Potential Youngkin successor focused on message in tough race to keep swing-state 'red'
RICHMOND, Va. – EXCLUSIVE: Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears was officially named the Republican Party's gubernatorial nominee on Tuesday evening, and during an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital, she described herself as "not a very conventional candidate."
She said her goal is to reach voters across the political spectrum while working to keep Virginia's historic state capitol – America's oldest – under Republican leadership.
She also spoke about her personal story and policy platform, and why they both resonate with voters. Earle-Sears was asked about governing at a time when there is uncertainty and tension both at home and abroad.
"When it comes to safety and security, is that not the first real role of the political leader?" she told Fox News Digital.
"It is to ensure that everybody is safe [because] we can't talk about economic development, we can't talk about education, we cannot talk about energy, we can't talk about affordable housing, if you're not safe and secure."
"[I]f you want to protest, of course. You must exercise your right to protest. But you must do it safely, and you must not threaten others."
During her speech at the Hippodrome Theater in Richmond's Jackson Ward, Earle-Sears said she is confident in her quest to keep Richmond in Republican hands.
Part of Gov. Glenn Youngkin's successful strategy in 2021 was to run up votes in Republican-friendly areas in southwest Virginia, where people also identified with President Donald Trump's message of the "forgotten man and woman."
Earle-Sears pointed out that in some parts of the region, residents live closer to as many as six other state capitals than their own – and often feel politicians show up during election season, then disappear.
In that regard, Earle-Sears pledged her first act as governor would be to open a "second" governor's office in the Old Dominion's rural western expanse. That move, she said, is part of a larger message that needs to be spoken of more in politics.
"Everybody wants to be heard," she said. "I made a promise that I would not be one of those kinds of politicians."
Conversely, she said, people in blue areas like the Washington, D.C., suburbs also have the right to hear a conservative message and have leaders from all sides responsive to them. "I mean, I look like the kind of people who really do normally vote Democratic, and I'm not. And so I'm appealing to all voters.
"My message is a common-sense message that no matter where you came from in life, no matter what color you are, no matter what country you came from, when you came to America and you tried and here you are succeeding, that's what we need."
During her speech, she spoke of how her father brought her to the U.S. as a young girl, landing in New York with $1.75 to his name – and how then her father could likely never imagine his daughter in one generation would be primed for a state's highest office.
"Here I stand, second-in-command in the former capital of the Confederacy," Earle-Sears said. "Don't tell me America hasn't changed."
She also issued a warning to her Democratic opponent, former Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va.
The GOP nominee, currently behind Spanberger by low-single-digits, used the idiom of a car traveling down the road and the driver looking in their side mirror and reading the sticker: "Objects are closer than they appear."
Spanberger held a separate event Monday at her high school alma mater in Henrico County, with a crowd of about 400, according to reports.
Fox News Digital had reached out to the Spanberger campaign ahead of Election Day as well.
At Tucker High School, Spanberger said being back reminded her "why this fight is worth fighting."
"I was lucky to have amazing opportunities here. I was lucky to have educators who cared deeply about the future of their students. I was lucky. And now, I want to make sure that every student, every family, and every community in Virginia has those same opportunities…" Spanberger said.
State Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg, D-Short Pump, who also spoke, called Spanberger a "Henrico Hometown Hero."
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