Following the blowout elections earlier this month that saw Democrats win several major races by significant margins, the lead consultant for Winsome Earle-Sears, the Republican gubernatorial candidate in Virginia, came out against his former boss for being a “weak candidate,” The Roanoke Times reported Monday.
Democrats secured major victories this month in several contests, including to gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, the highly contested mayoral race in New York City, New York, and a ballot measure in California to redraw the state’s maps and combat President Donald Trump’s gerrymandering plan in Texas to bolster the GOP’s congressional numbers.
Seen by some analysts as a bellwether for the upcoming midterm elections, the Democratic wins lead to a “full-blown panic” among Republicans, with Vice President JD Vance blaming the Biden administration, in part, for the losses.
But for Scott Weldon, founder of the consultancy firm Carnitine Strategies, the GOP’s loss – at least in Virginia – boiled down to Earle-Sears being a “weak candidate.”
“Kind of a weak candidate in Winsome, and kind of a poorly run campaign,” Weldon said, who led Earl-Sears’ campaign as lead consultant, a last-minute replacement for Earl-Sears’ former lead campaign consultant, Mark Harris.
“[Republicans have] got to get back to the basics of what’s driving the electorate. It’s kitchen-table issues, plain and simple. At the end of the day, they want to know that you’re looking out for their pocketbooks.”
The campaign manager for Earle-Sears’ opponent, now-Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger, was more blunt in her assessment as to why the Republican gubernatorial hopeful lost by nearly 15 percentage points.
“I think when Winsome Sears rolled out those culture war ads, they largely fell on deaf ears,” said Samson Signori, Spanberger’s campaign manager, The Roanoke Times reported.
Earle-Sears leaned heavily into supposed issues around transgender people during her campaign, and despite just over 3% of the youth population in Virginia identifying as such, whereas Spanberger campaigned heavily on the issue of affordability.
And Spanberger’s subsequent victory, Signori argued, wasn’t “just a landslide victory, but a coalition-redefining victory,” The Roanoke Times reported.