The GOP Is Panicking Over the Virginia Governor’s Race

Here in Virginia we have important elections every year.  It gets exhausting as one needs to gear up almost immediately for the next round of elections as soon as the last one finishes. This year, the Virginia elections - especially the races for statewide office lead by the gubernatorial race - offer an opportunity to rebuke the Felon and the larger GOP by sending the GOP statewide slate to defeat and electing Abigail Spanberger and her running mates by a landslide.  One can only hope that Democrats and independents do not become complacent and assume the Democrat slate will win and fail to take the opportunity to humiliate the GOP candidates by handing them stunning losses.  The Youngkin/Sears regime has not been good for Virginia as Youngkin proved to be a MAGA supporter despite his disingenuous campaign where he pretended to be a moderate and Virginia has seen its ranking as a place to do business drop.  Add to that the immense harm the Felon and the national GOP have done to the state through firings of federal workers and funding cut backs that will deprive thousands of Virginians of their health care coverage even as the Felon's tariffs drive prices higher and interest rates remain high in part due to the huge increase to the federal deficit thanks to the GOP's reverse Robin Hood "big beautiful bill." None of this is lost on Virginia Republicans who allowed Winsome Sears - a nut case in my view - to be the gubernatorial candidate since most viewed it as a losing proposition in 2025.  Now, the GOP fears their statewide ticket is doomed.  Virginia voters need to send the GOP a brutal message and twist the knife by making sure the GOP losses will be some of the worse in Virginia history. A piece in Politico Magazine looks at the situation:

When the Republican Governor’s Association convened this week for its annual summer fundraiser in Aspen, Colorado, there was an elephant in the room at the St. Regis: How little can it get away with contributing to its all-but-hopeless candidate for Virginia governor?

Of course, the GOP governors and their top aides wouldn’t couch it in such raw terms, but that’s the upshot in one of only two gubernatorial campaigns in the country this year. The convergence of paltry fundraising, weak polling and a candidate seen as incapable of fixing either has some in the RGA’s orbit unenthused, I’m told, about giving much more than the $500,000 the group has already contributed to Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears, the Republican standard-bearer in Virginia.

[L]ast week’s fundraising disclosures revealing that Democratic former Rep. Abigail Spanberger has more than three times the cash on hand as Sears — $15.2 million to $4.5 million — have Virginia and national Republicans convinced they’ll lose the governorship absent a dramatic and unexpected change in the race.

The money disparity is especially disheartening for Republicans because fundraising in these off-off year elections tends to be self-reinforcing, with donors and party committees curtailing their giving when they see candidates lagging.

Making the problem worse, Sears is reluctant to make fundraising or even glaringly obvious political phone calls, according to multiple Republicans familiar with her campaign. She’s not reached out to some of the most reliable donors in Virginia or to top GOP figures such as the Virginia-based Chris LaCivita, Trump’s campaign co-manager. And while Sears and [the Felon] Trump met privately earlier this year in the White House, the president has yet to embrace her candidacy, a non-endorsement that stems from her criticism of him between his two terms.

This grim outlook has prompted irritation from some leading Republicans about the straits Youngkin may leave the party in on his way out of office. . . . . Just as significant, Youngkin, a multi-millionaire, has yet to infuse the Virginia ticket with significant personal money or contributions from his political action committee.

Youngkin already lost control of the Virginia House of Delegates and failed to flip the state senate two years ago. And he was unable to find a top-tier candidate to take on Senator Tim Kaine (D-Va.) last year and will almost certainly not run himself next year against Virginia’s senior senator, Mark Warner (D).

That’s because the governor seems to be preparing for a future presidential bid. . . . . But he could leave behind a political mess for his own party in Virginia. Youngkin all but assured Sears’ nomination for governor, even though it was widely known she was a weak fundraiser and mercurial figure, and then attempted to torpedo the candidacy of her successor as lieutenant governor, John Reid, after it was alleged earlier this year that he had posted sexually explicit images online.

Now, Virginia Republicans — who were already swimming against the tide in a blue-tinted state Trump has never won that tends to punish the party in power in Washington — are alarmed their entire statewide ticket may lose and could deepen the party’s minority in the House of Delegates.

This sense of dread is prompting an earlier-than-usual political triage, in which the party races to determine who can be saved.  For the moment that appears to be the incumbent attorney general, who’s running for re-election, and as many House seats as possible.

Attorney General Jason Miyares, who declined to run for governor after seeing Trump prevail last year — and grasping the challenge the former president being back in office would carry this year in Virginia — has significantly more money in the bank than Sears and Reid, his two ticket-mates, combined. It is, to say the least, quite rare for an attorney general candidate to be better financially equipped than the gubernatorial nominee.

[N]one of this changes the fact that Trump only won 46 percent of the Virginia vote last year, when he carried every swing state, and that Democrats have an advantage in lower turnout elections when their high-engagement, high-education base always shows at the polls.

Which means groups like the RGA will want to preserve as much of their money as they can for 2026, when there are 36 gubernatorial races and some of the most expensive will be in open seats.

They can’t totally abandon Virginia — not with one of their own in office and making the case for his would-be successor in Aspen. To cut off Sears entirely would likely doom the party in Virginia. But this is one of those rare quadrennial elections in which New Jersey looks more appealing for Republicans than Virginia.