Virginia Gubernatorial Candidate Says Vaccine Mandate Should Make Life Hard

U.S. Army National Guard photo by Sgt. Sebastian Rothwyn via (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/) Flickr

Democrat nominee for Virginia Governor, Terry McAuliffe, called for employers across the state to impose Covid-19 vaccination mandates so that life becomes very difficult for those who chose not to get the vaccine.

From Fox News: 

“Today, I am calling on every Virginia employer to require all eligible employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19,” the former Virginia governor said in a statement Monday afternoon. “I have long said that the best way to defeat this deadly virus, keep our students in school and keep Virginia’s economy strong is by getting every eligible Virginian vaccinated as quickly as possible.”

President Biden’s chief of staff, Ron Klain, retweeted McAuliffe’s announcement, which came 10 days after the former governor said in Las Vegas that he wants to “make life difficult” for the unvaccinated in an effort to pressure them into getting the shot.

“We have 93 million Americans today that are not vaccinated, and we need to do everything that we possibly can,” McAuliffe said earlier this month at the HIMSS21 Global Health Conference. “And I tell my private businesses all the time, I hope you mandate vaccines for people coming in. Until we make it hard for people to get on planes or go to movie theaters, people just aren’t going to do it.”

“We can’t force them, we’re not going door to door, but you make life difficult,” he said. “If you’re going to come to the HIMSS conference, you got to be vaccinated.”

Terry McAuliffe’s political opponent, Republican nominee Glenn Youngkin, released a statement pushing back against any vaccine mandate. Youngkin had said that McAuliffe was trying to “bully” Virginians into doing what the government and he thinks is best regardless of their personal choice.