When the Republican Governor’s Association convened this week for its annual summer fundraiser in Aspen, Colorado, there was an elephant in the room at the St. Regis: How little can it get away with contributing to its all-but-hopeless candidate for Virginia governor?
Of course, the GOP governors and their top aides wouldn’t couch it in such raw terms, but that’s the upshot in one of only two gubernatorial campaigns in the country this year. The convergence of paltry fundraising, weak polling and a candidate seen as incapable of fixing either has some in the RGA’s orbit unenthused, I’m told, about giving much more than the $500,000 the group has already contributed to Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears, the Republican standard-bearer in Virginia. By comparison, the group gave $10.7 million directly to the now-term limited Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s winning campaign four years ago.
Leading Republicans have long been convinced that they have a better chance to win in New Jersey, the other state holding a gubernatorial election this year. The GOP nominee there, Jack Ciattarelli, ran a surprisingly competitive race as the standard-bearer four years ago and has the support of President Donald Trump.
Yet last week’s fundraising disclosures revealing that Democratic former Rep. Abigail Spanberger has more than three times the cash on hand as Sears — $15.2 million to $4.5 million — have Virginia and national Republicans convinced they’ll lose the governorship absent a dramatic and unexpected change in the race.
The money disparity is especially disheartening for Republicans because fundraising in these off-off year elections tends to be self-reinforcing, with donors and party committees curtailing their giving when they see candidates lagging. To borrow a phrase from Haley Barbour — a legendary fundraiser and former GOP governor himself — good gets better and bad gets worse, certainly when it comes to campaign dollars in such an environment.
Making the problem worse, Sears is reluctant to make fundraising or even glaringly obvious political phone calls, according to multiple Republicans familiar with her campaign. She’s not reached out to some of the most reliable donors in Virginia or to top GOP figures such as the Virginia-based Chris LaCivita, Trump’s campaign co-manager. And while Sears and Trump met privately earlier this year in the White House, the president has yet to embrace her candidacy, a non-endorsement that stems from her criticism of him between his two terms.
This grim outlook has prompted irritation from some leading Republicans about the straits Youngkin may leave the party in on his way out of office. In fairness, the governor is at least trying to aid Sears. He has appeared with her on the campaign trail in Virginia and this week in Aspen introduced her to donors and recounted his own dismal polling four summers ago, according to a Republican present at the gathering.
The Virginia race is also Example A of how Elon Musk walking away from electoral politics, at least for now, could have down-ballot repercussions. Democrats in the commonwealth earlier this year were bracing for an influx of the tech billionaire’s money into Virginia, where there are no caps on giving, but the Musk moolah has yet to appear.
Just as significant, Youngkin, a multi-millionaire, has yet to infuse the Virginia ticket with significant personal money or contributions from his political action committee.
“He’s got to win something,” said Delegate Terry Kilgore, the House GOP Leader, of the governor’s legacy leaving office after his single term.
Youngkin already lost control of the Virginia House of Delegates and failed to flip the state senate two years ago. And he was unable to find a top-tier candidate to take on Senator Tim Kaine (D-Va.) last year and will almost certainly not run himself next year against Virginia’s senior senator, Mark Warner (D).
That’s because the governor seems to be preparing for a future presidential bid. He courted business moguls earlier this month at Allen and Company’s annual retreat in Sun Valley, Idaho — where he appeared with Maryland’s Democratic Gov. Wes Moore in a discussion moderated by CNN’s Anderson Cooper, I’m told. Last week, Youngkin attended a GOP fundraising dinner in first-in-the-nation Iowa, and next month he’ll travel to South Carolina, traditionally the first presidential primary in the South.
But he could leave behind a political mess for his own party in Virginia. Youngkin all but assured Sears’ nomination for governor, even though it was widely known she was a weak fundraiser and mercurial figure, and then attempted to torpedo the candidacy of her successor as lieutenant governor, John Reid, after it was alleged earlier this year that he had posted sexually explicit images online.
Now, Virginia Republicans — who were already swimming against the tide in a blue-tinted state Trump has never won that tends to punish the party in power in Washington — are alarmed their entire statewide ticket may lose and could deepen the party’s minority in the House of Delegates.
Private polling from both parties has Spanberger leading outside margin of error. Democrats have her up 10 points, while Republicans project her to win by mid-single-digits, I’m told. And Republicans are worried their entire ticket may go down if she loses by more than five.
This sense of dread is prompting an earlier-than-usual political triage, in which the party races to determine who can be saved.
For the moment that appears to be the incumbent attorney general, who’s running for re-election, and as many House seats as possible.
Attorney General Jason Miyares, who declined to run for governor after seeing Trump prevail last year — and grasping the challenge the former president being back in office would carry this year in Virginia — has significantly more money in the bank than Sears and Reid, his two ticket-mates, combined. It is, to say the least, quite rare for an attorney general candidate to be better financially equipped than the gubernatorial nominee.
Every high-level Republican I spoke to said the 49-year-old Miyares gave the party their best chance to salvage a win this year and set up a stronger nominee for governor in 2029.
“He’s the Republican who has the best shot at winning statewide office this year,” LaCivita told me. (It was lost on nobody in Richmond that LaCivita earlier this year hosted a fundraiser in the state capital for Miyares’ campaign alone.)
“He’s going to lead the ticket,” Kilgore said of Miyares, adding that “this is gearing up to be a 2001-type year.” (Warner and Kaine prevailed that year, for governor and lieutenant governor, but Kilgore’s twin brother, Jerry, still managed to win as attorney general.)
“The math is showing us the obvious reality: Jason has done better at fundraising, has more cash on hand and he’s a very good candidate,” said Chris Saxman, a former GOP state lawmaker who now runs a state business lobby.
Miyares’ top donors have made clear to other fundraisers that they may be on their own and have to overcome headwinds from the top of the ticket, according to a contributor.
The good news for Virginia Republicans is that, while Musk may be sitting on his billions, he and his government-shredding chainsaw have also left Washington. That makes DOGE, which was particularly damaging in government employee-filled Virginia, less resonant with general election voters this fall than it would have been earlier in the year.
Veterans of Virginia campaigns in both parties are skeptical that Democrats have the sort of energy they enjoyed in 2017, the year after Trump’s first victory, when his surprise success immediately galvanized the opposition.
And Sears last week appeared to grudgingly accept that she couldn’t retain a pastor with little campaign experience as her campaign manager, a situation that Republicans believe well illustrated the difficulty she’s long had maintaining professional staff and consultants.
Sears’ campaign pointed me to longtime New York City donor John Catsimatidis, who has contributed to candidates in both parties for decades and said he’s given to Sears and would do so again.
“She’s a nice lady who believes in law and order and common sense,” Catsimatidis said of Sears.
Yet none of this changes the fact that Trump only won 46 percent of the Virginia vote last year, when he carried every swing state, and that Democrats have an advantage in lower turnout elections when their high-engagement, high-education base always shows at the polls.
Which means groups like the RGA will want to preserve as much of their money as they can for 2026, when there are 36 gubernatorial races and some of the most expensive will be in open seats.
They can’t totally abandon Virginia — not with one of their own in office and making the case for his would-be successor in Aspen. To cut off Sears entirely would likely doom the party in Virginia. But this is one of those rare quadrennial elections in which New Jersey looks more appealing for Republicans than Virginia.
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