I always urge Republicans not to pay too much attention to polls. The only poll that matters is the one taken on Election Day (or if Democrats have their way, Election Month, plus the week after.) But the campaign of Virginia Democrat gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe must be looking at the polls and finding them scarier than any Halloween haunted house. Particularly a new Fox News poll that finds support for McAuliffe has cratered since he started siding with leftist school boards over parents. The shocking new poll shows Republican Glenn Youngkin now in the lead by one point among registered voters and by eight points (53% to 45%) among likely voters.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/youngkin-ahead-virginia-voters

To illustrate how big a turn-around this is, just two weeks ago, McAuliffe was leading by 5 points among likely voters, by 11 points among registered voters, and by 10 points among likely voter parents, who now prefer Youngkin by 14 points!

As always, I’ll remind Republicans not to let good polls make you complacent. If you’re in Virginia, you need to get out and volunteer, campaign, vote and take your family and friends with you. You’ve got a lot of Democrat money, machinery, media and malfeasance to overcome. Thanks to the DC suburbs that are enriched by federal spending, a Republican hasn’t won statewide office in Virginia since 2009, but maybe the usual awful effects of blue rule are finally reaching critical mass.

(Incidentally, former President Trump clarified that his recent statement about election fraud possibly discouraging Republicans to vote “was in no way meant to imply that I would tell them not to vote,” and that “regardless of anything or anyone, we must get out the Republican and SANE VOTE!” The caps are his. You heard the Donald, get out and vote!)

Meanwhile, someone is obviously taking these bad poll numbers for McAuliffe seriously, and that’s his own campaign, which at this point can reasonably be described as “snake bit.” The candidate has committed one gaffe after another, from alienating parents to storming out of TV interviews. Lately, he’s been aligning himself with professional sore loser Stacey Abrams, and he recently seemed to endorse her widely-debunked claim (i.e., “Big Lie”) that the 2018 Georgia Governor’s race was stolen from her.

Now, word has come that McAuliffe’s campaign has hired a name all too familiar to readers of this newsletter, Democrat super lawyer Marc Elias of the notorious Perkins Coie law firm, famous for their roles in ginning up the false “Russian dossier” claims about Trump and suing to change state voting laws in 2020 to help elect Biden.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/team-mcauliffe-emails-reveal-effort-to-kill-this-fox-news-story

Law professor Jonathan Turley called the Elias hiring “an astonishing move” and suggested it might mean McAuliffe is planning to break his vow not to challenge the election results if he loses. This prompted Fox News reporter Tyler O’Neil to email McAuliffe spokesperson Christina Freundlich for a response.

Her response was to forward the email to colleagues with the question, “Can we try to kill this?” Which we know because she mistakenly included O’Neil in the list of email recipients.

As of this writing, the campaign had yet to respond to Fox News’ request for comment. Not even accidentally.

Now, that’s what I call a snake-bit campaign. But to look on the bright side, if McAuliffe and his team are this disorganized and incompetent, voters are lucky they’re finding out now instead of after the election, like Biden voters are.