Winsome Sears, GOP nominee for lieutenant governor, lets go of campaign team, ex-aide says

Mike Allers, who was Sears’ press secretary but is now out of a job, said he was notified by a representative of the Richmond political consulting company Creative Direct, which had been working with the Sears campaign for a few weeks.

“Campaigns retool all the time,” Sears said in an interview late Wednesday. “We’re trying to be more lean and that’s it. There is no big story here.”

“Campaigns retool. Glenn’s has retooled,” she said, referring to GOP gubernatorial nominee Glenn Youngkin. “Everybody else’s has retooled. I’m just doing it a little bit later.”

Also let go was campaign manager CJ Jordan, Allers said, saying that approximately six people were affected.

Allers said he wasn’t sure what led to the decision, had enjoyed working on the campaign and was disappointed.

“I was not told,” he said.

Sears declined to get into specifics.

Sears faces Democrat Hala Ayala in the Nov. 2 election, in which former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, faces Youngkin at the top of the ticket.

The Sears shake-up comes with the candidate down in the polls and facing criticism from Democrats over comments to Newsmax in which she said she’d support a restrictive abortion law in Virginia like the one in Texas that’s generating national headlines because it bans most abortions.

While polling shows the governor’s race is close, Ayala led Sears 52% to 42% with 6% undecided in a Christopher Newport University poll conducted in mid-August that had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.

Ayala received 39% compared to 31% for Sears in a Virginia Commonwealth University poll from earlier in August that had a margin of error of plus or minus 5.23 percentage points.

Ayala has raised more money than Sears, who ended the most recent reporting period on June 30 with $214,325 compared with $376,169 for Ayala, according to their campaign finance reports.

The candidates have not scheduled a debate.