The race for Virginia’s governorship in 2025 is likely to involve two candidates who each possess an equal opportunity to make history.
According to The Hill, both the likely Democratic and Republican candidates, Rep. Abigail Spanberger and Lt. Gov. Winsom Earle-Sears, respectively, each bear claim to becoming Virginia’s first female governor, and if Earle-Sears is elected, she would become the state’s first Black female governor.
The field has cleared for the two women, which political analysts like Debbie Walsh, the Center for Women in Politics director at Rutgers University, noted is a rare occurrence.
“It is really significant that not only are there going to be two women running but that both parties seem to be kind of clearing the field for them, which we have not necessarily seen,” Walsh told The Hill.
Walsh continued, “It’s been a bit of a challenge overall for women to move into those positions,” Walsh said before saying that women in politics are working against a “notion that women work well collaboratively and in committees, which lends itself to legislatures but not so much to being chief executive.”
Walsh concluded, “Virginia is also interesting because Virginia was the state after Donald Trump was elected in 2016 that gave us our first indication of a big political mobilization of women in the legislative races there, where we saw record numbers of women running for the Legislature but also beating incumbents at a rate much higher than anyone would have expected, and it foretold the story of 2018.”
Women, particularly Black women, are naturally expected to play larger roles than normal in shaping this election. Walsh also noted that since Earle-Sears is a Republican, that does not mean that she will get the backing of Black women in Virginia.
“They (Black women) will be a powerful force in that race,” Walsh said. “We know that women in general are more likely to support the Democratic candidate, but there’s tremendous variation and the strongest group for Democratic candidates regardless of the gender of the candidate’s gender.
The task for Spanberger, conversely, will be making sure the voter apathy from non-presidential races doesn’t affect Democratic voters as much as it does Republicans.
According to Bob Holsworth, a veteran Virginia political analyst, Spanberger will also have to marshal support from Black voters, which is uncharted territory for her.
“Critically, she has to do well in the African American community, and she’s never had to do that before,” Holsworth told The Hill. “The Democrats have to turn out people in the African American community in larger numbers than they have, and there was some backsliding from ‘20 to ‘24.”
Holsworth concluded, “There’ll be a million less people who will vote in this election than did in the presidential election. In an election where a million people aren’t voting, Spanberger needs to ensure that 60 percent of them aren’t Democrats.”
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