WINCHESTER, Virginia — The expectation is that sitting Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears will not win in her hometown.
The drive from Pennsylvania to Winchester, Virginia, situated in the Shenandoah Valley between the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Alleghenies, is filled with orange, green, and red rolling hills. Signs for all of the Virginia candidates dot the roadways and homes all around; however, it seemed there were fewer than in previous Virginia gubernatorial races, dating back to 2005.
While Frederick County, where Winchester is located, remains staunchly Republican, voters in the city shifted left toward former President Barack Obama in 2008 and have not looked back.
On paper, not just in Winchester but throughout the Commonwealth, the expectation is that Virginia residents will wake up on Tuesday and, by the end of the day, see a route for any candidate running for office with a “D” after their name. After all, Virginia is a firmly blue state that every few years gifts Republicans wins when the Democrats hold power in the White House.
The biggest attack line this year that has worked for Democrats has been to go hard against President Donald Trump. If this were Pennsylvania, this would not have worked; voters in the Keystone State want candidates to tell them what they are for.
However, Democratic gubernatorial nominee Abigail Spanberger has also done a consistent job of talking about the economy by tying state Republicans in Richmond to Trump, adding a nuance on economic uncertainty that is appealing to voters.
This has worked in the blue state in the same way it did in 2024 for Republicans and Trump in the swing states, where they were very effective in taking down former Vice President Kamala Harris on the economy.
Voters who will drive the results of this election in suburban Washington, D.C., and Richmond, primarily white and wealthy, will vote solidly for Spanberger, who formerly represented Virginia’s 7th Congressional District. Those not voting for Spanberger from those enclaves are middle-class Hispanics who favor Republican candidates.
Make no mistake, Spanberger is heading to a comfortable win — and she will take down several Republicans in down-ballot legislative races. The race to watch remains between Jay Jones, the Democrats’ candidate for attorney general, who sent violent text messages to a colleague fantasizing about shooting former Virginia House Speaker Todd Gilbert and his children, and sitting attorney general Jason Miyares, a Virginia Beach Republican.
Miyares is a solid candidate for the Republicans. The son of an immigrant, he is the first Hispanic candidate for either party to win statewide. He first took office in 2021 when he took out a sitting Democratic incumbent.
If Miyares narrowly wins, he will be the front-runner for the governor’s office for Republicans in 2029. However, if he loses, it will be a sign that Democratic voters and even independent voters in Virginia saw Obama give Jones a nod this past weekend by appearing with him in Norfolk.
Obama telegraphed to voters that he is in a let-the-consequences-be-damned, win-at-all-costs moment because he has realized that his legacy is that of a man who won the presidency twice but with numerous asterisks, including losing substantially in the 2009 Virginia and New Jersey governors races, the House in 2010, the Senate in 2014, and legislative majorities across the country.
His presidency was also followed by Trump winning in the next cycle and his former vice president, Joe Biden, costing his party the White House, the majority in the Senate, and the House in 2024.
It seems there is no person from rural Virginia to the cities who doesn’t know about Jones’s violent texts or his getting away with no consequences for violating the law by dangerously speeding. These are things only someone with elite connections could get away with.
Everyone saw Jones take the stage ahead of Obama in Norfolk over the weekend.
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Obama is looking to be a hero. It doesn’t matter that he telegraphed to voters how morally corrupt a candidate is to him; what matters to Obama is getting Jones over the finish line because Miyares is more of a threat politically to the Democratic Party than Jones, who fantasized about murdering a man and his children just because there was an “R” after his name.
While neither Obama nor Spanberger mentioned Jones in Norfolk, the message of Jones being on the same stage at the same rally was undeniable: win at all costs.
