Unclear if Virginia will hold GOP primary for governor after last minute filing
It's unclear whether Virginia will hold a Republican primary for governor this year, but at least one candidate is out of the race after failing to collect enough signatures to qualify for the ballot.
Dave LaRock said as of Thursday's deadline that he had not gathered enough signatures to appear on the GOP primary ballot in June. Amanda Chase said she submitted signatures to the Department of Elections, but it was not clear if her campaign had the 10,000 signatures required.
The two former legislators expressed their intent to run last month, a tight turnaround. Both candidates were running to the right of Republican frontrunner Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, who they said was not loyal enough to President Donald Trump.
If Chase and LaRock both failed to meet that benchmark by Thursday's deadline, there will be no primary in the governor's race for either party. Earle-Sears will face Democratic nominee Abigail Spanberger in November.
LaRock said Gov. Glenn Youngkin's endorsement of Earle-Sears made his cause more difficult.
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'It is with regret that I announce that, despite an enormous outpouring of support which I received over a short period of time, our campaign collected over 9,000 signatures of the 10,000 petition signers needed to be on the Republican primary ballot for Governor,' LaRock said in a statement posted to social media. 'The current Governor jumping in early to designate his successor did not make it easy for us to give the Republican voters a real choice in the primary — but we came close.'
Chase did not respond to a request for comment as of Friday morning, but posted on her website that she had turned in all of the signatures her campaign gathered late Thursday afternoon.
'It's been a scramble to say the least,' she wrote. 'We've tried hard to keep the faith but we knew with entering the race 5 weeks before the deadline, time was not on our side. I truly believed that if I was supposed to be on the ballot, God would make a way. Then, the Fed Ex envelopes starting arriving just as we were ready to head out the door. On top of that, several of you dropped off your petitions at the State Board of Elections ahead of us. I was still counting signatures in the back seat of my car on the almost two hour trip from Appomattox to Richmond.'
Chase said the campaign officially submitted all of the petitions with 20 minutes to spare, but she has not yet commented publicly on whether that number amounted to 10,000.
Meanwhile, Earle-Sears reported Thursday she had raised $3.1 million in campaign funds during the first-quarter reporting period.
'The threat of radical change that would turn our Commonwealth in the wrong direction is real and demands we fight back directly and aggressively,' she said in a statement. 'These record-breaking investments speak volumes about the enthusiasm to do just that and position us to both compete and win in November.'
Spanberger also officially qualified for the ballot Thursday.
'Thank you to every Virginian who has shared with me their vision for our Commonwealth's future since I launched my campaign,' she said in a statement. 'As the Democratic nominee for Governor of Virginia, I look forward to having many more meaningful conversations with all Virginians — across our communities and regardless of who they've cast their votes for in the past — about the issues that matter most to them.'
Kate Seltzer, 757-713-7881, kate.seltzer@virginiamedia.com
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