Bird appears to be the word used in Terry McAuliffe’s governorship campaign in Virginia.
The Democrat’s 21-year-old daughter, Sally, took a break from campaigning for her father to flash her middle finger in front of a Republican desk with signs of her father’s suddenly rising rival, Glenn Youngkin.
A photo of Sally making a lewd gesture was posted on Instagram and then shared to The Post by a mentor.
Sally McAuliffe hit the situation in Lynchburg, Virginia, where her father campaigned on Wednesday night.
Smiling friends give a thumbs up to Sally’s side in the photo outside the Lynchburg Republican City Committee.
“Terry McAuliffe’s ‘truly yours’ campaign was for his parents, so it’s no surprise that his divisive and hate-filled campaign was so front-runner about how he really feels,” said a top Virginia Republican.
The McAuliffe campaign declined to comment.
Although some Republicans were upset by the impudent display, others shrugged their shoulders.
Eric Harrison, chairman of the Republican City of Lynchburg Committee, whose office was the site of the coup, told The Post that “we’re not really interested in what the McAuliffe kids are doing.”
“What matters to us is that he doesn’t think parents in Virginia have a say in our children’s education,” Harrison said. “So we are working to elect Governor Glen Yongkin next Tuesday because he will stand up for Virginia’s parents and our children.”
The race was recently tied in a state where President Biden won by 10 points, but a Fox News poll conducted late Thursday put Yongkin suddenly by eight points in Tuesday’s election.
Education was a major issue in the campaign, and Yongkin released a video ad this week attacking McAuliffe for saying that parents should not have a say in what their children are studying in school.
“I’m not going to let parents into schools really take out books and make their own decisions,” McAuliffe said in a debate against Yongkin. “I don’t think parents should tell schools what they should teach.”
The McAuliffe campaign sought to turn the tables by noting that the Youngkin campaign ad featured a mother who sought to ban Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison’s book “Beloved” from the classroom.
The mother’s call led to legislation that McAuliffe rejected in 2016 and 2017 that would have allowed parents to choose not to allow their children to study classroom material with sexually explicit content.
McAuliffe’s campaign and fellow Democrats criticized Yongkin’s ad and accused him of trying to “silence” black authors, which McAuliffe said amounted to a “racist dog whistle”.
Sally McAuliffe, the fourth of five children, has been an active campaigner for her dad and is set to host Door knocking event Saturday in Arlington, Virginia to encourage Democrats to vote early.
she has Twitter features photos From her campaign trail this week with President Biden and former President Barack Obama.
She is a student at Syracuse University and is scheduled to graduate next year with a degree in Communication and Discourse Studies, according to her LinkedIn profile.
No Republican has won a statewide office in Virginia since 2009, and Biden held it a comfortable 10 percentage points in 2020.
A McAuliffe loss on November 2 – or even a minor win – would be an ominous sign for Democrats who already face a tough election next year, when their narrow control of the House and Senate is at stake. The party that has historically won the White House loses seats in Congress in the upcoming elections.
In 2009, Republican candidates won the New Jersey and Virginia races in a major blow to Obama during his first year in office after his landslide victory in 2008. Victories gave Republicans momentum in the 2010 midterm elections.
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