Former Democrat Tulsi Gabbard joins Yesli Vega on campaign trail at Quantico

Former Democratic Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard made the trip from Hawaii to Quantico Marine Corps Base to campaign for Republican Yesli Vega.

Gabbard joined Vega on the stump at her campaign headquarters, at the Quantico Gateway office complex just outside the base Saturday, October 22, 2022. Gabbard outlined why she left the Democratic Party earlier this month and urged voters to round up their friends and head to the polls to cast their ballot for Vega.

Everything from our freedom of speech to our freedom of religion. [The Biden Administration] is hostile towards people of faith and spirituality, openly hostile to anyone who dares to lift their voice or think for themselves. Worse than that, they are in power and have the muscle of law behind them,” Gabbard told a room of more than 200 conservatives. “We have seen time and time again how they are mobilizing and weaponizing and politicizing. The Department of Justice, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Education, and the Customs and Border Patrol. You go down the list of these institutions that literally exist to serve the public good, to protect our freedoms, to ensure the safety and security of our families, to secure our borders.”

Gabbard said he’s campaigning for multiple candidates this election cycle and was scheduled to make two campaign stops with Vega today. The second was planned after noon in Stafford County, near Fredericksburg.

Gabbard announced her departure from the Democrat Party earlier this month. She was a 2020 presidential candidate who challenged Joseph Biden for his party’s nomination. After dropping out of the race, Gabbard left congress, where she represented Hawaii residents from 2002 to 2003 and again from 2013 to 2020.

Gabbard served in Iraq in a field medical of the Army National Guard from 2004 to 2005 and was stationed in Kuwait from 2008 to 2009 as an Army Military Police platoon leader. She criticized Biden for a speech he delivered in September in Philadelphia in which the President said those who voted for his 2020 opponent, President Donald Trump, are “semi-fascist” extremists.

“…this made me so angry. On 9-1-1, on the anniversary of that horrific terrorist attack on this country, we heard people all over the mainstream media, the radical woke ideologues representing the administration, saying that people who voted for Donald Trump pose a greater threat to us than Al Qaeda terrorists,” said Gabbard.

Vega’s campaign rally comes a day after a canceled debate that was supposed to occur at Gar-Field Senior High School in Woodbridge. Her incumbent opponent, Democrat Abigail Spanberger, dropped out of the debate after taking issue with co-moderator Larry O’Connor, a conservative talk show host from WMAL radio in Washington, D.C.

The first attempt to organize a debate between the two candidates, at Mary Washington University in Fredericksburg in September, failed after Vega refused to stand on stage with Spanberger, calling it a college campus full of Spanaberger supporters. With only 17 days until Election Day and early voting underway, it’s unlikely the two will face off on the debate stage this election cycle.

“We are ready for change and feel it all over this district,” said Vega. “We had a debate scheduled for yesterday, but it’s no surprise my opponent is hiding and running.” Vega is an elected Prince William County Supervisor and a deputy sheriff in the county.

Spanberger, a two-term incumbent seeking to keep the 7th District seat, worked in the CIA’s Clandestine Service, gathering intelligence on nuclear terrorism until 2014, when she left the agency to an appointment to a state board by then Gov. Terry McAuliffe. She won reelection in 2029 by about 8,000 votes of more than 454,000 ballots.

The Virginia State Supreme Court redrew the state’s political districts last year. It shifted the 7th District north, away from Spanberger’s home outside Richmond, to include eastern Prince William County, Spotsylvania, King George, Culpeper, Greene, Madison counties, and Fredericksburg.

Former Republican Congressman Denver Riggleman, who represented Virginia’s 5th District from 2019 to 2021, recently appeared in a TV commercial endorsing Spanberger.

•  The deadline to apply for a ballot to be mailed to you is October 28, 2022. Your local voter registration office must receive your request by 5 p.m.
• The last day of in-person early voting at your local voter registration office is Saturday, November 5, 2022, at 5 p.m.