By Derrick Max,
Last night’s first and final Virginia gubernatorial debate between Winsome Earle-Sears and Abigail Spanberger had one clear loser — the approximately 446,000 Commonwealth voters who had already cast their early ballots.
For a state that has such a storied civic heritage, relying on a single, late-stage debate fails the test of responsible governance. The increase in no-excuse early voting, with a 45-day window to early vote, meant that hundreds of thousands of voters cast ballots before the candidates were scrutinized through the heat of direct, unscripted questions under the lights of a debate stage. No doubt, it seems, this is exactly what the two candidates intended.
The lack of debates allows the candidates to curate their image through campaign ads and partisan talking points, rather than a direct, head-to-head comparison on the issues that truly matter. Early voters were thus denied the opportunity to see if the two candidates for Virginia’s highest office can think on their feet, know the issues, or have a vision for how to lead.
The other clear loser in last night’s debate was Jay Jones, the Democratic nominee for Attorney General whose text messages wishing “two bullets” to murder then Speaker of the House Todd Gilbert – and the death of his children — were leaked by an unwitting recipient who was included accidentally in the violent text thread two years earlier. Jones then followed up the text messages with a phone call where he tried to justify his views and doubled down on his extremely violent text rhetoric.
Winsome Earle-Sears called for Jones to drop out of the race, and pressed Abigail Spanberger to do the same. Spanberger’s refusal to do so looked weak, and difficult to understand considering her clear denunciation of Jones for sending the repugnant text messages. For Jones, to have both candidates at the top of the ticket roundly denouncing his actions was a sure blow to his candidacy.
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