In a few hours, the polls will open in Virginia. Democratic candidate Ralph Northam, the lieutenant governor of the state, is in a tight race with Republican Ed Gillespie. This shouldn’t have been a big issue for Democrats. Incumbent Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe is popular. It’s the only southern state that Hillary Clinton won. It’s trending bluish—and Donald Trump is not popular here. And yet, here we are—one of the most critical races of the year, though some Virginia voters probably don’t even know that tomorrow is Election Day.

The Real Clear Politics polling average had Northam up on Gillespie by six points, which dropped to two points over the weekend, according to The Washington Post. Also, nonwhite voters in the voter-rich Northern Virginia have lobbed some criticism at Northam, mainly that he’s been very low energy in their neck of the woods, an area he has to over perform to win this off-year election. Maybe that’s why the Northam campaign and the Latino Victory Fund (possibly) teamed up to release this absurd ad showing a Gillespie supporter in a pickup truck running down Hispanic, Asian, black, and Muslim kids. The message is clear: Republicans are bad—and all white people are genocidal racists.

The ad attacked the voters, not the candidate. And if there were any low-key GOP voters in rural Virginia who might have passed on voting this year—they have a good reason to show up and stick it to Democrats. There’s also a mailer from the Northam camp that tries to link Gillespie to white nationalists. These aren’t the moves of a campaign that’s confident of victory. They’re scaring nonwhite voters to the polls. As for the LVF ad, well, it looks like the Northam campaign and the liberal group coordinated on this effort, as indicated in the latter’s disclosure form which shows a $60,000+ in-kind media contribution. Northam said this ad didn't come from his campaign; he only signed off on it. Another possible fib was discovered over by Streiff at RedState, who says that Northam may have exaggerated his military record.   

At a January event in Richmond, Northam had this to say about smart gun technology. The video and transcript are featured on his campaign website:

Yet, through a FOIA request, we have found where Northam served as an Army doctor. As Streiff,who is also an Army veteran, noted, Northam was a child neurologist at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. Here is where he breaks it down and calls into question the past remarks of Northam concerning seeing the wounds from these so-called weapons of war [emphasis mine]:

If Northam isn’t going full-metal Richard Blumenthal here, he needs to provide a helluva lot more evidence because right now his claims look as fake as his campaign.