All Eyes on Virginia Equality’s Chance to Fight Back

Spring 2025 • Zach Sener He/Him

With more than a year remaining before the 2026 midterm elections, Americans everywhere have had enough and are hungry for any opportunity to issue a repudiation of MAGA politicians and their fixation on harming LGBTQ+ people. Thankfully, Equality Voters in Virginia will not need to wait long, as the commonwealth prepares to hold their election for governor and state-level offices in November of this year.

Following four years of anti-equality Gov. Glen Youngkin’s failed leadership, Virginia’s 2025 elections cannot come quickly enough. Younkin’s record as governor has been marred by his continuous attacks on LGBTQ+ Virginians, particularly transgender youth. In 2022, his administration issued a directive ordering school districts to adopt policies requiring transgender students to use facilities and participate in activities corresponding with their sex assigned at birth, prompting a student walkout in protest. Term-limited, Gov. Youngkin will depart office next year, leaving a shameful legacy of division and political showmanship in his wake.

Now, HRC gladly looks to the future and is proud to endorse pro-equality candidate Abigail Spanberger to be the next governor of Virginia. From her time in the CIA to serving in Congress, Spanberger has shown time and again that she is a champion for the LGBTQ+ community and will fight for all Virginians. In Congress, Abigail cosponsored and voted for the Equality Act to protect the LGBTQ+ community from discrimination in employment, housing, education and public spaces. She also fought to pass the Respect for Marriage Act, which became law and codified the recognition of same sex and interracial marriage.

Abigail Spanberger and Danica Roem with supporters in 2021

Spanberger would bring these same values to the governor’s office, as she works to safeguard the rights of all Virginians and make sure that no member of the LGBTQ+ community is denied government services, loses a job, or faces any other form of discrimination because of who they love or who they are. She has also committed to working with the General Assembly to enshrine marriage equality in Virginia’s constitution and to sign legislation guaranteeing Virginians’ right to access contraception and birth control. Spanberger’s candidacy offers Virginians renewed hope for a future rooted in equality, where policies are driven by facts, empathy, and an unwavering belief in human dignity.

In stark contrast, Republican gubernatorial nominee Winsome Earle-Sears served as Youngkin’s lieutenant governor and stood in lockstep with his administration’s anti-equality agenda. Just last year, Earle-Sears said that she stood “shoulder to shoulder” with the Family Foundation, who filed a legal challenge that same week to overturn Virginia’s ban on conversion therapy. She came out “emphatically” against same-sex marriage in 2004, and dodged questions about whether she would support a same-sex marriage ban in Virginia as recently as in 2022. Even worse, Earle-Sears campaigned in 2021 with E.W. Jackson, a failed Republican candidate for Virginia’s lieutenant governor and pastor who said homosexuality was the “work of the devil.”

Virginia’s election this November is one of our first high profile opportunities since Trump’s election to defeat anti-equality MAGA politicians at the ballot box and will no doubt be seen as a bellwether for what is to come in 2026. Pro-equality lawmakers currently have razor thin majorities in both houses of the Virginia General Assembly that must be protected in order to safeguard our progress. That’s why HRC is stepping up to activate and mobilize Virginia's two million Equality Voters to elect Abigail Spanberger and send a clear message that while extremism may win attention, equality wins elections.