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The Republican nominee for governor of Virginia had the two best fundraising days of her campaign after a liberal activist protested her with an inflammatory sign that her party pushed to go viral, even after Democrats condemned it.
The episode began on Thursday evening, when Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears spoke at Arlington County’s school board, criticizing its gender-inclusive policies that have caused the Trump administration to threaten a loss of federal funding. Among the supporters of the policy who rallied outside against Earle-Sears was Anita Martineau, who carried a sign reading: “If trans can’t share your bathroom then blacks can’t share my water fountain.”
Earle-Sears’ campaign confirmed in person that the sign was real, then circulated the image on social media. A spokesman for Democratic nominee Abigail Spanberger quickly denounced the sign, as did local Democrats. We of Action, a local group whose logo was on Martineau’s shirt, soon called the sign “racist” and said that the activist was “no longer affiliated” with it.
But Republicans were already at work in the meme mines, making Martineau’s sign infamous. The RNC, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz attacked it on X. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in small donations rolled into Earle-Sears’ campaign, according to Mark Harris, a general consultant for her.
The sign flap deflated Spanberger’s previously careful approach to the schools’ policies. Like every Virginia Democrat, she’d denounced the administration’s funding threat; last week, a campaign spokesman told Semafor that the candidate thought that LGBTQ equality decisions “are best made at the local level with local parental input.”
Yet for days, Republicans hammered Martineau and anyone who didn’t condemn her, as she avoided media requests and got shunned by the left. She’d joined a parade of liberal activists, writers, and pop culture figures, most relatively anonymous, whose culture-war tactics proved toxic enough to Democratic candidates to make them overnight celebrities for Republican campaigns.
“I spent a decade where I had to answer for any lunatic who showed up at a Republican rally,” said Harris. “This is about how the main constituency Abigail Spanberger cares about is rich elite white voters in northern Virginia.”
Know More
The sign story got fairly light pick-up in Virginia media, but much more in national conservative outlets, widening Earle-Sears’s donor network at a helpful time. Matthew Hurtt, the chair of the Arlington County GOP, even sent Martineau a thank-you letter — telling the activist that she had just made it easier for Republicans to win in November.
“This is going to stick to Abigail Spanberger because Anita Martineau said the quiet part out loud — she said what they all say at progressive meetings,” Hurtt told Semafor. “She expressed an opinion that is held by maybe 10% of the population. Reasonable people think it’s an insane position.”
In fact, Martineau’s sign angered plenty of Democrats, some of whom were already worried that smug liberal activists are harming the party. Ben Tribbett, a Virginia-based Democratic strategist, wrote on X that his party had a “Karen” problem, with some activists leading ineffective and alienating protests that hurt the whole ticket.
“Can any Virginia elected or candidate have Indivisible branded stuff at their events after this?” Tribbett told Semafor. “Every time one of these Indivisible groups shows up now this will come back up and harm the statewide ticket again. Going away would help Democrats win.”
Some Democrats see it another way: That Republicans are exaggerating the tendency of some liberals, like Martineau, to over-react to tensions they inflamed.
“I’ve condemned the sign,” wrote Mark Broklawski, a vice chair of the Virginia Democratic Party. “What I won’t ignore is the climate Sears’ campaign fuels, one built on division instead of solutions.”
David’s view
Throughout the summer, Republican candidates and campaigns have repeatedly tried to link Democrats to decisions made and opinions aired by liberals who are nowhere near elected office. It’s all about capitalizing on the nervousness inside a party that’s increasingly concerned about being viewed by voters as over-educated culture police.
For instance: No Democrat with any power criticized American Eagle for a jeans ad starring the blonde actress Sydney Sweeney, which made a pun about her genes. None endorsed a re-brand by Cracker Barrel, a restaurant chain that hired a new CEO after its stock plunged in 2023. (The Democratic National Committee’s X account, reacting to anger at the re-brand, posted that it “sucks.“)
Yet Republicans all the way up to President Donald Trump mocked liberal posters and pundits who were offended by the Sweeney ad. The GOP also blamed left-wing culture for Cracker Barrel’s bland makeover.
Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn, the favorite to win next year’s race for governor, shared the news cycle’s definitive meme on the right: old Cracker Barrel logos under pictures of Donald Trump, and the new logo under a picture of Joe Biden.
The story Republicans are telling is that the Democratic Party is a hollowed-out vehicle for the most obnoxious liberalism you can imagine. Sometimes the connection is strained; in Arlington, it was fairly direct.
Martineau really was a sometime Democratic Party volunteer, which made it easier for Democrats to explicitly denounce her. She didn’t speak for Spanberger, who would never make Earle-Sears’ race an issue in the campaign.
But the underlying sentiment on her sign, comparing anti-trans legislation to segregation, had come up before at the state level. In March, when New Hampshire Republicans enforced separation by biological sex in all public spaces, it split the Democrats: One of the party’s Black legislators supported the law, and a white colleague compared it to Jim Crow.
The ultimate goal for Republicans elevating Martineau, or Cracker Barrel’s CEO, or anyone offended by Sydney Sweeney, is to incorporate those minor characters into the already weak Democratic brand.
That’s easier than ever to do thanks to AI, which generated the incendiary images of Spanberger and a whites-only water fountain that now pop up in the Democrat’s social media replies.
Room for Disagreement
In the American Conservative, Spencer Neale rolled his eyes at the “Boomer Republicans” who argued that the Arlington sign controversy had transformed the Virginia election.
“It was a story without legs that had already come and gone” by Sunday, he wrote.
Notable
For WTOP, Valerie Bonk covers what happened when Earle-Sears spoke at the school board meeting: “There are two sexes, boys and girls, and for generations, we’ve understood this, that they deserve their own sports teams, their own locker rooms, their own bathrooms.”
On her Substack, Erin Reed explains and links to the gender-inclusive Virginia school policies being targeted by the Trump administration.
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