An audio recording obtained by NR reveals the personal issues dividing the Virginia Republican gubernatorial ticket.
On June 18, Virginia Republicans’ 2025 lieutenant gubernatorial nominee John Reid dialed up his party’s gubernatorial nominee, Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears, to try and smooth things over.
The pair hadn’t spoken since April, when Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin phoned Reid — a Richmond talk radio host and the state’s first openly gay statewide nominee — and asked him to suspend his campaign following allegations that he reposted nude photos of men on a Tumblr account years ago that shares his Instagram handle. Reid denies the allegations and has declined to withdraw from the race.
Hence the lieutenant governor nominee’s decision to call Earle-Sears in mid-June to assess how they could “get over the hump, and have everything be good, or as good as it can be,” to unite the ticket. “So, tell me,” Reid said at one point in the private phone call, “what, what — how you see things, certainly for the two of us, at the moment?”
Things went south from there, according to a recording of the call obtained by National Review. Throughout the conversation, the details of which were also confirmed by two sources familiar with the matter, Earle-Sears repeatedly dodged Reid’s questions as she expressed her own distrust in Reid, as well as her concern that their conversation was being recorded. Her reluctance to acknowledge their communication problem prompted further pushback from Reid.
“I’ve tried very diligently to be positive about you and the ticket and both in public and private,” Reid said at one point on the call. “But I’m not going to lie and act like everything’s been hunky-dory. It’s been eight weeks since we’ve spoken. I’m puzzled about that. I don’t know why that is.”
The tense private conversation comes as no surprise to Virginia Republicans, who secured their three statewide candidates in April but whose ticket did not appear on the same stage together until July 1. Earle-Sears backers point to a joint local radio appearance between her and Reid last week as proof that the ticket is now rowing in the same direction following a mid-July staff shake-up on the gubernatorial nominee’s campaign team, which has seen high consultant and staff turnover in recent years. And following an inquiry from National Review for this story, both Reid and Earle-Sears made a show of sharing a joint social media video on Saturday with both candidates holding a campaign sign bearing all three statewide GOP candidates’ names. The three statewide GOP candidates also now share a joint field program.
But for months, the ticket has been rocked by bad headline after bad headline focused on the explicit photo allegations and the intra-party drama that followed.
And the mid-summer tensions between Reid — who became the default nominee in late April after his primary opponent, Fairfax County Supervisor Pat Herrity, withdrew for health reasons — and Earle-Sears is just one of many issues worrying Old Dominion Republicans ahead of this fall’s elections.
Many Virginia Republicans are convinced that the ticket rises and falls together, and that the onus is on the gubernatorial nominee to unite the ticket.
Earle-Sears won in 2021 “in large part, I think, because of Glenn Youngkin’s coattails. There are no coattails this year,” said former Republican Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling, who won reelection by double digits in 2009 after campaigning side-by-side with Governor Bob McDonnell. “And so far, she has not shown the ability to put together a compelling campaign message. She has not shown the ability to raise anywhere near the kind of money that you need to run an effective statewide campaign. She has not even shown the ability to unite her own ticket.”
Three months out from Election Day, many Republican operatives are feeling bearish about the party’s chances of keeping all three statewide offices in November, let alone flipping Democrats’ 51-49 majority in the House of Delegates.
According to RealClearPolitics’ polling data, Earle-Sears — the first black female lieutenant governor in Virginia history — hasn’t led a single public poll all year. Early voting starts September 19.
The fundamentals of this year’s political environment aren’t helping matters. Holding Virginia was always going to be tricky with a Republican in the White House. And GOP political operatives often say privately that Earle-Sears is no Glenn Youngkin, a unique political talent and wealthy former private-equity CEO whose millions helped him overcome a well-funded former Democratic governor. This year’s governor’s race also has a different feel than 2021, when Youngkin flipped the state red for the first time in more than a decade after focusing on public safety, critical race theory in K-12 schools, and parental rights. Virginia governors are barred from serving consecutive terms, meaning Youngkin — who is widely considered a likely 2028 presidential candidate — could not run for reelection this cycle.
Democratic gubernatorial nominee Abigail Spanberger, a former congresswoman and intelligence officer, is dominating in both the fundraising and polling department. She’s spent most of the campaign ignoring her GOP opponent, opting instead to inveigh against the “chaos” she claims Republicans are causing in Washington, D.C. She declined last week a CNN debate invitation with Earle-Sears (who accepted the network’s invitation), opting instead to agree to a debate moderated by a local news station.
A sign of the times? The Virginia Police Benevolent Association, a police union that backed Youngkin in 2021, announced plans this week to back Spanberger for governor while also endorsing Republican candidates down-ballot, including Reid for lieutenant governor and incumbent GOP Attorney General Jason Miyares.
For his part, the Old Dominion attorney general has largely stayed above the fray amid his reelection campaign to serve another term as Virginia’s top law enforcement official, sources say. The running joke in Virginia GOP circles is that Miyares — a strong campaigner and fundraiser — may end up serving in a Spanberger administration after defeating Democratic attorney general nominee Jay Jones. But Miyares’s fate is tied to Earle-Sears as his ability to keep his seat will depend on the electoral margin at the top of the ticket.
‘If You’re Not Trying to Blackmail Me . . .’
Cracking through the political drama won’t be easy, as demonstrated by the tension evident on that June 18 phone call.
“Here’s the thing,” Earle-Sears said during the conversation, when pressed repeatedly by Reid for a temperature check on their working relationship. “I didn’t appreciate that every time I turned around, there was something in the newspaper about you and me and whoever else.”
