Winsome Sears’ campaign for Lieutenant Governor has been a paradigm of controversy and conviction, similar to her Republican colleagues. 

Recently she met with the PW Perspective to discuss how the campaign trail is going and her vision for the Commonwealth. She began by discussing getting removed from Twitter last month and how it affected her campaign.

“I try not to subscribe to nefarious activities,” said Sears, “but it’s very suspect that they kicked me off Twitter for no reason. They didn’t give us a reason and then they said some suspect information showed up from here or there, but they didn’t really ask us to confirm when it was all said and done.”

“Had it not been for people having a massive outcry, I might still be off. That’s not right, and it’s not fair.”

“I was off for three to four days. I’m running for the second highest office in the land, and they’re giving my opponent free rein for four days. That’s part of the reason people hate politics and may vote this year because they realize they can be canceled.”

Once she was back on social media, she bounced back to campaigning, targeting the Democrats for supporting the racially charged system of eugenics and forced sterilization for Black women:

“The truth of the matter is we are not having our babies. The Klan couldn’t be more happy about what’s happening. Black women make up half of the abortions in the nation. I think we need to have better maternal health, we need to have better information systems. Where are our parents, family members and church groups who would help us with an unwanted pregnancy?”

Despite Sears’s claim that Black women account for half the abortions in America, a 2014 study shows that is not the case. No racial group makes up a majority of abortions, and Black women only account for 24%, according to the study. A similar study conducted in 2018, shows that Black women account for 34% of abortions nationwide and 45% in Virginia.

Another topic that was in the news lately were the poor conditions at Virginia mental institutions, and Sears recalls a personal situation, and what she feels is the most efficient way to deal with the problem.  

“These issues have been with us for quite some time now. You see that some of these people who have an encounter with the police, they are mentally incapacitated. My daughter was bi-polar, and she was having an episode, and they put her in jail because there were no hospitals for her. We have to make a concerted effort to keep our hospitals open. We have the money.”

“Here’s something really radical: what are we doing with the money that we have? Half of our budget goes into education. That’s the state level. What we have to ask ourselves is how is that money being spent? Is it going into the classrooms, where it’s most needed? Or is it going to the administration?”

“The programs we are funding in Virginia, how are they being spent? Is there any metric to determine if there is any success? We can take that money and put it towards our mental health facilities.”

“I was talking to another organization in VA Beach, where there is a high sex trafficking and I found two teenagers who they rescued from the system. There were no beds available, so they had to go to Montana to find a bed. That’s unacceptable!”

“We need a concerted effort to open our facilities, and we need to see where we are going to get the money to spend it. When I was in the House of Delegates, I was on the Finance Committee, and a program was reaching its sunset. We agreed that we would fund them for five years and then they would have to fund their own money. Five years later, they said they needed more funding. If your program is successful, then surely in five years you can find some organization to fund it because it’s worthwhile. We re-upped it because we didn’t want to seem like we didn’t care.”

“We need to conserve more and that is by having a top-to-bottom audit to see where the money is going and that’s by having a forensic study.”

Speaking of financial recovery, how does she plan on leading the Commonwealth back into stability as Lieutenant Governor? She says that the opportunities are already here, and it is up to the people to seek these opportunities.

“The jobs are here. I have jobs, but we can’t find people. But we can’t find them because a high amount of people out on unemployment are making quite a bit of money. As for businesses, we are cannibalizing a lot of workers. I have raised my prices in order to pay my people more, but more is not enough because someone has raised their prices.”

“Inflation is real. I know businesses that have shut down. The COVID didn’t shut down our businesses when the Governor decided what businesses were essential. I started my business during the Great Recession [of 2008] but what is going to shut me down is the government policies of this administration. Mr. [Terry] McAuliffe and my opponent [Hala Ayala] haven’t said we need to do anything different in saying we need to go back to work, because there is work.”

More than just finding a job, what is Sears’ approach to obtaining and maintaining generational wealth, particularly in marginalized communities?

“You have to start with a good education, because without a good education you go nowhere fast. My father came to America on August 11, 1963 from Jamaica, 18 days before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.” 

“I said to [my father], ‘Why would you come here?’” He said to me, this is where the jobs are. He saw opportunities. He came with only $1.75. He took any job he could find to put himself through school, and is now comfortably retired. Education brought us out of poverty. I believe that Black business is Black power. You know who said that? Richard Nixon. Who thought that he was a homeboy?” 

