A March poll of Virginia Republicans found Lt. Governor Winsome Earle-Sears is the current favorite candidate to succeed Governor Glenn Youngkin in 2025, with Attorney General Jason Miyares currently behind by more than 25 points.
The Cyngal pollsters claim Earle-Sears “holds an impressive 28-point advantages over Miyares on the governor’s ballot,” with 43.5 percent of support from Republicans. While Miyares had a distant 15.8 percent of support, a decisive 40.7 percent of those polled said they remain undecided.
Pollsters conducted their survey of 510 likely Republican primary election voters in Virginia on March 13 and estimated a margin of error of 4.28 percent. No Republicans have officially announced their candidacy, but Youngkin is constitutionally ineligible to seek a consecutive term.
While the pollsters noted, “Earle-Sears leads over Miyares with Trump Republicans and Traditional Republicans,” a raucous campaign could expose voters to her past remarks denigrating former President Donald Trump.
On March 7, after Youngkin endorsed Trump for the 2024 election, Earle-Sears reportedly declined to endorse the former president. Instead, she suggested, “Everybody has to make their own decision.”
The refusal to endorse Trump followed remarks Earle-Sears made in 2022, when she called Trump a “political liability” who Republican voters wanted to “step off the stage.”
A spokesman for Trump called Earle-Sears’ comments “a slap to the face to all of the grassroots Republicans that worked so hard to get [Sears] elected,” and predicted voters “won’t forget this and there will be a reckoning.”
Regardless of the admonition from Trump, the Virginia Republican made similar remarks about the former president in her 2023 memoir.
In her book, Earle-Sears ultimately wrote of Trump, “For the good of the nation, I do not think he should run again.”
By contrast, WFIR News recently reported that Miyares predicted that Trump is capable creating a winning coalition in 2024 by focusing on “kitchen table issues.”
Miyares explained to the outlet, “The reality is inflation has been so bad under President Biden, you’ve essentially taken a pay cut. Your dollar is not worth as much as it was when he took office.”
However, the pollsters noted Earle-Sears has a positive image among Republicans across Virginia, while “Miyares is lesser known,” with nearly a third of the electorate never having heard of the attorney general.
Earle-Sears’ political image among Republicans may have been improved in February, when she misgendered a biological male member of the Virginia House of Delegates who identifies as a transgender female.
She later apologized, and stated, “I am not here to upset anyone. I am here to do the job that the people of Virginia have called me to do.”
WATCH: Virginia Lt. Gov. @WinsomeSears refers to transgender State Senator Danica Roem as "sir."
He then storms out of the room and the senate went into two recesses.
Sears then came back out and said "I am not here to upset anyone. I am here to do the job that the people of… pic.twitter.com/WYbRP2h5EA
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) February 26, 2024
Meanwhile, Miyares has quietly received headlines for his decisions to join attorneys general from conservative states in legal challenges to a number Biden administration rules and policies.
The attorney general’s political action committee is also targeting prosecutor and district attorney races across the country, including one who is candidate challenging an incumbent that previously received support from Hungarian-American financier George Soros.
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Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Georgia Star News, The Virginia Star, and The Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “A.G. Jason Miyares” by A.G. Jason Miyares and “Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears” is by Winsome Sears.
