At her own rally last week, Earle-Sears insisted that she had a path to victory due to higher turnout from Republican voters. “The polls are showing that when it comes to Republican-leaning polls, where it really matters that people come, well, we are showing up—60, 70, 80 percent,” she told supporters at a farmers market and brewery an hour away from Washington, D.C. “[Democrats are] showing up much less to their polls.”
Still, the odds are in Spanberger’s favor, and Earle-Sears has faced criticism for the way she has run her campaign. The latest data shows that Spanberger, a former CIA officer who served three terms in Congress, has outraised her opponent by about $30 million. Earle-Sears’ campaign has been dogged by reports that as of July she had not contacted reliable Virginia GOP donors and a scandal related to the Republicans’ lieutenant governor nominee, John Reid. Earlier in the year, Gov. Glenn Youngkin (who is not running because Virginia governors cannot serve consecutive terms) asked Reid, who is openly gay, to drop out of the race after Youngkin learned that a Tumblr account with the same handle as Reid’s profiles on other platforms had posted lewd photos of men. Reid denied that the account belonged to him and refused to exit the race.
Even apart from fundraising and strategy problems and scandal, it was always going to be an uphill battle for the GOP this year. “Without question, the No. 1 factor in the race is the Virginia curse,” Chris Saxman, a former Republican member of the Virginia House of Delegates, told TMD. He cited a pattern in Virginia politics in which the party that wins the presidential election in one year almost always loses the Virginia gubernatorial race the following year. “Donald Trump is in the White House, and Republicans are at a disadvantage as a result, just as the Democrats were at a disadvantage in 2021 with Joe Biden in the White House,” Saxman said.
Earle-Sears has tried to recapture the magic that drove Youngkin and her to victory in 2021. Bolstered by Biden’s victory and pandemic school closures, Republicans that year made cultural issues—such as biological males who identify as transgender competing in women’s sports and using girls’ bathrooms—a centerpiece of their campaign. This year, Earle-Sears has continued that line of attack, cutting ads attacking Spanberger for her position on such issues. One ad from her campaign alleges that “Spanberger is for they/them, not for us,” alluding to a Trump campaign ad from last year.
For her part, Spanberger has been evasive about what she would do in office on that front, facing questions on the topic repeatedly but not answering them directly. During her lone debate with Earle-Sears on October 9, she was asked multiple times whether she would rescind a Youngkin administration order that requires students to use bathrooms consistent with their biological sex. She refused to provide a definitive yes or a no. “My answer is that in each local community, decisions should be made between parents and educators and teachers in each community. It shouldn’t be dictated by politicians,” Spanberger said. However, Spanberger’s equivocations haven’t helped Earle-Sears gain traction with voters.
Then, in early October, National Review broke the news that Jay Jones—the Democratic nominee for attorney general—had sent text messages in 2022 using violent rhetoric toward then-Virginia House Speaker Todd Gilbert. In one exchange, Jones said that if he had two bullets to use among Gilbert, Adolf Hitler, and Pol Pot, “Gilbert gets two bullets to the head.” He also reportedly said he hoped that Gilbert’s children would die in his wife’s arms so that he would become more in favor of gun control; “Only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy.”
That wasn’t Jones’ only scandal. Also in 2022, he was convicted of reckless driving for going 116 mph in a 70 mph zone. Jones was fined and ordered to complete 1,000 hours of community service—and listed working at his own political action committee as making up half of the community service time. A special prosecutor is actively investigating that discrepancy.
The Earle-Sears campaign has tried to tie Jones to Spanberger, who condemned Jones’ texts but stopped short of calling for him to drop out of the race. With Spanberger holding a comfortable polling lead, she and Jones appeared together at a rally Saturday with former President Barack Obama.
But the Jones scandal has helped his opponent, Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares, who is running for a second term. Before the news about the texts broke, no polls showed Miyares ahead of Jones. Since then, some polls have shown Miyares in the lead. And Miyares has used the scandal to hammer his opponent.
“We have never had anybody that has run for attorney general that’s advocated for violence against the innocent,” Miyares said at the same rally where Earle-Sears spoke last week. “We have never had anybody run for attorney general who literally has said that he wanted to see children die in their mother’s arms.”
At the same time, the Republican has not attempted to use Jones’ problems to disparage the rest of the political left. Instead, he has appealed to shared values. “This is our moment because Virginians, we don’t follow, we lead,” he said at his debate with Jones. “We could set an example for the entire country that we expect a minimum of decency in our leaders. That is what’s on the ballot today, and I’m asking you to join me.”
With Earle-Sears down and Reid also trailing (though not completely out), Miyares is Republicans’ best hope at winning a statewide race. What’s more, Virginia Republicans are not exactly surrendering the top of the ticket now, but they are keeping an eye on whom they want to be their candidate for the governor’s mansion four years from now.
“There is some element of people looking forward to 2029 and not funding certain candidates this year and hopefully supporting Jason Miyares going to ’29,” Saxman told TMD. “That I know is an active conversation.”
