The Patriot Post® · Youngkin Picks a Good Fight on EVs
If you love your gas-powered car and hate being told what to do, you might want to root hard for Glenn Youngkin and his fellow Virginia Republicans come Tuesday, November 7.
Youngkin, the energetic, optimistic, and intuitively attuned former Carlyle Group CEO and current Old Dominion governor, rode a wave of righteous school-board rage into office two years ago in a reliably blue state that Joe Biden had carried by double digits. And he’s been working hard and picking great fights ever since.
Youngkin isn’t technically on the ballot in 18 days, but his ideas certainly are. And when it comes to ideas, there’s perhaps none bigger or more consequential than whether Virginia will take its marching orders from California when it comes to banning gas-powered vehicles.
Two years ago, as The Wall Street Journal reports, Democrats in Virginia’s General Assembly made some mischief on their way out the door by passing a law to adopt California’s ruinous and pipe-dreamy vehicle-emissions standards. The bill was signed by outgoing Democrat Governor Ralph Northam, and it essentially “lets progressive regulators on the California Air Resources Board (CARB) dictate the kinds of cars Virginians can drive.”
Those cars, of course, are electric ones — the same electric ones that you’ve been told by the likes of Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg and Gavin Newsom are great for the environment and don’t cost a thing to drive, both of which are lies from the pits of hell.
As we noted a year ago, we don’t have a problem with EVs necessarily, but we do have a problem with the government picking winners and losers. And we think the American people deserve to hear the pros and the cons about the future of individual transportation, and they deserve to be able to make a fully informed decision about it. Otherwise, it’s a rigged game.
Youngkin is betting that his state’s citizens — at least its freedom-loving ones — would prefer to retain their sovereignty over the disastrously governed blue monstrosity on the country’s left coast, and the people of Virginia will have their say on this matter on election day. As the Journal continues:
Under the federal Clean Air Act, California is allowed to set its own standards for tailpipe pollutants, which other states may follow. The Environmental Protection Agency under Presidents Obama and Biden has interpreted this authority broadly, and last year CARB declared sales of new internal-combustion engine cars would be banned in the Golden State by 2035. EVs must make up 35% of auto makers’ sales by 2026 and 68% by 2030. Under Mr. Northam’s law, Virginia is obligated to follow its mandates.
Or not. Earlier this year, Virginia’s House of Delegates passed a bill repealing Northam’s EV monkey-see, monkey-dooism, but a single Democrat state senator blocked it from getting out of his committee. If Youngkin and his fellow Republicans can get out the vote on November 7, they can overtake the Democrats’ narrow majority in the state Senate and clear the way for repeal of the EV mandate. So those are the stakes.
No doubt sensing that Youngkin is on the winning side of this and other issues, Virginia’s Democrats are trying to make the upcoming election about the one issue they’ve been able to demagogue and win on: abortion. Seeking to strike the right balance in a normally blue state, Youngkin has proposed a 15-week ban on the procedure — a ban that Democrats are calling “extreme.”
“Yet,” as the Journal asks, “how is it not extreme to outlaw sales of the gas cars that 99.5% of Virginians still drive?”
If the state’s voters agree, if they reject the California EV mandate next month, Youngkin and his fellow Virginians will have put forth a blueprint for other sensible states to follow.