It's primary election day in Virginia, and the state is gearing up for a big election year. In November, Virginians will vote for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, and all 100 seats in the lower house of the legislature. Political watchers will eye the campaigns for clues about how voters in the purple-ish state are feeling about the Trump administration ahead of the 2026 midterms.
The major-party candidates in the race for governor are already set; neither faced a serious primary challenge. The race pits Democrat Abigail Spanberger, who previously represented Virginia's 7th Congressional District on Capitol Hill, against Republican Winsome Earle-Sears, the current lieutenant governor.
The political landscape Spanberger and Earle-Sears will negotiate between now and November likely favors Democrats, but still offers opportunities for Republicans. Virginia shifted right in 2024, but Kamala Harris still won it by six points. That lean to the right was fueled in large part by Trump's gains in the suburbs outside of D.C. — an area of the state that now stands to be particularly affected by the Trump administration's cuts to the federal government. Whether Earle-Sears can consolidate those suburban inroads — or whether Spanberger can capitalize on anger over the Trump administration's antagonistic approach to the federal workforce — may very well decide the race.
Either way, Virginia will make history in November: the commonwealth's 75th governor will be the first woman to serve in the role.
'A plan for what comes next'
Spanberger, 45, got her start in politics as a volunteer with her local Moms Demand Action chapter — and in April, the national gun safety group endorsed her in an event in Alexandria, Virginia, right across the Potomac River from D.C.
"I vividly remember my first Moms Demand Action meeting. It was in a library in Henrico County, and I walked in super nervous," she recalled to cheers from the crowd of about 100 volunteers in bright red t-shirts in a local community hall.
If elected, Spanberger tells the crowd, she'll sign bills banning high-capacity magazines and ghost guns and preventing people with domestic violence convictions from purchasing firearms — all legislation passed in recent years by a Democratic majority in the Virginia General Assembly but vetoed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican. She has also supported banning assault-style weapons.
Those promises are hardly unexpected for a Democratic politician. What's unique is the framing Spanberger offers for them: her experience carrying guns herself as a federal agent and former CIA officer. Gun restrictions, she argues, are pro-law enforcement.
"If we are serious about stopping violent criminals, we must prevent them from manufacturing and distributing illegal, untraceable firearms," she said.
Two local sheriffs are endorsing her candidacy.
This is all classic Spanberger, who's long cultivated a reputation as a moderate policy wonk focused on issues like fentanyl overdoses, veterans, and agriculture. While she usually toed the Democratic party line in Congress, she also picked her share of moments to disagree with party leadership, publicly criticizing the Biden administration's original sweeping ambitions for the Build Back Better Act and refusing to vote for former Speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2019.
Spanberger won her swing seat in Congress in 2018, and held it through two more elections dominated by the presence of Donald Trump.
Now, the Trump administration's cuts to the federal workforce are especially personal to the more than 300,000 federal employees living in Virginia, as well as the private Virginia businesses that pull in the most federal contracting dollars in the country.
The full impact of federal cuts on the Commonwealth is still unclear, with some government employees in limbo as lawsuits and agency reorganizations go forward. State revenue remained steady through April, according to the most recent figures from the Youngkin administration.
But in addition to opposition to Trump, Spanberger is also relying on her experience as a bipartisan lawmaker to get her over the finish line. Her campaign has been rolling out affordability-focused policies on housing, energy, and prescription drug costs.
"I'm standing up for Virginians in opposition to policies that are dangerous and bad for them, but also putting out a plan for what comes next, or, in worst-case scenarios, how we can mitigate the most negative of impacts coming from the Trump administration," Spanberger said in an interview with NPR at an event focused on her energy plan. "So it isn't an either-or."
'Freedom means you keeping money in your pocket'
Not everyone buys Spanberger's carefully crafted centrist image — most notably, her Republican opponent, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears. On the campaign trail, she criticizes Spanberger for voting for the George Floyd Justice In Policing Act, which made it easier to sue police officers for misconduct, and against the Laken Riley Act, which requires the detention of immigrants without legal status who are arrested for burglary, theft, and shoplifting.
"My opponent voted to have criminal, illegal aliens remain in this country. Why would she do that? We're talking about some of the most heinous crimes, rapists, pedophiles, murderers to stay in Virginia, in America", Earle-Sears told NPR at a campaign event.
In addition to her efforts to reframe Spanberger, Earle-Sears, 61, is also attempting to define herself: as an immigrant from Jamaica who's worked hard for her own slice of the American dream, serving in the Marines and owning her own plumbing and electrical business (which is now inactive, according to Virginia business records). Earle-Sears, the first Black woman elected to statewide office in Virginia, could become the nation's first Black female governor.
