The Buena Vista Labor Day parade has all the elements that paint what would seem to be a perfect picture of Norman Rockwell’s America: the high school marching band, the football team in uniform, the pageant queen on the back of a convertible, the weight of tradition that for 54 years now has brought political candidates to this small industrial city on the western slopes of the Blue Ridge to parade down Magnolia Avenue.
This parade — and the speechifying that follows on a stage in Glen Maury Park — has become a ritual in Virginia politics. It’s a ritual that has faded in recent years as the state has changed. In 2017 and 2021, the Democratic candidate for governor skipped Buena Vista for events in more populous parts of the state. This year, for the first time since 2013, all six statewide candidates were in Buena Vista — a return to tradition. This might be the only time in the whole campaign when all six candidates are in the same place at the same time, and one of the few times that any of them interact with an unpredictable crowd outside their own activist base. The event began with an old-school sign of respect: As the candidates were assembling on stage, Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic nominee for governor, crossed over to the Republican side to greet her former colleague, Ben Cline. The former Democratic congresswoman from the 7th District and the current Republican congressman from the 6th District, who probably don’t agree on very much, shared a hug.
There was, however, something different about this year’s festivities that those previous gubernatorial candidates did not see or hear: hecklers.
They are not entirely new to Buena Vista. At last year’s Labor Day event, hecklers tried to shout down Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears when she attempted to speak. I wasn’t there last year but did see the video circulated afterward. I was there this year, and the most unexpected thing out of the candidates’ speeches wasn’t some new policy position or a well-rehearsed sound bite — it was the Democratic hecklers who drowned out every Republican candidate when they attempted to speak.
Not everyone on the Democratic side of the audience heckled, but enough did that sometimes I couldn’t hear the Republicans speak, and I was in front of the stage, about 20 feet at most from the podium. When the Democrats spoke, those on the Republican side of the audience sat quietly. The Democratic side, though, was far more raucous — and disruptive. “Hear me out,” began John Reid, the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor. That was not the crowd’s mood, however. After the event, I overheard Reid tell a supporter: “That was not the speech I was going to give — holy cow.”
Instead, he had pivoted to a call for civility — which was heckled.
Some on the Democratic side even heckled Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares when he was trying to cite statistics on opioid deaths coming down — a subject that you’d think would be both bipartisan and worthy of some respectful silence. That was not the case.
Republicans claimed that many on the Democratic side (which did appear more numerous, even though Buena Vista now votes about 70% or more Republican) were from out of town. If that’s so, they should have stayed home because their behavior did not seem to win any friends to their side. I don’t have much interest in telling people whether they should lean left or lean right, but I have no qualms saying that heckling a speaker is bad behavior — and reflects more poorly on the side doing the heckling than whoever is being heckled.
None of the Democratic candidates acknowledged those rowdy spectators who loudly cheered their remarks but tried to keep their opponents from being heard. I felt that the Democrats missed a “Sister Souljah” moment to call upon their own supporters to exercise some restraint and practice civility. Republicans, meanwhile, turned the hecklers into a running theme on their side. “Remember when you’re a guest in someone’s home it’s important to behave nicely,” said state Sen. Chris Head, R-Botetourt County. He got heckled, too.
If this is what we want politics to be like, we have only ourselves to blame when we wonder why it’s so hard to find good people to offer themselves for public office. Why would anyone subject themselves to this kind of verbal abuse?
It didn’t used to be this way. I went to my first Buena Vista Labor Day parade sometime in the 1980s; there was always enthusiastic — and good-natured — cheering for one side or another, but I never remember any heckling, especially the prolonged jeering I saw Monday. This seems to be a byproduct of how Democrats have responded to the crudities of President Donald Trump, by descending into their own form of boorishness. If that’s so, shame on both of them. One of the people marching in the Democratic contingent in the parade carried a sign in the shape of a hand with the slogan “Power to the People.” When the sign-carrier pulled a lever, the hand-shaped sign would flip up a middle finger that read “Trump” and revealed that the sign now said: “Pooper to the People.” Is this what now passes for political discourse in America? Apparently so.
