In a messaging pivot during a Facebook video on Monday night, Senator Amanda Chase (R-Chesterfield) announced that she will now be providing weekly COVID-19 updates.
In Monday’s video, for the first time since March, Chase seemed to realize how dire the COVID-19 pandemic is for Virginians. She began by reading the positive result test rates and the sharp rise that has been happening since early November. “I am hearing a number of my friends getting COVID,” Chase said in the video. “I am choosing to stay home more.”
Chase also expressed happiness for the arrival of a COVID-19 vaccine while also saying that she will not be getting one. The senator has often railed against vaccines one the campaign trail. “JUST SAY NO TO COVID-19 VACCINATIONS,” Chase wrote in a Facebook post on October 10th. “Hell no to mandatory vaccinations. I will fight this with everything that is in me- so help me God,” she said in another post on the same day.
Chase’s comments on Monday night are surprising because the senator has been railing against COVID-19 restrictions in recent months while publicly ignoring safety protocols. “I don’t do COVID anymore, I am back to normal, y’all,” Chase wrote this Summer. “Yeah. I don’t do covid. I’m done. I just made a decision one day…no, we’re not doing this anymore. I don’t do COVID anymore, I’m back to normal, full speed ahead.”
The Senator has been seen at campaign events nearly every day for months ignoring the existence of the virus – often posting pictures on Facebook with no social distancing or masks at all. However, in a messaging pivot, Chase said on Monday night that she has been staying home more and that she has not been to the nail stylist or salon since before the pandemic. Although, a May 20 Facebook post shows different where Chase posted a picture with a woman that she says is her hairstylist – in one of the few instances that the senator has been seen wearing a mask.
This is not the first time that Chase has reversed course in relation to messaging and COVID-19. In March, when the pandemic was beginning to take grip across the country, Chase pleaded for her supporters to take the virus seriously. “I implore and encourage you to take this COVID-19 seriously,” wrote the Senator on March 21. “The virus is here and it’s real and it’s going to get worse over the next 2 weeks if people don’t practice social distancing.” The Senator also acknowledged in that same Facebook post that her base of supporters were not practicing safe social distancing. “Sadly, it’s my base of support that isn’t taking this seriously. Please trust me!” she stressed to her supporters.
The senator would eventually grow tired of the virus. In August, Chase threatened a restaraunt owner in Harrisonburg for enforcing a mask policy at their business. “Instead of support, she threatened to sue us and insulted us because of our mask requirement,” wrote Katharine Nye Pellerito, co-owner of Vito’s Italian Restaraunt. “She had a note from her doctor, claiming a medical exemption. She recorded my husband while he was explaining to her our policy and got on the phone with her lawyer while in our restaurant.”
Why the sudden change of heart? She didn’t say. The Chase campaign chose not to comment for this story.
Chase recently announced that she will participate in the Republican nomination convention – which means she will have to convince enough Republicans that she can win the general election in November so that they will consider voting for her in the convention.
Virginia has become a reliably blue state in the last decade, with Biden handily beating Trump last month. Chase has often been referred to as too far-right to win a statewide race in Virginia – but until Monday she has seemed to ignore that sentiment. And while it was only one video, Chase seems to be realizing she will need to try and move more to the middle while still leaving a trail of breadcrumbs behind for her base to follow.
If she can keep her base satisfied and convince enough party establishment voters that she will tone down her rhetoric in the coming months, the senator could win the Republican nomination for governor.
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