Falls Church, VA
—
It’s early on a Thursday night and Winsome Earle-Sears, Virginia’s Republican candidate for governor, is in a acquainted place. She’s standing outdoors of a college board assembly to name consideration to insurance policies associated to the place transgender college students can use their elected lavatory and play college sports activities.
“Let’s have girls have their private spaces and boys have their private spaces,” she stated to applause. “It has worked for how many millennia and certainly it can work now.”
Earle-Sears has blanketed the airwaves with adverts that characterize Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic nominee, as “being for they/them,” replicating the messaging used towards former Vice President Kamala Harris within the 2024 presidential election. She is airing the adverts throughout faculty and professional soccer video games simply as President Donald Trump’s campaign did last year.
On Friday, she’s going to tackle an occasion hosted by the conservative group Moms for Liberty, a corporation that claims it really works to defend parental rights in any respect ranges of presidency.
Polls in Virginia and elsewhere recommend the top issue on voters’ minds this fall is affordability. But Earle-Sears has made trans insurance policies a centerpiece of her messaging forward of the November election, hammering her Democratic counterpart for not answering whether or not she agrees that trans youth ought to be capable of use any lavatory in a college constructing or play on a sports activities crew that corresponds with their gender identification.
Just in September, the Earle-Sears marketing campaign spent over $2 million on adverts centered on transgender coverage, greater than it spent on every other subject, together with spots referring to “woke Abigail Spanberger.”
“She has to do something to differentiate herself and stand out in a very disaggregated media landscape and make up for the enthusiasm gap the Republicans have in Virginia,” stated Chris Saxman, a Republican strategist who served as Earle-Sears’ transition director after she was elected lieutenant governor and is now president of the enterprise e-newsletter Virginia FREE.
Democratic strategist Rodell Mollineau says focusing on transgender rights may work in some locations however not in Virginia.
“The Earle-Sears campaign is counting on transgender rights splitting independent and center-right voters in the same way it was problematic for Vice President Harris,” Mollineau stated. “The difference is it’s no longer 2024, Spanberger has done a great job of defining herself as a middle-of-the-road Democrat, and Earle-Sears is carrying the mantle for Trump in a state that hasn’t embraced MAGA.”
A ballot of doubtless Virginia voters in September discovered they had been most involved about inflation and price of dwelling, adopted by threats to democracy. According to the ballot, performed by Christopher Newport University, Democrats listed threats to democracy as by far their greatest concern whereas Republicans had been cut up between cost-of-living considerations, immigration and crime.
National polling, in the meantime, additionally means that debates over transgender insurance policies rank decrease amongst some voters’ priorities. A nationwide NCS ballot of adults launched this month discovered that 33% stated transgender insurance policies had been “extremely” or “very important,” rating final among the many issues surveyed, whereas 43% stated it was “not too” or “not at all important,” the best share of any situation that was requested about.
From Jennifer Agiesta, NCS’s director of polling and election analytics:
NCS recognized 5 various kinds of political independents, and people who are much less intently linked to both main occasion tilt towards feeling that society has gone too far in accepting totally different cultures, gender identities, sexual orientations and different totally different backgrounds. Among the Disappointed Middle, a group that’s extra politically engaged however deeply destructive towards each events, 41% say society has gone too far vs. 24% who say not far sufficient. For the Upbeat Outsiders, a much less politically energetic group of independents who’re extra constructive towards the events, it’s a tighter cut up, 38% too far vs. 35% not far sufficient.
When requested by NCS at her earlier information convention if she was emphasizing insurance policies associated to transgender youngsters on the expense of speaking in regards to the financial system, Earle-Sears defended her focus.
“Look at all of these people here. They are supporting women’s rights,” she stated.
Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares, a Republican who’s working for reelection, additionally defended focusing on the difficulty regardless of voters’ acknowledged want to speak about affordability. “This has been a huge issue in Virginia,” Miyares advised NCS in an interview. “It’s absolutely something I hear about on the campaign trail, from voters and students and people that come up and talk to me and people that stop me.”
Spanberger, the previous three-term Democratic congresswoman, told WSET that she would “support a bill that would put clear provisions in place that provide a lot of local ability for input, based on the age of children, based on the type of sport, based on competitiveness.”
“Ultimately, Abigail believes that these are decisions that must be made between parents, schools, and local communities — not politicians, and she believes that we need to get politics out of our public schools,” stated a spokesperson for the marketing campaign.
A number of downballot Virginia Republicans are mirroring Earle-Sears’ messaging subjects as are GOP candidates working in Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee. And outgoing Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin this week introduced that he has issued a state directive meant to “secure the health, safety, privacy, dignity and respect for all Virginians in sex-separated spaces.”
Trans individuals who oppose the Republican focus say they really feel forgotten.
“It feels as though I’ve kind of been boiled down into a talking point. My life is part of just this strategy to make people angry and afraid and scared and prey on the population of trans kids in this country, which is inherently very vulnerable,” stated Reed Williams, the 23-year-old digital director at Equality Virginia who transitioned at 12 whereas enrolled within the state’s public colleges.
A decade in the past, she says, her transition was supported by her household and faculty group. She worries that youth now received’t have entry to the identical degree of help.
“I just wish that people could have a little more empathy,” Williams stated.
Earle-Sears, although, is counting on conservative mother and father in Democratic strongholds like Fairfax County, echoing Youngkin’s profitable emphasis on parental rights in colleges 4 years in the past.
A mom who declined to be named out of worry of exposing her household says she didn’t discover out her youngster was transitioning till she went to entry educational information and was shocked to see a totally different title.
“I did the best that I could at the time and I think the school did the best as well, but I think they should have told me,” she advised NCS, including that she voted early for Earle-Sears however doesn’t broadcast her politics publicly.
Mark Harris, a political marketing consultant to Earle-Sears, stated the marketing campaign thinks this is a matter that may assist them with independents, reasonable Democrats, Asian and Black Americans.
“From the campaign perspective, it’s a great issue to draw clear contrast between us and Spanberger and her being beholden to this very out-of-touch group of people that are driving the Democratic agenda,” Harris stated in an interview with NCS.
Those supporting Democrats this fall reject that argument and say Earle-Sears and others aren’t chatting with the true considerations of most voters.
“They’re focused on things that don’t matter and they’re ignoring the millions of Americans whose health care is at risk,” stated Laura Packard, a small enterprise proprietor and most cancers survivor who confirmed as much as protest an Earle-Sears occasion.
Virginia State Sen. Danica Roem, the primary brazenly transgender particular person to be elected and serve in each chambers of a state legislature within the nation’s historical past, says the overemphasis on trans issues signifies Earle-Sears is working a shedding marketing campaign.
“I’ve seen this happen. I have seen this playbook. It is not going to work,” stated Roem, who advised that high of thoughts for a lot of Virginians is the uncertainty coming from the federal authorities in a state that’s house to greater than 300,000 federal employees.
Roem represents a state Senate district centered on Manassas, outdoors of Washington, DC, and has routinely been reelected after first flipping a state legislative district from purple to blue in 2017.
“They attacked me over sports. They’ve attacked me over bathrooms. They’ve attacked me over health care. They’ve attacked me over forced outing, you name it. And I won,” she stated.