Virginia Dem governor hopeful calls on businesses to mandate Covid-19 vaccine to make lives of unvaccinated ‘more difficult’

Democratic gubernatorial nominee Terry McAuliffe is facing backlash for calling on businesses to mandate Covid-19 vaccines after promoting efforts to make the lives of those who are unvaccinated more “difficult.”

McAuliffe called on “every Virginia employer” this week to mandate Covid-19 vaccines among all “eligible employees.” 

“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,” McAuliffe said in a public statement announcement, which followed the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officially approving their first Covid-19 vaccine, a Pfizer-BioNTech two-dose vaccine, on Monday.

McAuliffe’s statement brought renewed interest in recent comments the Democrat made in which he promoted mandates as a way to make “life more difficult” for those who are unvaccinated. 

“Make it hard for people to get on planes or go to movie theaters,” he said at a Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) conference in Las Vegas. 

Acknowledging that you can’t “force” vaccines by law, McAuliffe – recently endorsed by anti-Trump ‘Republican’ Bill Kristol – called on private businesses to be the ones to punish those who refuse to get inoculated. 

“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.”

McAuliffe is facing off against the Trump-backed Republican Glenn Youngkin in what has become a heated race. If he wins, he would serve his second nonconsecutive term as governor of the state. 

Youngkin accused McAuliffe of trying to “bully” Virginians into getting vaccinated, calling it a “personal choice” and acknowledging he has been vaccinated.

Numerous other conservatives were just as ready to pounce on McAuliffe’s supposed promotion of “discrimination.” 

“He's a total disgrace,” Donald Trump Jr. tweeted of McAuliffe, blasting him for “discriminating” against “law-abiding citizens.”

“Terry must be related to Newsom and Cuomo,” conservative pundit Mercedes Schlapp added. 

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