Hello, I’m Alex Swoyer. Welcome to the Washington Times interview with Virginia Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears, who is the Republican candidate running for governor to replace Glenn Youngkin. She is Virginia’s first female lieutenant governor and the first woman of color elected to the job.
[SWOYER] I wanted to start with the issue of race. I know it’s something that’s come up in the campaign. You just had a rude exposure to racism. I think it was the JMU football game. Someone in the stands yelled, “Go back to Haiti.” Obviously, the person doesn’t know much about you or geography. You’re originally from Jamaica, born there, U.S. citizen now. I’m wondering what role race has played in your campaign. And have there been any other incidents like this that you found to come up or is this isolated?
[EARLE-SEARS] It’s unfortunate, Alex. This racism issue has come up too often. The very famous one is one that most people probably know about, which is when you saw the sign that said Black people can’t use our water fountain. And, here I am, second-in-command and the former capital of the Confederate States. And really, is this what we’re doing? And it’s so bothersome because, you know, my dad came to America, August of 1963, just 17 days before Dr. King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech. And so here I am, second-in-command. And is this what we’re doing?
And the Democrats are the ones who are doing it. It’s not the Republicans. And supposedly, the Democrats love us Black people more than everybody else and they tolerate people more than everybody else, except when you don’t tow whatever line they want you to tow. And that’s not what we want to do. So I’m just so disgusted by it. And then you saw this liberal man tell me I needed to go back where I came from, which is a different country anyway. And does he forget that I said that I joined the Marine Corps while I was still not a citizen of these great United States, willing to give my life to fight, and yet he wants me to go home? You can’t make this stuff up, and I think, and I hope it opens people’s eyes to the fact that this is not what America ought to be. Just because I am a Republican should not make any difference.
[SWOYER] Right, and I think, through the 2024 election, when I was talking to voters, they were tired of identity politics or trying to use race to align certain people to certain parties. I wanted to ask you about President Trump. This week, he said that he wants the Republican in your race —in your governor’s race — to win. But he hasn’t really invested in the race all that much.
[EARLE-SEARS] He said that about Jersey, too. Well, we want to make sure there’s the Jersey race. We want to win that, too.
[SWOYER] That’s true. I think Spanberger will be campaigning with President Obama. I think that’s the plan. Spanberger actually has criticized you as being a MAGA extreme. How does President Trump fit in this race? I was curious about your relationship with the Trump administration.
[EARLE-SEARS] So I’m sure you know that the president wants me to win. And so you saw what he said. And let me tell you something. We are going to win in Virginia because we have the right ideas. We have the common-sense ideas. When we came into office in 2022, after the inauguration, Governor Youngkin opened up all the schools. The children were failing, failing badly, because they were looking at the silly computer screen that the previous governor, the Democrats, shut down all our schools, shut down our businesses, and shut down our houses of worship, just took total control of everything. You couldn’t leave your house unless you had a written order on why you were able to leave.
COVID didn’t do it, the response to COVID, the Democrat governor’s response to COVID. So people were sick and tired of that. You know, this is America. There’s this thing we like, like Liberty, like Freedom. And so we opened up everything. We brought our economy back. We have so many jobs that we’ve created. We have, by the way, created almost 16,000 now, new business startups, high-paying startups that never existed until we came into office. And then we’ve been able to attract businesses from elsewhere to come to Virginia. And so we have now about 225,000 job openings. So we’ve historically put more people back to work, and we still have job openings and businesses are still coming.
Watch the video for the full conversation.
