Republican Winsome Sears will be Virginia’s next lieutenant governor, making history as the first black woman to hold the office and the highest-ranking woman of color to be elected to office in Virginia.
Sears is an immigrant, a veteran, and a trailblazer. Born in Jamaica, she immigrated to the United States with her father when he had only $1.75 in his pocket and grew up in the Bronx, New York. She joined the Marines, where she was an electrician.
In 2001, she defeated a Democratic incumbent for a state House seat, serving one term. In 2004, she unsuccessfully challenged Virginia Rep. Bobby Scott for his congressional seat.
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History was set to be made in Virginia on Tuesday, with a woman of color being elected lieutenant governor no matter which candidate won.
Her Democratic opponent was Hala Ayala, a state representative with Salvadoran and North African heritage from her father and Irish and Lebanese heritage from her mother.
Ayala campaigned on reflecting Virginia’s increasing diversity: She was born and raised in Northern Virginia, was a single mother who went on Medicaid, and got an associate’s degree online while working full-time for the Department of Homeland Security.
Sears says that while Democrats center many of their messages on being friendly to immigrants and the black community, they actually sow division in each election cycle.
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“This is what the Democrats do over and over again,” Sears said on Fox News on Tuesday. “They come into the black community and they try to gin up our anger over some supposed threat or some supposed slight, and then we’re supposed to run out and vote for them because they’re coming to save us.”
“We want them to go find another victim. You see that they come and they try to get our vote, but only at election time, people. And after that, they are gone again for another four years,” Sears said. “They’re like the cicada.”
