Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears (R-VA)’s efforts to reverse her underdog status in the Virginia gubernatorial race against former Rep. Abigail Spanberger kicked into high gear in the last full month of the campaign.
After months of trailing Spanberger, Earle-Sears has seized upon an escalating drama surrounding Democratic attorney general nominee Jay Jones to reverse the party’s momentum.
During the sole debate between the two candidates Thursday night, the lieutenant governor sought to pin down Spanberger on several hot-button issues in the race, including whether Jones should remain on the ticket despite his violent text messages against former Virginia Republican House Speaker Todd Gilbert.
Earle-Sears’s aggressive debate performance could mark a definitive shift in the Virginia gubernatorial race. However, it’s too early to tell who Thursday night’s debate will end up helping, with both parties claiming victory.
Earle-Sears, who has been lagging in polling, immediately began a one-hour-long fusillade on Spanberger once the debate started.
She didn’t stop there. She repeatedly hammered Spanberger throughout the debate, prompting the moderators to ask her to stop interrupting.
“I was born in Jamaica, and when I was 10 years old, I saw that kind of political violence, which is why I’m asking my opponent to please ask him to get out of the race. Have some political courage,” Earle-Sears goaded her opponent.
She also took her Democratic opponent to task over transgender bathroom policies in public schools, access to abortion, and immigration.
SPANBERGER SILENT ON JAY JONES ENDORSEMENT UNDER HEAT FROM EARLE-SEARS IN FIERY VIRGINIA DEBATE
The stunt won her praise from Republicans.
“Winsome Earle-Sears showed courage, clarity, and conviction – she leads like a marine,” Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) wrote on X. “While Abigail Spanberger stood with her running mate Jay Jones and his murderous fantasies, and evaded every direct question including equivocating over men being in locker rooms with girls.”
“I think it’s clear that this Jay Jones issue is going to carry right till Election Day, and even the most casual observer has seen that that’s what that debate was about,” Brian Kirwin, a GOP strategist in Virginia, told the Washington Examiner. “And I don’t think Spanberger liked that. She seemed very uncomfortable with the issue.”
Throughout the event at Norfolk State University, Spanberger refused to address Earle-Sears as she blasted Spanberger for not calling on Jones to exit the race. The Democrat continued to face forward silently despite the taunting.
Kirwin compared Spanberger’s reaction to Democrat Michael Dukakis’s 1988 debate performance when he was asked whether he would support the death penalty if his wife, Kitty Dukakis, were raped and murdered.
“No, I don’t, Bernard, and I think you know that I’ve opposed the death penalty during all of my life. I don’t see any evidence that it’s a deterrent, and I think there are better and more effective ways to deal with violent crime,” Dukakis told CNN’s Bernard Shaw.
“He answered like he was a professor in class, and I saw that in Spanberger,” said Kirwin. “She froze, and no emotion.”
Spanberger did condemn Jones’s texts again during the debate. “The comments that Jay Jones made are absolutely abhorrent. I denounced them when I learned of them, and I will denounce them every opportunity I get,” she said. “As a mother, as a public servant, as a candidate for governor, I denounce them.”
But she stopped short of calling for him to leave the ticket. Unsurprisingly, the GOP blasted Spanberger over her comments.
“This answer should have been an easy one. Fantasizing about murdering politicians and their children is wrong. Anyone who cannot condemn that is not fit to be governor,” said Delanie Bomar, the Republican National Committee regional communications director, in a statement.
Democrats, however, blasted Earle-Sears’s constant interruptions during the debate as unwieldy.
“I think Winsome Earle-Sears came off quite immature in a sense,” said Kaivan Shroff, a 2024 delegate for former Vice President Kamala Harris. “She was so combative. And when you’re arguing and fighting the moderator, and you’re not [President] Donald Trump … and it’s a local election where often those moderators are respected by the community, it’s not a good look. And she did it the entire time.”
Some political experts claimed Earle-Sears’s combative persona may play well with Trump, who has not yet endorsed her campaign but has endorsed Republican Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares for reelection.
“Trump does like a fighter, or he says he does, so maybe that was part of her calculation,” said David Richards, a political science professor at the University of Lynchburg. “He does seem to comment on when people are combative like that.”
“I’m not sure that in the end it really did her a lot of favors. My impression was that she had some good attack points. Spanberger didn’t really respond to them, and it was kind of a lost opportunity,” Richards said of Earle-Sears’s performance. “I think Earle-Sears could have pinned Spanberger down and then sort of stepped back and let Spanberger flail. And instead, she just kept on coming and kept on interrupting. And after a while, that became the story instead of Spanberger’s non-answers.”
Kirwin suggested Trump would endorse Earle-Sears after the debate. “I think it’s gonna happen,” he said.
“Trump is so in for Jason Miyares against Jay Jones. And I think he’s going to endorse Winsome and make it about Jay Jones and not about Winsome,” he added. “I think he’s going to criticize Abigail for defending Jay Jones, and that’s going to be why she can’t be governor.”
Early voting had already begun in Virginia when the Jones drama broke, but voters have roughly three more weeks to cast a ballot before election day.
Spanberger’s campaign did find an inroad to lambast Earle-Sears during a disagreement they had on same sex marriage.
“My opponent was asked about her record of discrimination. And importantly, my opponent has previously said that she does not think that gay couples should be allowed to marry,” Spanberger said during the debate.
“That’s not discrimination!” Earle-Sears quipped back.
“Virginia families deserve better than a leader who refuses to protect their rights under the law. The Lieutenant Governor last night showed Virginians that she is more focused on dividing people than solving problems,” Spanberger said in a statement on Friday morning.
Spanberger still has the momentum heading into Election Day as she leads her Republican competitor in polling and fundraising.
But the Jones drama has overshadowed other key topics in the race, including the government shutdown, reduction-in-force notices, and their effect on the Virginia economy, where federal workers make up a sizable portion of the workforce.
“Abby Spanberger will win. And I’m am voting for her but this COULD have been her own SISTER SOULJA moment that shows Democrats the way to win and she completely blew it,” wrote Michael LaRosa, former press secretary for former first lady Jill Biden. “THIS clip epitomizes the type ‘running scared’ public communication culture that plagues Dem candidates, incumbents, and staffers and VOTERS absolutely hate it and see through it.”
JAY JONES’S VIOLENT TEXT MESSAGES IN VIRGINIA BLEED INTO THE NATIONAL DEBATE
“I don’t think the Jones scandal is going to drag Spanberger down too far, honestly, or
really much at all,” added Shroff. “I think we are in a bit of a post sort of personal scandal environment in politics, obviously largely due to Donald Trump.”
“And then how many people are paying attention to the AG race of all things, compared to the governor’s race? And I do think Spanberger is a much stronger candidate than Earle-Sears,” he continued. “And so, if anything, I think if Jay Jones wins, he owes it to her.”
