Politics

Youngkin went to war with an openly gay GOP candidate. He lost this round.

Published

1 year ago

May 3, 2025

The blast radius from the controversy surrounding Virginia’s Republican lieutenant governor candidate expanded this week, when a top political aide to Gov. Glenn Youngkin stepped down from his post.His departure was the latest event in a week of turmoil that has pitted Republican leaders in the state against the GOP’s grassroots, upending a party that was already confronting a difficult election year.

The conflict centers on the political future of lieutenant governor candidate John Reid, who resisted a week of pressure from some Virginia Republican Party leaders to step aside over allegations that he maintained a social media account with sexually explicit images of men. Reid, the first openly gay candidate for statewide office in Virginia, denied that he was connected to the photos, and has argued that efforts to remove him from the Republican ticket are rooted in discrimination against his sexual orientation.

When Republican Party leaders in Virginia became aware of the photos, some tried to force Reid out of the race. Youngkin asked Reid to drop out last week, confirmed by Blue Light News. But the attempts to oust him backfired. Matt Moran, who ran Youngkin’s political operation, stepped aside as he was accused of pressuring Reid to remove himself from the GOP ticket — something Moran has denied publicly.

Moran did not respond to a request for comment. A representative for Youngkin pointed to comments from the governor on Friday where he declined to say if he would campaign on behalf of Reid, but said he will “support the nominees and their ticket. And at the end of the day, Republicans need to win. And that’s the bottom line.”

The fallout has created a rift within the state party as it faces an uphill battle in November. President Donald Trump and tech billionaire Elon Musk’s war on the federal workforce has hit hard in a state where more than 150,000 federal employees live. The controversy, Republicans conceded, could tarnish Youngkin’s efforts to position himself as a potential 2028 presidential candidate, and it is widely viewed as a misstep.

“If John Reid is conservative and he’s being trashed by his own political party, you need to go out there and support him,” said Scott Pio, who chairs the Loudoun County GOP, which has started selling “In John Reid We Trust” mugs, with proceedings going toward Reid’s campaign. “You need to lean in and support the guy instead of run away from him.”

One Virginia Republican operative, who like others in this article was granted anonymity to speak freely, shrugged off the photos as “just a bunch of penises,” while another said of the episode, “This is insane.”

The second operative said the day before Moran’s departure became public, “The only winners here are Democrats and then a bunch of losers who are Republicans and starting with the governor and going on down to the rest of the ticket.”

Yet GOP consultant Rory Cooper dismissed the drama as a “purely Virginia thing” that has mainly captured the attention of political insiders, and likely won’t have any impact on an election six months away.

“Candidate choice matters, the party being united matters, and I think they’ll get this stuff behind them because they really have no choice,” Cooper said. “A fractured party is not going to be able to beat a moderate Democrat who has high favorables going into the general, and so they’ll figure it out.”

That message of unity appears to be echoed by Reid’s campaign.

“John is proud to be the Republican nominee and he looks forward to campaigning across the state over the coming months,” Reid’s campaign said in a statement. “He has been very clear that he welcomes the support of the governor, full ticket, and all Virginians who are committed to unity around our ticket and a positive future for our home.”

Fear that the controversy could weaken the GOP ticket is not limited to strategists inside the GOP. Winsome Earle-Sears, the presumptive GOP gubernatorial nominee, in a public statement Tuesday quoted from the Book of Matthew and called the focus on Reid a distraction from what she cast as a mission of uniting Virginians. “It is his race and his decision alone to move forward,” she said. Earle-Sears did not respond to questions.

Earle-Sears, who authored a Christian self-help book, holds socially conservative beliefs. In 2024, when fulfilling her duties as lieutenant governor to sign legislation, she hand wrote her personal objections to a bill that prohibits officials from denying marriage licenses based on sex, gender or race.

Reid held a solo rally in Henrico, Virginia, on Wednesday evening, after plans for Youngkin and the entire GOP ticket to appear together were scrapped. Facing a large crowd, Reid railed against the “Richmond swamp” that “does not like it when they encounter a different type of person who they can’t control.”

The fact that Reid is drawing fervent grassroots support in the GOP represents another marker in the ongoing populist transformation of a party that, for decades, made social conservatism and, in particular, opposition to same-sex marriage, a key part of its platform. This shift, embodied by the election of Trump, a thrice-married New York reality television star, has led to Republican primary voters focusing more on “fighting” than on “family values.”

The attempt to oust Reid, and the turmoil that followed, may in part be because the operative class has not quite caught up to the grassroots on this issue. A third Republican operative familiar with the situation said there was the sense that some Virginia Republicans were panicked that Reid’s sexual orientation would be an electoral drag and then used the social media account to work backwards and justify dropping him from the ticket.