“What we’re finding is that our children are failing spectacularly. I was on the State Board of Education, and I know where to look for information. When we look at the NAEP scores, and test them on five different areas, I’m going to concentrate on two, Math and English. Did you know that by the time our children reach the eighth grade, 45% of White children are failing, 75% of Latino children are failing, and 84% of Black children are failing math, and 85% of Black children are failing when it comes to reading comprehension.”

“Our children must have a hope and a future. Most of those jobs are going to be taken away because robotics are taking over. At the grocery store, I’m checking myself out.”

“These entry-level jobs are no longer going to be around, and so we need education to be prepared. How do we do that? Competition. I said before that we need the money to go into the classroom so the students can get what they need and the teachers need to be paid more. Second, we need to have school choice. Why don’t we have that ability to have different options for schools?”

So what is her solution?

“It is time for us to have competition.” Sears states. “It works in states like Florida, where they have a lottery system. By the fourth year where students are out of the public school system, the students are at an advanced reading level. Meanwhile, the students in public schools are still struggling. I talk with Black parents, and I ask them where they want to send their kids. It is to private, parochial and even homeschool.”

She advocated for trade schools. “My business is a trade, so you don’t need to get $50,000 in loans that you have to get back. You can get a trade that pays $80/hour with paid training. Our kids need an apprenticeship that will launch them so we can create generational wealth.”

Next, she takes on the often talked about but rarely understood concept of Critical Race Theory, which she and fellow Republican candidate for Governor Glenn Youngkin object to being taught in public schools.  

“As I said, I’m knocking on doors of Latino, Black and Asian communities, and not one person has said we need CRT. One teacher said, ‘We can’t even keep math teachers.” 

“If the objective is to let a child know their history, and they can not just survive but thrive, then I’m all for that. I’m for Black history the entire year and boost everyone’s morale. At the base of CRT, it says ‘I’m oppressed and the white man is the oppressor.’ That doesn’t help anyone develop critical reading or math skills or create generational wealth. We need more science and technology theory. That is what the women in ‘Hidden Figures’ did to get a man on the moon, and now they ‘re doing away with the advanced diploma because they’re saying it dumbs Black children down. Let our children succeed and then I hope that when our children see me, they don’t say she’s special but that they can reach where I’m trying to reach. All I did was stay in school, study and learn, and I hope to give that message to our children. That’s what I’m about, hope and future.”

We asked Sears to speak upon the lessons she has learned along the way which helped her to prepare for her bid to become Virginia’s next Lieutenant Governor?

“It’s not one thing, it’s several things; it’s life that has prepared me for this. The reason I became a Marine is because our matriarch passed. When she passed, I said to myself I need some discipline, so I joined the Marines, because I knew I wasn’t going to make it. Then I went to college, and I had three girls, all under five. I went to become a lawyer and passed the LSAT, but then I realized I wanted to do more with my life. I became the head of a homeless shelter for women, giving them a place to stay and helping them get back into society.”

“If there was one thing that got me into politics, it was just that I wanted someone to ask me for my vote. No one ever talked to me about the issues. I ran because I wanted people to understand that the seat I have belongs to them, the 90th district. I wanted people to see what servant leadership looks like.”

“I met a couple that was losing their home to eminent domain in a Black neighborhood. I would not have known if I didn’t knock on their door. I talked to the university that was going to take their land, and they decided that they were going to get more money to keep the house.”

One thing she has done is taken the opportunity to give back to those in her district by letting them see how things work on the General Assembly floor. “I would take a teacher and one activist and take them to Richmond so they would shadow me in the House of Delegates. If I was on the floor, they were right there with me. I wanted them to see this is what being a delegate is all about.”

Although she is very confident about the momentum of the campaign heading into the general election, she knows there are those who may be on the fence. What is her message to them? 

“My opponent says that she would not take money from state regulated utilities, and those voters supported her financially. The week before the election, she took the money, so she did not keep her promise and the people who supported her, she sold them out. A politician must keep her promises, and now we know that my opponent can be bought, and it doesn’t matter what policies she presents, she cannot be trusted. I cannot be bought, because all I have is my integrity.”

“When it comes to police, let’s get rid of the bad apples and let’s keep our police in the communities, like we used to.”

She concludes with a saying that is close to heart, “You can either light a candle or curse the darkness, and to light a candle is to create change, and that is what I’m here to do.”

Sears will face off against Delegate Hala Ayala in the election on November 3rd. The PW Perspective has proudly endorsed Ayala for Lt. Governor of Virginia.