Except Gillespie wasn’t there, irking some Trump supporters who say the Republican has been too standoffish toward the president. But Corey Stewart, a Trump acolyte who nearly beat Gillespie in the June gubernatorial primary, was front and center and gave the crowd the blunt, populist rhetoric it craved.
“We are in a war, a cultural battle,” boomed Stewart, who is running for the GOP nomination to challenge Sen. Tim Kaine (D) in 2018. “And we have to stand up and fight, fight the criminals, communists, crackheads and the weirdos — those are your Democrats.”
He urged the crowd to “take back Virginia!”
Two-thirds of the Republican ticket — state Sen. Jill Vogel, who’s running for lieutenant governor, and lawyer John Adams, candidate for attorney general — traveled to Virginia Beach for the event, although Adams had to leave before it began because his father fell ill.
