Can Abigail Spanberger win?

It's been assumed for a month that Abigail Spanberger would defeat Winsome Earle-Seares, then become Virginia's next single-term govoernor. Ben Domenech's op-ed questions that theory. Domenech's op-ed is particularly noteworthy because he's a Virginia resident with his wife Meghan McCain. But I digress. Back to the op-ed.

Domenech wrote "The off-year governor’s election in purple Virginia is almost always a win for the party that doesn’t hold the White House, but this year the race is showing how much Democrats have refused to learn their lessons from their massive culture-war losses of 2024. The battle in the Old Dominion has all the hallmarks of Democrats’ White House defeat in November."

Quite a few polls show Spanberger with a significant, though not prohibitive-sized lead. With Jay Jones' ethical difficulties, it isn't likely that Spanberger will open up an outside-the-margin-of-error lead.

The Turning Point?

Thanks in part to a massive spending gap, Spanberger built up a double-digit polling lead over the summer; many in the GOP wrote off the race as lost.

But in recent weeks she’s stumbled badly over the case of Richard Cox, a biological man claiming transgender status who’s exploited local “bathroom laws” to repeatedly expose himself to women and children in Northern Virginia locker rooms.

Fairfax County police say they have no intention of charging Cox with any crime, despite public outrage — and even though his phone reportedly contained both child porn and a schedule tracking children’s swim classes.

This should be easy for a politician with any common sense to condemn. Instead, Spanberger has dodged.

Ms. Spanberger is making this much more difficult than it has to be. Check this out:

After getting caught, Jones insisted that he was joking. He wasn't. Since then, Spanberger has been mostly silent. That's the definition of sick. It's the definition of being a Democrat, too.