U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith, a Republican, said that having a diverse GOP ticket — a Black woman, an openly gay man as well Attorney General Jason Miyares, the son of a Cuban refugee — should help Republicans’ odds in November. “That’s a good, feel good story, no matter what,” he said, referring to the candidates’ backgrounds. “And that story should override, assuming that those pictures aren’t a whole lot worse than it was depicted.”

On Thursday morning, Reid guest-hosted a four-hour conservative radio show, and a series of callers spent their morning bashing Youngkin and his allies. Reid, who said he had secured the guest spot before he was asked to leave the race, was filling in for host John Fredericks, who described Reid as “a friend.”

“Everyone who is trying to come out against you really learned a lesson last night of what not to do,” said a Virginia caller named Casey. Another caller went straight after Youngkin, calling the governor “nothing more than a RINO.”

The backlash doesn’t bode well for Youngkin, who is term-limited in the state and looking for his next opportunity. How he navigates this situation with his own state party could have major implications for his political future.

Reid’s only primary opponent, longtime Fairfax County Supervisor Pat Herrity, dropped out of the race late last month due to health concerns, locking in Reid as the nominee.

“If you were that worried about (me being gay), why didn’t you run a bunch of other people?” Reid said on the radio show Thursday morning.

But staying on the ticket is one thing. Winning in November is another.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, who represents part of Northern Virginia, said it doesn’t matter who the GOP nominates for lieutenant governor, because the Trump administration’s overhaul of the federal government has created a tough environment for down-ballot Republicans in a state where many federal employees live.

“Virginians are mad right now,” Subramanyam said. “Whoever the Republican nominee is in November is going to pay a price for what’s going on in D.C. right now.”

Ally Mutnick contributed reporting.

Politics

Bobby Pulido is sick and tired of apologizing

Published

35 minutes ago

August 6, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

HIDALGO, Texas — Bobby Pulido is learning that the bright lights of politics can be even harsher than music superstardom.

For the past several months, the Latin Grammy-winning singer and local megacelebrity has been the subject of a steady stream of national headlines scrutinizing his former professional relationship with a one-time bandmate who was imprisoned on child sex molestation charges. He’s also faced criticism for past social media posts that included racial, sexist and homophobic slurs and comments.

During a recent interview with Blue Light News — after a weeknight meet-and-greet with voters in the same stadium where he performed his final concert in November 2025 — Pulido struck a defensive tone about the scandals that have plagued his campaign.

“I apologize right now,” Pulido said, referring to the social media posts. “I’ll tell you right now, that way you’ll never ask me again. I apologize for everything that I’ve ever joked about that offended anybody. But I can’t continue to revisit every single one.”

Pulido also insisted he did nothing wrong in his working relationship with Frankie Caballero, maintaining he did not know about his former accordionist’s child molestation charges. He expects opponents to “keep dripping, dripping, dripping, dripping” new social media posts.

“I’ve been an open book for 30 years,” he said. “I was on Twitter way before I thought about running for office. They’re gonna keep going to old tweets, and there’s a lot of tweets in there that I’m embarrassed of. There’s jokes that I’ve told that I apologize for, and I’ve owned up to them. I’m like, man, that makes me cringe, and I’ve publicly apologized.”

Pulido is one of House Democrats’ prized battleground recruits and a key part of their plan to flip control of the lower chamber. The first-time candidate is widely known in Texas’ 15th District for his singing career, and he hopes to capitalize on voters’ anti-incumbency angst in his bid against GOP Rep. Monica De La Cruz in a newly redrawn district that President Donald Trump won by 18 points in 2024.

Recent polling shows the race within the margin of error or Pulido leading, thanks in large part to his near-universal name ID. But while voters have shown a strong interest in political outsiders, those outsiders are also untested — and new revelations can swamp news cycles and potentially their chances.

The New York Post first reported in April on Pulido’s past relationship to Caballero, a registered sex offender who was imprisoned for indecent contact with an eight-year-old girl. Pulido told Blue Light News he first learned that Caballero was incarcerated on sex charges from the Post report, and Pulido’s campaign says the singer’s management company cut ties with Caballero after learning about a domestic abuse charge in 2021.

Pulido said he’d asked Caballero why he was in prison. “Transferring illegal aliens. That’s what he told me,” he told Blue Light News. “And I knew he had a lot of substance abuse issues, and he violated a lot of his paroles. Those were the things that he told me.” (Pulido’s campaign told the Texas Tribune in July that Pulido only knew Caballero struggled with addiction.)

In June, Axios reported Caballero performed with Pulido at a middle school benefit concert in 2018, where children were present, after being released from prison. When asked if he regretted having Caballero play there, Pulido said he did — knowing what he knows now.

