Abigail Spanberger and Winsome Earle-Sears had significant exchanges on the government shutdown, transgender issues, and abortion.
The top candidates in the 2025 election for governor of Virginia—Democratic former U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger and Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears—met on Oct. 9 at Norfolk State University for a debate about policy and their candidacies. It was the only planned head-to-head confrontation during the campaign, which will end with the general election on Nov. 4.
Spanberger and Earle-Sears debated for about one hour on a variety of topics, including the state’s car tax, federal workers, affordability, the ongoing U.S. government shutdown, transgender issues, and the Jay Jones political scandal. Most polling before the debate indicated that Spanberger has a large lead over Earle-Sears, with 52 percent support compared with Earle-Sears’s 42 percent in a recent poll by Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia.
Post-debate polling about either candidate’s performance has not yet been published.
Here are some key takeaways.
Government Shutdown
Northern Virginia, the most populous region of the state, is home to a large number of federal employees and contractors who work in the greater Washington, D.C. area. The ongoing U.S. government shutdown has deprived most of these workers of their paychecks, some of whom are still required to report for duty as “essential” employees.
Spanberger criticizes Earle-Sears and other Republicans over the shutdown of the federal government.
Earle-Sears attributed the shutdown to Democrats’ refusal to support a GOP-backed stopgap bill that would extend government funding at the existing level from before the shutdown.
“We only need eight Democratic senators … and we can find two in Virginia,” said Earle-Sears, referring to Virginia’s U.S. senators, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, both Democrats, who have refused to support a temporary funding measure passed by the House of Representatives.
She accused Spanberger and Democrats of “playing political football. … When are you going to ask Sens. Kaine and Warner [to vote for the bill]?”
Responding to this question, Spanberger said that Virginia was “the most impacted state in a time of shutdown … after months of DOGE and attacks on our federal workforce.” She referred to the Department of Government Efficiency, an agency created in the White House when President Donald Trump returned to office and led briefly by tech entrepreneur Elon Musk that sought to reduce wasteful spending and shrink the workforce in the federal government.
Transgender Issues
Virginia Republicans, since the 2021 election won by Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-Va.), have accused Democrats of being acquiescent to “transgender ideology” in schools. Polling on the issue, nationally, suggests that a plurality of U.S. voters oppose allowing people who identify as transgender to play on sports teams or use bathrooms of the opposite sex.
“Should transgender girls who are biological males be allowed to use girls’ bathrooms and play on girls’ sports teams?” moderator Tom Schaad asked at the debate.
Spanberger responded by saying that “parents, teachers, and administrators [should make] decisions about their individual schools, and not politicians.”
“There should never be nude men in locker rooms,” she added.
The issue is central to Earle-Sears’s campaign strategy in vote-rich Northern Virginia, and of great concern to suburban parents of children in public schools in the region.
“I will not rescind the governor’s executive order,” said Earle-Sears, referring to Youngkin’s directive to Virginia’s public schools that children must use the bathroom that aligns with their sex. “Are you going to change in a gym where men are nude in the locker rooms? … I don’t think you will.”
Abortion
The debate marked the first time in Virginia’s history that two women were the major party nominees, and one of them will become the first female governor of Virginia. Both were asked about abortion in the state, where the procedure is legal until the end of the second trimester of a pregnancy.
Earle-Sears deferred a question by moderators about the number of weeks at which abortion should be restricted, saying that “it will be a view of the majority.”
Spanberger, by contrast, said that she supports “the Roe [v. Wade] standard,” referring to a now-overturned Supreme Court case in which abortion could be banned after a fetus’s life becomes viable outside the womb of a woman’s body. She also said she supports a constitutional amendment to enshrine the “right to reproductive freedom” into the Constitution of Virginia.
Immigration
On the issue of immigration, Spanberger said she “never ever would support … providing any sanctuary policies here, because local and state law enforcement must always work with federal agencies when there is a warrant.” Spanberger noted her past work in the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, a federal law enforcement agency that investigates postal crimes.
Earle-Sears responded by criticizing Spanberger for her tenure as a Democratic member of Congress during the Biden administration, associating her with his border policies.
“My opponent did not vote for the Laken Riley Act,” she said, referring to a bill that was enacted in 2025 that would require mandatory immigration detention of foreign nationals arrested for certain crimes.
The bill was named after a Georgia woman killed by an illegal immigrant in 2024.
Jay Jones Scandal
The recent controversy around the Democratic candidate for state attorney general, former state Delegate Jay Jones, has also become a central theme in Earle-Sears’s campaign. In text messages from 2022, Jones suggested to another state legislator that the House of Delegates’ then-Speaker Todd Gilbert be shot dead.
“Gilbert gets two bullets to the head,” Jones wrote in one text message to Del. Carrie Coyner (R). In another message, Jones describes Gilbert’s children dying in the arms of their mother, Jennifer.
Transcripts of the text messages were displayed during the debate, with Jones having written, “Only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy.”
Jones has publicly apologized for his comments but has refused to drop out of the race. In response to the very first question of the debate, regarding the state’s car tax, Earle-Sears questioned Spanberger’s attitude toward Jones’s rhetoric.
“When are you going to take Jay Jones and say to him, ‘You must leave the race’?” Earle-Sears asked.
Spanberger responded that the comments were “absolutely abhorrent.”
“I denounce them,” she said. She did not call for Jones’s withdrawal when asked.
“We are all running our own individual races,” Spanberger said. She also referred to John Reid, the Republican nominee in the concurrent election for lieutenant governor of Virginia—the office Earle-Sears currently holds—who faced controversy after alleged sexually explicit images of him were published online.
By Arjun Singh
