Imagine If The Democrats Were A Good Party With Good Candidates— Instead Of Just A Lesser Evil!

Virginia Republicans Are Looking At A Catastrophic 2025 Cycle

A more recent poll by Roanoke College shows Spanberger up 43-26%

Democrats are looking towards a wave election in Virginia this year— not so much a blue wave as an anti-red wave. Alex Isendstadt put it more subtly yesterday: Republicans worry DOGE cuts will sink them in Virginia governor's race. The Democrats have a pretty bad candidate, who had no primary opponent, lousy conservative Abigail Spanberger. But she looks almost Heaven-sent compared to the garbage the GOP is putting up, basically a sacrificial lamb in a terrible year for the Republican Party. “Republicans,” wrote Isenstadt, “are increasingly worried that budget cuts by Elon Musk’s DOGE could cost them dearly in November's vote for Virginia governor— an early electoral test of Trump’s policies. Virginia has one of the highest percentages of federal employees in the country— more than 5% of the state's workforce by some estimates— and Republicans' internal polls are starting to show the damage from tens of thousands of federal layoffs… 32,000 jobs could be lost in the state this year, many of them federal positions. ‘Northern Virginia is filled with people who suffered the consequences of the DOGE cuts, and it's hard to see them being sympathetic to a Republican candidate who supports the DOGE cuts,’ said Whit Ayers, a veteran Republican pollster. ‘I suspect this will be an albatross around the neck of every Republican candidate this year,’ said Virginia Republican Bill Bolling, a former lieutenant governor.”

A private poll done for the campaign of a statewide Republican candidate suggested that just 39% of voters had a favorable view of DOGE.

Nearly half of voters surveyed said they knew of someone impacted by the DOGE cuts, according to results shared with Axios.

The poll showed Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears trailing former U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D) by single digits, outside the margin of error.

DOGE could especially hurt Earle-Sears' campaign for governor in Northern Virginia and Norfolk, sections of the state where huge segments of the population are federal workers or have jobs tied to the government.

Those areas played a role in Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin's win in 2021, when he cut into Democratic margins and improved on the GOP's performance in 2017. (Virginia governors can't succeed themselves, so Youngkin isn't allowed to run again.)

The D.C. suburbs of Northern Virginia are home to upper- and middle-income voters, many of whom have ties to the government and are particularly likely to vote.

Even non-federal workers in those areas could be impacted by DOGE, given the role federal funding plays in driving the local economy.

Flashback: Republicans already are comparing DOGE's potential impact on Virginia's 2025 election to that of the GOP-led government shutdown of 2013, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of government workers being placed on unpaid leave.

Democrats swept the state's highest offices that year— an outcome many GOP strategists blamed on the shutdown.

…Democrats are making DOGE a centerpiece of their election playbook.

Virginia's Democratic Party has been running ads highlighting Earle-Sears' comments accusing the media of overhyping the impact of DOGE cuts.

Other Democratic commercials are e linking Republican state legislative candidates to Musk

Behind the scenes: Youngkin has taken steps to try to soften the blow to the state's federal workers, launching a "Virginia Has Jobs" initiative aimed at helping laid-off workers find new positions.

Republicans say Earle-Sears has an uphill climb, even without DOGE.

In every election since 1977 besides one, the state has elected a governor from the opposition party to the sitting president.

Top GOP officials — including some close to Trump — have criticized Earle-Sears and her campaign. Chris LaCivita, Trump's 2024 co-campaign manager and a longtime player in Virginia politics, has called her team "amateurs."

Virginia's up for electing a governor, a Lt. Gov., Attorney General and all 100 House of Delegates members. Dems have a slim 2 seat majority now, 51 Democrats to 49 Republicans. 4 of the 49 Republicans are retiring. And, the minority leader, Todd Gilbert, has handed over his position to the second most senior Republican to Terry Kilgore (who represents HD 45— Lee, Scott and Wise Counties), because Gilbert is about to be appointed U.S. Attorney by Trump. That’s 5 of the 49 Republican incumbents choosing, or looking for, the door out of the state house— 10% of their caucus. They know that they will not regain the majority. At this point, with 10 days remaining before the filing deadline, Dems are contesting all 100 House districts; all 49 Republican incumbents and GOP-held seats have a Democratic nominee. In contrast, Republicans are only filed in 73 of the 100 districts— they are contesting 24 of the 51 Democratic-held seats. In other words, they’re giving away 27% of the state to Democrats at the state house level. That is not a show of confidence. As the gubernatorial candidates have become better know, polls have unifoirmly done in Spanberger's direction:

The Republicans’ statewide ticket is a mess. Their base voters don’t like their gubernatorial nominee, Winsome Earle-Sears, for many reasons; she’s insufficiently MAGA… and various “other reasons.” The Lt. Gov. nominee, John Reid, is totally MAGA; totally Trump Cult, xenophobic, racist, etc.; but, he’s openly gay, with a Black partner and a weird online sexual scandal. Youngkin made a serious play to force him off the ticket, but Reid withstood the pressure and is staying on the ticket.

Democrats have an embarrassment of riches as far as diversity and inclusion among their candidates this cycle. Democrats are running women, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, young people, LGBTQ— a rainbow coalition. Republicans, not so much— other than their Lt. Gov. candidate, who they tried to tank because he’s LGBTQ, and their gubernatorial candidate, who they don’t like because she’s Black. If you’re interested in helping out, Blue America has endorsed 2  strong progressives running for the legislature, Jessica Anderson, who is on track to oust Republican Amanda Batten, and Elizabeth Guzmán, former co-chair of Bernie’s Virginia campaign, now running for the House of Delegates and likely to replace Republican Ian Lovejoy.