What for awhile seemed a straightforward governor’s race got a lot more complicated Wednesday when not one but two new candidates for the Republican nomination surfaced.
Earlier in the day, former Del. Dave LaRock filed paperwork to run. If he can collect enough signatures by April 3, that would officially force a June primary with Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, who had been the presumed Republican nominee.
Then, Wednesday evening, former state Sen. Amanda Chase sent out an email blast to supporters declaring that she, too, would enter the race.
Both LaRock and Chase rapped Earle-Sears for being insufficiently supportive of President Trump, which seems to be their main reason for running.
Let’s recap a busy day:
First, LaRock filed his paperwork. It had previously been reported that he was circulating petitions, so his official filing of candidacy papers wasn’t a surprise. Of note: This does not yet trigger the election machinery: He simply filed his intention to run, not the actual petitions. Virginia law requires at least 10,000 signatures, with 400 from each congressional district. That is something of an organizational challenge, particularly for a candidate with no known network statewide.
While LaRock wasn’t giving interviews Wednesday, his website made clear he’s challenging Earle-Sears from the right: “While the GOP’s presumptive nominee offers platitudes and backtracks on conservative values, LaRock takes action —defending parental rights, backing law enforcement and fighting for Virginia’s future.”
To say that LaRock is a controversial figure is an understatement. In 2020, he told The Winchester Star and The Washington Post that he could support giving Arlington County and Alexandria to Washington, D.C., because those two Virginia localities have “dramatically different values” than the rest of the state.
After the 2020 presidential election, he joined with two other Virginia legislators to write a letter to Vice President Mike Pence warning that he shouldn’t declare Joe Biden the winner. He also attended the Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally but did not take part in the storming of the U.S. Capitol that followed.
No doubt prompted by LaRock’s formal entrance into the race, Republican leaders moved to rally behind Earle-Sears. Youngkin reiterated his endorsement. “I will stand with her with every step of the way as our party unites and she wins in November,” he said. Then more than 50 Republican state legislators — led by House Minority Leader Todd Gilbert of Shenandoah County and Senate Minority Leader Ryan McDougle of Hanover County — announced their support.
Then Wednesday evening came the Chase email blast. Where LaRock took a swipe at Earle-Sears, Chase came out swinging. “Our current announced Republican nominee is a Never Trumper who has really never come out and embraced our President,” Chase said in her email.
That’s not quite so: Earle-Sears did say in 2022 that it was time for the party to move on from Trump, but she campaigned with Trump when he appeared at the Salem Civic Center in October. She led chants for Trump in Salem — and, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, at another rally in Chesterfield County. “That’s a man I can support, because he cares about America,” Earle-Sears said then. “We are not voting for the lesser of two evils, no. We are voting for the lessening of evil.”
Chase, however, said that Earle-Sears couldn’t win: “In the past few days, I’ve learned that our only declared Republican candidate for Governor has encountered some pretty serious issues with her campaign. We now face an almost certain defeat in November, if we don’t find a candidate who can manage and organize a successful campaign against [Democrat Abigail] Spanberger.”
That echoes what former Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, a much more moderate figure within the party, posted on Facebook earlier this week. After the Roanoke College poll showed Spanberger with lead of 15 percentage points over Earle-Sears, Bolling wrote: “It’s time for Republicans to get real. Winsome Sears is not a strong statewide candidate. If she is the Republican nominee, she will lose.” While Spanberger’s lead in that Roanoke College poll is unusually large, it follows two other polls, by Christopher Newport University and Virginia Commonwealth University, that also showed Spanberger leading the race by margins of 5 and 10 percentage points.
All this points to the challenge that any Republican nominee faces: Trump is exceedingly popular with Republicans but far less so with the general electorate in Virginia. He lost the state three straight times and the recent Roanoke College poll found his disapproval rate in the state stands at 59%, higher than at any time during his first term. Embracing Trump might be a way to win the Republican nomination but that seems unlikely to be a way to win a general election.
Chase acknowledged in her email that it will be a challenge to collect enough signatures to get on the ballot before the April 3 deadline. However, Chase, unlike LaRock, has a statewide profile. She sought the Republican nomination for governor in 2021; she finished third in the seven-way nominating contest won by Glenn Youngkin.
Like LaRock, she also attended — and spoke at — the “Stop the Steal Rally” on Jan. 6, 2021. She was also censured by the Virginia Senate on a 24-9 vote in 2021. Three Republicans joined with Democrats to pass the censure while six declined to vote. The Virginia Mercury reported at the time that senators said the censure vote “became unavoidable due to Chase’s loose grip on the truth, lack of respect for her colleagues and the institution and a pattern of inflammatory behavior.” Even the Senate Republican leader at the time, Tommy Norment of James City County, gave what the Mercury called “a fiery address” in supporting of censuring Chase.
Both LaRock and Chase have suffered election defeats that raise questions about their electability.
After the latest redistricting, LaRock moved from Loudoun County to Clarke County and sought the Republican nomination for the state Senate. He finished second in an eight-way race with 25.5% of the vote; Timmy French won that nomination with 32.9% and went on to win the general election. Conservative radio talk show host John Fredericks ridiculed LaRock in an interview with The Washington Post: “This is basically a clown show on wheels. Dave LaRock, who was a principled conservative in the House of Delegates, lost a Senate primary in his own district against an unknown farmer with no name ID. Now you’re going to go up against the lieutenant governor — and Governor Youngkin’s unequivocal choice for the nomination — with no money and for what purpose — drain resources, waste time.”
After losing her 2021 gubernatorial campaign, Chase lost her state Senate seat in 2023 when she was defeated by Glen Sturtevant in the primary. After that, she moved from Chesterfield County to Appomattox County and ran for the Republican nomination for the state Senate seat that John McGuire vacated when he was elected to Congress. She finished third; Luther Cifers won that nomination and eventually the election.
In her email blast, Chase invoked her nickname of “Trump in Heels” and said she might have won the 2021 nomination if it had been a primary, rather than a convention. That is possibly true. One reason Republicans held a convention rather than a primary that year is some feared in a seven-candidate field, Chase might have won with a plurality. As it turns out, she trailed throughout the convention balloting while Youngkin led the whole way.
I’ll have more to say about these developments in West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter that goes out Friday afternoons. You can sign up here: