Winsome Sears Wants Black Voters to Rethink the G.O.P.

RICHMOND, Va. — On a December afternoon, Winsome Sears, Virginia’s lieutenant governor-elect, stood astatine the podium successful the State Senate enclosure wherever she volition soon preside. It was bare but for a fewer clerks and staffers who were walking her done a signifier session, making unreal motions and points of order. Ms. Sears followed on arsenic the clerks explained arcane Senate protocols, though she occasionally raised matters that weren’t successful the script.

“What if they’re making a ruckus?” Ms. Sears asked her tutors.

Then, a clerk said, pointing to the elephantine woody gavel astatine Ms. Sears’s close hand, you bang that. Ms. Sears smiled.

That she was lasting present astatine each was an improbability built upon unlikelihoods. Her run was a agelong shot, precocious successful starting, skimpily funded and repeatedly overhauled. The governmental trajectory that preceded it was hardly much auspicious: She appeared connected the country 20 years ago, winning a legislative spot successful an upset, but aft 1 word and a quixotic bid for Congress, disappeared from electoral politics. She concisely surfaced successful 2018, announcing a write-in protestation against Virginia’s Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, but this earned her small beyond a fewer funny mentions successful the press.

The absorption connected Ms. Sears’s triumph, successful quality profiles and successful the post-election crowing of blimpish pundits, has been connected the uncommon operation of her biography and politics: a Black woman, an migrant and an emphatically conservative, Trump-boosting Republican.

“The connection is important,” Ms. Sears, 57, said implicit a luncheon of Jamaican oxtail with her modulation squad astatine a edifice adjacent the State Capitol. “But the messenger is arsenic important.”

This is the question that Ms. Sears embodies: whether she is simply a singular fig who won a astonishment triumph oregon the vanguard of a large governmental realignment, dissolving longtime realities of contention and partisan identification. Democrats accidental determination is small grounds for the latter, and that Ms. Sears won with emblematic Republican voters successful an particularly Republican year. But Ms. Sears insists that galore Black and migrant voters people broadside with Republicans connected a assortment of issues — and that some are starting to recognize that.

“The lone mode to alteration things is to triumph elections,” she said. “And who amended to assistance marque that alteration but me? I look similar the strategy.”

Ms. Sears dates her ain partisan epiphany to her aboriginal 20s. She already had plentifulness of beingness acquisition by that point: moving astatine the property of 6 from Jamaica to the Bronx to beryllium with her father, who had travel seeking work; joining the Marines arsenic a mislaid teen and learning to beryllium a diesel mechanic; becoming a azygous parent astatine 21. When she listened to the 1988 statesmanlike campaign, proceeding the debates implicit termination and welfare, she realized, to her surprise, that she was a Republican.

More than a twelve years passed earlier Ms. Sears, past a joined parent of 3 who had tally a stateless structure and gone to postgraduate school, began her governmental career. At the urging of section Republicans, she ran successful 2001 for the House of Delegates successful a bulk Black territory successful Norfolk. The spot had been held by Billy Robinson Jr., a Democrat, for 20 years; his begetter had held it earlier him. Weeks earlier the election, Mr. Robinson spent a nighttime successful jailhouse connected a contempt of tribunal charge. Ms. Sears won successful the astonishment of the predetermination season.

In the Legislature, she adjusted to the governmental architecture and her antithetic spot successful it: joining, past leaving, the legislative Black caucus; voting dependably arsenic a Republican but calling earlier than galore colleagues for the resignation of the Republican House talker erstwhile quality broke of his intersexual harassment settlement.

She did not tally for re-election, alternatively launching an underdog run against Democratic U.S. Representative Bobby Scott. Mr. Scott returned to Congress, wherever helium remains, and the House of Delegates spot returned to Democratic hands for good. Ms. Sears was “done with politics,” she said.

Her household moved to the tiny metropolis of Winchester successful the Shenandoah Valley, wherever Ms. Sears and her hubby ran a plumbing and electrical repair shop. She held a fewer posts — connected the authorities committee of acquisition and connected a committee astatine the Department of Veterans Affairs — and wrote a book, “Stop Being a Christian Wimp!” Much of her absorption was connected caring for a girl struggling with intelligence illness. In 2012, the daughter, DeJon Williams, was killed successful a car mishap on with her 2 young children.

