With less than six weeks until Election Day, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger is betting on voters being most preoccupied with the rising cost of living and concerns about White House actions.
Her opponent, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, appears to be all-in on cultural issues, particularly raising concern about transgender women in women’s locker rooms and whether transgender youth athletes compete in sports that align with their biological sex or their gender identity.
Those approaches are reflected in the candidates’ recent messaging. In the past week, at least 13 of Spanberger’s posts on the social media platform X contained references to rising costs, affordability or the economy.
“The #1 thing I hear across the Commonwealth?” read one post. “Everyday essentials in Virginia are becoming too expensive. That’s why lowering costs is my top priority — and on Day One, I’ll get to work making housing, healthcare, and utility bills more affordable.”
In the same time frame, including reposts, Earle-Sears posted about gender ideology or boys and men in girls’ spaces at least 18 times.
“Abigail Spanberger can’t say men don’t belong in girls’ bathrooms,” one post read. “And she wants to be governor? Virginia, vote like your children depend on it — because they do.”
The candidates have also devoted TV ad space to those issues.
757 Votes: The Virginian-Pilot and Daily Press 2025 election guide
On the cultural warpath
One particular line of attack for Earle-Sears points to Spanberger’s time in Congress, when she voted in favor of the Equality Act, which passed in 2021. The bill prohibits discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity, and specifically “prohibits an individual from being denied access to a shared facility, including a restroom, a locker room, and a dressing room, that is in accordance with the individual’s gender identity.”
Spanberger has said she’s in favor of an approach that allows schools to make case-by-case determinations on how transgender children participate in sports.
“So in Virginia, until very recently we have had a process in place where on an individual, one-by-one basis, schools, principals, parents, coaches were making decisions based on fairness, competitiveness and safety, where a child might be able or might not be able to play in a particular sport,” Spanberger told WSET-TV this month.
Political analyst Bob Holsworth said Earle-Sears’s strategy seemed to be an attempt to replicate what Gov. Glenn Youngkin did in 2021, when he successfully capitalized on issues such as parents’ rights in schools.
“I don’t think that’s absolutely going to be decisive this time, because I think in 2021, the real issue was the COVID lockdown, the 18-month remote learning,” Holsworth said, speaking to reporters before an event in Richmond discussing the impacts of the election on the 2026 Congressional midterms.
Republican GOP Chairman Sen. Mark Peake said he thought the issue continued to be important.
“It’s been a huge issue for several years now, and I think it just became a bigger issue when you saw Spanberger just run away from a reporter asking what her position was on boys in girls sports, boys in girls locker rooms and boys in girls bathrooms,” he said, referring to an encounter with a local ABC reporter this week. “She knows that the majority of the population doesn’t believe in that nonsense, and she doesn’t know what to do, and it’s going to be a big issue until she actually comes out and answers yes or no where she stands on those positions.”
Focus on economy
Spanberger’s approach is two-prong, Holsworth said, focusing on the high cost of living and on the impact of federal cuts to the workforce and funding reductions are having on Virginians.
“The Trump budget raises healthcare costs, raise mortgages, raises the price of electricity and gas,” a Spanberger TV ad said recently. “You pay more so billionaires can pay less.”
A spokesperson for the campaign said Spanberger has already laid out plans to lower healthcare, housing, and energy costs “because she hears from Virginians every day who are worried about the high cost of living — and who want leaders who are serious about delivering for them on this issue.”
The Earle-Sears campaign did not respond by publication to a request for comment.
“It’s going to be a tough thing for any governor to lower health care costs or energy costs or housing costs in the near future,” Holsworth said. “I think she’s on the right path and the right territory there. The second (argument) is the anti-Trump argument, and that’s a powerful one in Virginia because he lost Virginia by six points and is even less popular today after all the DOGE cuts.”
Peake said he thought that was a losing issue for Democrats, who control the state legislature.
“That’s a terrible thing for them to get in on because they’re 100% responsible for our higher energy costs, 100% responsible for Southwest Virginia’s problems with their power bills,” he said. “We can’t meet our energy demands and energy prices have been going up for the past four, five years since they passed the (Virginia Clean Energy Act).”
Polling on voter concerns
A recent poll from Christopher Newport University found issues such as inflation and cost of living and threats to democracy were top of mind for Virginia. Republicans reported a roughly even distribution among likely voters who thought cost of living, immigration, and crime were the most important issue. Democrats reported that threats to democracy, followed by cost of living, education and healthcare were the most important issues.
Holsworth said he isn’t convinced a focus on issues such as transgender children in sports and restrooms will be enough for Republicans to pull off a win in 2025.
“Republicans typically win, I think, when they come up with a compelling issue to kind overcome this slight tilt of the state,” he said. “I think it’s a heavy lift for boys and girls bathrooms, the anti-trans argument to do that, but I think that’s kind of where they are now.”
A Virginia Commonwealth University poll released at the beginning of September asked what issue would most influence how registered voters would vote. The biggest was 28% of registered voters said the rising cost of living, followed by women’s reproductive rights (13%) and immigration and education (12%).
Compare that with polling in the run up to the 2021 gubernatorial race, when Youngkin was elected. A VCU poll from October 2021 found registered voters identified top issues as the economy (27%), public schools (20%), and COVID-19 (19%).
Kate Seltzer, (757)713-7881, kate.seltzer@virginiamedia.com.