Yes, Virginia, there are elections in 2025

It's the best place to prove Trump's multi-ethnic coalition can grow

The Old Dominion is the New Opportunity for Republicans.

The country is now locked into a polarized partisan grid that has the parties at near parity.

Only three states now send split-party delegations to the U.S. Senate – the lowest number in history. Only 16 House districts are represented by the party opposite of the one that carried it in the most recent presidential contest – also the lowest number in American history.

To break the gridlock of unworkably tight majorities, one of our two parties must grow in states it is now losing, while staunching the bleeding in states that realignment has been narrowing.

For Republicans, Virginia is the-one-that-got-away in our lifetimes, and that makes it the place where the GOP must claw back. That effort begins today, the first day of this year’s general election in the Commonwealth after yesterday’s Democratic primary.

From 1968 to 2004, Republicans won Virginia in every presidential election. In 1969, the GOP broke the Democratic machine that ran state government and in the next eight gubernatorial elections, Republicans won an average of 52 percent of the vote.

In the 21^st century, Virginia’s trajectory has been terrible for Republicans, who lost 4 of 6 races for Governor and fumbled the state’s electoral votes in presidential elections in every race after George W. Bush retired. No Republican has won a U.S. Senate race in the Old Dominion since 2002. The only bright spot has been in races for the powerful office of Attorney General, for which the GOP has won all but two elections since 1991 and in which the GOP nominee typically runs ahead of the rest of the ticket.

Joe Biden’s disastrous first year in office helped Republicans establish a fire break in Virginia in 2021, electing Glenn Youngkin as Governor, Jason Miyares as Attorney General, and Winsome Earle-Sears as Lieutenant Governor. This year, Republicans nationwide have a vested interest in extending that fire break by helping Miyares, who is running for re-election, and Earle-Sears, who is shooting for Governor. The state House of Delegates is also on the ballot, and Democrats hold a 51-49 majority, but the GOP can reclaim the majority by sweeping the 3 vulnerable Democratic seats and losing no more than 1 of its own.

Virginia must be a priority for any Republican anywhere in America who can help, because the GOP imperative to win in Virginia is bigger than just pulling one state back from the liberal abyss. It’s also a chance to prove the model for the new, multi-ethnic party of work we saw emerging in Donald Trump’s popular vote victory in 2024 nationwide.

Earle-Sears is a Jamaican immigrant and Miyares is the son of a Cuban immigrant. The state is 11 percent Hispanic and 7 percent Asian. Earle-Sears is a Marine who got into politics winning a majority-black Delegate seat and Miyares a former line prosecutor who cut his teeth winning elections in the state’s most important swing locality: Virginia Beach.

The first immigrant and first child of immigrants to hold statewide office in Virginia since the post-Colonial era, the pair is ideally suited to get an audience from non-traditional GOP voters, many of whom are giving fresh looks to the GOP because they share views on affirmative action, criminal justice and immigration policy. Miyares’ race against Jay Jones, a former state delegate who has been on the far left side of criminal justice reform, will test this dynamic.

Non-white voters account for most of the moderates in today’s Democratic Party, juxtaposed with the over-educated whites who are the Party’s liberal faction. Northern Virginia, the exurbs and suburbs of the nation’s capital, offers one of the country’s best laboratories to observe this widening schism. The way for Republicans to reclaim Virginia is to peel off exurban non-white moderate voters who are freaked out by Democratic radicalism on cultural and security matters.

Once you get more than 10 miles south or west from the 14^th Street Bridge that connects Virginia to Washington, you’ll find neighborhoods of 1960s and 1970s housing stock whose owners have driveways full of white panel vans, the tool of choice for immigrant blue collar entrepreneurs; self-employed painters, carpenters, plumbers, and roofers. They fill up Catholic Churches on Sunday mornings and bank branch lobbies on Friday afternoons. Further north, in the rows of newer town homes within the landing path of Dulles Airport are striving families of Asian descent, furious at the Democratic rigging of the education establishment to make it harder for their kids to get into the best public universities. These groups represent the frontier of Republican opportunity.

Educational attainment was previously a driver of the GOP’s trouble in Virginia, where 42 percent of adults hold college degrees – seventh highest among the states --compared to 35 percent nationwide. But education density is now the Democrats’ problem. Those degree holders disproportionately reside in a few hyper-educated, close-in DC burbs that have a college attainment rate over 64 percent, creating a social pressure vortex that pulls neighbors leftward with on one-upper yard signs and virtue-signaling Instagram posts. Over time, that sheepskin concentration and its ratcheting group think, has pulled the whole state’s Democratic Party leftward, and its governance with it, into faculty-lounge dogma. That’s why Republicans can regain our footing in the other parts of the state.

Trump got 46 percent in Virginia in 2024, one point better than he did in 2020 and 2016, and one point worse than Mitt Romney in 2012. Youngkin, Miyares, and Earle-Sears nudged to majorities in 2021’s elections by being more competitive than Trump or Romney in the edge communities outside the metro areas.

By biography and accomplishment, either or both Miyares and Earle-Sears can do it again this year and grow their support among immigrant communities who are now more familiar with them - and with the real agenda of today’s Democrats - than they were in 2021. Republican donors nationwide should wake up, pitch in, and give them the chance.

COLUMNIST’S DISCLAIMER: I not only am part of Jason Miyares’ campaign team, I have known him for 15 years and hosted his first fundraiser as the 2021 nominee in my backyard.