By Lauren Victoria Burke
BlackPressUSA Newswire Contributor

All eyes will be on Virginia and New Jersey as voters select a Governor and other statewide officials in those states this year. 

The “off year” elections will be viewed as a referendum on President Trump. They will take place well after Trump’s budget is decided on and as many of his decisions on war, immigration and health care have hit home for many voters. Many could say that’s already happened. 

But in Virginia, the question of diversity will be on the ballot as the Commonwealth presents the most diverse statewide ticket in U.S. history.

The historically diverse statewide ticket in Virginia includes an openly gay Republican white male, a Black male attorney from Norfolk, a Jamaican-born U.S. Marine corps veteran, a Muslim woman born in India, a white woman who was a CIA officer and a Cuban American Republican. Who knew that a southern state could yield such a diverse ticket at a time when the Trump Administration has marketed heavily against “DEI” in an attempt to use it as a political weapon against Democrats?  

Lt. Governor Winsome Earle-Sears is the GOP nominee for Governor in Virginia. Her personal story includes her father immigrating from Jamaica, where Earle-Sears was born, to support the family. She served in the U.S. Marines and is currently the sitting Lieutenant Governor of Virginia. 

The Republican nominee for Lieutenant Governor is openly gay conservative talk show host John Reid. Reid had to fight his own party off after he was challenged by Youngkin to drop out of the race in April after photos surfaced on social media. Instead, Reid fought off the controversy and threatened to sue a political operative of Gov. Youngkin. The GOP ticket in Virginia is rounded out by the sitting Attorney General in Virginia: Jason Miyares. Miyares won alongside Gov. Glenn Youngkin in 2021 as they defeated the ticket led by Terry McAuliffe.

On the Democratic side, former Congresswoman and CIA officer Abigail Spanberger spent six years in Congress branding as bipartisan and moderate. Spanberger appears to be extending that strategy into her race for Governor. In a May 9 interview with Vanity Fair, she stated that President Trump will not necessarily be a primary focus over issues such as the economy. But in a year that features Trump’s authoritarianism on full display, many voters on the left are calling for fire and brimstone and they’re looking for someone who will bring the heat to the Trump Administration.

With Earle Sears and Spanberger at the top of the Republican and Democratic tickets in Virginia it’s certain that the next Governor will be a woman — which will make history in the state. 

The Democrats are running State Senator Ghazala Hashmi as their candidate for Lieutenant Governor to go up against John Reid. 

Hashmi has focused on progressive issues in the Virginia Senate and worked to protect health care. Her strength is that she will always be the adult in the room and will likely attract a powerful segment of the electorate that doesn’t get a lot of media attention: Voters of South Asian descent. 

Finally, at Attorney General, Virginia’s Democratic nominee is former Virginia House of Delegates member Jay Jones, 36. Jones’ resume includes working as an Assistant Attorney General in the Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia. He is the only Black male on either ticket and will likely bring much needed help to Spanberger to win over Black voters in November. 

Lauren Victoria Burke is an independent investigative journalist and the owner of Black Virginia News. She is a political analyst who appears regularly on #RolandMartinUnfiltered and hosts the show Comms Class on YouTube @LaurenVictoriaBurke. She can be contacted at LBurke007@gmail.com and on twitter at @LVBurke.

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