Virginia Republicans are raising alarm bells about the state of Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears’s (R) campaign in the state’s closely watched gubernatorial race.
Last week, news broke that Earle-Sears’s campaign manager Will Archer was removed from his post but would remain on her campaign in a different capacity. The development came as polls show Democratic candidate Abigail Spanberger in the lead.
Now, some Republicans are warning that further shake-ups are needed if they want to win in what is seen as the most significant bellwether this year.
“From my vantage point and the people we’re talking to, it’s a disaster,” said one Virginia Republican operative who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Conservative talk show host John Fredericks has been one of the most vocal figures to raise concerns about the state of the race, pointing directly to Earle-Sears’s campaign.
“This thing is a clown car she’s got going on,” Fredericks, who served as Trump’s 2016 and 2020 Virginia campaign chair, said in an interview with The Hill, calling the campaign “a dreadful operation.”
“And it’s frustrating everyone in Virginia,” he added.
Virginia Republican Party Chair and state Sen. Mark Peake (R) pushed back on Fredericks’s characterization of the campaign as “a clown car” during an interview with the talk show host last week.
“I think we’re fixing it as we speak,” Peake told Fredericks, referring to the campaign. “Lt. Gov. Sears had a strategy at the beginning of the campaign. I think they’ve executed it well.”
“I think what you are about to see based on what has happened this week is a change of strategy in the campaign, which is now going to be more obvious, more out in the open, more public, more events, and much more responsive to media,” he continued.
A Virginia Commonwealth University poll released last week showed Spanberger leading Earle-Sears with 49 percent support to 37 percent among registered voters in the state. The poll also showed downballot race margins mirroring the top of the ticket.
Last week, Spanberger also reported a massive second-quarter fundraising haul of $10.7 million. Earle-Sears’s campaign announced that Thursday marked its “best single fundraising day” since their launch last September, but it did not publicly disclose how much it had raised.
“We’d like to extend a heartfelt thank you to the liberal media. They spent all week attacking Winsome, and it turns out that was the best fundraiser we’ve ever had,” said Mark Harris, Earle-Sears’s general consultant.
“The media wants this to be a coronation for the left, but Virginia voters clearly have other plans. If this keeps up, we might start sending them flowers,” he continued.
According to the latest campaign finance data from the Virginia Public Access Project, Spanberger has raised $27 million since she jumped into the race in November 2023 and has more than $15 million in the bank. Earle-Sears has raised more than $11 million since launching her campaign and has more than $4 million cash on hand.
On top of the fundraising and polling disparities, Republicans have also expressed concern over the optics of the shake-up involving Archer, who worked as a pastor prior to joining the campaign, coupled with the exit of Earle-Sears’s former political director, Richard Wagner.
One GOP strategist said the developments are emblematic of “a lack of experience on Winsome’s campaign right now.”
“It’s disappointing,” the strategist said. “It’s easy to go win races in wave years, but competitive races take a competitive edge. And right now with Winsome’s team you’re not getting any of that from her very well-paid consultants.”
“They just don’t seem to have a fire under them. It’s more like a safe-seat race than one where you have to bulldoze your way across the commonwealth to add to the coalition to win a very purple state.”
There’s also a concern that Earle-Sears’s standing could drag down the rest of the Republican ticket, which is made up of technically separate races. In the lieutenant governor’s race, state Sen. Ghazala Hashmi (D) leads conservative talk show host John Reid with 46 percent support to 36 percent, while in the attorney general race, former state Del. Jay Jones (D) leads current Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares (R) with 47 percent support to 38 percent.
The last time Virginians voted to split a ticket was in 2005, when now-Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) was elected governor and Republican Bill Bolling won the lieutenant governor’s race.
Miyares is seen by many Republicans in the state as the strongest component of the GOP ticket, given his incumbency status and what Republicans see as his talent on the campaign trail. According to the Virginia Public Access Project, Miyares has nearly $7 million cash on hand, which is more than Earle-Sears’s own.
“If she can’t raise a lot of money soon, there’s going to be a sense that the best thing they can do is try to salvage the Miyares campaign because an attorney general in Virginia has independent powers,” said veteran Virginia political analyst Bob Holsworth.
“Sears at the moment is not defining the campaign,” he continued. “The most visible Republican campaign is the campaign against Jay Jones.”
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R), who is term-limited, is seen as one of the best hopes for Republicans. The governor is still seen as relatively popular as he approaches the end of his tenure. Additionally, Earle-Sears and Miyares benefited from Youngkin’s 2021 campaign, which saw Republicans make inroads throughout the commonwealth.
“The only thing that can save [Earle-Sears] is Glenn Youngkin,” Fredericks told The Hill. “Glenn Youngkin has to take this campaign over right now, lock, stock and barrel.
“Other than that, she and the entire ticket is going to get blown out,” he added.
When pressed by Fredericks on when the governor and his political apparatus would “take this thing over,” Youngkin said that “we’ve got to go to work as a group.”
“I am deeply engaged with them,” he said, citing events he and the lieutenant governor have done together. “I’m going to be campaigning for all of the candidates. This is going to be an important run for us to make sure that everybody understands where we are today is not a given.”
Youngkin added that at this point during his 2021 race against former Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), he was down in the polls between 6 and 11 points.
Fredericks told The Hill last week that he believes Earle-Sears and her campaign have about two weeks to turn things around, noting that Spanberger is running out the clock in the meantime.
“She’s going against a weak campaign and so she’s playing four-corners keep-away basketball,” he said. “You get a big lead, you’re in there early in the fourth corner, you just run out the clock.”
