Deporting Violent Aliens Could Be a Big Winner for Earle-Sears
Would make a good Earle-Sears bumper sticker. Image credit: Restoration News
by James A. Bacon
Winsome Earle-Sears, the Republican candidate for governor, has unveiled her first campaign ad. In it, she introduces herself to the voting public as an immigrant from Jamaica, a former Marine, and a small businesswoman. The tag-line: “Earle-Sears is living proof that the American dream is alive and it is her mission to keep it that way for all Virginians.”
In her stump speeches, Earle-Sears advocates traditional Republican priorities: Education reform, business and job creation, an all-of-the-above energy policy, and safe communities. It’s a solid platform. But is it enough to defeat Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic candidate who has a reputation (whether deserved or not) as a “moderate”?
The campaign strategy playbook says to define your opponent on your terms, not theirs. Earle-Sears has not done that yet. A handful of press releases emanating from her campaign have been critical of Spanberger, but they have been scatter shot and they have failed to gain traction. One issue, though, seems to have breakthrough potential—the deportation of criminal illegal aliens.
In a recent press release and video on X, the Earle-Sears campaign assailed Spanberger’s “close allies,” Fairfax County Commonwealth Attorney Steve Descano and Sheriff Stacey Kincaid, for releasing a violent criminal illegal immigrant into the community despite his federal firearm conviction and allegations of violent crimes.
The same press release also took note of an incident in a Wise County maximum-security prison in which five Salvadoran MS-13 members injured five (stabbing three) prison guards in a premeditated attack.
“This is what Spanberger’s Virginia looks like: criminals walk free, ICE is ignored, and law enforcement is undermined,” said campaign press secretary Peyton Vogel. “When you surround yourself with radical weak-on-crime allies like Descano and Kincaid, the consequences fall squarely on your shoulders. Time and time again, Spanberger proves to Virginians that she doesn’t take their safety seriously. This is just another example.”
Clearly, the Earle-Sears team sees the issue as a potential winner. The X video shown above has performed modestly well with 19,400 impressions as of writing. But equally clearly, the issue has not yet achieved critical mass.
Perhaps it could after this: Spanberger criticized U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for arresting two illegal immigrants in an Albemarle County courthouse and, in the words of the Daily Progress, “whisking them away in unmarked vehicles to a detention center in Farmville.”
“I think what we’ve seen most shocking, including here in Charlottesville, has been cases where people haven’t provided identification and have been in some cases masked and in plain clothes,” Spanberger told the Daily Progress.
As a former federal agent who worked narcotics and money-laundering cases, she said, she carried out many search and arrest warrants. “Even when you enter a home, in a stack, lined up, guns drawn, yelling, ‘Police!’, you show your badge, you show your credentials, you show your warrant.”
That may be a legitimate point—I don’t know enough to say. The ICE agents were operating in hostile territory: Albemarle County, a politically progressive community centered on Charlottesville where the local prosecutor, much of the population, and perhaps even local law enforcement are sympathetic to illegal immigrants. Whether that affects the way ICE conducts its arrests is an angle worth examining. Earle-Sears should not put herself in a position of trampling on due process.
But the larger picture is this: When Spanberger chooses to take a stand on a deportation-related issue, she consistently stands with deportees and the progressives who would thwart Trump administration immigration policy. While Trump is not popular in Virginia, I expect that his immigration policies are (unlike his trade policies) and Earle-Sears is politically astute to align herself with them.
One press release and video on X won’t drive that message home. But repeated messages might. Spanberger has made herself vulnerable by siding with the deportees without ever acknowledging that maybe they should be deported, even if ICE also needs to dot its i’s and cross its t’s. If she wants to frame the debate as ICE agents not wearing uniforms, not showing their badges, and driving in unmarked vehicles, Earle-Sears will have her right where she wants her—defending criminal aliens on grounds that most voters will view as superfluous.
I sense that her campaign team gets this and will hammer the point home. The beauty of this issue is that the usual Democratic playbook—portraying Earle-Sears as a xenophobic bigot who hates brown people and immigrants—is off the table. She is a brown person. She is an immigrant. And, as she frequently reminds her audiences, she entered the U.S. legally.
“Spanberger defends violent aliens. I defend you.”
It could make a great bumper sticker.