“Without me knowing, it’s hard for me to say that,” he said. “Me, that I know now, yes. I wish I wouldn’t have taken him there.”

Caballero could not be reached for comment.

Pulido’s past social media posts have also come back to haunt the singer-turned-politician. In Twitter posts between 2013 and 2018, Pulido used homophobic and sexist Spanish-language slurs which translate to “f-g,” “f—-t” and “p—y.” In several other posts, he used the word “prieto,” a term referring to dark-skinned individuals many view as pejorative. The posts were first reported by NBC News and reviewed by Blue Light News. In another 2013 Spanish-language post reviewed by Blue Light News, Pulido joked that Mexican actor Mauricio Islas “isn’t a f-g, respect him. His boyfriend is.”

Islas, whose partner is a woman, did not respond to a request for comment.

Pulido told Blue Light News some of the remarks were made in jest toward personal friends. “That’s how we joke. I would never tell a stranger that,” he said.

He defended his use of the racial term as a cultural misunderstanding. “In our culture, we call each other that. It’s like Black people calling each other the n-word,” he said. “Would somebody that called another Black person the n-word be accused of racism? But they want to come and translate what I said to this guy, which is how we say it and we’re joking, they wanted to make it seem like I’m telling some complete stranger that. That’s not what it is.”

“I’m not making excuses,” Pulido added. “Would you have to apologize to your friend that you joke like that with, that doesn’t have a problem with anything you say? I don’t feel like I should have to apologize to them because they’re my friends.”

This isn’t the first time he’s flashed irritation when asked about his past posts, saying they distract from issues like affordability and immigration that voters care about. Pulido let loose on the New York Post when the paper reached out for comment about some other controversial social media posts. “We’ve been getting the same recycled tabloid nonsense since last October,” he said in a July video posted to his social media channels.

“And for whatever reporter that wants to keep asking,” he said in Spanish, “que no mamen, Kool-Aids. Now go translate that.” The colloquial phrase translates roughly to “don’t be jerks, assholes” or “don’t be stupid, assholes.”

De La Cruz’s campaign hopes to make hay out of the issues. In a statement, James Shook, the representative’s campaign manager, said Pulido is a “product of the corrupt compadre system that looks out for itself and everybody else is expected to look away.”

In press releases, De La Cruz’s campaign has pointed out apparent inconsistencies in Pulido’s statements. They note that Pulido told The Monitor he fired Caballero in 1996, but Caballero appears on two of Pulido’s albums through 1999. In a 2019 podcast, Pulido suggested he got Caballero out of jail; he told Bloomberg this year that was “hyperbolic” and he “misspoke.”

“Bobby Pulido walked a man convicted of molesting an eight-year-old girl onto a middle school event in this community, and hid his sex offender status from parents,” Shook said. “This is someone he toured with for years and is on tape bragging he personally bailed him out of jail. The only question left is why he thought he would get away with it.”

But there are signs that voters have become increasingly desensitized to scandal. A new Blue Light News Poll found a significant share of voters — both Republican and Democrat — say they would stick with their preferred candidate even if they were caught accepting gifts from lobbyists, exploiting tax loopholes or making antisemitic posts. Democrats drew a harsher line when it came to accusations of sexual violence and sexual assault. Voters were not polled on past use of homophobic or gender slurs on social media, or on relationships with sex offenders.

Some of Pulido’s supporters who know his family largely shrug off the headlines.

Esmeralda Knapp, a hairstylist in McAllen, said she will vote for Pulido solely because his uncle, a former county judge, helped secure Knapp’s brother’s release from prison many years ago. Bob Villarreal, a retired teacher in Edinburg, reminisced about the time Pulido’s father, a musician himself, substitute-taught his sixth-grade orchestra class. Maria Dominguez, who runs a wellness club in McAllen, said Pulido is “a good person” because she knows his family: “His family are working people, good people and raised in the valley.”

Villarreal brushed off Pulido’s relationship with Caballero. “It wasn’t Bobby,” he said. “I guess it’s important for some people, but for me, I mean, it’s somebody else.”

“It’s guilt by association,” said Patricia Villarreal, his wife.

Politics

Dasha Burns presses Mike Johnson on the economy, Iran and Trump’s agenda

Published

7 hours ago

August 6, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Dasha Burns presses Mike Johnson on the economy, Iran and Trump’s agenda

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Politics

Progressives got their win in Michigan. Can a democratic socialist carry Wisconsin?

Published

16 hours ago

August 5, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The wave of populist energy propelling progressive Democrats to primary wins across the country reduced Wednesday morning to a ripple, just pushing Abdul El-Sayed to a narrow victory over his more moderate opponent, Rep. Haley Stevens.

