Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff made a campaign stop in Charlottesville on September 25, speaking to a crowd of more than 200 University of Virginia law school students at the Kimpton Forum Hotel.
“It’s good to be talking to law students again,” said Emhoff, who is a practicing attorney and instructor at Georgetown Law. “I’m not teaching this semester because I’m spending full time campaigning so my wife can be the next president of the United States.”
Emhoff was met with raucous applause from attendees who’d gathered for a voter protection training organized by the UVA Law Democrats. Voter disenfranchisement is a chief focus for the Harris-Walz campaign amid increasing barriers instituted by Republican leaders under the guise of election integrity.
“As a practicing lawyer for over 30 years, I cannot tell you how important it is for what our profession does to protect democracy,” said Emhoff. “We are literally on the front lines protecting the rest of our fellow citizens from what could happen when the rule of law is ignored, abused, and taken advantage of, and that’s why lawyers have to be vigilant and prepared and ready for anything during this election season.”
Beyond preparing for the legal challenges anticipated post-election, UVA Law Democrats are also rallying behind voter protection and efforts to get out the vote.
The Virginia Democratic and Republican parties are both running major poll-watching campaigns for the November General Election. While similar in theory, the impetus and rhetoric around the volunteer drives diverges.
On the Republican side, state and national leaders are calling for poll watchers to protect election integrity and continue to peddle the claim that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen” from former president Donald Trump. The Virginia Democratic Party has also committed to election integrity, but does not deny the outcome of the last presidential election. The VDP Voter Protection Team, which includes poll watchers and phonebankers, emphasizes the importance of ensuring that voters are able to exercise their legal right to vote and combat misinformation and disinformation around the election.
“We’re going to continue to have these voter protection and election events through November 4 … and we’re going to be getting out the vote,” says Kirk Wolff, a second-year law student and vice president of UVA Law Democrats.
The student organization—which relaunched five weeks prior to the event with Emhoff—has rapidly rallied support on Grounds. According to Wolff and Law Democrats President Miles Cooper, more than 230 students have joined the group and there was a lengthy waitlist for the September 25 event.
“We [Cooper and Wolff] have a lot of close friends who are Republicans, and we saw that they were organizing Law Republicans, and we just couldn’t believe that there was nothing happening on Grounds for Democrats,” says Cooper.
While Cooper is excited by the energy around Law Democrats and the Harris-Walz campaign, he also hopes to rally more energy for 5th District congressional candidate Gloria Witt in the weeks leading up to the election.
“I think there’s a really, really great chance to send Witt to the House,” he says. “You can make a huge difference here. … If [Harris and Walz] don’t have the House and the Senate, it will impede their ability to execute the New Way Forward agenda. … It’s a team effort. That’s the way our founders envisioned it, and so we have to make sure that we send a really good team.”