Abigail Spanberger for Governor of Virginia

Living in Virginia one never gets a year off from elections given Virginia's off year elections. This year all eyes will be on Virginia's gubernatorial race that pits two women, Abigail Spanberger the Democrat nominee and Winsome Sear's the batshit crazy (in my view) Republican, against each other. In Spanberger, Democrats have a former moderate member of Congress and former CIA officer who is smart, articulate, and focused on leading Virginia forward.  In Sears, despite the extremely deceptive ads she has been running that say nothing about her positions on issues, Republicans have an extreme culture warrior who wants a ban on abortion, unfettered gun rights, an end to same sex marriage and a continuation of Glenn Youngkin's effort to ban school curriculums that offend white Christofascist sensibilities and prejudices.  Plus, Sears has said Trump "was sent by god"- I hope Spanberger runs some ads with video clips of Sears saying this! Four years ago, Glenn Youngkin won the governorship by masquerading as a moderate, something his first actions in office showed to be a lie.  The chances of similarly duping voters this year is likely remote given Sears' past statements and ads (one shows her with an assault rifle).  Also looming over the election is the harm the Felon's regime has inflicted on Virginia's many federal workers and the threat the GOP's "big beautiful bill" poses to rural area hospitals and Medicaid coverage for rural working class voters.  A piece in the New York Times looks at the coming contest for governor of Virginia.  Here are highlights:

The politics of Washington nearly always bleed across the Potomac River and into Virginia’s odd-year elections for governor, long seen as the first sign of how the country is feeling about its new president.

This year in particular, that is a big advantage for Democrats. In Virginia, they have fully united behind a candidate they view as ideal to win a Trump-era election in a purple state: former Representative Abigail Spanberger, a onetime C.I.A. officer who has raised buckets of money and defined herself as a moderate willing to buck her party’s leadership.

She is widely seen as the favorite against Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, a socially conservative Republican who has struggled to remain competitive financially in the early months of the race. Ms. Spanberger had $14.3 million on hand as of June 5, the latest campaign finance reporting date, compared with under $3 million for Ms. Earle-Sears.

And while the party locked out of the White House usually performs well in the Virginia governor’s race, this is no ordinary year for the state. President Trump’s slash-and-burn tactics for cutting the government have heavily affected Virginia’s large population of federal workers.

Democrats in the state and far beyond see Ms. Spanberger’s campaign as their biggest opportunity yet to make a statement about their opposition to Mr. Trump.

“The list goes on and on,” Ms. Spanberger said in an interview on Monday, discussing what voters were telling her. “Sometimes it’s the chaos, sometimes it is the anger. Sometimes they’ll name the president.”

Virginia Republicans, for their part, are in disarray. The party has been squabbling over its nominee for lieutenant governor, John Reid, who faced a controversy this year involving explicit photos online. Some Republicans say they will not back Mr. Reid, who would be Virginia’s first openly gay statewide official.

“A lot of the traditional financial supporters in the business community are not yet convinced that Sears can win, and they’re not going to give her money until they are,” said former Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, the last Republican to hold that post before Ms. Earle-Sears won it. “A lot of them don’t view her as a serious candidate.”

Ms. Earle-Sears declined to be interviewed. Her campaign spokesman dismissed Ms. Spanberger’s fund-raising advantage as insignificant.

Ms. Earle-Sears did not face any primary rivals, nor did the party’s incumbent attorney general, Jason Miyares, or its choice for lieutenant governor, Mr. Reid.

But she [Sears] does not have the personal fortune or donor connections of Mr. Youngkin, a former private equity executive who could self-fund large chunks of his political operation.

A former one-term state legislator, Ms. Earle-Sears lost races for the U.S. House and Senate before her fierce opposition to same-sex marriage and her defense of gun rights propelled her to the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor four years ago. Mr. Youngkin’s victory in the general election helped carry her into office. . . . . It does not appear that she has inherited his popularity.

“If Abigail is able to nationalize the election, it’s a very difficult construct for the Republicans,” said Chris Saxman, a Virginia Republican who helped run Ms. Earle-Sears’s political action committee during the first part of her term as lieutenant governor. “For those people who are feeling the pinch of getting their jobs cut or funding cut or losing contracts, that matters. That’s their economy.”

Democrats who are optimistic about Ms. Spanberger point to her victories in tight congressional races in 2018, 2020 and 2022. In those elections, she performed better in rural precincts than many of her fellow Democrats on the ballot. Many in the party hope to repeat that feat and expand their narrow majority in the State House of Delegates this fall. . . . At the same time, Ms. Spanberger continues to haul in cash, accumulating a fund-raising advantage unseen in modern Virginia politics.

Polling is of limited value more than four months before a state election in which both candidates remain relatively unknown, but private surveys conducted by officials in both parties show Ms. Spanberger with a modest lead that probably reflects the state’s Democratic lean.

“The problem right now is that the blue part of the state is angrier and the red part is more complacent,” said former Representative Tom Davis, a Republican who represented the Washington suburbs. “Angrier people tend to turn out. That explains almost every Virginia election.”