Next Tuesday, Virginia residents will head to the polls and cast their votes for governor, attorney general, lt. governor, and state delegate. Despite the fact that Democrats have passed dozens of gun control bills over the past few years that would now be law if not for Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin's vetos, GOP candidate and current Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle Sears has said next to nothing about the California-style gun laws that could be imposed on Virginia gun owners if Democrat Abigail Spanberger becomes governor and Democrats maintain control of the legislature.
In my opinion, Sears' campaign is making a major mistake by not making gun control a primary issue, at least in her outreach to voters in rural Virginia. Sears will almost certainly win the majority of votes in southwest and Southside Virginia regardless, but I wouldn't be surprised if her margin of victory in these counties is more narrow than Youngkin's was four years ago; at least in part because her campaign isn't talking much at all about the Second Amendment stakes of the election.
Spanberger, meanwhile, is making a play for those rural voters; not by masquerading as a Second Amendment supporter, but by talking about other issues and maintaining radio silence on gun control while campaigning in red parts of the state.
Shortly after launching her bid for governor early last year, Spanberger swung through southwestern Virginia’s rural counties, then returned 10 months later for a 10-stop tour through the state’s rural center. This summer, her “Span Virginia Bus Tour” rode through the Appalachian region.
During these stops, Spanberger blamed Republicans’ reconciliation megabill for health clinic closures and vowed to “mitigate the harm of that bill,” including by expanding telehealth options. On tariffs, which she derides as a “massive tax hike on Virginians,” she has promised to maintain state-level trade relationships and open new export markets for trade producers, “not cheering on potential trade wars or hoping it will all just work out.”
... “We can win anywhere in this state if we talk about the right issues,” said Roberta Thacker-Oliver, the rural caucus chair for Virginia Democrats. “It’s the things that keep people up at night: health care, education, good jobs, being able to take care of their family.”
Thacker-Oliver is deluding herself if she thinks Democrats can actually win places like Wise County in the southwestern corner of the state, or even Buckingham County in central Virginia, which was one of those counties that flipped from support for Barack Obama in 2012 to Donald Trump in 2016 and has become increasingly redder ever since.
But Democrats don't have to win these counties to win statewide races. Four years ago Youngkin defeated Terry McAuliffe by about 64,000 votes out of more than 3,000,000 votes cast. Youngkin's margin of victory came from increased voter turnout in many rural counties. It wasn't just that he was winning these counties with 65% or 70% of the vote, but that far more voters were participating in the election than they did four years ago. If those same rural voters stay home this year, it won't matter if Winsome Earle Sears still captures two-thirds or more of the rural vote; those votes will be negated by what's expected to be strong turnout in Democratic strongholds in northern Virginia, Richmond, and the Virginia Beach area.
It makes sense for Spanberger to keep mum about her gun control plans when campaigning in rural counties. It makes no sense whatsoever, though, for Winsome Earle Sears to allow Spanberger to get away with that strategy by refusing to make gun control an issue in her own outreach to rural Virginians.
Sears is already polling well behind where Youngkin was four years ago, with the RealClearPolling average showing Spanberger with a seven point lead. Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares, though, has come from behind and is now in front of Democratic candidate Jay Jones thanks to the revelations about Jones's desire to put two bullets into a Republican delegate, and his wishes to see that delegate's children be murdered so that the Republican would start to support gun control measures.
Sears can't capitalize on any such comments from Spanberger, and her attempts to tie Spanberger to Jones's comments haven't really stuck with voters. The only ads I've seen from the Sears campaign are commercials featuring Spanberger's refusal to demand Jones exit the AG's race and ads touting Spanberger's support for transgenders. Four years ago Sears's campaign featured a picture of her holding an AR-15; now the gubernatorial candidate isn't even talking about Spanberger's support for a ban on those rifles, much less the Democrat's backing of bans on "large capacity" magazines, storage mandates, and the possession of home-built firearms.
It's no surprise that Spanberger isn't talking about her gun ban plans while she's campaigning in rural Virginia, but it's unfathomable to me why Sears isn't making her opponent's opposition to our right to keep and bear arms a central part of her messaging to rural voters. If Sears ends up underperforming in rural Virginia next Tuesday, I suspect one of the biggest reasons will be her campaign's decision to downplay Second Amendment issues in those parts of the state where the right to keep and bear arms is of fundamental importance to many voters.
