Source: Politics<\/p>\n
RICHMOND, Va. \u2014 Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin\u2019s campaign sparked controversy for lashing out at a high school student on Twitter, revealing the 17-year-old\u2019s name and photo after they shared a news story about part of the governor\u2019s mansion where slaves once lived.<\/p>\n
The student, Ethan Lynne, retweeted a Richmond public radio station\u2019s report Saturday that suggested Youngkin might be scrapping efforts pursued under two previous governors to highlight the history of enslaved people at the mansion, The Washington Post reported Sunday.<\/p>\n
The radio station\u2019s report contained an error, which Lynne noted on Twitter hours later after the station issued a correction.<\/p>\n
By then, \u201cTeam Youngkin,\u201d the official Twitter account for the governor\u2019s campaign, had posted a photo of Lynne with former Gov. Ralph Northam at a Democratic fundraiser in October.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere\u2019s a picture of Ethan with a man that had a Blackface\/KKK photo in his yearbook,\u201d Team Youngkin tweeted shortly before 5 p.m. Saturday, pairing the October photo with a racist picture from Northam\u2019s 1984 medical school yearbook<\/a> that surfaced in 2019.<\/p>\n Democrats responded immediately, calling on Youngkin to apologize to Lynne. The attack on Northam drew less notice, since Northam is a public figure and adult, although it ran counter to Youngkin\u2019s public expressions of thanks toward the Democrat for an \u201cincredibly cooperative\u201d transition.<\/p>\n Team Youngkin removed the tweet late Sunday morning but offered no apology.<\/p>\n Lynne, in an interview with the Post on Sunday, said \u201cA governor\u2019s campaign account has attacked a minor \u2014 to me that was a new low.\u201d He said the campaign\u2019s tweet was deleted after more than 12 hours, adding, \u201cI received no apology, no communication, nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n Youngkin spokeswoman Macaulay Porter did not respond to questions from the Post about the tweet. Matt Wolking, a Youngkin campaign spokesman who continues to work for the governor as a strategist at Axiom Strategies, responded to questions sent to Porter but didn\u2019t say who wrote the tweet.<\/p>\n Wolking said Team Youngkin decided to remove the message after belatedly learning that Lynne \u2014 identified on Twitter as \u201cVirginian. HS Senior. Democrat.\u201d \u2014 was a minor. Wolking called Lynne a \u201cDemocrat Party official\u201d and suggested that Democrats had made Lynne a fair target by previously promoting him on Twitter.<\/p>\n