Charlie Kirk, Trans School Policies To Motivate 'Unlikely Voters' In VA

An update on the electoral battle over 'gender identity' in schools

Over the last two weeks, I onboarded at Genspect as a staff editor without a byline. They needed someone and I was available. However, that also means I have fewer weekly hours to attend to this website. Henceforth, I will be posting just 3-4 times per month besides my two podcasts and at least one book review, so I am dropping the premium subscription rate by 40 percent. I will also be publishing everything behind the paywall first, with less content unlocking than before. Upgrade your subscription now to have full access to this content in 2026. I will be at Genspect this weekend and will have exclusive reporting next week.

---

If you believe the public polling, Abigail Spanberger is leading Winsome Earle-Sears by up to 12 points among “likely voters”. But Dr. Bromley-Trujillo, a political science professor at Christopher Newport University in Virginia, points out that Democrats were surprised before in 2021 by discounting the effect of ‘culture war’ campaigning on unlikely voters.

Errors via autotranscript at ABC 7:

“The last go-around, part of the context at this point in the polling season, related to President Biden's popularity. His popularity went down considerably over the time frame from when we took that poll to election day, and so really what's happening is the federal level is incredibly impactful on state elections,” she said. “Biden's trajectory went way down, and so did Democrats' fortunes in this state. I'll also say that there were some campaign issues that were helpful to the republican party [sic] less [sic] go-around.”

None of this will be a surprise to premium subscribers of The Distance. Elections are won by the candidate who mobilizes the highest number of voters to the polls, not polls of the likeliest voters. Now Andrew Stanton reports at Newsweek that at least one Democratic consulting firm is flashing a red light in Virginia.

“Democrats ‘risk losing’ the pivotal New Jersey and Virginia races if they do not shift their strategy to excite the base, according to a new report by Impact Social shared with Newsweek.”

Impact Social looked at two bellwether off-year elections, the Virginia and New Jersey governor’s races, and found a distinct enthusiasm gap in favor of both Republicans. In New Jersey, “net sentiment for Sherrill online is -27, compared to +14 for Ciattarelli. In Virginia, Spanberger has a net sentiment of -28, while Earle-Sears’ sentiment is +18. In both cases, the discrepancy is because the left is ‘venting against Trump while failing to support the Democratic candidate or attack their opponent,’ according to the report.”

Democrats think their oppositional politics are inherently motivating, but that is not the case. “Relying on Trump as a mobilizing foil can only go so far. If Democrats cannot channel that oppositional energy into genuine support for their own candidates they risk losing these contests,” the report reads. Meanwhile, Earle-Sears has her own mobilizing foil, and Spanberger seems eager to lean into it in the most ineffectual way possible.

“Abigail Spanberger just went full Kamala Harris to avoid a simple yes or no question,” Sears tweeted yesterday. “The answer is YES—Abigail supports men in girls’ sports, restrooms, and locker rooms.”

It is the worst kind of answer to a simple question: Spanberger wants to breathlessly “recognize” that people are concerned about boys cheating at girls’ sports and hanging out in their locker rooms, but she wants to stick by the tried-and-true method of “local” control by “communities” where such policy has been captured, so that as many boys as possible can be encouraged to cheat at girls’ sports and hang out in girls’ locker rooms. Spanberger attempts to elicit empathy for the “individual circumstances” of boys cheating at girls’ sports and hanging out in girls’ locker rooms. Can’t we all just get along and keep doing the policy that genderwoo activists captured ten years ago? It was working so well for special boys who want to cheat at girls’ sports and hang out in girls’ locker rooms.

There is a truism in politics that if you are explaining, you are losing. The more Abigail Spanberger explains her position on this issue, the more she will lose. In deeply-blue Virginia, she may still win, anyway. However, the diffence — the ‘delta’ — between her expected win (9 to 12 points among “likely voters”) and the eventual turnout will give us a clear indication of how salient this issue really is.

Let us not engage in Pollyanna forecasting. Notionally, if Spanberger expects to win by 10 points and only wins by one point, we can assume the difference is largely made up of voters mobilized by this issue, with some effect from the Charlie Kirk assassination. This is very much to hope for, so naturally, Earl-Sears is doubling-down on an issue that motivates her potential voters.

New fuel has been added to this issue fire. According to a letter from the Defense of Freedom Institute to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, “on September 2, 2025, a 14-year-old girl entered the girls’ locker room at West Springfield High School and changed into clothes for gym class, but as she was leaving the locker room, the girl encountered a male student who has ‘facial hair’ and was ‘wearing pants that were so tight they clearly outlined his genitalia’ standing inside the girls’ locker room and watching the girls preparing for P.E. class.”

On the same day that Charlie Kirk was killed, and again the next day, “DFI says the girl was upset by the boy’s presence in the locker room, where she had just changed, and other girls were in various stages of undress as they prepared for their required gym class.” The boy has since been observed using the boys’ locker room.

DFI says that when the girl told a teacher that there was a boy in the girls’ locker room, the “teacher told her daughter there was nothing that teacher could do about the boy’s intruding into the private facility reserved for females and watching girls as they changed.”

Pressed for comment on the story by Nick Minock, a local ABC affiliate reporter, Spanberger sperged forth a bowl of word-salad aimed at tickling all the talking points about the evil orange man and the sacred class that must be allowed in girls’ sports and spaces. Her staffers prevented Minock from following up the question, because of course they did.

The circumstance as this legal case plays out is really one of we’ve had court cases settled or judged here in Virginia in the fourth district, the former Gavin Grimm case related to bathroom usage. And in fact, the argument is the assessment is there needs to be much clearer guidance in terms of what is an executive order’s binding assessment of Title IX versus what has been a decision of a court. But ultimately, the real impact here is, once again, it is the Trump administration taking dollars away from Virginia. Threatening education dollars to our public schools is an attack on Virginia’s kids. It’s an attack on our economy. It’s an attack on Virginians. And as governor, the important thing is, as a candidate for governor, the important thing, the important priority for me is to ensure that we have the best public schools in the entire country. And the reality is, when we have a president who is coming after Virginia, our education system, whether it’s K-12 or whether it is our public universities that is harmful to Virginia, our ability to educate our kids and ultimately our economy.

Earle-Sears, on the other hand, is relentlessly hammering her opponent with a clear, unambiguous message, exhibiting laser-like focus, because it frames her opponent in a motivating way. How much motivation remains to be determined, but it is already being measured, since early voting has started. Results are being baked-in, right now.

As noted, the Charlie Kirk effect will also play a role. “Let your rage fuel you,” Spanberger said at a recent event. “Every time we turn on the news, we let it fuel us. Every time something bad we say, ‘Oh, that’s motivation’. I’ll tell you this, I have an opponent who’s incredibly motivating.” She is of course telling too much truth, there.

“Rage. That’s what Abigail Spanberger is calling for,” Winsome Earl-Sears responds. “We’ve seen it with racist signs, cruel jeers, even cheering a father’s assassination for daring to disagree. I’m asking for love. Love for our neighbors and our Commonwealth.

“Because Virginia is for lovers — not rage.”

The Distance is monitoring this story until November. Our coverage will unlock starting on Election Day. I will be back next week with a report from the Genspect conference in Albuquerque as well as a book review.