Virginia’s next governor will be a woman.
We thought that was going to be the case; a single social media post on Monday made that as certain as anything in politics can be certain.
Attorney General Jason Miyares announced on X, the former Twitter, that he will seek reelection next year. That means he will be forgoing a run for the Republican nomination for governor.
That leaves Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears as the lone Republican candidate, and the likelihood that anyone will challenge her is pretty close to zero.
On the Democratic side, Rep. Abigail Spanberger had already cleared the field to become that party’s presumptive nominee.
This will be the first time Virginia will have both major parties nominate women for governor at the same time. Until now, the only time a major party in Virginia has nominated a woman was 1993, when Mary Sue Terry was the Democratic nominee. The first woman to appear on a Virginia ballot for governor was Alice Burke of Richmond, the Communist Party nominee in 1941. She won 0.9% of the vote. The first woman to receive votes for governor was Millie Davis Custis of Accomack County, who ran as a write-in candidate for the Socialist Party in 1921, and won 0.1% of the vote.
Virginia is in the minority: Thirty-two states have already had women as governors, according to the Pew Research Center, and 10 have had governor’s races where both major party candidates were women, according to the Center for American Women and Politics. As a result of the recent election, 13 states will have women as governors at the same time, a record, according to the Associated Press.
Miyares’ announcement would also seem to lock down two-thirds of the Republican ticket next year. Richmond radio talk show host John Reid has expressed interest in seeking the lieutenant governor’s nomination, but the Republican field has generally been frozen in place while it waited for word on what Miyares was going to do. Now that he’s decided, we may see other candidates for the only open nomination available materialize.
Democrats already have two active nomination contests going on, for lieutenant governor and attorney general.
For lieutenant governor: Chesterfield County state Sen. Ghazala Hashmi, Prince William County school board chairman Babur Lateef, Virginia Beach state Sen. Aaron Rouse and Richmond Mayor LeVar Stoney.
For attorney general: former Norfolk Del. Jay Jones and Henrico County Commonwealth’s Attorney Shannon Taylor.
Only two sitting attorneys general in Virginia have ever lost reelection bids: Francis Blair in 1885 and Mark Herring in 2021, when he was defeated by Miyares.
Assuming no one comes forward to challenge either Spanberer or Earle-Sears for their respective nominations, which seems highly unlikely, this would be the first governor’s race since 1997 when the party’s nominees were known so far in advance.
Miyares’ statement:
You can see the full video here.
The Democratic response:
“As Attorney General, Jason Miyares has been a MAGA mouthpiece in pushing an extreme agenda. Virginians deserve an Attorney General who will stand up for their rights and freedoms, not someone who is constantly trying to take them away. It is clear that, if re-elected, Miyares would use his office as a partisan tool to serve the interests of the Trump administration, rather than the needs of hard-working Virginians.”
— Susan Swecker, chair, Democratic Party of Virginia
I’ll have more to say about the 2025 races in this week’s edition of West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter, that goes out on Fridays. You can sign up here: