How this GOP Governor's Miracle Became a Curse

Don't blame President Donald Trump for the setback Republicans are facing this November.

Ahead of next year's congressional midterms, the first big test of the GOP's strength since Trump returned to office comes this fall in New Jersey and Virginia.

While Republicans always expect an uphill battle in New Jersey, Virginia ought to be favorable territory — after all, the GOP won every statewide office there just four years ago with Glenn Youngkin atop the ticket.

But it's Youngkin and company, not Trump, who are on the verge of forfeiting Virginia to the Democrats this year.

What went wrong is a tale of botched succession and inadequate intra-party competition.

Republicans nationwide need to pay heed to the Virginia party's self-immolation.

The big story isn't the sex scandal engulfing the GOP's openly gay candidate for lieutenant governor, John Reid.

It's not even the role Youngkin and the head of his Spirit of Virginia PAC — who's since had to resign — played in promoting the scandal in a botched effort to force Reid to drop out.

Sex and betrayal make great headlines, but the lieutenant governor's race — and Reid's apparent dalliances with drag queens and pornography — is a sideshow: the race that matters most is for governor.

With term limits preventing Youngkin from succeeding himself, his lieutenant governor, Winsome Earle-Sears, expected to get her turn at the top of the ticket.

And she has: The primary isn't until next month, but because Earle-Sears' challengers dropped out before the deadline to appear on the ballot, she's the default nominee.

In fact, there's no primary competition for any statewide office, although a challenger to Reid who gave up earlier — businessman John Curran — is now attempting a write-in campaign.

Republicans in Virginia, like those in many other places, think competition is a fine thing except when it comes to their own races.

And the major factions of the party, which until recently were the Christian right and country-club moderates, have long preferred to settle their differences in the close confines of party conventions rather than in primaries.

The rise of MAGA hasn't changed much: Reid seemed unbeatable before the Youngkin circle exposed his antics because he's a talk-radio host popular with the populist right, but the party's habit of quashing competition applied even to him, until Youngkin's coterie changed their mind (and changed it too late — Reid is still probably unbeatable in the primary, only now much weaker in the general election).

Each well-managed faction preferred not to have a primary fight, so all of them together avoided one, deferring to Earle-Sears as the next in line for the marquee spot on the ticket.

That was a mistake.

Earle-Sears was reassuring to the party's right wing four years ago, as a black woman (and immigrant from Jamaica) in the post-George Floyd era who'd served in the United States Marine Corps and was outspokenly anti-abortion and supportive of gun rights.

Moderates might have perceived her as inexperienced — she'd served two years in the House of Delegates in the early 2000s — but Youngkin's coattails with centrists carried Earle-Sears and the rest of the ticket to victory.

Once in office, however, Earle-Sears made some rookie mistakes, looking ahead to running for governor in her own right by trying to court the moderates who weren't so keen on her, while losing support with right-wingers, especially once she started to opine on national politics.

"I could not support him. I just couldn't," she told Fox News in 2022 about the possibility of another Trump bid for the White House.

"A true leader understands when they have become a liability," she said.

She felt differently by the time Trump locked up the GOP presidential nomination last year, but the damage with MAGA voters was already done.

The result was that Earle-Sears remained too well-positioned to challenge but is ill-prepared to maximize conservative turnout or win moderates the way Youngkin did.

Her response to the Reid controversy has also been alienating both supporters of the man who hopes to succeed her as lieutenant governor and those who want to cut loose:

"John Reid is the Republican nominee for Lt. Governor. It is his race and his decision alone to move forward," she stated on Facebook. "We all have our own race to run."

She trails the presumptive Democratic nominee, Abigail Spanberger, in all early polls by an average of nearly 7 points.

Earle-Sears and Reid both needed the kind of close scrutiny they would have received in a competitive primary.

A tough primary might have weakened the eventual nominees — but they would hardly be weaker than they are now, and early exposure of their vulnerabilities might have allowed the party to pick better.

Primaries can be unruly, but if the GOP wants to avoid a rout next year, it will have to put its candidates to stricter tests than they've faced in Virginia.

(COMMENT, BELOW)

