Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears is borrowing a page from Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s campaign playbook by leaning into parental rights to take some of the wind out of Democrat Rep. Abigail Spanberger’s sails in the Virginia governor’s race.

The strategy helped energize the Earle-Sears campaign less than a month out from the start of early voting. Still, Republicans insist Ms. Earle-Sears could shake up the race in a dramatic fashion if she expands the pro-parent message to include recent allegations that a school counselor at Fairfax County’s Centreville High School arranged abortions in 2021 for students, did not notify parents, and that the principal was aware.

“Let me give you a baseball analogy,” said John Fredericks, a conservative radio host who co-chaired President Trump’s Virginia campaign. “This could turn seeing-eye single into a dead red 400-foot, bases-loaded, Grand Slam.”

The Fairfax County School District, which informed staff this month it was investigating the “concerning allegations,” did not respond to a request for comment.

The WC Dispatch, a conservative website, first reported that a teacher at Centreville High School came forward with the allegations that a social worker helped one of the female students go through with an abortion. She also allegedly encouraged another female student, who was five months pregnant, to get an abortion, but the girl ran away from the clinic before the procedure could be done.

Former Republican state Delegate Chris Saxman, executive director of the non-partisan Virginia FREE business group, said the case could upend the race.

“It’s also the cover-up by potential system, and no one’s out there denying it,” Mr. Saxman said. “No one’s saying, Oh, this never happened.”

Ms. Earle-Sears has been warning that Ms. Spanberger is trying to hide from her far-left record in Congress, including votes in favor of guaranteeing transgender people access to public bathrooms according to their chosen gender and for allowing “individuals whose biological sex at birth was male to participate in programs that are for women or girls.”

Mr. Youngkin helped thrust parental rights back into the spotlight this month by directing the Virginia State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigations to open a probe into allegations that “Fairfax County Public Schools officials arranged for minors to get abortions without parental consent and may have misused public funds to pay for them.”

In Virginia, it is against the law for a minor to get an abortion without consent or a court order.

“We continue to have this demonstrated, consistent behavior of ignoring parents,” Mr. Youngkin said in a recent interview with Mr. Fredericks. “We have been fighting this for the last three and a half years.”

Indeed, Mr. Youngkin won the 2021 election after pouncing on sexual assault allegations in a Loudon County school bathroom that opened up a new front in the national debate over transgender and parental rights.

Now, the investigation is hanging over the off-year governor’s race, which is heralded as a bellwether for the national political climate and has historically been tough on the sitting president’s party.

Ms. Spanberger has commented on the investigation and sided squarely with parents’ rights.

“Your underage daughter can’t get an aspirin without your permission — yet a Virginia school may have taken a young girl for an abortion, in secret, using YOUR tax dollars,” she said on X. “If true, it’s monstrous, and there will be consequences,” 

Ms. Spanberger has consistently led in the polls and has been able to define her candidacy on her own terms, casting herself as a pragmatic moderate.

Focusing her message on affordability, she has blamed Mr. Trump’s tariffs and efforts to downsize the federal workforce for leaving thousands of Virginians unemployed and dragging down the state’s economy.

“The Trump administration’s reckless policies are stifling Virginia’s job market, driving up costs, and jeopardizing our Commonwealth’s long-term economic strength,” Ms. Spanberger said. “While Virginians are hurting, my opponent is cheering on the White House and downplaying the reality of Virginians losing their jobs.”

The dynamic was flipped on its head in 2021 when Mr. Youngkin was able to tap into voters’ frustration with President Biden, who never politically recovered from the messy August withdrawal from Afghanistan that left 13 U.S. service members dead.

The Trump administration joined the battle this month, threatening to withhold federal funds after concluding that five school districts in the Democratic stronghold of Northern Virginia violated Title IX by allowing students to access “sex-segregated facilities based on the students’ subjective ‘gender identity.’”

The 1972 law known as Title IX prohibits sex discrimination in any education program or activity that receives federal funds.

While some Republicans fret that Mr. Trump’s involvement could help energize Democrats in Northern Virginia, others believe the fight will help Ms. Earle-Sears question why Ms. Spanberger is not more engaged and cast her as more beholden to the bureaucrats than parents.

“What is happening in our schools right now is just wrong. It is dangerous. It is insane and it has to stop,” Ms. Earle-Sears said at a recent Arlington County School Board meeting. “Here’s the truth. There are two sexes, boys and girls, and for generations who understood this, that they deserve their own sports teams, their own locker rooms, their own bathrooms. That’s not discrimination. It’s common sense.”

Her efforts have angered liberal activists, including an elderly woman who held up a sign at a recent pro-trans event that read: “Hey Winsome, If Trans Can’t Share Your Bathroom, Then Blacks Can’t Share My Water Fountain.”

Ms. Spanberger condemned the sign, which went viral online.

Meanwhile, Republicans said it exposed the radical underbelly of the Democratic Party that backs Ms. Spanberger.

Ms. Earle-Sears also earned free media, which helped her rally the party base and raise some much-needed money.

Ms. Spanberger has raised $27 million and had $15.2 million in the bank at the end of June, while Ms. Earle-Sears had raised $11.6 million and had almost $4.6 million in cash on hand.

• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.