RICHMOND, Virginia — Four years ago, Glenn Youngkin, a political upstart, flipped the Virginia governor’s mansion red for the first time since 2009, foreshadowing Republican gains in the 2022 and 2024 cycles.

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His running mate at the time, Winsome Earle-Sears, became the state’s first woman lieutenant governor. Four years later, Earle-Sears is betting she can recreate the same grassroots campaign that could propel her not just to being Virginia’s first woman governor but the nation’s first black woman governor as well.

Yet this second go-around will be much harder.

Earle-Sears is running for governor under Republican President Donald Trump instead of under Democratic former President Joe Biden.

The policies Trump has enacted in Washington have a direct impact on Virginians, who will be among the first group of voters to render judgment on Trump during the November off-year elections.

Yet Earle-Sears is undaunted. In a sit-down interview with the Washington Examiner last month, she claimed she could succeed Youngkin as his political heir.

“Our ticket is going to win because we bring commonsense ideas. My opponent and her crew are about nonsense,” Earle-Sears said. “She wants to grow government, which means you’re going to have to take money from the people in order to do that, and I want to grow jobs, which means you have to make sure that you have an environment that is conducive for businesses to want to come here.”

The lieutenant governor also claimed polling is on her side. “The polls are telling us, and the people are telling us, that they want what we’re doing to continue,” Earle-Sears said. “And this is where I believe my opponent, Abigail Spanberger, is going to get tripped up, because the people like what we’ve done.”

The polls, however, paint a more complicated picture.

According to a recent poll from Virginia Commonwealth University’s L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs, Spanberger leads Earle-Sears by 12 percentage points, 49% to 37%.

A May poll from Roanoke College shows Spanberger leading the lieutenant governor by 17 points, 43% to 26%. A June poll from Founders Insight, however, showed a closer battle: 46% of likely general election voters surveyed would cast a ballot for the Democratic gubernatorial nominee, compared to 43% who would vote for the Republican nominee and 9% who said they were undecided.

Brian Kirwin, a Virginia political consultant with over 20 years of experience, dismissed the VCU poll, arguing that polls relying on likely voters provide a more accurate picture of the race. “Many registered voters won’t be voting this year. It’s usually around a 50% turnout. So registered voter polls don’t tell you a lot,” he said.

Looming over the race is the Trump administration’s efforts to slash the federal bureaucracy through the Department of Government Efficiency, which has affected thousands of Virginians. The Old Dominion is home to more than 224,000 federal workers who could play an outsize role in the election.

Earle-Sears told the Washington Examiner that Virginia has adapted to help workers seeking new employment.

“We are going to make sure that if we expand the employer base, if we attract even more businesses to Virginia, then that way we can keep taxes low,” she said.

“And by the way, we’ve created over 250,000 new jobs in Virginia, and we have created 15,000 business startups, never existed, small businesses, because we know how to do this,” she continued. “We’ve told the people, you have an idea, come to us and we’ll be the real Shark Tank, and we’ll fund you up to a certain point. And we are hosting job fairs for those on the federal level who are no longer working there.”

At a campaign stop last month with the entire Democratic ticket, Spanberger, a former Virginia representative, reiterated a frequent line of attack against the GOP.  

“I’m running for governor now because we need a hell of a lot more governing than grandstanding,” she said at a stop in Fairfax, Virginia. “And at a time when we have more than 320,000 federal employees who call Virginia home, and their jobs, their livelihood, and our state’s economy are under threat, we need a governor who will stand up for them and stand up for Virginia.”  

It’s in sharp contrast to when Youngkin and Earle-Sears ran on political backlash to Biden’s efforts in handling COVID-19 by galvanizing the parental rights movement.

Unlike former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s 2021 campaign, Spanberger is a candidate who has won multiple races as a centrist willing to buck Democratic leadership.

Yet if Earle-Sears can receive a Trump endorsement, it could also help bring excitement to her campaign, although Trump never won the Old Dominion in his three presidential campaigns.

“She really needs Trump to give her an endorsement,” said David Richards, a political science professor at the University of Lynchburg. “It would help people who are reluctant, who are Trump supporters who are reluctant to maybe go out and vote for her, or maybe look at her and John Reid on the same ticket and say, ‘Look, I’m just going to sit this one out.’”

