Category: Winsome earle-sears
Democrat holds a healthy lead for Virginia governor, but one scandal could throw downballot races
Early data indicates Democrats are currently enjoying a lead in Virginia’s gubernatorial race, but one notorious scandal might cost them the attorney general race.
Polling has consistently shown Democratic gubernatorial nominee Abigail Spanberger with a comfortable advantage over her Republican challenger, Winsome Earle-Sears, who has served as Virginia’s lieutenant governor since 2022. Spanberger is averaging 7.4 points ahead of Earle-Sears, according to RealClearPolling, with some polls even putting the Democrat at a double-digit lead.
‘Do you really want to elect that person as a law enforcement officer in your state?’
However, this advantage has not translated to the Virginia attorney general race, where Democratic candidate Jay Jones has fallen behind Republican candidate Jason Miyares.
Miyares’ newfound momentum came at the beginning of October after Jones’ leaked texts revealed he was privately fantasizing about putting “two bullets” in the head of a political opponent and about the man’s kids dying in the arms of their mother.
Photo by Maxine Wallace/The Washington Post via Getty Images
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), who himself survived a politically motivated shooting, warned that Jones’ rhetoric revealed skewed judgment.
“Do you really want to elect that person as a law enforcement officer in your state?” Scalise asked in response to the texts. “Should other elected officials be accepting and condoning and endorsing that, or should they denounce it, which I did? Everybody should denounce it, and yet some won’t for political reasons.”
“I think it’s a gut check for people’s integrity,” Scalise told Blaze News. “If you’re willing to accept a call to violence because you’re more worried about a political party advancing than you are worried about civility in this country, that’s a real big concern for alarm.”
RELATED: Earle-Sears’ campaign bus bursts into flames days before election for Virginia governor
Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
It’s clear that extreme rhetoric is unpopular with Virginians. In the lieutenant governor’s race, Republican candidate John Reid has hammered Democratic candidate Ghazala Hashmi’s radical track record, including the time she boasted about teaching children books that were banned for containing explicit material.
“One of my concerns is violence. We seem to focus on sexually explicit material,” Hashmi said in a video obtained by Blaze News. “I don’t really care about that.”
“We teach the books that other people try to ban,” Hashmi said.
Even still, polling puts Reid and Hashmi within striking distance of each other. The latest polling shows Hashmi at a two-point advantage over Reid, although notably 7% of surveyed voters remain undecided.
“Ghazala Hashmi’s words speak for themselves,” Reid told Blaze News. “Any public official who says they ‘don’t really care’ if children are exposed to sexually explicit material in schools is completely out of touch with Virginia parents.”
“Parents deserve to know what’s in their kids’ classrooms — and when I’m lieutenant governor, they’ll have a voice and a seat at the table.”
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Earle-Sears’ campaign bus bursts into flames days before election for Virginia governor
The campaign bus for the Republican gubernatorial nominee in Virginia caught on fire just five days before the pivotal election.
Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears confirmed the incident in a post on social media Thursday but offered few details.
‘I’m thinking of the Lt. Governor and her team after this scary incident.’
“While en-route to an event, our campaign bus caught fire,” she posted. “Everyone is safe. Thank you to the first responders who got to the scene quickly — we are so grateful for you.”
Her Democratic competitor, Abigail Spanberger, posted about the incident as well.
“I’m relieved to hear Winsome Earle-Sears and her team are safe after her campaign bus caught on fire this afternoon,” she wrote in a Facebook post. “I’m grateful to our first responders for their quick action — and I’m thinking of the Lt. Governor and her team after this scary incident.”
Authorities have not released any details yet about the incident.
WCAV-TV published a photograph of the fire that was sent to them by a viewer. A second photo from the scene shows that the bus was mostly destroyed by the fire.
A spokesperson with the Earle-Sears team said first responders were still at the scene at about 3 p.m. local time.
RELATED: VIDEO: Earle-Sears crushes Democratic candidate over death-wish texts during gubernatorial debate
Most polling has shown Spanberger with a lead in the race, but Earle-Sears has gained some ground and closed some of the gap as Election Day approaches.
Spanberger might have given Earle-Sears an opportunity to persuade voters into the Republican column after the Democrat refused to retract her endorsement of Democratic attorney general candidate Jay Jones, who texted death wishes against a Republican and his children.
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