Government shutdown, text message scandal could reshape Virginia’s gubernatorial race : NPR

Virginia is just weeks away from electing a new governor, but the government shutdown and a recent text message scandal could reshape the race.



LEILA FADEL, HOST:

The Virginia governor’s race is in its final stretch. The contest in the purplish state is often seen as a gauge of national voter sentiment in between a presidential election and the midterms. This year, some late breaking events may be reshaping the race. Here’s Margaret Barthel of member station WAMU.

MARGARET BARTHEL, BYLINE: First, there’s the government shutdown. Virginia is home to about 320,000 federal workers. Right now, many of them are furloughed. The Trump administration’s cuts to the federal workforce have hit the commonwealth hard, with an estimated 11,000 jobs eliminated, and Democrats are eager to use their votes to push back.

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BARTHEL: That much was clear at a recent town hall meeting in northern Virginia. Marsha Peltz (ph) was there. She said her son lost his federal job in a mass layoff earlier this year. Now he’s a contractor worried about his paycheck again. And that’s got her feeling motivated to get out and vote.

MARSHA PELTZ: There’s not much I can do on a federal level. But on a state level, I do have some influence. So I’m encouraging my neighbors, please, go out and vote. Please volunteer.

BARTHEL: That’s good news for the Democrat in the governor’s race. She’s former Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger. On the campaign trail, she portrays herself as a champion for affordability and a defender of federal workers. Here she is at a debate on WAVY-TV last night.

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(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

ABIGAIL SPANBERGER: It is only increasing the challenge that they are facing after months and months of the attacks from this White House under DOGE.

BARTHEL: Stephen Farnsworth is a professor of political science at the University of Mary Washington.

STEPHEN FARNSWORTH: When you add up all those people who have directly or indirectly some downstream effect of federal employment, it is a very, very damaging environment for Republicans.

BARTHEL: The Republican in the race is Virginia Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears. She’s supported Trump’s cuts to government jobs, insisting she’s helped create plenty of jobs in the private sector. Instead, she talks a lot about transgender kids in bathrooms and locker rooms. Here she is last night.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

WINSOME EARLE-SEARS: This is not hard. Are you going to change in a gym where men are nude in the locker rooms? Are you going to do that, Abigail?

BARTHEL: Her message is motivating for conservative-leaning voters like Ursula Bocall (ph), a federal contractor who came to a Moms for Liberty event to hear Earle-Sears speak.

URSULA BOCALL: It just seems that now there’s more of a push of the schools to over-insert themselves in the whole sort of sexuality issues that are going on in schools.

BARTHEL: And there’s another big development that may boost Earle-Sears, a scandal in the race for attorney general – violent and disturbing text messages from the Democratic candidate, Jay Jones, recently surfaced by the National Review. In a series of 3-year-old messages, Jones imagines a distressing scenario where a top Virginia Republican is shot. He goes on to wish the Republicans’ children would die, too. This in hopes that he would change his policy positions. Zack Roday is a partner with Ascent Media, a Republican-leaning strategic communications firm.

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ZACK RODAY: It’s going to fire up a whole lot of infrequent, probably right-of-center to conservative voters that are not Republican consistent voters. They may vote in presidentials. They don’t vote in governors’ races.

BARTHEL: Virginia Republicans, President Trump and the Fraternal Order of Police have called for Jones to drop out. Spanberger has condemned the messages but hasn’t said he should leave the race, and Republicans are already running ads criticizing her for it. In the meantime, early voting is in full swing in the commonwealth with nearly 450,000 ballots already cast.

For NPR News, I’m Margaret Barthel in Arlington, Virginia.

(SOUNDBITE OF ROEDELIUS AND TIM STORY’S “CONCISE”)

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