While Ms. Sears was absent from politics, Barack Obama won the presidency, Trayvon Martin was killed, the Black Lives Matter question roseate up, Donald Trump was elected and neo-Nazis marched connected Charlottesville, Va. Ms. Sears’s governmental example, arsenic a Black pistillate Republican representing a bulk Black territory successful Virginia, went unrepeated.

Republicans, she said, seldom adjacent tried to sever the aged ties betwixt Black voters and the Democratic Party. This is partially wherefore she decided to tally this year.

“I conscionable took a look astatine the field, and said, ‘My God, we’re gonna suffer again,’” she said. “Nobody was going to scope retired to the assorted communities that needed to beryllium heard from: women, immigrants, you know, Latinos, Asians, Blacks, etc.”

She stood to the close of overmuch of the tract and was arguably the furthest close of the 3 Republicans nominated for statewide office. She favors strict limits connected abortion, calling Democratic termination policies “wicked”; she is an advocator of vouchers to assistance students wage for backstage schoolhouse tuition and of tighter restrictions connected voting; and she insists that weapon power laws bash not deter transgression — weapon ownership does. A photograph that went viral past spring, showing her holding an AR-15 portion wearing a blazer-and-dress outfit suitable for a Chamber of Commerce luncheon, propelled her arsenic overmuch arsenic thing to the Republican nomination.

Ms. Sears derides the near arsenic excessively acrophobic with contention but often explains her authorities arsenic rooted successful Black history, stressing Marcus Garvey’s rhetoric connected self-reliance arsenic a Jamaican migrant successful Jim Crow America, emphasizing that Harriet Tubman carried a weapon and referring to the infamous Tuskegee experiments successful explaining her absorption to Covid-19 vaccine mandates. “If the Democrats are ever going to speech astir race, past let’s speech astir it,” she said.

She rejects the conception that the problems Republicans person attracting Black voters mightiness tally deeper than specified neglect. She was angered erstwhile Republicans nominated Corey Stewart, who had a past of associating with Neo-Confederates, for the 2018 U.S. Senate contention successful Virginia. But she said this didn’t springiness her qualms astir the party. She remains a champion of Mr. Trump, who openly endorsed Mr. Stewart; indeed, she was the nationalist chairwoman of a radical called “Black Americans to Re-elect the President.”

Jennifer McClellan, a Democratic authorities legislator from Richmond, agreed that Democrats could not presume that Black radical would amusement up for them astatine the polls, saying that Black voters, similar immoderate voters, take candidates based connected who they judge is going to assistance lick their problems. But, she continued, small that Ms. Sears has said suggests she would beryllium that idiosyncratic successful office.

The grounds that this year’s elections scrambled the fundamentals of contention and partisanship is mixed astatine most. If anything, immoderate Republicans disquieted that Ms. Sears’s hard-right authorities mightiness jeopardize the run strategy of appealing to much mean voters. This hazard was mostly mitigated, said John Fredericks, a blimpish vigor host, by the information that Ms. Sears’s wide predetermination campaign, which helium called “a bid wreck from commencement to finish,” ne'er raised capable wealth to truly broadcast her politics.

In immoderate case, the attraction was overwhelmingly directed to the apical of the ticket.

“The predetermination this twelvemonth was each astir the gubernatorial candidates,” said Stephen Farnsworth, a governmental idiosyncratic astatine the University of Mary Washington. There were fewer large surprises successful the exit polls, respective governmental experts said, and Ms. Sears won her contention by a borderline that would person been expected of conscionable astir immoderate Republican this year.

But determination were immoderate informing signs for Democrats, outlined successful a postelection survey by the Democratic Governors Association. While Black Virginians overwhelmingly voted for Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic nominee for governor, the investigation recovered a driblet successful Democratic enactment among Black men, compared with the 2020 statesmanlike election. There was notable erosion successful Democratic enactment among Asian and Latino voters arsenic well.

“We don’t request to beryllium tied oregon beholden to 1 peculiar party,” said Wes Bellamy, a Black governmental activistic and a erstwhile vice politician of Charlottesville. He volition beryllium watching Ms. Sears closely, helium said.

Lieutenant governors successful Virginia are reasonably constricted successful their responsibilities, but they person a nationalist illustration — and they astir ever tally for governor. If Ms. Sears advocates for policies that amended the day-to-day lives of Black radical and, much crucially, if she tin transportation her Republican colleagues to spell along, Mr. Bellamy said, “I deliberation she’s gold.”