Last Tuesday, Abigail Spanberger was in Roanoke to speak to the state convention of the Virginia Trucking Association. The Democratic candidate for governor used her time to talk about how she supported trucking-related legislation in Congress, how she wants to find ways for state government to make it easier for people (especially veterans) to enter the trucking profession and how she supported creation of an inland port in Southwest Virginia to serve as a hub for freight cargo to and from the port at Hampton Roads.
None of this was headline-worthy news. Spanberger had endorsed the inland port months ago; neither it nor her other trucking-related ideas have any partisan tint to them. Her appearance before the truckers, though, was very typical of what Virginians have come to expect from their candidates for governor, who typically make the rounds of various business groups to talk about their plans.
What was notable was what the truckers didn’t hear: They didn’t hear from the Republican candidate for governor, Winsome Earle-Sears. She was invited but declined; her campaign sent word that her schedule didn’t permit a visit.
By itself, that’s not unusual. Candidates get far more invitations than they can accept. What was unusual was that Earle-Sears was in Roanoke; she just wasn’t at the Hotel Roanoke, where the truckers met. The trucking convention ran Sunday, Sept. 21, to Tuesday, Sept. 23. Earle-Sears’ social media account documents no events on that Sunday. She did post a video outside a prison, apparently in Norfolk, where she once led a prison ministry, although it’s unclear when that video was recorded. Her social media account documents no campaign events on that Monday, either, although that night she did have a private fundraiser in Roanoke. On that Tuesday, when Spanberger appeared before the truckers, Earle-Sears’ social media account shows no campaign events, either, although she had another fundraiser that night in Richmond.
Since Earle-Sears was in Roanoke on the evening of Monday, Sept. 22, for the fundraiser, it sure looks as if she could have spared 15 minutes to talk to the truckers — which is about the amount of time Spanberger spent with them.
This fits a pattern: Earle-Sears still has yet to meet with Virginia FREE, a pro-business group that typically meets with all the candidates. Spanberger has. So have all the other statewide candidates, with the exception of Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares — but scheduling with Miyares is underway for a meeting. The group started asking Earle-Sears back in the spring and was told her schedule didn’t allow it. At some point in the summer, after Earle-Sears changed campaign managers, her campaign gave Virginia FREE two weeks to set up a meeting, but by then, the group couldn’t arrange one — and some board members had already endorsed Spanberger.
When I checked with Virginia FREE’s executive director, Chris Saxman (a former Republican state legislator from Staunton), to verify that no meeting has happened, he replied: “The problem isn’t my answer. The problem, for Winsome and the GOP, is the question.” In other words, this is not normal for a candidate for governor.
Very little about the Earle-Sears campaign is normal, and this could come back to haunt the whole Republican ticket.
Throughout the campaign, Earle-Sears has avoided many interactions that might lead to her being seriously questioned, be it by a business group or the news media. Earle-Sears has rarely done interviews outside what seem to be “safe” news outlets. One exception might be Cardinal News. After four months of asking, she granted an interview with me in late July to talk about energy and Southwest Virginia. She was generous with her time — the promised 15-minute interview turned into 40 minutes. More recently, though, her campaign has gone completely silent and stopped responding to messages. We regularly hear from the five other statewide campaigns, beyond whatever formal statements they might put out. Sometimes the campaigns are responding to questions that journalists have posed, sometimes they’re offering their “spin” on events in hopes of influencing coverage — all that is part of the normal back-and-forth of politics that I’ve witnessed firsthand for about four decades. I’ve never seen a campaign just go radio silent like Earle-Sears’ has.
I understand that campaigns have changed over the years. Once, candidates spent a lot of time interacting with ordinary voters; now they don’t. Social media is a large part of the reason; it allows candidates to give the appearance of speaking directly with voters, but in scripted ways. These days, campaigns don’t like to subject their candidates to situations where unpredictable things might happen; the risk of a gaffe is deemed too high. That’s true of both Democrats and Republicans.
Forty years ago, I was with Douglas Wilder — then the Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor — as he campaigned in Norton. Wilder was walking down a street with local Democrats when a pickup truck stopped and a man got out. The stranger shouted at Wilder: “What are you running for?” The two fell into a conversation about local roads — the pickup driver was unhappy about one particular road that was often blocked by trains. “I know you don’t have time to come and look,” the man said, “but if you did, you’d see what I mean.”
For Wilder, that wasn’t just a challenge; it was an invitation. He hopped into the stranger’s truck and away they went, leaving his small entourage slack-jawed on the sidewalk. That kind of thing would never happen today — even though in that case they returned about 30 minutes later with the man praising Wilder for his attentiveness.
Nonetheless, candidates for governor today are still expected to demonstrate their worthiness in other ways. As recently as 2017, both candidates for governor — Ralph Northam and Ed Gillespie that year — made the rounds of the state’s newspapers to conduct detailed interviews. Often, their campaigns initiated these visits. I was with The Roanoke Times then, and I remember Northam showing up alone — and talking for more than an hour about a wide range of subjects. Gillespie arrived with an aide, but also a thick briefing book with details about state government and his plans if he got elected. Their positions differed, but the message was the same: They were serious people who were knowledgeable about the issues and had specific plans to deal with them. They were essentially conducting job interviews to show that they would be ready on Day One.
