Sometimes the conventional wisdom is correct, no matter how much we want it to be wrong. There are two governor races that are being sized up as referendums on the 2026 prospects for the Republican party, but neither race is being taken seriously by the corporate Republican hierarchy, which signals their lack of interest in the mid-term elections, and their lack of support for Donald Trump!
The Republican candidates are both flawed, but in different ways.
Winsome Earle-Sears vs. Abigail Spanberger is an easy one. Winsome Earle-Sears is relatively new to politics, and simply does not have the relationships and contacts necessary to raise money on her own. Her earnest but ham-handed direct efforts may draw small donations, but the Democrats are throwing a huge amount of money at her trans-loving lunatic opponent! And of course corporate Republicans are flocking to Sears' campaign to sop up whatever money is available, but there is no coherent effort. They want her to lose with dignity!
Jack Ciattarelli vs. Mikie Sherrill is a clown-show of flawed candidates. The republican challenger is conspicuously light on political philosophy, but quite adept at judging wind direction! In 2015, he called Donald Trump a "charlatan," but by 2020 he was a Trump supporter! Of course he is pro-abortion until 20 weeks, and supports drivers licenses for wetbacks, so how he meshes with President Trump's policies is a mystery. He also failed to pursue the obvious failings in the 2021 NJ governor's election, preferring to lose with dignity, mostly to preserve his options to run again!
Sadly, he is running against an awful candidate who is implicated in three different issues that should have sunk her campaign. She was implicated in a cheating scandal at the Naval Academy, she scammed her two teenage children into nominations for the naval academy class of 2029, and she claims ignorance about the now-typical stock grift of congressmen that supposedly netted her $7,000,000. Whether that is true is secondary to her evasions about it and the other issues.
But hope springs eternal!
Hope in Virginia and New Jersey: Republicans Could Actually WIN This Thing!
Conventional wisdom has the GOP dead in the water in Virginia and New Jersey — the only two states that’ll be electing new governors in Nov. 2025. This highly focused spotlight gives the Commonwealth of Virginia and/or New York Junior an outsized role in determining long-term political mojo: The winning party owns the opening momentum in next year’s midterms.
And conventional wisdom has the Republican Party in a world of hurt.
New Jersey, after all, is a Democratic stronghold. Hasn’t gone Republican in a presidential race since 1988. Out of their 12 congressmen, only 3 are Republicans.
Meanwhile, from 1952 through 2004, Virginia went red in every presidential election, sans ’64. But since 2008, they’ve gone blue every single time — and often by lopsided margins. The three times Trump was on the Virginia ballot, he never got within five points of his Democratic opponent. (His worst defeat was in 2020, where he lost to Biden by over 10 points.)
And in New Jersey? Sure...Sherrill has been rocked back by the allegations, but she has a compliant media backing her, and as is their wont, the Democrats are circling the wagons to protect her. Is there a significant GOTV effort funded by the Republican party? Hah! I have not gotten a single in-state communication about the governor's race or, for that matter, any NJ race!
These two races expose the weakness of the Republican party as a counter to the Democrat party's fantastic legal and illegal efforts. Think about the disarray of the Democrats this year, and imagine how these two sates would be fairing with a well-organized state Republican party and solid, well-organized support from the national party.
But the real question as we begin to look at a post-Trump political landscape is whether the Republican party can energize the base without the incredible draw of Donald Trump? Converting his popularity into meaningful, long-term electoral changes requires more than what the Republican party is doing today.