WVIR: Reid, McGuire promote Republican ticket during Albemarle campaign stop

ALBEMARLE COUNTY, Va. (WVIR) - Less than a week away from Election Day in Virginia, voters in Albemarle County rallied around the Republican ticket at a gathering to support gubernatorial nominee Winsome Earle-Sears’ ‘Commonsense Not Nonsense’ bus tour.

John Reid, the Republican nominee for Lieutenant Governor, 5th District Congressman John McGuire, and Sears’ husband, Terry Sears, spoke to a crowd at First Free Coffee Bar on Wednesday in a final push to keep the Governor’s Mansion red.

But there was one notable absence at the campaign rally: Sears herself.

“Winsome Sears should be here today,” Reid said at the opening of his remarks. “It is wrong for the Democrats in Virginia to prevent her from being able to campaign in the last week.”

A number of issues, from education to immigration to the economy have dominated this year’s statewide campaigns.

But it was what Republicans argue has taken Sears, the current Lieutenant Governor, off the campaign trail that took center stage on Wednesday: redistricting.

This week, the Virginia House and Senate are back in Richmond for a special session, where Democrats are aiming to pass a constitutional amendment that would give them the opportunity to join the national redistricting battle.

“It’s election interference, plain and simple,” McGuire told reporters Wednesday. “They want to take Winsome Sears off the campaign trail, which is why she can’t be here today.”

Both McGuire and Reid pointed to the constitutional amendment that voters passed in 2020, which created a bipartisan commission to head redistricting efforts, aiming to make the process less political. Democrats told 29News on Tuesday that the constitutional amendment they’re pushing through would not eradicate the bipartisan commission.

“I think the average Virginian, even if you’re a Democrat, says come on guys, you chose to do this right before the election to be unfair,” Reid said. “I think there’s going to be some punishment at the ballot box for that.”

Democrats have argued that the effort is simply leaving all options available and that it’s in response to President Trump’s push for Republican states to take on redistricting, which began in Texas, and has now expanded to Missouri, North Carolina, and Indiana.

29News asked McGuire if he would support redistricting in those states.

“I’m only worried about Virginia and the next six days,” McGuire said. “Virginia is not Texas. But if that argument were true, which I don’t believe it is, but if that argument were true, they would have done something four, five, six, seven, eight weeks ago, but not in the last week of the election.”

Reid responded similarly.

“I can’t help what happens in Texas or any other state,” Reid said. “That’s why we’ve got 50 states. That’s why the people of Virginia did what probably all the other states should do.”

Terry Sears also promoted his wife in a speech to the crowd, pointing to her focus on getting public education “back to the basics,” restoring “law and order” and Title IX, and strengthening immigration enforcement efforts.

“If you come to this country, and you do it legally, she is gonna fight for you,” Mr. Sears said.

He also reiterated one of the common GOP ticket headlines, “Let’s Keep a Good Thing Going,” praising the work of Governor Glenn Youngkin and the current administration in recruiting businesses and lowering crime rates.

“The governor and my wife and Jason [Miyares] have done so well over the last four years that we have to continue that,” Mr. Sears said. “With that is bringing businesses and companies and jobs to Virginia, but guess what, if you have no law and order, those businesses and companies aren’t coming. Why would they?”

It wasn’t all pro-Sears in Hollymead on Wednesday, though. A handful of protestors from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Virginia gathered with signs ahead of the campaign visit to criticize Sears’ backing of The Big Beautiful Bill, specifically condemning efforts to roll back Medicare and Medicaid.

“Republican or Democrat, we’re all human, and human beings deserve to have healthcare,” said Lauralyn Clark, a home care worker. “We don’t deserve to have the Republican party take away healthcare for thousands of people right here in Virginia that need these critical services.”

The group has been following Sears’ campaign bus this week to speak out against “harmful positions that threaten healthcare access, cut vital services, and harm working families across the Commonwealth.”

“People are really going to die,” Clark said. “This is not a joke. This is reality.”

Meanwhile, inside, McGuire and Reid acknowledged the protestors.

“That’s the First Amendment,” McGuire said. “As Governor Youngkin says, we should be able to disagree without being disagreeable.”

At times, the Republican ticket itself has disagreed significantly. Reid experienced a rocky start to the race last spring when Governor Glenn Youngkin asked him to drop out, and the openly gay candidate is split with Sears over same-sex marriage.

“I’m not gonna lie to you - we had a rough start,” Reid said. “But everything is great now... It’s not a uniform rubber stamp ticket. It’s a group of individuals with individual experiences who have strong personalities and strong beliefs. That’s going to make us better going forward.”

Reid also took the chance to take a few shots at his opponent, Democratic State Senator Ghazala Hashmi, calling her a “radical” and critiquing her unwillingness to debate him. Last week, Reid hosted a forum with an AI-generated version of Hashmi, which spoke on behalf of the Senator.

“I kept hoping maybe my AI debate...would make her do a real debate,” Reid said Wednesday. “But instead, it’s just been more of her complaining that I did the AI debate.”

Hashmi responded in a statement to 29News.

“I’m not giving a platform to someone who treats politics like a circus and has been linked by some news reports to offensive, extremist content online,” she wrote. “Virginians deserve better than a radio shock jock as their next lieutenant governor — someone who wants to shut down public schools and compares abortion to slavery."

Reid publicly refuted Hashmi’s claim about him wanting to close public schools, the focal point of the Democrat’s most recent TV ad.

“Not true,” Reid said. “What I want to do is fix the ones that are failing.”

Despite Sears’ absence, the message of the campaign stop remained the same: vote. Though the latest polling from the Wason Center shows Democratic nominee Abigail Spanberger leading Sears by 7%, Republicans say they’re still confident.

“This is a very tight race,” McGuire said. “It’s about the next six days, that’s the only thing that matters.”

“We always say that this is the most important election ever,” Mr. Sears added. “Well, guess what folks. This one truly is.”