Following a lengthy and at times brutal primary campaign, Virginia’s Republicans have chosen Corey Stewart to take on Tim Kaine in the state’s 2018 contest for United States Senate. Stewart, the Chairman of Prince William County’s Board of Supervisors, ran neck and neck with Delegate Nick Freitas of Culpeper as the results began pouring in, with Bishop E.W. Jackson occupying a distant third place. The election wasn’t called until nearly all of Virginia’s precincts had reported, with Fairfax County, the largest in the state, keeping voters in suspense as campaigns and their supporters held their breath, crossing their fingers in hopes of winning over the ever-elusive D.C. suburb which was among the last of Virginia’s counties to report election results. Prince William County also played a major role in allowing Stewart to come back from behind.
At the Stewart campaign’s Woodbridge based victory party, supporters gathered to watch the results pour in, in hopes of the evening climaxing in a victory speech by the candidate himself. A number of Virginia’s leading conservative figures spoke to the crowd, including Alice Butler-Short of Virginia Women for Trump, Jack Posobiec, and YouTuber Dionne Alexander, who spoke on unifying the American people across cultural, racial, and religious lines, through an ‘American first’ identity.
Later in the evening, chants of ‘Corey! Corey!’ filled the room as Stewart pulled ahead by 2,000 votes, and victory seemed well within the campaign’s grasp. When the election was finally called in Stewart’s favor, the crowd erupted. Euphoria filled the room as the moment his supporters had been so long awaiting finally arrived. With every vote counted and every precinct reporting, Stewart’s margin of victory stood at over 5,000 votes. He had defeated Delegate Freitas by 1.7%, a margin eerily similar to that by which Stewart was defeated in 2017’s Gubernatorial Primary by Ed Gillespie.
Shortly thereafter, Corey Stewart arrived to address the raucous crowd, shouting ‘thank you Virginia!’ following more chants of ‘Corey! Corey!’ as he came on stage. Stewart wasted no time in pledging his support for President Trump and his America first agenda, who he declared ‘the greatest President in at least 100 years.’ Stewart told the crowd that Virginia has two clear choices in 2018: ‘It can continue the prosperity, and the progress of America under President Trump, or it can choose the past, with everything we know that has failed, and that’s Hillary Clinton’s running mate Tim Kaine.’
Stewart pledged to enforce the immigration laws of the United States, pledging to build a wall along the southern border, and to deport the violent, illegal alien gang members of MS-13, echoing President Trump as he said ‘they really are animals.’
As his speech concluded, Stewart congratulated his opponents, and delivered one more jab to the Democratic Party and Tim Kaine as he said; ‘The Democratic Party folks, used to represent the little guy, it used to be the party that said it stood up for the working man, it doesn’t anymore. The Democratic Party instead stands for far left-wing radicals!.’