Cline, who represented Buena Vista in the House of Delegates before being elected to Congress, has been to far more of these Labor Day events than I have. I asked him when they turned so sour. His reponse: “When moderates left the Democratic Party.” What he didn’t say is that a lot of moderates have left the Republican Party, too, as it’s moved further right, but the Republicans I saw in Buena Vista were far better behaved — and pointedly resisted responding in kind.
I understand that Democrats are outraged by much of what Trump is doing. Trying to shout down the Republican candidates may fire up their own activists but would seem to do absolutely nothing to help Democrats achieve what ought to be their overarching political goal, which is to win back voters who over the years have defected to the other side. Buena Vista was once a Democratic stronghold; now it’s not — a classic example of how Democrats have lost blue-collar voters. In 2013, the last time a Democratic candidate for governor walked in the Labor Day parade, Buena Vista voted 57.9% Republican. Four years ago, Buena Vista voted 74.3% Republican. Whatever caused those voters to change allegiance will not be reversed by heckling. On the contrary, it might only harden current allegiances.
The irony is that this unmannerly behavior by some (again, some, not all) Democratic supporters came in a year when their whole ticket made a point of coming to Buena Vista, a place that realistically Democrats don’t need to count on for many votes. Each of the Democratic candidates — Spanberger for governor, Ghazala Hashmi for lieutenant governor, Jay Jones for attorney general — made respectful pitches for why voters in Buena Vista ought to consider them and never once criticized their opponents. Spanberger, in particular, leaned into themes that might play well with voters in a small, conservative city. She talked about being a former CIA agent and a member of the Fraternal Order of Police, about her endorsement by the Virginia Police Benevolent Association. I don’t know how many undecided voters were at the pavilion in Glen Maury Park — realistically, probably not many. However, if any were there, I have to wonder who they’ll remember more: the Democratic speakers, or the Democratic spectators who shouted down the Republican candidates. I know which group made the most impression on me.
For any Democrats upset by this column, I’ll just point out that I wrote a very similiar one when then-Rep. Bob Good, the Republican congressman from the 5th District, heckled President Joe Biden in 2023: “Rep. Good heckled the president. Why that’s bad for Republicans and bad for society.” This behavior only coarsens our civic life even more than it already is.
The townspeople who lined up along the parade route displayed no such impoliteness toward either side, even though election returns now make Buena Vista bright red. I walked the whole route and didn’t hear the crowd react to the politicians one way or another. The main cheers I heard were for the cheerleaders from Parry McCluer High School — “Go Blues,” a reference to the Fighting Blues and not any political color. Spanberger, Hashmi and Jones walked behind a Democratic banner with a group of supporters who alternately chanted “Abigail! Abigail!” or “USA! USA!” The Republicans were more spread out, and Cline often departed from the parade route to shake hands with people sitting on their porches. Both Miyares and Reid passed a young man wearing a T-shirt with the outline of a gun and the slogan: “Come and take it.”
“I like your shirt,” Miyares told him.
Reid followed soon after. “Don’t tell anybody, but I like your shirt,” Reid said.
Both parties had their mascots: an elephant statue for Republicans, a donkey statue for Democrats. The latter also had a band on one float, picking out tunes from Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Our Land” to Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down.”
At the speaking pavilion, a fiery Earle-Sears seemed prepared for what followed and gave the crowd a good look at her combative nature. She started right off talking about the hecklers — pointing a finger at “the tolerant left,” she called them. Or maybe “the intolerant left” — it was hard to hear. “They’re rude and they’re crude — that’s what they do.” Then she stepped back from the lectern, folded her arms and waited for the roar to subside. To her supporters, she said, “You didn’t have to be bused here; you came because you wanted to be here.” She then introduced herself as “a United States Marine,” pointed to the American flag on the side of the stage, walked over to it and held it for a few seconds. Whether that was patriotic or performative may depend on your political point of view. “That flag represents everybody,” she said. When those on the Democratic side started chanting “USA! USA!” Earle-Sears shook her fist and joined in with them until they stopped.