Previously:
• 04/15/25: Is UnitedHealthcare CEO's murderer the Left's Donald Trump?
• 04/01/25: Lawfare Isn't Beaten -- In France or America
• 03/25/25: Will Trump Turn Nationalism Against America?
• 03/18/25: The Dems' Civil War
• 03/11/25: Can Donald Trump Win a Trade War?
• 03/04/25: Europe's Decline Was a Choice
• 02/25/25: How Trump Makes Europe Stronger
• 02/20/25: Tax-payers funding a sham of democracy
• 02/11/25: What Kind of a Populist Is Elon Musk?
• 02/03/25: Can Trump Win Trade Wars Before They Start?
• 01/21/25: Trump Inaugurates a New Era
• 01/14/25: Dems Aren't Democracy's Party
• 01/07/25: Donald Trump's Worldwide Election
• 12/31/24: Harmless self-deception?
• 12/17/24: Communism thriving, including HERE
• 12/10/24: Birthright Citizenship Is a Breach in the Border
• 12/03/24: Identity Politics, Not Biden, Cost Dems the Election
• 11/19/24: Why Dems Are Losing Tomorrow's Elections Today
• 11/12/24: Dems Are at a Dead End, Unless They Learn From Trump
• 10/29/24: Harris Targets Married Women
• 10/22/24: Vibes Turn Bad for Kamala Harris
• 10/15/24: Why Veterans Are Voting for Trump
• 10/08/24: How Donald Trump Can Win the Popular Vote
• 10/01/24: Iran Targets America's Elections -- and Trump
• 09/24/24: Trump's Would-Be Assassin's Explanation
• 09/17/24: When Character Assassination Becomes the Real Thing
• 09/10/24: Kamala Harris Runs Like a Republican -- and Misleads
• 09/04/24: Where Trump Is Moderate -- While Kam Is Maximalist
• 08/27/24: Donald Trump Is Reagan's Heir
• 08/20/24: Will Voters Settle for Joe Biden's Wing(wo)man?
• 08/13/24: Trump Has to Run Like It's 2016 Again
• 08/07/24: Is Trump Running Against Harris -- or Donald Trump?
• 07/30/24: Kamala Harris' 'Mean Girls' Election
• 07/23/24: Kamala Harris Is the Opponent Donald Trump Wants
• 07/16/24: Ready for Biden's Counterattack?
• 07/09/24: Biden Faces Richard Nixon's Choice
• 07/02/24: Should Biden Drop Out -- or Resign?
• 06/18/24: Separate Sexual Identity and State
• 06/18/24: Nigel Farage Makes the Trump Moment Permanent
• 06/04/24: State that's long eluded GOP turns toward Trump
• 05/21/24: Trump's Sun Belt Hopes and Rust Belt Needs
• 05/14/24: What Trump Sees in Doug Burgum
• 05/07/24: The Vietnam Era Never Ended for Biden's Party
• 05/06/24: Nationalists of the World, Unite?
• 04/25/24: Foreign Policy Splits
• 04/16/24: How pro-lifers stand to lose everything gained in overturning Roe
• 04/02/24: PBS Misremembers William F. Buckley Jr.
• 04/02/24: Who Wants to Be House Speaker?
• 03/26/24: Trump Hunts for a VP Close to Home
• 03/19/24: Princess Kate and Democracy's Discontents
• 03/12/24: Can Biden Buy the Voters?
• 03/05/24: Veepstakes Give Trump an Edge
• 02/20/24: Do Americans Trust Either Party?
• 02/13/24: Vladimir Putin -- A Passive Aggressor
• 01/23/24: Will 'Lawfare' Take Trump Off the Ballot?
• 01/16/24: Will Africa Save America?
• 01/09/24:'The Sopranos' at 25: A new world tragedy
• 01/02/24: Trump, Biden and a Fight for the Heart
• 12/12/23: What Happened to Ron DeSantis?
• 12/12/23: Biden Looks Doomed -- But Is He?
• 12/05/23: A Test for Trump and His Rivals
• 11/21/23: When Inequality Is Fatal for Men
• 11/14/23: Nevermind, The Battle's Over
• 11/07/23: War in the Dem Party -- and at the Opera
• 10/24/23: Israel's Lesson for 2024: A Lib Crackup
• 10/17/23: Libs' Dilemma: Immigration or Israel?
• 10/10/23: Why Bidenflation Defines Bidenomics
• 10/03/23: Will Gavin Newsom Copy Trump?
• 09/26/23: Biden's a Loser -- but Dems Can't Ditch Him
• 09/19/23: Do Sex Scandals Matter?
• 09/12/23: Cornel West Spells Doom for Biden
• 09/05/23: What Trump Does for Democracy
• 08/2/23: Ramaswamy: A Trump Versus Trump?
• 08/22/23: Take 'Rich Men North of Richmond' Seriously
• 08/16/23: How America Kills Its Own
• 08/08/23: The Biden Pardon That Can Spare America
• 08/01/23: Harding, a consevative for the ages
• 07/25/23: Demography Destiny, for Us and China
• 07/18/23: The Frontrunner Who Looks Like a Loser Is Biden
• 07/11/23: Britain's Bad Example for American Conservatives
• 07/05/23: Could We Still Win a Revolutionary War?
• 06/27/23: Civilizations Clash -- in Ukraine and at Home
• 06/20/23: China Comes for the Caribbean
• 06/13/23: Fertility, Family and Bio-Socialism
• 06/06/23: From American Dream to Orwell's Nightmare
• 05/23/23: Ukraine war is an existential struggle --- for the West
• 05/23/23: Learn the Right Midterm Lessons -- or Lose in 2024
• 05/16/23: Feinstein Today Is Biden Tomorrow
• 05/09/23: Trump, DeSantis and Political Courtship
• 05/02/23: RFK Jr.'s Threat to Biden
• 04/25/23: Biden's Lost Generation
• 04/25/23: Who's In Charge of Clarence Thomas?
• 04/11/23: Beyond AI, Our Cyborg Future
• 04/04/23: 2024: 3 Leaders, 1 Way to Win
• 03/28/23: Climate Science Makes a Bad Religion
• 03/21/23: All the Conspiracy That's Fit to Print