Jamaican Winsome Earle-Sears running to become governor of Virginia

Jamaica-born Winsome Earle-Sears has filed paperwork to run for governor of Virginia in 2025, hoping to become the first woman to hold this office in the history of the state.

She is currently lieutenant governor of Virginia, the first black woman to hold this position.

Earle-Sears is the first Republican to throw her hat in the ring for governor of Virginia. The current governor, Republican Glenn Youngkin, cannot run again due to term limits.

If she wins in 2025, not only would she be the state’s first female governor of the state, but the first woman to become governor of any state in the United States (US).

Earle-Sears was born in Kingston, Jamaica, on March 11, 1964. She immigrated to the US at the age of six. She grew up in the Bronx, New York City. Earle-Sears earned an associate degree from Tidewater Community College; a bachelor’s degree in English, with a minor in economics from Old Dominion University; and a master’s degree in organisational leadership from Regent University. Earle-Sears served as an electrician in the United States Marines from 1983 to 1986. Before running for public office, Earle-Sears directed a Salvation Army homeless shelter. In November 2001, Earle-Sears upset 20-year Democratic incumbent Billy Robinson while running for the 90th District seat in Virginia’s House of Delegates, becoming the first Jamaican female Republican, first female veteran, and first naturalised citizen delegate to serve in the body. In 2004, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Anthony J. Principi appointed her to the US Department of Veterans Affairs’ Advisory Committee on Women Veterans. In 2004, Earle-Sears unsuccessfully challenged Democrat Bobby Scott for Virginia’s third congressional district seat. She received 31 per cent of the vote.

Earle-Sears opened a home appliance business in Virginia after her 2004 election loss.

Governor Bob McDonnell appointed Earle-Sears to the Virginia Board of Education in 2011. In September 2018, Earle-Sears entered the race for US Senate as a write-in candidate after Corey Stewart won the Republican nomination, citing his past alliances with white nationalists and other racial controversies. She received less than one per cent of the vote. During the 2020 US presidential election campaign, Earle-Sears supported Donald Trump and was national chairwoman of Black Americans to Re-elect the President.

After Republicans heavily underperformed and Trump-endorsed candidates lost in critical battleground states in the 2022 midterms, Earle-Sears criticised Trump, calling him a liability for the party, and said she would not support him in the 2024 presidential election.

On May 11, 2021, Earle-Sears won the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor of Virginia on the fifth ballot, defeating former state delegate and second-place finisher Tim Hugo (54% to 46%). On November 2, 2021, she won the race along with gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin and attorney general candidate Jason Miyares.

She was inaugurated as the 42nd lieutenant governor of Virginia on January 15, 2022.

During the election campaign, she declined to state whether she had been vaccinated against COVID-19, but she encouraged others to get vaccinated.

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