CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – As he campaigned to be Virginia’s lieutenant governor, Republican John Reid – the party’s first openly gay statewide candidate – faced bigotry that may dissuade him from seeking office again.

Reid told Cville Right Now on Tuesday that his partner, Alonzo Mable, hid hateful emails and letters from Reid during the campaign, not wanting them to be a distraction or impact Reid’s attitude as he worked to win over voters.

Reid said it wasn’t until about a week after his loss to Sen. Ghazala Hashmi, part of a strong showing from Democrats in the November election, that Mable shared the messages with Reid.

“It was very ugly in ways I had not expected,” Reid said. “It was brutal on me, and my family. Alonzo really went through it, too. He was deliberately hiding some of the emails from me that were really racist and nasty and brutal. It’s not like I’ve got thin skin. I’ve been on radio and TV so long, you just kind of roll with the punches. but some of the things that were said to him and to us, were awful. And it wasn’t one party or the other. It was people on both sides of the political spectrum.”

In April, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin pressured Reid to drop out of the race over concerns about social media accounts with photos of nude men that the governor said were linked to Reid, a claim he denied. Reid stayed in the race, but personal attacks on him continued.

After the defeat, Reid said he and Mable were vacationing in the Galapagos Islands in November when Mable told him, “That campaign killed my soul.”

“I thought at the time, ‘What have I done to this guy?'” Reid said. “It hurt me to hear him say that.”

Still, Reid – who gave a keynote address at the Republican Party’s annual advance meeting in Williamsburg last month – won’t rule out another bid for a government post. He said that GOP chairman isn’t a good fit for him and that a run against Democratic incumbent Senator Mark Warner would likely be futile for financial reasons.

“How in the world could I possibly do that with no money against the second-wealthiest U.S. Senator?” Reid said.

Reid believes his strength as a candidate lies more in grassroots efforts and said funding issues played an oversized role in his loss to Hashmi.

“I think we ran a strong campaign given the very limited resources that I had,” Reid, a former conservative radio personality in Richmond, said. “Virginia is a tied-up state. I think it’s very clear there are a lot of people who are in this state who don’t like Donald Trump. They were going to crawl across glass to go vote for anybody in the Democrat party to send a message about that, about him. That’s not me bashing Trump. That’s just an eyes wide open analysis of where a large percentage of the voters are in the state.”

Reid, a former staffer for Sen. George Allen, said he’s concerned that Democrats, who won races for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general, and added 13 seats to their House of Delegates majority in November, will enact stronger gun control laws and pass a minimum wage increase.

“I don’t think that’s smart,” Reid said. “If you’re focused on affordability, this is the exact wrong thing to do.”

Reid said he hopes Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger will hold to her campaign pledge not to repeal Virginia’s right-to-work law.

As for his place in all of it, Reid said he hopes to have a role with the GOP going forward.

“I would like to be a part of the rebuilding of the Republican party in Virginia,” he said. “There’s clearly a deficit between where we are as a party and where the public is at the moment.”

Reid said the party also needs to address voter turnout in non-presidential election years and grapple with what the future will look like when President Trump’s term ends.

“You can’t just show up in a presidential year with a state that’s as closely contested as Virginia and expect everything to be OK in Virginia,” Reid said. “Somehow we have to convince our core voters, who voted for Trump, that it’s not just about Trump. And let’s be honest, Trump will be gone in three years. The Republican party can’t hinge on one person and their personality.”

If running for another elected office isn’t immediately on Reid’s agenda, what is next? Last week, he launched a new podcast, ‘The Reid Revolution,’ partially inspired by numerous podcast appearances he made during the campaign. Reid said the show is a daily offering broken into three 20-minute segments – an opening monologue, a guest interview and then a discussion with his longtime producer, dating back to his Richmond radio days.

“I like being able to comment on what’s happening,” Reid said. “There’s a lot that’s going on in the world right now and there are a lot of stupid people who are talking about it. I’d like to add my voice, hopefully with some level of informed opinion, and reasoned opinion to the argument. … I don’t think we need any more theatrics in the political world and emotion in the political world. I think we need reasoned people.”