Earle-Sears is running as the natural successor of her boss, current Gov. Glenn Youngkin, whose emphasis on business development and lower taxes has kept his approval ratings high in a state where voters have roundly rejected Donald Trump three times. (Virginia law only allows governors one term at a time.)
"You might know that as we talk about freedom, well, freedom also means you keeping as much money that you make in your own pocket," Earle-Sears told a group of volunteers, at her headquarters in northern Virginia for a June election integrity training sponsored by the Republican National Committee.
To cheers, she told the group she'd get rid of the local car tax, a much-hated annual personal property tax levied by local jurisdictions in Virginia. That, too, would be an extension of Youngkin's term. Earlier this year, Youngkin proposed a three-year rebate program for the tax, but Democrats in the General Assembly blocked it, citing concerns over the potential impact of the Trump administration on Virginia as a reason the state shouldn't commit the funds.
But Earle-Sears contends the commonwealth has the money and should use it. (Spanberger has said she'd like to work with the legislature to find a way to end the tax, but has not claimed the state currently has the funds to do so.)
Earle-Sears says she's not worried about the impact federal cuts could have on the Virginia economy, which she believes is strong after four years of Republican leadership.
She empathizes with people who've lost a job. "I know what it feels like to lose a job," she said, but believes Virginia has adequate social support to help people between jobs, pointing to disability insurance, health insurance, and an unemployment insurance fund refilled after the pandemic. And she is unequivocal in her support for the Trump administration's slash-and-burn approach to the federal government.
"So there has been waste, there's been fraud, and there's been abuse, and the American people, even Democrats, I'm hearing from them, have said, 'Our money has been going to what? To help what terrorist organizations? To help transgenders in other countries? Is that what we want our money for?'" she said.
Democrats have attacked Earle-Sears for minimizing the consequences of federal cuts, and they've also eagerly seized on her culturally conservative stances on abortion rights — in the last state in the South not to impose restrictions on the procedure — and marriage equality as evidence she's out-of-step with Virginia voters.
Earle-Sears is against abortion rights, and during the 2021 campaign said she'd support a ban on the procedure at six weeks, though since then she's aligned herself with Youngkin's push for a 15-week restriction. Earlier this year, as part of her duties as the president of the state senate, Earle-Sears was required to sign a bill beginning the process of adding a reproductive rights amendment to the state constitution — and she did, but scrawled "I am morally opposed to this bill; no protection for the child" alongside her signature, according to reporting from The Virginia Mercury.
She was also required to sign a 2024 bill prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, sex, and gender in awarding marriage licenses, and again wrote that she was "morally opposed" to the legislation along with her signature, according to reporting by Virginia Scope.
The race 'leans Democratic,' for now
As of now, some political analysts think Spanberger has the edge, in part because of Virginia's decades-long history of picking governors from the opposite party of the one in the White House. And then there's the Trump effect.
"More recently, Trump seemed to hand Spanberger a campaign issue on a silver platter," wrote J. Miles Coleman, an associate editor and political analyst at the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. "Virginia has one of the nation's highest concentrations of federal workers, a group that, to put it charitably, the Trump administration has gone out of its way to antagonize."
Coleman's April assessment put the race as "Leans Democratic," which concurs with early independent polling from Roanoke College, Christopher Newport University, and Virginia Commonwealth University.
The Spanberger campaign also has a two-to-one fundraising advantage, with nearly $23 million raised compared to Earle-Sears' $9.2 million.
But recent analysis from Founders Insight, a Republican-affiliated research firm, saw opportunities for Earle-Sears and the rest of the Republican ticket, particularly in messaging on economic issues.
"Most political observers privately think Virginia will be blue forever after 2025. But not so fast, the Commonwealth's political fundamentals appear more fluid than conventional wisdom suggested," the group wrote of its findings, which showed a statistical tie between Spanberger and Earle-Sears. "Economic anxieties are reshaping voter priorities in ways that could benefit Republicans, while high undecided rates indicate an unusually unsettled electorate heading into the general election."
A Spanberger win might help national Democrats recapture momentum after their 2024 losses and redefine their party identity beyond opposition to Trump, Coleman said. Flipping the Virginia governor's mansion would be "a concrete win that they could point to" ahead of the 2026 midterms.
An Earle-Sears win, meanwhile, could give Republicans their own midterms playbook.
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