The politics of Washington nearly always bleed across the Potomac River and into Virginia’s odd-year elections for governor, long seen as the first sign of how the country is feeling about its new president.
This year in particular, that is a big advantage for Democrats.
In Virginia, they have fully united behind a candidate they view as ideal to win a Trump-era election in purple Virginia: former Representative Abigail Spanberger, a onetime C.I.A. officer who has raised buckets of money and defined herself as a moderate willing to buck her party’s leadership.
She is widely seen as the favorite against Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, a socially conservative Republican who has struggled to remain competitive financially in the early months of the race. Ms. Spanberger had $14.3 million on hand as of June 5, the latest campaign finance reporting date, compared with under $3 million for Ms. Earle-Sears.
And while the party locked out of the White House usually performs well in the Virginia governor’s race, this is no ordinary year for the state. President Trump’s slash-and-burn tactics for cutting the government have heavily affected Virginia’s large population of federal workers.
Democrats in the state and far beyond see Ms. Spanberger’s campaign as their biggest opportunity yet to make a statement about their opposition to Mr. Trump.
“The list goes on and on,” Ms. Spanberger said in an interview on Monday, discussing what voters were telling her. “Sometimes it’s the chaos, sometimes it is the anger. Sometimes they’ll name the president.”
She continued: “Sometimes it’s just, ‘With everything going on right now,’ or, ‘With all this chaos,’ and then they’ll pivot to what they want.”
Virginia Republicans, for their part, are in disarray.
The party has been squabbling over its nominee for lieutenant governor, John Reid, who faced a controversy this year involving explicit photos online. Some Republicans say they will not back Mr. Reid, who would be Virginia’s first openly gay statewide official.
And Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a popular and wealthy Republican who is prohibited by state law from seeking re-election, has not yet made a significant financial investment in Ms. Earle-Sears’s campaign.
“A lot of the traditional financial supporters in the business community are not yet convinced that Sears can win, and they’re not going to give her money until they are,” said former Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, the last Republican to hold that post before Ms. Earle-Sears won it. “A lot of them don’t view her as a serious candidate.”
Ms. Earle-Sears declined to be interviewed. Her campaign spokesman dismissed Ms. Spanberger’s fund-raising advantage as insignificant.
“This race isn’t being bought — it’s being built on a message that matters,” said Peyton Vogel, Ms. Earle-Sears’s press secretary. “This is a grass-roots-driven campaign led by the right candidate with the right message — you can’t buy that.”
Democrats have yet to choose the rest of their statewide ticket. Primary elections on Tuesday will determine the party’s nominees for lieutenant governor and attorney general, candidates whose fortunes have historically risen and fallen with the contender for governor.
Ms. Earle-Sears did not face any primary rivals, nor did the party’s incumbent attorney general, Jason Miyares, or its choice for lieutenant governor, Mr. Reid.
While the governor’s race has been sleepy so far, it will make history.
The winner will be the first woman to serve as governor of Virginia, where the state government is so draped in tradition that it has written protocol for when to call the state’s leader “His Excellency.” Ms. Earle-Sears, the first Black woman elected to statewide office, would add an extra milestone if she winds up presiding over the former capital of the Confederacy.
But she does not have the personal fortune or donor connections of Mr. Youngkin, a former private equity executive who could self-fund large chunks of his political operation.
A former one-term state legislator, Ms. Earle-Sears lost races for the U.S. House and Senate before her fierce opposition to same-sex marriage and her defense of gun rights propelled her to the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor four years ago. Mr. Youngkin’s victory in the general election helped carry her into office.
It does not appear that she has inherited his popularity.
Polls show that both candidates are relatively little-known statewide. Neither hails from the vote-rich Northern Virginia counties that make up nearly 30 percent of the statewide electorate.
And voters in those Washington suburbs tend to pay close attention to national politics, despite quadrennial attempts from the party that controls the White House to localize Virginia’s races for governor.
In 2017, Ralph Northam, a Democrat, harnessed voters’ anger at Mr. Trump’s first administration to cruise to victory. In 2021, Mr. Youngkin won after President Joseph R. Biden Jr. appeared to be flailing in his efforts to pass his signature domestic policy legislation.
“If Abigail is able to nationalize the election, it’s a very difficult construct for the Republicans,” said Chris Saxman, a Virginia Republican who helped run Ms. Earle-Sears’s political action committee during the first part of her term as lieutenant governor. “For those people who are feeling the pinch of getting their jobs cut or funding cut or losing contracts, that matters. That’s their economy.”
Democrats who are optimistic about Ms. Spanberger point to her victories in tight congressional races in 2018, 2020 and 2022. In those elections, she performed better in rural precincts than many of her fellow Democrats on the ballot. Many in the party hope to repeat that feat and expand their narrow majority in the State House of Delegates this fall.
“What I’ve seen is that she is focused on the margins and going into red places that we probably in the past have not done a good job on,” said Finale Norton, a Democrat who lost a 2021 race for a State House seat on the state’s rural Eastern Shore. “This is the perfect opportunity for her to continue to work on those margins.”
At the same time, Ms. Spanberger continues to haul in cash, accumulating a fund-raising advantage unseen in modern Virginia politics.
“It seems I’m avoiding another Abigail fund-raiser every other night in Northern Virginia,” said Representative Don Beyer, a Democrat whose district abuts the nation’s capital and has already hosted his own fund-raiser for her campaign. “Everybody I know is having one for her.”
Polling is of limited value more than four months before a state election in which both candidates remain relatively unknown, but private surveys conducted by officials in both parties show Ms. Spanberger with a modest lead that probably reflects the state’s Democratic lean.
“The problem right now is that the blue part of the state is angrier and the red part is more complacent,” said former Representative Tom Davis, a Republican who represented the Washington suburbs. “Angrier people tend to turn out. That explains almost every Virginia election.”
Reid J. Epstein covers campaigns and elections from Washington. Before joining The Times in 2019, he worked at The Wall Street Journal, Politico, Newsday and The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
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