Editor’s note: After publication, John Fredericks, a conservative radio host and general manager of the John Fredericks Media Network, reached out to NOTUS and said his “team is responsible for writing and airing the ad in question.” Fredericks said Winsome Earle-Sears’ gubernatorial campaign was not involved in the radio ad’s creation.
“I reviewed the ad and it just got past me,” he said. “I own the company and I take full responsibility for that.”
“I value and appreciate the work; you ought to be holding everyone accountable,” Fredericks said after reading NOTUS’ reporting. “Nobody was trying to embellish her record, she’s got a great record. It was just an oversight and it got past me.”
Fredericks said the radio ad, paid for by the Glenn Youngkin-tied Spirit of Virginia PAC, has been edited to no longer indicate that Earle-Sears fought “overseas.” It is still being run during his radio shows. Earle-Sears campaign has not responded to NOTUS’ request for comment.
—
Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears served in the Marine Corps in the 1980s as an electrician and diesel mechanic — a record she touts as she campaigns to be the state’s next Republican governor.
The pro-Earle-Sears Spirit of Virginia PAC, which is tied to Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, appears to be embellishing that record.
“Marine, legal immigrant, business owner, fighter. She fought for our freedom overseas,” a radio ad paid for by the group says, going on to call Earle-Sears’ opponent, Democrat and former U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger, “a Washington swamp creature,” and a “deep state CIA operative.”
A NOTUS review of Earle-Sears’ interviews and past writing found no reference to the Virginia Republican fighting overseas during her time in the Marines.
“I served proudly in the U.S. Marines, but I don’t claim to have been on any foreign battlefields,” Earle-Sears wrote in her book “How Sweet It Is,” published in 2023. “Stolen valor is no joke among Marines.”
Earle-Sears’ own campaign has not made the same assertion about her military service as the Spirit of Virginia PAC.
Spirit of Virginia PAC has become a major player in the Virginia governor’s race. One source familiar with the PAC’s operations who is not authorized to speak for the committee said that there’s normally “constant coordination with all the campaigns” they support.
It is not clear whether the Spirit of Virginia PAC radio ad was coordinated between the campaign and PAC, or if any media production company reached out to Earle-Sears to clarify her background.
Spirit of Virginia PAC and the Earle-Sears campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Under Virginia election law, candidate committees and PACs are allowed to coordinate.
Lee Goodman, a former Federal Election Commission chairman who, while in private practice helped craft the Campaign Finance Disclosure Act of 2006 for the state of Virginia, said that clarifying details about a person’s background may not even rise to the level of coordination.
“Answering basic questions, like positions on policy and what have you, is an exception to coordination even under the federal system,” said Goodman, who emphasised that coordination between a PAC and a candidate would be legal under Virginia law. “I don’t think that telling a PAC about an incorrect fact in an ad constitutes material involvement or coordination.”
Earle-Sears has made her military service a campaign cornerstone. She wears an “Eagle, Globe and Anchor” pin, the insignia of the Marine Corps, almost constantly and says “I’m a Marine” often in her political ads. She became the first woman veteran to hold a statewide office in Virginia when she won the lieutenant governorship in 2021.
Earle-Sears describes her time in the Marine Corps as a formative experience. In her writings, she also said repeatedly that she served domestically. Earle-Sears said in her book that her unit at Camp Pendleton, California, was only “practicing deployments and playing war games.”
She has spoken extensively about the culture and rules of the Marine Corps at a time when women were not often allowed to be placed in overseas positions. Congress and the Department of Defense didn’t officially open combat roles to women until 2013.
“I did have an opportunity to go to Okinawa, [Japan], but those orders came down in such a way you were allowed to refuse them,” Earle-Sears wrote in her book. “I opted to stay stateside. I’m sorry I did that.”
In another passage, she said she “couldn’t be deployed because I couldn’t find anyone to look after DeJon,” her daughter.
“Finally, there was yet another deployment coming up, and I was forced to beg off,” she writes. “It just was not going to work. I had one more year left on my enlistment, yet I felt that I was not pulling my weight.”
According to Earle-Sears, that last missed deployment and an on-the-job injury motivated her to leave the Marine Corps.
In her book, Earle-Sears frowned on the practice of misrepresenting one’s military service — and accused Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of doing so.
She claims Blumenthal “intimated that he had been on the battlefield.” Blumenthal, who represents Connecticut, told The New York Times in 2010 that he had misspoken about his service.
“We veterans call that stolen valor,” Earle-Sears writes.
A July 16 poll by Virginia Commonwealth University indicated Earle-Sears trailed Spanberger by more than 10 percentage points. The race has started to worry national Republicans.
“Money and polling have broken down at this point that Spanberger has a significant lead,” John McGlennon, a professor of government at William and Mary told NOTUS. “Lt. Gov. Sears has had a history of sometimes being in the right place at the right time, but not really having to rely on a very well-funded, clear-eyed campaign like Spanberger is running.”
Earle-Sears recently asked her campaign manager to step down, according to reporting by The Washington Post. McGlennon described Earle-Sears’ campaign as “racked with problems and issues,” one of those being “a campaign manager who rides around with you in the car going to various events, as opposed to really strategizing and overseeing a complex statewide campaign organization.”
For any candidate, McGlennon noted, an inaccurate accounting of military service is a big risk.
“The nature of military experience is something that’s particularly likely to result in these sort of controversies over whether somebody has been accurate or not,” McGlennon said. “It does distinguish them from lots of other people — because relatively few Americans will have served in the military and maybe know fully the nuances that are involved.”
—
Correction: This story has been updated with John McGlennon’s correct title. He is a professor of government.