Virginia Governor Race

Virginia Governor

 

Status: Republican Open

2024 Presidential Result: Blue State (South)

 

Outlook: Likely Democrat

 

The race for Governor of New Jersey will likely be closer and the race for New York City Mayor will likely get many headlines, but in Virginia, Democrats can achieve an off-year election flip in taking over the Governor's Mansion. This would be in line with the decades long tradition of the party holding the White House losing this race the following year. A long streak was broken in 2013 when a Democrat narrowly won here despite having a member of the party as President. Many believed this was proof positive that Virginia had become a solidly blue state.

 

Thus, there was some surprise eight years later, after Joe Biden won the Presidency, when a comeback effort by the Democrat who had been elected Governor in 2013 fell short. Republican Glenn Youngkin won 51-49 in a campaign that kept then former President Donald Trump mostly out of the conversation. Democrat Terry McAuliffe's comeback bid was hurt by missteps such as on the issue of parental involvement in education. It is worth nothing that Virginia is the only state in the nation where a Governor is not allowed to seek a second consecutive term.

 

What that means is that Youngkin, who has fairly high job approval numbers is not eligible to run again. Instead, the party turned to the next in line, and current Lt. Governor. Youngkin's victory helped elect Winsome Earle-Sears (whom I do not believe was using the Earle name officially back then) in a separate election, as the Old Dominion does for Lt. Governor and Attorney General. In recent cycles, the same party has won all three offices together.Whether or not that is achieved this year will be a major story line.

 

Either Earle-Sears or her Democrat opponent will become the first female Governor of Virginia, which is also one of the few remaining states never to have a woman as a United States Senator. Born in Jamaica, Earle-Sears immigrated to the United States as a child and grew up in New York City. She went on to serve in the Marine Corps. For a couple of years, she served in the state House of Delegates before losing a Congressional bid in 2004 in a heavily Democrat district. With experience in business and appointed state government she ran as a write in candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2018, after Republicans nominated a controversial candidate with ties to white nationalists.

 

In 2021, she won a contested Republican Party convention for Lt. Governor on the fifth ballot, and joined her ticket-mates in victory that November. While Earle-Sears had ties to many on the right socially in the state, she took positions at Lt. Governor that generated a lot of national attention as they related to Donald Trump. She basically called for him to not attempt to re-enter politics, saying he had become a "liability" to the party. Trump would successfully re-enter politics though and while Earle-Sears fell in line behind him, she is now running for Governor without the "full and complete" endorsement of the current President. That likely has much to do with her past criticism of him but it is also true that the nominee is a black female immigrant from a Caribbean country that Trump has denounced before.

 

As was the case with Virginia Republicans this year, a primary contest also did not develop among Democrats. The nomination went to Abigail Spanberger a former CIA officer. In 2018, Spanberger was among a host of female Democrat candidates elected to Congress, who had national security backgrounds and were seen as relatively moderate. In her case, Spanberger defeated an incumbent in a suburban district that had long been held by Republicans. She joined classmate Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey in being elected to Congress that year. Now, both women are nominees for Governor and Democrats will hope that much of the country looks at them as examples as compared to the controversial socialist nominee Zohran Mamdani, who seems poised to be elected Mayor of New York.

 

Spanberger won two competitive reelections in her district but did not seek a fourth term in 2024 as she openly focused on an upcoming Gubernatorial campaign. During her time in Congress, she took some steps to distance herself from Joe Biden on issues such as inflation and the border, but mostly has been in step with her party.

 

Despite Youngkin's win in 2021, Virginia is still considered a friendly state for Democrats, with numerous affluent government workers in the northern part of the state. Spanberger has led in polls throughout this campaign and has been well-funded. While Earle-Sears has an attractive backstory, she has had a reputation throughout her career and time as Lt. Governor as being a bit strident and sort of not always on message as a communicator. Facing long-odds in this race, the Republican has turned even more combative. Some of her television interviews were frankly embarrassing for her as she attempted to avoid questions regarding matters such as DOGE layoffs in the state or the current government shutdown and instead has tried to shift the focus to wedge issues such as transgender women in sports or public bathrooms. These are the kind of issues that the public has clearly taken issue with Democrats on and Spanberger has struggled at times with these questions, but there seems little reason to believe that swing voters place more importance on those over economic matters. In a debate the candidates had, Earle-Sears routinely interrupted her opponent and moderators. Supporters thought she scored points by being forceful and aggressive, while many others thought she was downright rude and disrespectful to all involved. It is another example of a candidate trying to follow the Trump lead while they wind up being held to higher scrutiny for the behavior.

 

The dynamics of this race have always pointed to a  turnover in party but some polls had at least showed a tightening race. As has been the case in New Jersey, (which is the state this candidate was born in), Spanberger has been described by some as running an overly cautious race and not doing much to energize core Democrat constituencies. Far more like Sherrill than Mamdani, Spanberger is far from the most charismatic politician but is someone Democrats would like to point to as a national figure.

 
It is rare that downballot races much have of an impact on Gubernatorial contests, but that has turned into a different story this year in Virginia. Republicans at least hope that the Attorney General election might somehow bring down Spanberger, While it is possible that the Democrat candidate for AG may have brought down himself, it would be very unlikely that he can harm his party's Gubernatorial nominee in a major way.

