Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, a Republican who blamed Donald Trump for her party’s struggles in the 2022 midterms, but is trying now to let MAGAs now she’s one of them, announced her candidacy for the 2025 GOP gubernatorial nomination on Thursday.
Should be a rollicking good time over on that side, based on the response of the attorney general, Jason Miyares, who is expected to be announcing his own candidacy for the Republican nomination, after this year’s election is done and dusted.
Miyares issued a statement on Earle-Sears throwing her hat into the rang on Thursday, saying Republicans “need to be focused on this November’s elections before even thinking about next year.”
Miyares and Earle-Sears were both swept up in the Glenn Youngkin wave in the 2021 state elections, all of them aided by the historically inept campaign of former governor Terry McAuliffe, who stumbled and bumbled Democrats into losing a sure-thing race by allowing Youngkin to define himself as a middle-of-the-road Republican.
The far-right, MAGA-adjacent tilt that we’ve seen since earned Youngkin and Republicans a rebuke from the voters in the 2023 state midterms, in which Democrats took back control of the House of Delegates, and retained their majority in the State Senate, rendering Youngkin a feckless lame-duck for the final two years of his lone four-year term.
Earle-Sears is fresh off a truly odd public appearance at the Labor Day parade in Buena Vista, in which she accused Democrats in attendance for post-parade speeches of “telling a Black woman to get off the stage,” and claiming that she heard one person tell her to “go back to Jamaica.”
This came moments after she assailed Democrats for, among other things, “removing body parts from our children and calling it freedom,” then yelled at a person to “take down that sign, because y’all are the ones who are weird,” before declaring her fealty to Trump.
Video: Winsome Earle-Sears enters 2025 governor’s race
That last point, the declaration of fealty to Trump, may be a key one for the viability of her candidacy, after she blamed Trump for the ground lost by Republicans in the 2022 midterms, saying that the losses were “a clue that the voters want to move on,” and that “a true leader knows when they have become a liability to the mission.”
Trump, as you know already, doesn’t take kindly this kind of disloyalty, as the knife in the back he delivered to Fifth District Congressman Bob Good, the chair of the House Freedom Caucus, found out the hard way back in the spring.
The ex-president rewarded Good’s move to endorse Ron DeSantis for the GOP presidential nomination with an endorsement of Good’s primary opponent, John McGuire, who went on to a narrow upset win in a June primary.
Trump may very well not be a factor in Virginia in the 2025 cycle. Should he lose in November, as is becoming more and more likely by the day, the value of his endorsement will wane over time, and there is already talk behind the scenes in Republican circles about how the party will need to rebuild itself from the Trump cult of personality era to remain relevant politically moving forward.
This is where Miyares may be making the right call to steer clear of trying to jumpstart the 2025 cycle before Nov. 5 – the less political baggage to carry with you to next year, the better.
Last word here goes to Earle-Sears.
“As an immigrant, mother, a United States Marine, a business owner and now as your lieutenant governor, I’m living the American Dream,” Earle-Sears said in her announcement video. “Just like in the Marines, we can either choose to improvise, adapt and overcome, or we can risk falling backwards. Extreme liberal politics have led some states down a path of decline, but here in Virginia, common-sense conservative leadership has refueled our birth.”
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Chris Graham
