The danger of changing campaign staff during an election cycle is that the press immediately covers it as a campaign in peril, not as one that should be lauded for noticing there may be a problem.
When the Washington Nationals’ promising season hit the skids as soon as the temperatures started to reach the 90s, they fired the manager who had led the franchise out of the cellar and to its only World Series Championship.
In this business, loyalty only gets you so far.
That’s certainly true for the changes in the Virginia lieutenant governor’s campaign to become the state’s first female governor.
Out is campaign manager Will Archer, chairman of the Conservative Coalition and pastor at Potomac Valley Church—though he’ll remain on the campaign in a role that focuses on voter turnout in the Northern Virginia area. Also out is Richard Wagner, George Mason economist and the lieutenant governor’s political director.
Campaign consultant Mark Harris said that neither position is going to be immediately filled.
The Wilder School at Virginia Commonwealth University had just published a poll showing Republican candidate Earle-Sears trailing Democrat and former congresswoman Abigail Spanberger by 12 percentage points.
Polls are like yeast, I’m told. They help raise the dough—and that’s the biggest problem for the GOP in Virginia.
The day before the poll came out marked the release of the June campaign finance numbers, and the Democrat had raised $10.7 million in the second quarter, ending the period with $15.2 million in the bank. Meanwhile, Earle-Sears brought in $5.9 million over the same three months and has only $4.5 million on hand.
Money isn’t everything. In 2021, Democrat Terry McAuliffe spent $30 million and lost to Republican Glenn Youngkin, who spent $22 million.
The VCU poll also identifies 14% of respondents as undecided between the two candidates. That’s the good news if Sears can tap into the right energy to lead them—the way Nationals manager Davey Martinez did in 2019 using the slogan, “Just Go 1-0 Today.”
The VCU poll also shows that Gov. Youngkin is just as popular as Spanberger, scoring a 49 percent job approval rating. Maybe that might be the place to look for a boost.