When Earle-Sears finally began the more formal part of her remarks, she twice pointed to Spanberger, sitting behind her on stage, and called her by name. “You know what I want to know — where was my opponent, Abigail Spanberger, when they said Black people could not drink at their water fountain?” (That’s a reference to the woman who, at a protest recently in Arlington against the Trump adminstration’s policies on transgender students, held up a sign that read: “Hey Winsome, if trans can’t share your bathroom, then Blacks can’t share my water fountain.”) Earle-Sears said it took “a whole day” before Spanberger responded to condemn the sign. Earle-Sears went on to say that “my opponent will kill jobs.”
By contrast, Spanberger made no mention of Earle-Sears, although she did thank Buena Vista for hosting an event so that candidates “could tell you what we are for” — perhaps in contrast to Earle-Sears, whose talk had mostly been about her opponent and not herself. The closest Spanberger came to a partisan moment was when she said that the Republican-passed One Big Beautiful Bill would take “billions” from the state’s health care system. “I will work to negate the harm of that bill,” she said.
Instead, Spanberger spent her time running through her biography and talking up how, when she was in Congress, “I was ranked as the most bipartisan member of Congress from the Virginia delegation because I did work to build coalitions.” (That ranking came from the Lugar Center and Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy.) She pointed out that she was ranked as “the most effective legislator from either House and Senate on matters of agricultural policy.” She even made a special appeal for non-Democrats to vote for her. In more normal times, Spanberger’s talk might have been called “conciliatory.”
It’s just too bad that the candidate who talked about building coalitions across party lines had a cheering section that tried to keep people from hearing what the other side had to say.
For more on where the candidates stand, see our Voter Guide.
What the other candidates had to say in Buena Vista
Ghazala Hashmi, Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor: “I had students [when she taught community college] who would lose their housing in the middle of the semester, and they’d have to drop out to take care of their families. I had students who went hungry in the middle of a semester and came by my office to ask if I had some snacks to share. Virginia, we can do better . . . We have a responsibility to our rural communities, especially now we’re seeing the crisis come as we lose Medicaid. We’re going to see the destruction of our rural hospitals…. we are going to see so many issues that we have a responsibility at the state level to respond to.”
John Reid, Republican candidate for lieutenant governor: “There are really clear differences between the two parties, respectfully, respectfully. I hope you see me as a new type of Republican, someone who will arrive at the Capitol with an open heart, an open mind, and a fresh set of eyes.”
Jay Jones, Democratic candidate for attorney general: “We know times are a little bit challenging right now where costs are going up and people are feeling the squeeze and the things coming out of Washington make us less safe and less secure. We need someone to step up and be the champion for people all across Virginia. As assistant attorney general, I kept Virginians safe by going after the largest ghost gun manufacturer in the country and putting them out of business . . . We’ll usher in a brighter day that we have not seen for the last three and a half years.”
Jayson Miyares, Republican candidate for re-election as attorney general: “Four years ago, Virginia was literally a state that was dying with more people moving out than moving in. Then something remarkable happened — the great Virginia comeback happened. [With the 2021 election of Glenn Youngkin, Winsome Earle-Sears and Jason Miyares], we saw an amazing turnaround. We went from 46th in the country in job creation to top five; $130 billion of new investment. And yes, we reversed the trend of more people moving out of the state than moving in . . . When I said Virginia was a dying state, that was literal. When I took over as attorney general, our murder rate was at a 20-year high, our violent crime was at a 30-year high and the addiction death rate was at the highest we’d ever seen in Virginia history. . . . [Four years later, we have], a third drop in our murder rate, a double-digit drop in violent crime. And we’ve had such a change on addiction. . . My office has gotten enough fentnayl off the street that would have killed 7 million Virginians . . . We’re the number one state in the country for a drop in addiction deaths.”