The circular conversation went on from there, as both candidates seemed to reference a separate leaked conversation from April 27, when a former top aide on Youngkin’s super PAC, Matt Moran, told Reid’s longtime partner and campaign team that “getting out of the race” is “the only way to stop” the scandal from spiraling out of control. (Moran has denied he pressured Reid to leave the race or defamed him in any way. He has since parted ways with Youngkin’s team.)
On the phone call, Reid pleaded with Earle-Sears to get past the April drama. In an implicit reference to his belief that Moran had attempted to coerce him into dropping out of the race, he told her, “If you’re not trying to blackmail me, then I don’t think you ever have anything to worry about.” Reid insisted that his feud with Youngkin’s former aide “didn’t involve you.”
“You don’t think I have any trepidation about speaking to you when you’ve had private conversations that have ended up in the newspaper?” Earle-Sears shot back.
Around the nine-minute mark, Earle-Sears dropped off the call. A couple minutes later, her since-demoted campaign manager, Will Archer, said on another line that the lieutenant governor “had to hop” and that they’d have to revisit the discussion “at another time.”
Pressed by National Review, the Reid campaign and Will Archer — a pastor with no political experience — declined to comment for this story. And the Sears campaign brushed aside the phone call as a non-issue.
“These silly narratives obsessed over by political gossip traffickers won’t distract us from our united mission to defend and deliver for Virginia. We’re busy with news that matters,” a spokesman from the Winsome Earle-Sears campaign said in a statement to NR.
A Jamaica-born immigrant, Marine veteran, and former business owner, Earle-Sears is known for her independent spirit, strong religious faith, and getting to where she is on her own. As critics tell it, that insistence on trusting her own instincts has left Earle-Sears undisciplined, lacking a messaging throughline, and unwilling to trust advisers about the direction of her campaign.
A Fundraising Gap
The midsummer fundraising delta between the two candidates was striking. According to the Virginia Public Access Project, Sears raised $11.6 million as of June 30, falling behind Spanberger’s $27 million and Miyares’s $16.6. million. The Democratic Governors Association has committed $5 million to the race compared with the Republican Governors Association’s $500,000 so far for Earle-Sears.
Sources say Earle-Sears dislikes fundraising and it’s not uncommon for her to go full days without campaigning at all, which Republican operatives say is rare for a top-of-the-ticket nominee in a competitive statewide race. At one point in the campaign, she had up to two to three “personal admin days” a week, a source familiar with the matter told NR.
According to ABC News, Earle-Sears recently claimed that she’s running her 2025 race like a military-style operation, prompting searing criticism from longtime Virginia operative and 2024 Trump co-campaign manager Chris LaCivita. “More like the Bay of Pigs,” LaCivita jeered in a social media post last week.
While the popular governor is certainly helping the ticket campaign, Republicans say that the onus is on Sears to dial for dollars. And this far into the race, many donors are confused about why they haven’t received a phone call from her requesting their financial help.
“I’ve had people call me from around the country, asking: ‘Why won’t she call me?’” said Chris Saxman, a former Republican delegate and current president of Virginia FREE.
Earle-Sears’s backers emphasize that she’s gained ground in the fundraising department in the past few months. “She has done a really great job the last couple of quarters, and because of it, she will be able to be competitive heading down the stretch,” said DJ Jordan, former chief of staff to Miyares who now works in the private sector.
‘Never Even Acknowledged His Presence’
On July 1, Virginia Republicans held a carefully choreographed rally in Northern Virginia with Youngkin, Sears, Miyares, and Reid to demonstrate a show of unity among this year’s slate of Republican candidates. It marked their first joint appearance of the campaign and followed a previously scheduled joint rally back in the spring that was canceled following the explicit-photos scandal.
At the July event, Youngkin praised every candidate by name, and Reid took the stage to insinuate — without directly acknowledging the fallout — that he was ready to let bygones be bygones. “Call this Commitment Day,” he said. “I am all in for the Republican ticket of Winsome Sears for governor, Jason Miyares returning as attorney general . . . because the Republicans have the right policies to save the state of Virginia.”
But Sears kept her distance onstage and did not mention Reid in her remarks. Nor did she mingle with the other candidates in the green room before the event or privately acknowledge Reid in any fashion, sources tell National Review.
For Reid defenders, the so-called “unity” rally only worsened the ticket’s optics. “I had breakfast with John two, three weeks ago, and I did ask him about that rally,” Bolling told NR in a recent interview. “What he told me was: she never even acknowledged his presence at that rally, either personally or from the podium.”
There are some Republicans in Virginia who wonder how this year’s Virginia GOP drama and a prospective electoral wipeout for the GOP might affect the political aspirations of Youngkin, who is widely seen as a potential presidential candidate in 2028. The counterargument here is that embracing competition in this year’s gubernatorial primary would have opened another can of worms, namely, slighting his own second-in-command. So instead, she ran unopposed.
The ticket has seen a slight shift in tone in recent weeks as Election Day approaches. But critics say that following the April drama, the GOP ticket wasted far too many precious weeks running their own races rather than projecting a united front. To Chris Saxman, the former delegate, that’s “100 percent” on Earle-Sears.
“You can’t deny the body language. You can’t deny the fact that she, for months, wouldn’t campaign with him,” he said in an interview. “When I speak to groups around the state, it’s one of the first things that comes up: ‘What’s her problem with John Reid? Why won’t she campaign with him? What’s taking so long? Why can’t they be united?’ And when you’re in a difficult political environment anyway, you need every vote you can get.”