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Anti-establishment firebrand Corey Stewart wasted little time Tuesday night before offering his synopsis of why Republicans lost big in Virginia's elections: They picked the wrong guy.

After watching Republican Ed Gillespie go down in defeat in the governor's race, Stewart, the chairman of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors and the former chairman of President Donald Trump's Virginia campaign, blasted Gillespie in a statement, saying he "refused to stand with the grassroots of the party and refused to fight ultra left wing Democrats."

"Tonight was a humiliating rejection of the failed Bush wing of the Republican Party," said Stewart, who almost upset Gillespie in the GOP primary for governor earlier this year running on a right-wing populist platform of cracking down on illegal immigrants and defending Confederate symbols.

Gillespie, a former White House aide to President George W. Bush, professed to be running on a big-tent Republican platform in his stump speeches. But after he narrowly beat Stewart in the June primary, his campaign ads took on a harder edge, emphasizing the threat of violence from Latino street gang MS-13 and accusing Democrat Ralph Northam of wanting to "tear down history" by supporting the removal of Confederate statues.