It was supposed to be layup for Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears.
Virginia’s first black woman lieutenant governor has Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s (R-VA) seal of approval and was on her way to winning her party’s nomination when her momentum was blunted by two MAGA Republicans who jumped into the race. Then came whispers her campaign had lost focus and was suffering from a turnover problem.
“It’s trouble and that’s what you also saw in Kamala Harris’s run for elected office,” former Democratic Gov. Doug Wilder, Virginia’s first black governor, told the Washington Examiner. “She had this tremendous turnover and it has an effect. It’s not that people shouldn’t pay attention to candidates, but we don’t know the reasons people are leaving. It’s obviously got a negative effect and I think that is a problem for Winsome.”
Earle-Sears recently brought in a new consultant firm to revamp her campaign. But ColdSpark, a Pennsylvania-based firm that ran former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley’s unsuccessful presidential campaign, has the potential to cause more harm than help.
The gubernatorial hopeful was already eyed with mistrust by MAGA over comments she made in 2022 about how the Republican Party should move on from President Donald Trump. Trump in turn has referred to her as a “phony.” To make matters worse, the president has made it clear that any person or company who has worked with “Birdbrain” Haley, as he puts it, is persona non grata.
ColdSpark co-founder Mark Harris has since dropped Richmond-based firm Poolhouse, which has worked closely with Youngkin’s campaign, and replaced it with Something Else Strategies, which was also involved in Haley’s presidential campaign.
The turnover and picking of a firm with close ties to Haley have given Earle-Sears’s two new political rivals an opening.
Dave LaRock, a former state delegate from Loudoun County, announced last month he would run against Earle-Sears, promising an Elon Musk-like approach to cutting waste through a “Virginia Department of Government Efficiency.” He has positioned himself as a staunch conservative alternative to the lieutenant governor. A day later, former state Sen. Amanda Chase, who pitched herself as “Trump in heels,” also entered the race, further complicating Earle-Sears’s bid for the nomination.
Both newcomers have lost lower state-level races, both have embraced Trump and the MAGA movement, and both seem to be punching above their weight class for a shot at the governor’s mansion, political analyst Kyle Kondik told the Washington Examiner.
“I am interpreting the entry of late candidates as an indicator of a perceived level of weakness and Earle-Sears is having to deal with that now and [Democratic candidate Abigail] Spanberger isn’t,” Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball election newsletter published by the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, said. “That is helpful to Spanberger, but I guess you could also say that having a contested primary forces a candidate to perform earlier on and maybe that could be helpful overall. But what’s not helpful is the belief amongst these two outsider Trumpy Republican candidates that the nomination can be actually gotten.”
While it’s unclear whether LaRock or Chase will gather enough signatures needed to get themselves on the primary ballot by next month’s deadline [10,000 signatures, including 400 from qualified voters in each of the state’s 11 congressional districts], their involvement has opened up Earle-Sears to early criticism. Their entries also come as Spanberger scored her first double-digit lead over Earle-Sears in a Roanoke College poll.
“Life is a fight,” Earle-Sears said in a recent interview, “and we shouldn’t be surprised by a fight.”
Though well-liked by many GOP activists, Earle-Sears has been knocked by her Republican challengers for not embracing the MAGA movement more.
LaRock’s website claims Earle-Sears “offers platitudes and backtracks on conservative values.”
Chase has faulted Earle-Sears for allegedly turning her back on Trump supporters and has claimed it’s Earle-Sears who may struggle to qualify for the primary ballot, citing campaign “turnover and upheaval.”
“Winsome Earle-Sears has alienated a lot of Trump supporters when she said she didn’t support Trump’s second run for president,” Chase told the Virginia Mercury. “People want a candidate that has not denounced President Trump.”
Last month, Chris LaCivita, Trump’s 2024 campaign manager, tweeted that Hung Cao, a Republican Senate nominee who lost his race, could run for governor. Since then, Trump has nominated Cao, a combat veteran who has pushed for a military of “alpha males and alpha females” for Navy undersecretary.
Trump has not endorsed anyone in the Virginia primary yet but Earle-Sears’s chances aren’t looking good with two mega-MAGA candidates also vying for his blessing.
But there may be a silver lining for Earle-Sears in the suddenly active primary, Kondik said.
“If you are going to have one challenger get in, you might as well have two because maybe if there’s any sort of non-Earle-Sears vote, they end up splitting it,” he said. “In a general election, being 1000% pro-Trump is probably not where you want to be anyway. Glenn Youngkin was able to kind of balance it in his 2021 race and he also had the political environment at his back.”
Peyton Vogel, press secretary for the Winsome Earle-Sears campaign, told the Washington Examiner they aren’t worried and are laser focused on November.
“[Winsome Earle-Sears] is working for Virginians,” Vogel said. “She is working for every vote and I think the biggest thing that is going to resonate with voters is her common sense policies.”
If Earle-Sears wins in November, she will become Virginia’s first female governor and the first black woman to be elected governor in the United States. A win would also give Virginia Republicans a rare back-to-back gubernatorial victory. While ambitious, the odds aren’t in her favor. Since 1977, Virginia has elected a governor from the opposing party every time a new president has been elected.
“If you add up the fact that Virginia voted against Trump three times and the disruptions of the federal workforce, which you might feel more of in Virginia than in other places, you start stacking up some advantages for Spanberger,” Kondik said.
Virginia is one of the states most affected by Trump and Musk’s moves to shrink the federal workforce. The state is home to 145,000 federal workers, according to the Office of Personnel Management.
Spanberger has described the widespread layoffs as an attack on the state’s economy.
“This frankly isn’t about politics,” Spanberger said in an interview with NBC News, later adding, “It is a chaotic circumstance coming out of this White House and this administration, and it is deeply, deeply damaging to real people and real jobs and real families.”
Despite Spanberger being able to use the federal layoffs to her advantage in the race, Kondik and Wilder cautioned she wasn’t the strongest candidate out there and could be beaten.
“There’s work Spanberger needs to do in Hampton Roads with black leaders and black voters,” Kondik said, referring to the Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, Norfolk, Virginia, area that is known for its large military presence. “She’s never run in that part of the state. Her district was kind of greater Richmond and then became more of a Northern Virginia seat under its current form. Spanberger seems like a good candidate for the white professional base of Northern Virginia but there are some questions she would need to answer before getting the right amount of black turnout.
“If Spanberger were to lose my guess is that would be that low black voter turnout would be part of the reason why she lost. That doesn’t necessarily mean Earle-Sears is going to do well among black voters because black voters are an overwhelmingly Democratic constituency. I think that’s true even if the Republican candidate is black and the Democratic candidate is white, which is what we are headed toward, but that would be part of it.”
Wilder said even though Earle-Sears is lieutenant governor, has $2 million in her election coffer, and name recognition, not a lot of people know what she stands for.
“This is going to be an interesting election for several reasons,” he told the Washington Examiner. “Abigail isn’t going to be the strongest person to appeal to the issues she needs to be strong with, like on casinos and football stadiums, standing for education, and immigration. The people of Virginia are not sure if the issues are being addressed and if she’s the right person to do it.”