COREY STEWART, a Northern Virginia politician running for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, has hit on a novel campaign strategy. Rather than wait for primary voters to select his running mate, he’s anointed one right out of the gate: the Confederate battle flag.

Mr. Stewart, who chairs the Prince William Board of County Supervisors, grew up in Minnesota but can’t seem to resist the flag, Confederate statues and any other symbol of the Confederacy he can coopt. They have become his constant companions as he campaigns across the Old Dominion. Some Virginians cherish the symbols as badges of tradition, but to many Americans they equate to a celebration or at least a tolerance of slavery.

For now, Mr. Stewart’s embrace of symbols regarded by many as racist has gained him little traction; polls show him in second place in the GOP contest, at some distance behind the front-runner, political strategist Ed Gillespie. Mr. Stewart’s Confederate strategy has caused him some collateral damage, including the loss of the support of Prince William’s sheriff, Glendell Hill, a longtime ally who could not stomach what he called “all that Confederate stuff” — recently, including Mr. Stewart’s participation in a Confederate-themed ball and an airplane streaming both a Stewart banner and a Confederate battle flag.

Mr. Hill, who is African American, withdrew his support of Mr. Stewart and threw it to Mr. Gillespie, who, it turns out, is also backed by four of the five other Republican members of the county board that Mr. Stewart leads. Familiarity with Mr. Stewart, it seems, breeds something less than enthusiasm.

Mr. Stewart made his name by antagonizing undocumented immigrants in Prince William, pushing legislation that authorized ethnic profiling by county police. The effect was that many undocumented Hispanic immigrants left the county, a bragging point for Mr. Stewart.

His embrace of Confederate symbols dovetails with that earlier crusade, sending a loud message of intolerance and provoking protests that Mr. Stewart, in what has become a familiar refrain, gleefully denounces as political correctness. That’s a page from the 2016 playbook of President Trump, whose Virginia campaign Mr. Stewart co-chaired until his shenanigans prompted the campaign to fire him.

Mr. Stewart is a third-rate provocateur but the political vein he seeks to tap is real and virulent: voters who, in the name of cultural heritage, tradition and conservatism, are content to indulge a candidate for whom divisiveness is a touchstone. The last prominent Virginian who tried that tactic — former U.S. senator George Allen, of “macaca” fame — was unceremoniously thrown out of office for his trouble. It would be a fine thing if Mr. Stewart were treated with equal aplomb.