Republican gubernatorial nominee Winsome Earle-Sears and her conservative allies have gone all in on anti-trans messaging in the Virginia governor’s race, launching more frequent attacks — and taking those attacks further — than Donald Trump’s campaign did in 2024.
It won’t be a one-off escalation.
Earle-Sears’ increased focus on transgender issues is a preview of the Republican Party’s message in the 2026 midterm election, according to political strategists in both parties. They describe the Virginia contest as a model for Republicans in key congressional and statewide races, with candidates prioritizing transgender issues more than they did in 2024, even at the expense of longtime conservative causes like crime, immigration and even the economy.
“This is going to be in every single race in 2026,” said Lanae Erickson, the senior vice president for social policy, education and politics at Third Way, a moderate Democratic think tank. “The Virginia governor’s race is just a preview of it.”
Republicans in the Virginia race, including Earle-Sears’ campaign, have dedicated 57% of all their paid media campaigning toward transgender-related issues, according to data from AdImpact. Crime and immigration, two issues that Republicans have relied on heavily in recent elections, amount for only a combined 1% of ads, the data show.
Democratic gubernatorial nominee Abigail Spanberger is “for they/them, not us,” one TV ad from Earle-Sears alleges, mentioning transgender athletes in schools and bathroom access.
Even if Republican campaigns next year don’t concentrate their message to the extent Virginia Republicans have, strategists and party officials think these kinds of attacks will be in heavy rotation next year.
“The way the battleground is shaping up, and who the leading Democrats are on their side, this is 100% going to be part of the conversation nationally,” said one GOP strategist working on 2026 races, granted anonymity to speak candidly.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee, the political arm of the Senate GOP, has already released a transgender-themed ad this year targeting Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia, and officials have signaled their interest in using the attacks against leading Senate candidates like Roy Cooper in North Carolina and Janet Mills in Maine (Mills is expected to announce she’s running for Senate this month).
The escalating anti-trans messaging from Republicans marks a new chapter in what has been one of the most visible and emotionally visceral issues in politics recently — one that has sparked intense debate within the Democratic Party and convinced Republicans they’re on the right side of a culture war fight. Rather than fade as an issue, the treatment of trans people appears poised to become an even greater focal point of Republican campaigns, as they seek to emulate and expand Trump’s approach from 2024.
Whether they’ll be as successful with it in 2026 as Trump was in 2024, however, is a matter of debate. Even some Republicans said they were wary of the increased emphasis on anti-trans attacks, saying the party risks going all in on a subject that has limited resonance with some key voters.
Outgoing Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina scoffed at the idea that Republicans should focus on trans issues, particularly in his state. Asked if trans policies were top of mind for voters, Tillis told NOTUS, “No, I don’t think it is.”
“I think that if you take a look at right-of-center, left-of-center voters, they’re more pocketbook issues. And I just don’t see any one of those issues — unless we have some major event that draws, you know, broader attention to it — I just don’t see those as being the margin of error,” Tillis said.
“I tell everybody, go back to the tried and true ways of winning elections: It’s about the economy,” the senator continued.
An October Washington Post-George Mason University poll found that only 4% of voters in Virginia said “policies about transgender students” were their most important issue when looking at the governor’s race. “Economy/cost of living/jobs/housing” came out at the top, with 19% of people naming it as their top issue.
But right-wing groups investing heavily in trans ads are not deterred, believing anti-trans messaging has particular resonance with Virginia voters.
“Thom Tillis is an idiot, frankly,” Terry Schilling, president of the American Principles Project, told NOTUS. “He’s not basing off of any polling. He’s not basing off of any consumer research data. … I’ve spent millions of dollars in polling and consumer research channels and focus groups. I know what I’m talking about. He has no clue.”
American Principles Project has been heavily involved in the race. Most recently, the group put out a $1 million ad reminiscent of George H.W. Bush’s infamous 1988 Willie Horton ad in which Spanberger is tied to Richard Cox, a registered sex offender who allegedly exposed himself in a girls’ locker room while claiming he was a trans woman.