Francesca Hong will try to keep the progressive momentum alive in another swing-state test in Wisconsin next week.

But if Hong, the democratic socialist frontrunner to claim her party’s gubernatorial nomination, wins her primary, she’s already recognizing the need to unite a broader coalition to win in November.

“We absolutely need every single vote, and we’ll be fighting to earn every single vote,” Hong said in an exclusive interview with Blue Light News on Wednesday morning.

“I’ve talked to moderates and independents, Republicans, folks who don’t have a political home right now, and they have a lot of concerns about what’s going on in the state. They also have concerns about things I’ve said in the past,” she added. “But what we’re focusing on is how to come together to actually deliver for Wisconsinites, and that’s going to be electing Democrats down and up the ballot this cycle.”

Hong, a state Assembly member and former restaurant owner, this week faced criticism from across the political spectrum about a slew of old social media posts espousing far-left views, from declarations to abolish the police to a call to “cancel Thanksgiving.” And El-Sayed’s knife-edge win right next door is reigniting concerns among some Democrats that a battleground may not be ready for such a lefty leader.

Hong appears to be moderating on — or at least adding context to — some of her more controversial positions. She has walked back her stance on police abolition while emphasizing the need to better tackle the underlying causes of crime. She told Blue Light News many of her old posts were “jokes,” including the one about Thanksgiving, which she said is actually her favorite holiday.

Still, Hong isn’t giving up her democratic socialist bonafides.

“The vision that we have for Wisconsin is one that my local DSA chapter shares,” she said, adding that “we’re fighting to make sure that we’re building the diverse coalition that we need to make sure that we win this for Wisconsinites in November.”

Hong has notched endorsements from several national progressives, including Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who rallied alongside her and the progressive podcaster Hasan Piker last weekend.

But she hasn’t been endorsed by the country’s two most prominent democratic socialists and standardbearers of the progressive movement: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). Hong told Blue Light News she has not spoken to either and attributed their lack of endorsement to their focus on federal races — though Sanders endorsed Troy Jackson in the Vermont governor’s race before he lost and became the Senate nominee, and both endorsed New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani last year.

“We have been focusing on winning a Democratic primary and staying above the drama,” Hong said.

Despite a major fundraising disadvantage, Hong has emerged as an unlikely frontrunner. She has led in the polls for months and became the all-but-presumed nominee after her main opponents, Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes and Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, both dropped out amid simmering scandals that embroiled their campaigns. Hong’s chief primary opponent next week is Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, who dropped out of the race then jumped back in last month and has the endorsement of the state’s current Gov. Tony Evers, a moderate Democrat. Whoever wins on Tuesday will face off against the President Donald Trump-endorsed GOP Rep. Tom Tiffany.

Hong believes her lead is due to a grassroots campaign that has excited Democratic primary voters in Wisconsin. “Free child care, fully funding our schools, taxing the billionaires and a moratorium on AI data centers is what the majority of Wisconsinites have been telling us that they want, and we are the campaign that is listening,” she said in the interview.

The Crowley campaign is pointing to the Michigan results as a sign that they can still catch Hong. “There is still a long way to go in this race,” Crowley spokesperson Eddie Vale said. “If you can’t handle an easy BLN interview about Thanksgiving how can you possibly face the full wrath of the Republican attack machine?”

To beat Tiffany in the general, Hong would likely need to pick up support from more moderate Democrats and independents — all while dodging a deluge of Republican attacks digging up her old comments and seeking to paint her as “woke.”

“All Francesca Hong has to offer Wisconsin is bigger government, a plan to make Wisconsin the highest-taxed state in the nation, and a record of calling to abolish the police and prisons,” Tiffany said in a statement to Blue Light News.

“They are trying to get a head start on labeling her ahead of the primary because they don’t see the result changing,” said Winnebago County Executive Gordon Hintz, who was minority leader in the state Assembly when Hong was first elected.

“There’s a very big discussion going on in Wisconsin, much as there was in Michigan, about whether a very progressive candidate can prevail in the primary and in the general election,” said John Nichols, a Madison native who wrote an anti-capitalist manifesto with Sanders. “It goes to a lot of questions about what’s been said in the past and how much people care.”

Asked if she planned to change her messaging strategy ahead of the primary, Hong flipped the question back to Tiffany. “When it comes to tailoring messaging, it’s important to recognize that what we have to offer are actual solutions, and what Tom Tiffany is bringing are clearly more Trump tariffs,” she said.

Tiffany, in his statement, hit back. “While she focuses on promoting socialism, defending inflammatory statements, and campaigning alongside terrorist sympathizers, I’ll remain focused on ending the 400-year property tax hike, rooting out fraud, bringing good-paying jobs back to Wisconsin, and making life more affordable after eight years under a Democrat governor,” he said.

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