This story was reported and written by our media partner the Virginia Mercury.
After months of infighting that exposed deep fractures within the Virginia GOP, the party’s three statewide candidates appeared together for the first time Tuesday evening, projecting a message of unity at a packed rally in Vienna.
The event at the Vienna Volunteer Fire Department drew more than 500 supporters and marked a public effort to move past a bitter dispute that erupted this spring when Gov. Glenn Youngkin privately asked John Reid, the party’s nominee for lieutenant governor, to withdraw from the race.
At the center of the turmoil was Matt Moran, a longtime GOP operative and head of Youngkin’s Spirit of Virginia PAC, who was accused by Reid’s campaign of spreading false and defamatory claims about explicit images linked to a Tumblr account with the same social media handle as Reid’s. Reid denied being tied to the account in any way.
Despite that request, Reid took the stage Tuesday alongside Youngkin, Attorney General Jason Miyares, who is seeking re-election, and Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, now running for governor. They shared a stage on a sweltering summer evening, as volunteers handed out water bottles to attendees crowding into the fire station’s main hall.
Reid, a longtime conservative radio host and the first openly gay person nominated for statewide office in Virginia, framed the moment as a turning point.
“Call this Commitment Day,” he told the cheering audience. “I am all in for the Republican ticket of Winsome Sears for governor, Jason Miyares returning as attorney general … because the Republicans have the right policies to save the state of Virginia.”
Without referencing the recent controversy directly, Reid emphasized his credentials and long-standing work within the GOP.
“I’m the guy, like you, who gets up early on Election Day, opens the polls, and stays until they close,” he said. “I’ve stood up for minorities, for unpopular people — and yes, even for Democrats when they’ve been wronged. I’ll do the same for you in Richmond.”
The remarks attempted to rally Republican voters behind a ticket that has been overshadowed in recent months by damaging internal conflict.
Youngkin, who had remained largely silent during the dispute, offered a full-throated endorsement of the entire Republican slate at Tuesday’s rally — including Reid.
“It must be winning time again! Are you ready to sweep?” Youngkin shouted to the fired up Republicans in the room. “We’ve demonstrated how to win in Virginia — and we’re going to do it again this November.”
He praised each member of the ticket, calling Earle-Sears “a Marine who knows how to fight,” Miyares “the best attorney general in the country,” and Reid the right choice to break ties in a closely divided state Senate.
“There’s a lot of stuff I don’t know,” Youngkin said, “but I do know this — when there is a 50/50 tie in that Senate, John Reid is going to sign bills the right way, and say no when they’re the wrong bills.”
Miyares leaned heavily on the campaign’s law-and-order message, casting his first term as a reversal of Democratic mismanagement.
“The Virginia of 2021 was very, very different,” he said. “It was like when you watch those mafia movies and the guy wakes up in the trunk of the Buick — he doesn’t know where he’s headed, but he knows it’s not a good final destination. That was Virginia. We were dying as a state.”
Miyares credited the Youngkin administration with driving down the state’s murder rate and addiction deaths, and pledged to continue fighting crime, fentanyl trafficking and lenient parole policies.
Earle-Sears, who now tops the ticket, delivered the most fiery speech of the evening, lashing out at her Democratic opponent, former U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger.
“Make no mistake about it: the ideas that my opponent has are socialist in nature,” she declared. “She is reckless and she is radical. I want to grow jobs and she wants to grow government. Folks, this is not hard. This is about freedom!”
She warned that repealing Virginia’s right-to-work laws — a position Spanberger has not openly supported either — would drive businesses out of the state.
“I am not anti-union, I am pro-worker,” Earle-Sears said. “To be pro-freedom is to be pro-liberty… Businesses will get up and go. They’re going to turn us into Maryland, New York, or California.”
And in a moment that brought the crowd to its feet, Earle-Sears rejected the notion that America is inherently unjust.
“If things are so bad, then how is it that here I am — an immigrant, a Black woman — and I am second in command in the former capital of the Confederate States?” she asked.
But Democrats were quick to dismiss the GOP’s show of unity as superficial and out of step with voters’ real concerns.
Maggie Amjad, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Party of Virginia, said Earle-Sears’ rhetoric at the rally only underscored how closely she aligns with former President Donald Trump.
“No matter what Winsome Earle-Sears says, Virginians know that she will always put Donald Trump’s agenda before the commonwealth,” Amjad said in a text message.
She accused the lieutenant governor of cheering on policies that threaten Virginia’s economy and failing to stand up against cuts to Medicaid that could affect more than 300,000 residents.
“While Virginians deserve a governor who fights for the commonwealth,” Amjad added, “Sears is dismissing workers worried about their jobs and telling Virginians to ‘wait and see’ as their healthcare is at risk.”
Still, Tuesday’s GOP rally served as a public reset for the party after an earlier unity event planned for Henrico County was abruptly canceled in May as tensions reached a boiling point. At the time, former Republican Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling was among those who publicly criticized the fallout, noting that no one had confirmed whether the explicit account in question was ever actually linked to Reid.
“It derailed what was supposed to be the GOP’s first show of unity,” Bolling said at the time.
Republican Party of Virginia Chairman Mark Peake struck a more optimistic tone Tuesday, declaring the current statewide ticket “the best since 2021” and predicting victory across the board.
“We are going to win all three statewide races,” Peake said. “There are three reasons why: Winsome Earle-Sears, Jason Miyares, and John Reid.”
For their part, the GOP party leaders appear intent on turning the page and putting the rift behind them.
“Virginia today is the very best place to live and work and raise a family,” Youngkin told the crowd. “But we have to protect that. We know how to win — and now we have the candidates to do it.”
Virginia Mercury reporter Nathaniel Cline contributed to this report.
