Organization Responds To Sign At Protest

By
Mark Stevens
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The old political adage says when you’re in a hole, stop digging. But Virginia Democrats this week? They’ve thrown away the shovel and brought in a backhoe. What began as a straightforward opportunity to quickly denounce a deeply racist sign held by one of their own turned into a masterclass in self-destruction—one that could very well shape the outcome of the 2025 gubernatorial race.

It started in Arlington, where Republican gubernatorial candidate Winsome Sears, a Marine Corps veteran and the sitting lieutenant governor of Virginia, showed up to speak at a school board meeting. She was met by a crowd of leftist activists, including a now-identified Spanberger supporter named Anita Martineau. Martineau waved a sign so inflammatory, so jaw-droppingly racist, it stopped the political world in its tracks: “Hey Winsome, if trans can’t share your bathroom, then Blacks can’t share my water fountain.”


Even by the low standards of today’s protest culture, this wasn’t just offensive. It was grotesque. Sears, a Black woman, was being likened to segregationists—for the sin of questioning progressive bathroom policies in schools. It was a vile inversion of logic, wrapped in smug “satire” that nobody was buying. And the fact that it came from an elderly white liberal who just so happens to have been a 2023 Spanberger campaign volunteer made it all the worse.

Spanberger’s response? Deafening silence—until a full day later, when she finally issued a statement that managed to condemn the sign and blame Sears at the same time. The excuse? That Martineau acted out because of Sears’ “objectionable beliefs.” In other words, the victim of the racist attack is actually to blame.


And that’s when the bottom fell out.

Enter Mark Broklawski, vice chair of the Virginia Democratic Party. Instead of calming the waters, he turned the temperature up to eleven. In a now-infamous Substack post, Broklawski acknowledged the sign was wrong—only to turn around and claim it was the natural result of Sears’ campaign rhetoric. According to him, Sears created a “climate of contempt” by daring to run on a platform that includes public safety, education reform, and yes, opposition to radical gender policies in schools.


Then came the worst part. Broklawski wrote that this is how “contempt moves from the fringe to the mainstream.” Incredibly, he used language that mirrored historical justifications for anti-Semitism—only to later claim he was the real victim of antisemitism from Sears. The whiplash was immediate, and the backlash was even worse.

Spanberger, who entered this race with a hefty 17-point lead, is watching her campaign unravel not because of policy—but because her party has proven utterly incapable of condemning racism without footnotes and finger-pointing.


Let’s be clear: this is not complicated. A white woman told a Black woman to use a separate bathroom. That’s not “grievance politics.” That’s racism, full stop. And the fact that it took 24 hours and a tortured, defensive response from Spanberger—and then a tone-deaf, self-pitying meltdown from Broklawski—only confirms what many voters already suspect: this version of the Democratic Party cannot take accountability, even when the moment demands it.

The polls are moving. Spanberger’s once-commanding lead has dropped to single digits. And we haven’t yet seen the full fallout from this incident, much less the impact of Sears continuing to expose Spanberger’s hard-left policy record that’s been carefully hidden behind the word “centrist.”

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