Fairfax County Supervisor Pat Herrity, the only elected Republican in the county, on Wednesday said that his campaign to become the next lieutenant governor of Virginia was motivated by an effort to help the Republican ticket on Election Day, and particularly to help Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears win her election to succeed Governor Glenn Youngkin.
Asked on Wednesday by The Virginia Star publisher John Fredericks how he expected to win in November if Earle-Sears should perform poorly, as a January poll showed former Representative Abigail Spanberger winning against Earle-Sears by 10 percent, Herrity pointed to his years of electoral success in Fairfax County.
“I’ve done it before,” said Herrity, who has won five elections in his heavily Democratic county, during his appearance on “The John Fredericks Show.”
“I know, and my promise to Virginia, is that I will be able to deliver Fairfax County at 40 percent, because we will go out and find Republican voters, we will explain to them the importance of this race and how critical it is that we keep Virginia on the right path. They will come out, they will vote, and if we get 40 percent in Fairfax County, it’s game over.”
He later pointed directly to Earle-Sears, suggesting his fundraising prowess and popularity in Northern Virginia would help her turn around an early deficit in fundraising and polling.
Herrity told Fredericks, “This is about getting the ticket over the finish line. This isn’t about Pat Herrity and Lieutenant Governor, I was asked to run four years ago. This is about getting Winsome over the finish line, because it’s critical to Virginia’s future.”
Earlier in the interview, the Northern Virginia official explained a previous statement in which he urged Republicans to “move past” President Donald Trump.
“First of all, that statement was taken entirely out of context. We had just lost the midterms in [2022],” Herrity claimed. “The party really needed to move on in its messaging. The messaging that I have always used is commonsense conservative values, [and] President Trump calls it the revolution of common sense.”
Herrity did not clarify his statement from May 2021, when the Fairfax County official said, “I think the party needs to move past President Trump and come together, and we’ve got a great opportunity to do that here in Virginia.”
Nonetheless, Herrity praised the newly-inaugurated president for his performance since returning to the White House.
“John, we’ve had a couple of great weeks, there’s a lot of very good stuff going on,” Herrity told Fredericks. “I’m a CFO, I’ve had to dig into budgets and county budgets, and make the hard decisions, and put on the table cuts. So I get exactly what [Trump] is going through, and I’m again, the only one of the candidates that’s got experience doing that.”
Herrity is currently leading the field of candidates in fundraising, but both James City businessman John Curran and former Richmond radio host John Reid are additionally pursuing the Republican nomination.
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Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Pennsylvania Daily Star and The Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
