Pete Snyder had already made a name for himself in DC circles as owner of New Media Strategies, a social media marketing company he founded in 1999, before he decided to get a little more inside the political game by running in the Republican primary for Lieutenant Governor of Virginia in 2013. He lost that contest but was undeterred, chairing the 2017 campaign for Republican Ed Gillespie’s run for Virginia’s Governor.
Gillespie lost, too. But after four years of Democratic Governor Ralph Northam’s leadership, and a one-party rule situation in Richmond that Snyder calls “an unmitigated disaster,” the 48-year-old father and communications expert reckoned perhaps the time was right to throw his hat into the big ring himself and run for Governor.
And the trauma of the school closings in Fairfax County, Va. have given Snyder a timely policy platform that cuts across partisan divides in a state that works very closely with Washington, DC. And closing the partisan gap is a crucial element if a Republican hopes to win.
“The very same frustrations and angst that I heard from business owners all last year who were fighting for their lives,” Snyder tells RedState, “not because they made bad decisions, but because their own government decided to pick winners and losers…[and] it shattered their dreams…when I’ve been talking to parents and students about the schools issues…it’s the very same thing: they feel unseen and unheard by their own government.”
Snyder has been paying attention to the polls that indicate a majority of teachers who have returned to the classroom are comfortable with that decision. And he’s got his eye on the science related to school closings, releasing a statement back in January responding to the the CDC’s proclamation of “scant spread” of coronavirus among children.
Votes don’t count anymore if you want to defeat the left it’ll be done through violence
I’d like to hear his thoughts on rural areas of the state, particularly ESVA. Will he stand for our rights and endeavor to protect our land and water? We have been so trampled by the state in the past from menhaden lobbyists to CAFOs being allowed to build without proper well permitting (the state pretty much gave them a free pass after the fact to the detriment of our sole-source drinking water aquifer).