“Sears protects children from sex offenders, Spanberger allows men into girls’ locker rooms — men like Richard Cox,” a narrator says in the ad. “Spanberger’s radical transgender policies will let it happen again.”
The group commissioned the firm Evolving Strategies to conduct message testing in the Virginia attorney general race, finding that messaging on Jay Jones’ position on trans issues could sway voters towards the GOP candidate, Jason Miyares, by as much as 6.9 percentage points, per data viewed by NOTUS.
Schilling said that Virginia, which he called a “blue state,” is an “uphill battle” because “these statewide elections the year after the presidential, they usually go in opposite of whoever’s in the White House.”
But he said whether the strategy works is not measured by Earle-Sears winning, it’s about “how many voters did it shift?” To that end, his group plans to release ads against Ossoff in Georgia and Cooper in North Carolina.
Republicans supportive of the strategy say using anti-trans attacks galvanizes their base better than other issues and puts Democrats in a difficult position with some moderate voters. They say it also makes a broader point about Democrats’ fundamental political worldview, painting them as ideological extremists.
“People are wrong if they think it is just a culture war issue,” said Mark Harris, the lead strategist for the Earle-Sears campaign. “This is an issue about how people view fundamental realities. And to most voters who are not white, rich, left progressives, it’s a pretty open-and-shut 80/20 issue. So in politics, when you have 80/20 issues, you run with them.” (Americans’ views on trans-related issues are mixed, but polling has found they’re growing more supportive of restrictions.)
The Earle-Sears campaign’s ad referencing Spanberger’s support for “they/them” is the same line Trump’s campaign used against Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris last year in an ad that even Democrats conceded was politically effective.
But even some Republicans pointed out that the two ads had some key differences. The Trump ad, for one, showed a video of Harris saying that she believed inmates were entitled to gender-affirming care at the taxpayer’s expense; the Earle-Sears ad shows Spanberger saying members of the LGBTQ+ community deserve equal rights.
And the Trump ad used the anti-trans attack as part of a larger message about the economy, saying that Harris wasn’t focused on helping cost-of-living issues because she was focused on helping the transgender community. The Virginia Republican’s ad makes no mention of the economy.
“Is this enough to win an election? Honestly, I think the answer is no,” said one Republican strategist, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “It’s something you can define somebody as an ideologically liberal, and that’s a starting point. But we’re in a world where the voters are telling us the top issue is prices, it’s cost of living.”
A party that goes all in next year on transgender messages is “going to lose a lot of races,” the operative added.
An October Christopher Newport University survey found that “Virginia likely voters say Spanberger would do a better job than Earle-Sears” handling transgender policy by a 50–37 margin.
One House Democrat from a battleground district, who was granted anonymity to speak frankly, told NOTUS that Republicans’ reliance on trans issues is “almost like what we did with abortion,” referring to how Democrats put a heavy focus on reproductive rights in 2024.
“It’s still an issue, but I don’t think it’s quite as potent as it was,” the lawmaker said.
By hammering on anti-trans messaging, Republicans are going to get their “base riled up, but are you going to turn people? Especially, I mean, when federal workers are getting laid off, when the economy’s suffering, you know?” the lawmaker added.
Spanberger has responded to Earle-Sears’ anti-trans messaging, at least indirectly, with her own spot characterizing herself as a mother of three daughters and former law-enforcement officer who went after child sex predators. But her campaign has otherwise stayed overwhelmingly focused on economic issues, Democrats say.
Harris, Earle-Sears’ lead strategist, defended the campaign’s emphasis on the issue, saying that neither he nor anyone on the campaign thinks trans messages alone can win an election but that they still resonate more strongly with voters than nearly any other message.
“I don’t think it’s a magic bullet,” Harris said. “But very rarely in politics are there magic bullets. From my end, it’s a pretty clear positive thing.”