Winsome Earle-Sears, the Republican gubernatorial nominee in Virginia, speaks during a campaign event at the Vienna Volunteer Fire Department on July 1. Al Drago/Bloomberg/Getty Images Falls Church, VA —

It’s early on a Thursday evening and Winsome Earle-Sears, Virginia’s Republican candidate for governor, is in a familiar place. She’s standing outside of a school board meeting to call attention to policies related to where transgender students can use their elected bathroom and play school sports.

“Let’s have girls have their private spaces and boys have their private spaces,” she said to applause. “It has worked for how many millennia and certainly it can work now.”

Earle-Sears has blanketed the airwaves with ads that characterize Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic nominee, as

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