The Virginia gubernatorial debate is taking place on Thursday under the shadow of a controversy involving leaked text messages from Democratic attorney general candidate Jay Jones, in which he expressed using violence against the former GOP state House speaker.
Republicans, including President Trump, have come out in droves to call on Jones to drop out.
Now former Rep. Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic nominee for governor, will be forced to address the issue live during Thursday’s debate. Her GOP rival, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears (R), has already rolled out a number of ads hitting Spanberger over the controversy.
The debate comes as Spanberger maintains a solid lead over Earle-Sears, having spent the majority of the race leaning on issues of cost and affordability, as well as recent cuts to the federal workforce under Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency. The latest government shutdown and questions over whether furloughed workers will receive backpay is also likely to factor into the race and Thursday’s debate.
Here are five things to watch in the debate.
How does Spanberger address the Jones controversy?
Spanberger is almost sure to be asked point blank if she thinks Jones should exit the race, forcing her to respond once more to a controversy that is threatening to upturn the elections in Virginia.
News of Jones’s text messages were first reported by the National Review and later published by the Republican Attorneys General Association over the weekend.
Jones sent the texts about shooting former House Speaker Todd Gilbert (R) to Republican Del. Carrie Coyner in 2022. The Democrat was not in elected office at the time.
Spanberger’s campaign was quick to make her displeasure with the news known, releasing a statement following the leaks saying she had conveyed her “disgust” to Jones in a conversation. However, Republicans are arguing that Spanberger did not go far enough in not calling on Jones to drop out.
Some Democrats have noted that incumbent Attorney General Jason Miyares’s (R) conservative record and ties to Trump automatically makes Jones the better alternative. Others note that Spanberger would be taking a risk in calling on Jones to drop out because there’s a chance he would not heed the call, given that the attorney general race is separate from the governor’s race.
Hundreds of thousands of voters have already cast their ballots in early voting and Jones will appear on the ballot when voters go to the polls to vote on Election Day in November.
Regardless, Spanberger will be forced to confront the issue once more. The debate is being hosted by WAVY-TV, which is owned by The Hill’s parent company Nexstar Media Group. The forum is taking place in Norfolk, which is also Jones’s hometown.
DOGE, shutdown likely to play prominent role
If it were not for the controversy surrounding Jones, the topic of conversation in the governor’s race would likely be about how furloughed government workers are fairing in the government shutdown.
Spanberger has made the Trump administration’s cuts to the federal workforce under DOGE a central theme in her campaign due to the large swaths of federal workers that reside and work in the commonwealth.
Earle-Sears has struggled to hit back against the attacks throughout the campaign. The most notable example of this took place during a CNN interview in August when the lieutenant governor sparred with an anchor over the topic.
While the DOGE cuts to the federal workforce took place earlier this year, the welfare of federal workers is still in the news.
On Tuesday, a Trump administration official confirmed to The Hill that a draft memo from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) argued the law does not automatically guarantee that all furloughed employees are guaranteed back pay.
With the issue still front and center on the national stage and impacting Virginians directly, Earle-Sears will likely be forced to lay out her view of the matter on Thursday’s debate stage.
How will Earle-Sears handle Trump?
Trump has yet to formally throw his endorsement behind Earle-Sears, but he has spoken positively of her campaign. She has also previously praised the president, though she has also broken with him in the past.
Following Republicans’ underwhelming performance in the 2022 midterms, Earle-Sears appeared to criticize Trump when she said in an interview that a true leader understands when they have become a liability. She has since said she would be honored to have his endorsement.
But Trump lashed out at Earle-Sears in 2022, calling her “a phony” and said he never felt good about her.
Earle-Sears has to be cognizant of Trump’s grip on the GOP base, which Republicans need to turnout in Virginia. However, she also needs to be aware of Trump’s general high unpopularity in Virginia, particularly in the wake of the DOGE cuts.
Spanberger could very well use the debate to tie Earle-Sears to the president, which she did in her last ad released before the debate earlier this week.
Earle-Sears searches for breakout moment
While Spanberger has been laser-focused on the impacts of the DOGE cuts on Virginians, as well as cost and affordability, Earle-Sears has struggled to find an issue that appeals to broad swaths of the state’s voters.
In recent weeks, Earle-Sears has turned her attention to transgender issues in schools, seemingly taking a page out of Youngkin’s playbook focusing on education and parental rights. Additionally, Earle-Sears has attacked Spanberger over the Jones controversy.
Still, strategists note that Earle-Sears’s strategy of attacking Spanberger is not enough to win over voters outside of the conservative tent, arguing that she needs to give voters a reason to vote for her rather than vote against Spanberger.
A statewide debate could be Earle-Sears’s last moment to deploy that message as Spanberger leads in paid advertising.
Can Spanberger have an uneventful debate?
The 2021 Virginia governor’s race arguably changed course in the final debate between Youngkin and former Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), when McAuliffe suggested that he did not believe parents should have a say in what their children learn in school. Republicans promptly seized on those comments, and at least some observers attribute McAuliffe’s defeat in part to his words.
The Democratic candidate this time around will obviously be looking to avoid a moment like that. Spanberger has employed a safe and disciplined strategy through her campaign, staying extremely focused on her top issues of cost and affordability.
She will have an opportunity to showcase her stances on those and other issues Thursday evening, but she will need to come prepared on issues Republicans have attacked Democrats over so far, including transgender issues and the Jones controversy.
Source: The Hill