MANASSAS, VA — “Do you remember when you had to get a permission slip from the principal — I mean, the governor — to be out?” Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears asked in her election eve rally.

“Remember?” She prodded the faithful, gathered in a 200-person venue in the exurbs of D.C., stirring their bad memories of the state’s 2020 lockdowns under former Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat. “Who died and left him in charge like that? We cannot go back to that.”