The June primary won't feature a race at the top of the ticket.
Former Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger will be the Democrat in the race for governor this year. And the Republican candidate will be Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears, whose potential Republican opponents couldn’t get enough signatures to get on the ballot.
"She is definitely dealing with the duality of her identity being both Black and being a woman," says Jatia Wrighten at Virginia Commonwealth University. "She will deal with both sexism and racism, and so besides having to deal with her own party and maybe them not seeing her as a loyalist, she's going to be dealing with not only her ideology, but also her identity."
While there won’t be a primary for governor, lower down the ticket, both parties have a crowded field of candidates for lieutenant governor. J. Miles Coleman at the University of Virginia Center for Politics says Republicans are going to try to portray themselves as pro-Youngkin while Democrats will be anti-Trump.
"I don't know if a statewide candidate in Virginia for lower-level office would be the best person to push back against that," Coleman says. "But they want someone who can kind of push back against what the Trump administration is doing."
The Democrats will also face a choice about who should challenge Republican incumbent Attorney General Jason Miyares – former Delegate Jay Jones or Henrico Prosecutor Shannon Taylor.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