The overall scope of Virginia's three statewide races is pretty significant to consider. Beyond the race for Governor, between two women, one a Caribbean-American immigrant, there is a lot of diversity down the ballot as well. The close contest for Lt. Governor features a female Democrat State Senator who was born in India and who would become the first Muslim Lt. Governor in American history. She won a crowded primary where her top competitors were African-American males. Now, Ghazala Hashmi races Republican John Reid, a former Congressional aide who went on to become a conservative talk radio host. Reid also happens to be openly gay and would be an extremely rare openly LGBTQ candidate of his party to win statewide office. During the primary campaign, Reid had been accused of making some sexually explicit posts online, which he denied. Still, many in Virginia's Evangelical community called on him to exit the race and Governor Youngkin himself tried to get him out, believing he could be a drag on the ticket. Reid stayed in though, having his primary opponent not quality for the ballot. While they have appeared together, it appears that Earle-Sears has not exactly been enthusiastic about supporting Reid on the ticket she leads. After all, the current Lt. Governor has in this campaign taken positions opposing same sex marriage and claiming in a debate that firing people based on sexual orientation was "not discrimination."

 

The controversy over Reid has taken a backseat though to the race for Attorney General, in which Jason Miyares the Cuban-American Republican incumbent is being challenged by Jay Jones, a 36 year old African-American former State Delegate. It was only after Jones won a closer primary and early voting (which Virginia has many weeks of) began that a story broke about texts Jones had sent in 2022 to a then Republican colleague in the State House. First of all, this should be a cautionary tale to all politicians about thinking that an across the aisle friendship cannot be used against you if you say something stupid.

 

To be clear, what Jones said was reprehensible, even if he was not being literal, and he clearly was not being literal, as he vented about the Republican State House Speaker in a completely inappropriate way. Jones went on to use the familiar bit about "if you had two bullets and three people including Hitler who would you shoot?" Jones said he would use both bullets on the Virginia Republican official. Even worse, he mused about the potential death of this official's young children and spoke of their mother seeing them die, saying that personal pain might be the only way to see the change he wanted enacted.

 

All of this is horrifying, but Republicans, who of course have defended everything Donald Trump or his allies have said, have exaggerated the statements, as awful as they are without exaggeration. They are claiming that Jones said these things about his "opponent" and his "opponent's children", indicating he said them about Miyares, which is not true. He also did not threaten to kill the young children of the Virginia House Speaker but just spoke of their death at the hands of others, which of course is bad enough. There have also been other revelations made in recent weeks about Jones and his driving record. 

This all was pretty shocking to many, since Jones had the reputation of being a somewhat mild mannered public figure. When given the chance to tone down the rhetoric in these text exchanges, Jones refused, continuing to engage in repulsive political venting. When all of this went public last month, Republicans immediately called on Jones to exit the race. The deadline had passed though to replace him on the ballot, meaning that such a thing would allow the Republican, who had been trailing in the polls, to win reelection unopposed. If there were a way to replace Jones, you can be certain that Democrats nationally and in Virginia would have acted quickly to get him out,and he would have deserved it. Spanberger has openly expressed her frustration about how this matter has taken up so much of the oxygen in this campaign.

 

Donald Trump is known for not apologizing about anything. Many on his side admire him for that while other Republicans have been bothered for a decade but have largely stood by him. For his part, after being caught, Jones has unequivocally apologized and said he was "ashamed" of his behavior. The nominee for Attorney General has stayed in the race though and has put Democrats, including Gubernatorial nominee Spanberger in an awkward position. She had previously endorsed her ticket-mate of course, but has since neither revoked or affirmed her past support. Many Democrats are saying the matter is now up to voters. The polls have showed a distinct change away from Jones and towards Miyares, although the race actually is still very close, to the frustration of many Republicans. The names of both of Spanberger's running-mates have recently seemed to disappear from the design on her campaign bus. So, it is accurate to say that both Gubernatorial nominees are wanting to place distance between themselves an someone else on their ticket.

 

Earle-Sears has talked about Jay Jones at every stop along the way in the final weeks of this campaign. She is continuing to criticize Spanberger by association for having not withdrawn her support. This might be a valid point, at least to the extent that when you are losing in politics, you have to try whatever you can, but Earle-Sears, despite once mostly breaking with Trump, has felt obligated to stand by him since. She knows that to do otherwise would be damaging to her in regards to the party's base. Nonetheless, the Trump endorsement has not come. He has only endorsed Miyares in Virginia. 

 

This looked like some national factors affecting Democrats had made the Gubernatorial contest more competitive a couple of weeks ago, but conventional wisdom is now that this is easily Spanberger's race to lose, and things such as the government shutdown in Virginia have made it nearly impossible for a divisive Republican to win in Virginia. Earle-Sears nomination is historic, but it appears America is not going to elect its first black female Governor in 2025.

 

I think Spanberger probably wins by double digits and while I do not officially predict down-ballot races, it will probably be enough to bring the Lt. Governor candidate along with her. As for Attorney General? It sure looked like this Jones controversy had saved Miyares, with enough ticket splitters present to give Republicans at least one statewide win. The Republican nominee for AG is even running ads appealing to Spanberger voters. However, ticket splitting is rarer and rarer and this could wind up being a three-person sweep for the Democrats.

 

Once the race is over, I will be interested to see if Donald Trump will take to social media to attack Winsome Earle-Sears. He does not like "losers" and likely holds a grudge against a politically mouthy woman in his party who once dismissed him as damaged goods. All of this is a price that might have to be paid for loyalty to Trump.

 

You may win-some and you may lose-some.