But timing will be key, Richards said. If a Trump endorsement hasn’t come by September and early voting has started, an endorsement may not come at all. This is a sharp contrast from when Youngkin flipped the governor’s mansion in 2021 by keeping Trump at a distance on the campaign trail.

The president has not yet weighed in on the campaign, although Earle-Sears sounded confident she has his support.

“Do you think our president wants me to win? Of course, he does. He likes to win, and so do we, and he will come when it is time,” she said. “And until then, we will continue to do the work. We’re not flinching. We’re not afraid of hard work.”

Kirwin, the GOP strategist, pointed to the work she has done to recreate a broader GOP base after avoiding any serious challenges for the GOP nomination. “Without having a primary to deal with, she’s really focused her time on broadening the base — her numbers with minority communities and trying to make sure that she has a strong contingent of reaching women voters,” he said. “It looks like she’s going to save the base appeal into the closing weeks.”

Adding to the complications Virginia Republicans are facing this year are the tensions between Earle-Sears and John Reid, the GOP nominee for lieutenant governor. It wasn’t until a July 1 unity event with Youngkin that the two candidates appeared together. They also went eight weeks without speaking until late June.

“Everybody has to run their own race because the lieutenant governor slot is not chosen by the governor,” Earle-Sears said when asked about the GOP ticket uniting. “So we’re going to have that unity, and at the same time, we’re going to make sure that everybody knows who we are.”

Tensions snapped earlier this year after Youngkin asked Reid to step away from the ticket following revelations that explicit photos on social media were linked to Reid.  

Reid adamantly refused to step away from the ticket and claimed he was being targeted as the first openly gay man running for statewide office.

“I’m not going to continue to answer a never-ending parade of questions and false accusations from people who we now know are solely motivated to stage a coup against a gay man whom they didn’t want to be their nominee but didn’t have the guts to run against,” Reid said in a video posted on X in late April.

Democrats subtly mocked the GOP ticket during their statewide tour.

“I’m gonna let you guys in on a little secret. We actually like each other. We actually talk to each other. We travel on a bus together. I can’t say the same for the other side, but what you have is a united front putting people first here in Virginia,” said Jay Jones, the Democratic nominee for attorney general, during a stop in Fairfax.

But with the GOP ticket finally appearing together, the attacks have lost some of their bite.

Youngkin, Earle-Sears, Attorney General Jason Miyares, and Reid united for a campaign appearance on July 1 at the Vienna Volunteer Fire Department.

“I am all in for the Republican ticket,” Reid told the supportive crowd. “Because the Republicans have the right policies to save the state of Virginia.”

In another reminder that the GOP is attempting to repeat its 2021 success, Youngkin asked the crowd, “It must be winning time again! Are you ready to sweep?” 

Earle-Sears said part of the work in campaigning with the governor is that she and Youngkin are elected officials.

“The governor and I have been together as much as possible, and sometimes our schedules don’t align because, you know, well, he’s a sitting governor and I’m the sitting lieutenant governor. And where he can’t be, there are places that I am, and vice versa,” she said.

Earle-Sears is also facing a financial deficit against Spanberger. The Democratic National Committee is pouring $1.5 million into the Virginia off-year elections. In mid-July, Spanberger announced she raised more than $10.7 million in the second quarter of this year, with $15.2 million cash on hand. In contrast, Earle-Sears brought in $5.9 million during that same period and has $4.5 million cash on hand.

Richards, the political science professor, questioned how Spanberger’s campaign would spend the money in its final months.

“If the Democrats are going to put millions of dollars and then spend it in northern Virginia, where they’ve already got that advantage, then they’re kind of wasting that money,” he said. “They need to spend it, I would think, trying to push into areas where there’s more of a margin.”

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“We laugh at the Spanberger campaign spending gazillions of dollars on video ads when most people are enjoying their summers, and it’s months away from anybody being able to cast a vote,” Kirwin added. “But I guess Democrats campaign the way they govern — spend, spend, spend.”

The lieutenant governor, however, said her campaign can recreate the 2021 era that saw her rise to statewide office despite the disadvantages she faces.

“Everything I’ve been given, I’ve had to work very hard for it,” she told the Washington Examiner. “We didn’t come this far to be crying that we’re victims.”  

Mabinty Quarshie is a national political correspondent for the Washington Examiner.