The pandemic interrupted that tradition in 2021; so has the decline of newspapers and the rise of social media. With fewer journalists, there are fewer people asking the candidates questions about what they’ll do in office — and more opportunities for candidates to insulate themselves from questions that don’t fit whatever message they’re trying to convey. Earle-Sears has taken this to an entirely new level, except it’s not just the news media she’s not talking to — it’s business groups as well.
I repeat: This is not normal.
I get that many people aren’t going to be concerned if a candidate isn’t particularly forthcoming with journalists; we’re often an annoying, vexatious lot. I also get that Earle-Sears likely raised enough money at her Roanoke fundraiser to communicate with far more people than the hundreds of trucking executives across town in the Hotel Roanoke ballroom. However, by skipping the truckers and Virginia FREE and other groups, Earle-Sears is inadvertently sending a signal to the business community that she’s not really interested in them — and raising the question of whether she’s truly prepared to be governor. Over the years, I’ve found that administrations often mirror the campaigns that preceded them. Glenn Youngkin ran a businesslike campaign and followed that with a businesslike administration. Forget whether Earle-Sears is talking with the news media; if she won’t talk to business groups during the campaign, what assurance do they have that she’ll be willing to take their calls if she’s governor? By contrast, Spanberger has talked with Republican business leaders who may not support her campaign, but are businesspeople before they’re Republicans and want to make sure they’ll have their concerns heard if she’s governor.
Here’s why Republicans ought to be concerned: Earle-Sears is not doing the things a normal candidate for governor would do. I can’t say she’s not working hard because I don’t know what she’s doing; I just know that when it comes to the public part of the campaign, there’s just not much to see. Her running mates, John Reid for lieutenant governor and Miyares for attorney general, are doing the things we expect to see candidates doing. Reid is holding multiple events a day, putting out position papers and conducting interviews. He has a contraption he can use to hold his phone so he can conduct Zoom interviews wherever he can get a signal. Miyares has an important day job but can hardly be called inaccessible. He’s held some kind of event in or near Roanoke every week for more than a month. Earle-Sears, though, is often simply missing from the types of things where you’d expect a candidate for governor to be, such as the trucking association, when she’s in the same town. If Earle-Sears loses, there will be multiple factors to blame — a poor political environment for Republicans, for instance — but one of them will be that she’s been AWOL much of the time. She hasn’t been completely AWOL, but she’s been absent from enough events that it does raise questions about what she’s doing. A lower-ballot candidate can afford to take a low profile and hope the general tide is in their party’s favor, but the candidate for governor is expected to drive those trends.
I see party activists doing their part for the Republican ticket, but the ticket-leader isn’t holding up her end of the bargain to wage an energetic campaign. I’ll concede that maybe she’s working energetically in ways we can’t see, but many in the business community sure don’t see it. This is strange because a Republican candidate would normally find these business groups to be a friendly audience — and Earle-Sears is ostensibly running to continue Youngkin’s policies. He’s been well-connected to the business world. Earle-Sears is not — her campaign finance reports show that, and so does her lack of engagement during the campaign. Down-ballot Republicans have reason to worry that Earle-Sears’ unusual campaign will backfire and hurt them.
Here’s why voters who aren’t particularly partisan ought to be concerned: We don’t really know much about what either candidate would do in office — especially Earle-Sears.
Spanberger has honored the tradition of releasing position papers on specific issues: education, economic development, energy, health care. I have found these to be vague, the political equivalent of vanilla, although we do at least get some flavor of what her administration would do.
Earle-Sears has done none of that.
We know quite clearly how she feels on transgender issues. I don’t want to disregard the strong feelings that many people have regarding those issues, but that is just a single detail out of the thousands that a governor will face. What about the others? We really don’t know. We can safely assume her instincts will be conservative, but that doesn’t really tell us how she’d approach the many issues that don’t fit neatly into the ideological spectrum.
Maybe for many people, simply knowing which candidate is the “D” and which one is the “R” is enough. Once, though, we expected more — and candidates attempted to deliver, within the confines of their own political necessities, of course.
In an attempt to replicate those old days when candidates met with newspaper staffs to answer questions, we at Cardinal invited both candidates to meet with our staff — virtually, since Cardinal’s staff is scattered from Bristol to Richmond. Both campaigns said their candidates didn’t have time for that, but both agreed to take questions in writing — so our staff put together 25 questions for each candidate. These arise from issues we’ve covered across Southwest and Southside, from broadband to workforce training. None of those are particularly sexy, but they all involve details that the next governor will have to deal with.
Spanberger’s campaign asked for two and a half weeks to answer our questions (some of which are somewhat technical); we’re promised responses by Wednesday.
Earle-Sears’ campaign has yet to respond — or even acknowledge receipt. Seven inquiries have gone unanswered.
Perhaps this column will prompt a response, because someone who wants to be governor really ought to be able to tell voters what they intend to do if they’re elected.
Here’s what we do know about where the two candidates stand
You can see how the candidates stand on our initial round of questions on our Voter Guide. We have individual pages for every county and city in Virginia; you can look up your localities and see who’s on your ballot.