginia.
“Radical Amanda Chase has been kicked out of her own party, and now she wants to run for Governor of Virginia,” the PAC says on its website. “It’s time that she is finally told no.”
But, a large factor in Chase’s growing attractiveness to her own voter base is the performative stunts that have often hurt her ties with the GOP — a difficult phenomenon to unpack.
In 2019, Chase was kicked from the Chesterfield County GOP after making critical Facebook posts towards sheriff Karl Leonard, R-Chesterfield. The posts accused Leonard of having turned the county into a sanctuary city for undocumented migrants since his 2014 inauguration.
Chase’s attack on Leonard came in response to a statement of his own, made prior to Chase’s Facebook posts. Leonard had publicly condemned Chase, suggesting she apologize for a verbal altercation she provoked between her and a Capitol Police officer in March of 2019.
“I have no grievances with our disagreement,” Leonard said in an interview shortly after being reelected in 2019. “I just wanted her to apologize for her behavior with the Capitol Police. It’s obvious she just wanted to deflect attention from herself onto someone else, and I think the voters of Chesterfield are well educated to have been able to recognize that.”
Although Chase is no longer affiliated with both the Republican caucus and the Chesterfield County GOP, she can still run on the ballot as a republican candidate. However, the Virginia GOP decided Sunday on using a convention to decide its 2021 candidates, instead of a primary election.
This means that Chase will have to run as an independent candidate for governor if she is excluded from the convention — a likely outcome, as highlighted by the very notion of using a convention rather than a primary. Anticipating this, Chase pre-committed to running as an independent back in February. However, Chase has recently backtracked on her commitment, requesting the GOP reconsider its decision.
Uniting the right, dividing the nation
Many believe the presence of an extremist, insurgent candidate, like Chase, in the 2021 GOP gubernatorial primary holds a striking resemblance to a previous GOP primary in the Commonwealth.
In 2017, former state chairman for the Trump campaign, Corey Stewart, ran against Ed Gillespie in the GOP primary on a platform heavily geared towards confederate monument preservation.
“Trump’s politics have failed to win much support in Virginia, and Corey Stewart and Ed Gillespie are good examples of that, but Chase is trying to go even further,” said Grant Fox, Communications Director for the Virginia Democratic Party.
Like Stewart, Chase also has taken it upon herself to raucously defend the idea of preserving Confederate monuments located in public spaces.
“Let’s be honest here, there is an overt effort here to erase all white history,” Chase said in a video posted to her campaign’s Facebook page, referring to comments made by Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney that recommended removing all Confederate monuments in Virginia.
But, most similarly to Stewart (and indeed with striking resemblance to QAnon talking points) Chase often uses a strategy of courting appeal from conservatives with a distaste for mainstream politics and progressive ideals. Typically, Chase does this through scandalous stunts and speculative statements, often in protest of proposed legal restrictions viewed to be an impediment on her “rights” as a citizen. But, most of these issues seem to boil down to a distaste for political correctness and increasing opportunities for minorities.
“[in 2016] I saw these patterns emerging,” said Susan Bro, the mother of Heather Heyer, who was killed in 2017 by white supremacist James Alex Fields Jr. during the Aug. 11–12 Unite the Right rally. Since then, Bro has gone on to testify before congress on the threat of white supremacist extremism, and also works on the advisory council for Not in Our Town.
According to Bro, this pattern is an all-too common one for the far-right. The pattern takes form by doing “what’s totally outrageous, withdraw it, and then you insert it again a little further each time,” Bro said.
Altogether, this tactic bolsters the actions of violent white supremacists by “desensitizing people” to their heinous ideology, according to Bro.
“That’s why we even have the possibility — the outrageous possibility — of the unmasked KKK coming to a progressive town to supposedly defend their rights,” Bro said. “Meanwhile, we have people like Amanda Chase running for office.”
Many of the issues that are intersectional with QAnon (specifically, political correctness) seem to aggravate many conservatives because “they don’t like being told what to do,” Bro said. “It seems to appeal to people who don’t like the elite.”
Stewart, like Chase, also has been revealed to hold several entanglements with right-wing extremists, particularly those who organized the deadly August 2017 rally.
In February of 2017, Stewart campaigned in Charlottesville, publicly condemning the city council’s recent vote to remove a statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee from a park downtown. Among those on stage with Stewart was Jason Kessler, the right-wing, Charlottesville-based blogger who organized the August rally with help from white nationalists like Richard Spencer and Eli Mosely. While speaking, Stewart endorsed Kessler’s petition to have Charlottesville Deputy Mayor Wes Bellamy investigated for abuse of office — an endeavor Kessler undertook in retaliation against Bellamy’s handling of a UVa professor that had made racist comments online.
“Stewart has done little to distance himself from Kessler in the aftermath of ‘Unite the Right,’ instead denigrating other Republicans as being ‘soft’ for condemning the alt-right,” the SPLC wrote in a profile on Kessler.
At several other Stewart campaign events in 2017, Kessler was in attendance with Unity & Security for America — a group he founded while filing his petition. The SPLC describes the group as a “nativist, white nationalist” organization focused on ridding Charlottesville of “Cultural Marxism […] a conspiracy that a group of Jewish leaders escaped Nazi Germany and have since sought to ‘erode Western values’ through cultural influence.”
Although initially appearing to have corralled the lion’s share of support from voters, Stewart went on to lose in the GOP primary against Gillespie, but only by a narrow 5,000 votes. Gillespie lost in the general election against Gov. Ralph Northam, who won by over 300,000 votes.
“Virginia Republicans let the far-right views and conspiracy theories of Donald Trump take over their party in the past few years,” said Fox. “But Virginians as a whole have rejected these candidates every chance they get, and I think if [Chase] wins the Republican nomination she’ll lose the general election.”
Republicans have not won a statewide election in Virginia since 2009. Dr. Amanda Wintersieck of VCU believes this is a clear sign of how much the Virginia GOP’s influence has continuously deteriorated.
“In the state of Virginia, the Republican Party is practically broken and there’s no way they can be competitive,” Wintersieck said.
The likely implication of this trend is that the Virginia GOP has a “0% probability” of winning in the general election, “because the Republican Party in Virginia is so fractured, and because [QAnon] is not a winnable position,” Wintersieck said.
But, QAnon and other intersectional far-right positions are certainly a winnable strategy in other states. Such is the case with recently-elected Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga, who is an outspoken QAnon believer and proudly anti-muslim.
In Virginia, it stands to reason that the 2021 gubernatorial election is a significant one — even if the possibility of a Chase victory in the general election is slim-to-none. This is because in Virginia, redistricting is done in the legislature, but is ultimately subject to a gubernatorial veto. With a newly completed census, and an incoming third-party committee tasked with “bipartisan” redistricting, the future remains unclear and generally up for the taking.
“We’ll know a lot more once the Census comes out, but demographers are pretty clear that over the last decade, Virginia has become increasingly diverse and increasingly educated,” Wintersieck said. “Those two things do not line up well with conspiracy theory-driven parties or candidacies.”
[Author’s note]: Sen. Amanda Chase did not respond to a request for an interview.
