Statewide elections in Virginia are heating up with less than a month to go before voters head to the ballot box. In the midst of controversy surrounding Democratic Attorney General nominee Jay Jones and his violent rhetoric, Republican gubernatorial candidate and current Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears has pulled even with her Democratic opponent, Abigail Spanberger, according to a new poll.
The Trafalgar Group conducted a survey in the immediate aftermath of last week’s gubernatorial debate and found Spanberger polling at 47.7% support to Earle-Sears’s 45.1%. With a margin of error of 2.9%, the numbers represent a statistical tie. Likewise, Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor, Ghazala Hasmi, and Republican nominee John Reid are also statistically even, with Hasmi at 46.8% support and Reid at 45.9%. Incumbent Attorney General Jason Miyares (R), however, is leading Democratic challenger Jay Jones 48.9% to 43.1%.
Jones became the subject of controversy and heated discussion earlier this month after a series of disturbing text messages he accidentally sent to a Republican colleague while the two were working together in Virginia’s House of Delegates became public. In those texts, Jones said that then-Speaker of the House Todd Gilbert, a Republican, should get “two bullets to the head” and that if Gilbert and other Republicans “die before me I will go to their funerals to piss on their graves.” He also argued that Gilbert’s wife, Jennifer, should have to witness her children being shot and killed so that Gilbert might reconsider his support for Second Amendment rights. “Only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy,” Jones told Republican Carrie Coyner. He quipped, “I mean do I think Todd and Jennifer are evil? And that they’re breeding little fascists? Yes.”
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Since then, Spanberger and other Democrats — both at the state and the federal level — have refused to distance themselves from Jones or ask him to discontinue his campaign, despite Republicans warning that such explicitly violent and dehumanizing rhetoric is clearly “disqualifying.” When asked directly in last week’s debate, Spanberger refused to rescind her endorsement of Jones. “I did not hear an answer to the endorsement issue. Will you continue to endorse Jay Jones?” debate moderator Deanna Albritton asked. “I knew about these text messages when they came out, and I denounced them as soon as I learned about them,” Spanberger answered. “The voters now have the information that was withheld from them, presumably for political reasons, but they now have the information, and it’s up to voters to make an individual choice based on this information.”
“Ms. Spanberger, I understand what you are saying at this time about the voters. Do you yourself still endorse Jay Jones? You have 15 seconds. Yes or no?” Albritton pressed. Spanberger replied, “We all are running our individual races just like my opponent has said that about her lieutenant governor,” referring to Reid, the first candidate for statewide office in Virginia to openly identify as homosexual.
In comments to The Washington Stand, FRC Action Director Matt Carpenter explained, “Trafalgar nailed the 2021 gubernatorial election in Virginia, so they cannot be ignored by any honest election observer. Their most recent poll clearly shows Virginians souring on the candidacy of Jay Jones, with Jones now trailing Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares outside the poll’s margin of error.” He continued, “With Jones’s text messages fantasizing about the violent end to his political opponent and his children, Democratic candidates running statewide in Virginia are having a difficult time making their closing arguments to voters who are, rightfully, incensed that Jones could be so callous toward a colleague and his family.”
Carpenter noted, “As we saw recently in the gubernatorial debate, Spanberger repeatedly refused to call for Jones to drop out of the race, and so she’s stuck with him as her running mate. The Trafalgar poll shows a race tightening rapidly for Spanberger and other Democrats running on the same ticket, and Jones is dragging them down with him.”
The debate also saw Spanberger dodge questions on whether or not biological boys should be allowed to compete in girls’ sports or use girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms. When asked about the contentious issue, Spanberger demurred and suggested that the question should be left to parents, teachers, and school administrators on a local level. The Democrat offered a similar response last month when pressed on the issue by reporters. “The argument is, the assessment is, there needs to be much clearer guidance in terms of what is an executive order’s binding assessment of Title IX versus what has been a decision of a court,” she told the press, before her staff instructed reporters to stop asking questions. “I 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,” she said later when asked about the issue again.
In an interview following the debate, Spanberger delivered what Earle-Sears referred to as a “word salad defending her support for men in girls’ bathrooms and predators in their locker rooms.” The Democrat was asked, “What do you make of Earl Sears’s claim that you’re fine with ‘putting men in girls’ locker rooms?’” She answered:
“Right now, what we are seeing is there are differences between what is the law of the land under Title IX and what are executive orders put out by the White House. And in circumstances where there are conflicting evidence or conflicting interpretations, the reality is the federal government has to be clear in what is the real guidance available to our schools as it relates to use of locker rooms. The reality is that we have multiple jurisdictions who believe they are following the letter of the law and have their lawyers conveying why. And at the end of the day, we have a president of the United States who is taking away and threatening federal funding. The — what I think is so egregious is that this is a tool that, unfortunately, this president continues to use the threat of federal funding. … The real challenge that exists here is that we have a president who is using congressional-approved federal spending as a cudgel and — just as an issue of principle — you know, right now it’s coming after the schools, before it was coming after conservation programs. It’s also, consistently, across our universities and institutions of higher education and research, uh, it’s a dire circumstance. But when it comes down to, um, you know, understanding the implementation of how it is that, you know, our kids are coexisting in the classroom, um, or on the sports field, yes, I do think that, in many cases, it’s the local community that knows their community best.”
Lily Mullens, former captain of the women’s swim team at Roanoke College, blasted Spanberger for her position on the issue. “The cowardice and refusal to give a clear yes or no on keeping [incumbent Republican] Governor Youngkin’s policy protecting Virginia’s girls destroys all trust in Spanberger’s judgment and integrity,” Mullens told Fox News. “I firmly believe that if you are unable to denounce such outward disregard for the rights of girls who live in the great Commonwealth of Virginia, then you are unworthy [of] holding any office, let alone that of a governor,” she asserted. “For someone who is to be representing all constituents of Virginia, she should be able to clearly answer questions instead of pandering to the radical gender ideology, especially when asked about an issue that an overwhelming majority favors keeping men out of women’s spaces.”
Democratic Party power players, however, are coming to Spanberger’s defense. According to The Daily Signal, former President Bill Clinton and his wife, failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, will be participating in a fundraiser benefitting Spanberger’s campaign. The event will take place Monday and will be hosted by former Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe, who lost his reelection bid to Glenn Youngkin in 2021, largely due to his support for transgender policies in Virginia’s schools. Spanberger and the other Democrats sharing the ballot with her have significantly outpaced Republican candidates in terms of fundraising. Spanberger has accrued over $40 million in funding, more than double Earle-Sears’s war chest.
LifeNews Note: S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.
