HARRISONBURG, VIRGINIA – Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears returned to the campaign trail Thursday in Harrisonburg after being pulled back to Richmond for a surprise redistricting session she said was orchestrated by Democrats to sideline her in the final stretch before Election Day.
“The Democrats wanted that. You know why? Because they’re trying to get at me, because they see the numbers and they know we’re going to win,” Earle-Sears told supporters.
Earle-Sears, who is running for governor, said the session was a deliberate attempt to keep her and other Republicans off the trail while costing taxpayers nearly $1 million. “They pulled me back off the campaign trail and into session again, and they’ve pulled your delegate back into session so he can’t campaign,” she said. “It’s costing you almost a million dollars because you got to pay us to show up. We didn’t want that. The Democrats wanted that.”
She tied the move to her opponent, former Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger, accusing her of benefiting from a partisan redistricting push backed by national Democrats. The National Democratic Redistricting Committee donated $150,000 to Spanberger’s campaign on Wednesday, a contribution Earle-Sears cited as evidence of coordination before lawmakers were called back to Richmond. “Abigail Spanberger sold out Virginia for $150,000,” Earle-Sears said. “But you know who won’t sell out Virginia? Me.”
Earle-Sears drew sharp contrasts between herself and Spanberger, casting the Democrat as a Washington insider and herself as a straight-talking outsider focused on Virginia. “I left politics 20 years ago, and I’ve now come back,” she said. “I like dealing with people who shoot straight. Just tell me how you vote, and I’ll decide if I want to vote for you.”
She accused Spanberger of siding with party leaders over Virginians on issues such as border security, crime, and taxes. “If you’ll sell us out when you know we’re going to find out, what will you do behind closed doors?” Earle-Sears said. “Abigail will not protect us. Abigail is for Abigail.”
Earle-Sears then broadened her criticism to national Democrats, accusing Spanberger of standing by former President Joe Biden despite what she described as clear signs of decline. “Abigail kept showing pictures that she was always in the room with the president at the time, President Biden,” she said. “That means she saw his cognitive decline and said nothing about it. The rogue nations of the world saw that he was not altogether there.”
The lieutenant governor also used the stop to sharpen her broader campaign message, pitching low taxes, public safety, and energy independence as the pillars of her bid for governor. She touted Virginia’s budget surplus and said Democrats have repeatedly tried to raise taxes. “We’ve already given you back $9 billion, and we’re going to keep doing that,” she said, warning that Democrats would “tax you more” and block efforts to eliminate the car tax.
Earle-Sears contrasted Virginia’s fiscal position with neighboring Maryland’s, criticizing Democrats there for turning a surplus into a deficit. “In Maryland, folks with a Democrat governor, they’re now $3 billion in the hole,” she said. “And you know what those business owners are doing? They’re moving their businesses to Virginia. We should put up a billboard facing Maryland that says, ‘Bring your business to Virginia, where the taxes are low.’”
She ended her speech on a unifying note, urging voters to look beyond partisan and racial divides. “I don’t want to keep fighting the Civil War,” Earle-Sears said. “Racism is not a skin problem; it’s a sin problem. Some politicians keep picking at the scab and telling you that you need us. We don’t want that kind of politics, we want to live in peace, we want to live in harmony.”
WINSOME EARLE-SEARS CAMPAIGN BUS CATCHES FIRE AHEAD OF ROCKINGHAM RALLY
According to the latest RealClearPolitics average, Spanberger leads Earle-Sears 50.3% to 42.9%, a 7.4-point advantage that has remained largely consistent through October. Individual surveys show a similar margin, with Christopher Newport University putting Spanberger ahead by seven points, Suffolk University by nine, Quantus Insights by five, and the most recent Trafalgar/InsiderAdvantage poll showing a closer 46% to 42% race.
Earlier in the day, a bus from Earle-Sears’s campaign caught fire near Lydia, Virginia. Everyone aboard the bus made it out safely, and none of the candidates were in the vehicle when the fire occurred, according to the campaign. The lieutenant governor did not address the incident during her rally in Harrisonburg.
