ARLINGTON, Va. — Only two states, Virginia and New Jersey, hold their elections for governor the year after the presidential election and the year before the midterms. The races are often seen as a test of voter sentiment, but just weeks out from the election, two late-emerging issues in Virginia may be reshaping that state's contest.
Abigail Spanberger, a former member of Congress, is the Democratic candidate, and Winsome Earle-Sears, the Republican candidate, is the commonwealth's current lieutenant governor.
Democrats are hopeful that history may be on their side. The party in power in the White House typically loses the race for governor in Virginia. That trend, plus frustrations over the government shutdown and the Trump administration's effect on the state's large federal workforce, could propel them over the finish line.
Meanwhile, Republicans may have received a boost from reporting on violent text messages sent in 2022 by the Democratic candidate for attorney general, first published in the National Review.
The stakes of the election are high. Governors have become key figures in either supporting the Trump administration's policies or opposing them. The parties' successes or failures at the top of the ticket are likely to impact down-ballot races.
Democrats focus on the economy and the federal workforce
In the one-and-only candidate debate in the race, Spanberger highlighted the rising cost of living in Virginia and voter anxiety over the Trump administration's cuts to the federal workforce, themes her campaign has hammered for months.
That's for good reason: federal cuts are having a significant impact in Virginia, home to about 320,000 federal workers, and many others who work on federal contracts. During the government shutdown, many workers are feeling the squeeze through furloughs or working without pay.
And since July, about 11,000 Virginia-based federal jobs have been lost, according data from the University of Virginia's Weldon Cooper Center for Public Policy. That doesn't include laid-off federal workers who live in Virginia but work in D.C.
The Trump administration's decision to lay off thousands more federal workers during the shutdown, a move now paused in court, has put many Virginia Democrats in a mood to fight. At a town hall earlier this month in Northern Virginia, dozens of federal workers and contractors told Congressman Suhas Subramanyam, a Democrat, they wanted him to continue the shutdown and stand up to Republicans in Washington. After the event, several voters told NPR they were feeling motivated to participate in the Virginia election.
"There's not much I can do on a federal level, but on a state level, I do have some influence," said Marsha Peltz. She said her son lost his job in the federal government in the spring. "So I'm encouraging my neighbors, please go out and vote, please volunteer."
The upheavals in government employment and contracting have created a "very, very damaging environment for Republicans" in the Virginia November election, said Stephen Farnsworth, a professor of political science at the University of Mary Washington. Spanberger, he noted, has led in most public polling by close to 10 points throughout the race.
"A year ago, the economy was a great benefit to Republicans when they could talk about the Biden economy," Farnsworth said. "But a year later, with a Republican governor and a Republican president, the Democrats are the ones who have the advantage in the economic conversation."
Spanberger is doing all she can to capitalize on the moment, calling out Earle-Sears for continuing to seek Trump's endorsement.
"My opponent refused to call on President Trump to stop this chaos. Virginians saw with their own eyes that Winsome Earle-Sears' loyalty to Donald Trump will always come first, no matter the cost to Virginians and their families," the Spanberger campaign said in a statement after news of a fresh wave of federal layoffs broke. "That's not leadership — that's betraying the people of Virginia who she was elected to serve."
Earle-Sears has been broadly supportive of Trump's cuts to the federal workforce. She says the commonwealth should be able to weather the job losses because of the Youngkin administration's focus on job creation in the private sector. She has criticized Spanberger for not calling on Virginia Democrats in Congress to end the shutdown.
"So my opponent, all summer long, has been playing political football with federal workers by trying to say that she loves them more than anyone else," Earle-Sears said on the debate stage. "Let me tell you what love looks like. It looks like Abigail calling Senators Kaine and Warner and telling them, 'Go back, do your job, and vote against a government shutdown.' "
Republicans decry violent text messages
The Earle-Sears campaign is seeking to capitalize on news of a series of violent text messages from Democratic candidate for Attorney General Jay Jones. In the messages, which were sent to a Republican member of the House of Delegates in 2022, Jones describes the then-Republican speaker of the House of Delegates hypothetically being shot in the head with two bullets. The National Review reported Jones also said he wanted the Republican's children to die in order to compel him to move on policy. Jones has apologized for what he said in the messages, expressed remorse and said the messages were unacceptable
Virginia Republicans say the scandal is an indicator of what they believe is Democrats' tolerance for political violence, a potent argument to energize conservative voters still reeling from the assassination of right-wing political activist Charlie Kirk.
"It's going to fire up a whole lot of infrequent, probably right-of-center to conservative voters that are not Republican consistent voters," said Zack Roday, a partner at Republican-leaning strategic communications firm Ascent Media.
Virginia Republicans, President Trump, and multiple law enforcement associations have called for Jones to drop out. Spanberger and other prominent Democrats have condemned the messages, but have not said he should leave the race.
Early voting is well underway, with more than 400,000 votes cast.
Roday said the issue also calls into question Spanberger's leadership and principles.
"This is a crisis for Democrats to handle, and they have no answer for it," he said.
At the gubernatorial debate, Spanberger repeated her condemnation of the messages but refused to retract her endorsement of Jones, saying Jones is running his own race and voters should decide what to do with the information.
It's not clear yet how significantly the news could impact the top-of-the-ticket contest, though Republicans are doing all they can to ensure that it will. The Earle-Sears campaign is now running ads tying Spanberger to Jones, featuring a clip of Spanberger telling a group of supporters to "let your rage fuel you" — a quote she has used on the stump as part of a larger call to supporters to volunteer for her campaign. The Republican ad concludes, "Reject insanity. Vote Republican."
Debate over transgender students in public schools
Roday also pointed to "a narrative shift" in the race as Earle-Sears has ramped up calls to ban transgender students from girls' sports, bathrooms, and locker rooms in public schools. She's criticized Spanberger for supporting "boys and men in girls' spaces" and showed up at school board meetings in blue school districts in Northern Virginia to protest gender-expansive policies.
"We, as women, want our private spaces. There's nothing hard about that," Earle-Sears told reporters following an appearance at a Moms for Liberty event in Fairfax County.
That message is appealing to voters like Ursula Baukol, a self-described "moderate conservative" and federal contractor who attended the gathering.
"It just seems that now there's more of a push … of the schools to over-insert themselves in the whole sort of sexuality issues," she told NPR. She said she believes Virginia schools are sharing content about sexuality and gender too early.
Spanberger has called for the state government to stay out of decisions about who uses what bathrooms and locker rooms, arguing that's best left up to parents, teachers, students, and their school districts. While she's generally avoided transgender issues on the campaign trail, she's also sought to portray Earle-Sears' record on same-sex marriage as out of step with Virginians' support for marriage equality. At the debate, Spanberger brought up written comments from Earle-Sears expressing that she was "morally opposed" to same-sex marriage.
"That's not discrimination!" Earle-Sears responded. Her campaign said afterward that she believes marriage equality to be "settled law."
Focusing on transgender students may help with Republican turnout, but it's not clear how important it is to voters overall. Virginia voters tend to agree with Earle-Sears about girls' spaces, but they put the debate far down on the list of top issues in the race, according to polling from The Washington Post and George Mason University. The economy claimed the top spot.
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