EXCLUSIVE: Republicans Won't Flip Virginia Red Without the Permanent Campaign Model

Virginia's race for governor is shaping up to be the most consequential race of 2025 and a bellwether for the 2026 midterms. Lose those and we put President Trump's entire America First agenda in jeopardy, inviting endless stalling and impeachment hearings by Democrats.

Ned Ryun is trying to prevent that.

"We can't run like it's 2005 if we're serious about beating the Left—and I hope conservatives are as serious about winning as we say we are," he told Restoration News in an exclusive interview.

Getting Serious Means a Permanent Campaign

Ryun is the founder and CEO of American Majority Action, which trains conservative leaders, and the nation's leading expert on what's called the "permanent campaign"—building the infrastructure to prime Republican voters not days, but years in advance of Election Day. That requires coordinated voter registration, message microtargeting, and maximal early voting turnout—whether it's in-person or by absentee ballot.

"Virginia has 45 days of early voting," Ryun explained. "If Democrats are banking votes in mid-September, Republicans can't wait until November 4 to start turning out the vote. They have to start now—or better yet, years ago."

Of the 722,863 voters on Virginia's permanent absentee ballot list, fully 72%—that's 518,098 voters—are likely Democrats. Just 25% are likely Republicans (178,765 voters).

Ned Ryun, American Majority

Identifying each party's likely voters is a challenge since Virginia doesn't register voters by party affiliation, but the latest estimates give Democrats a nearly 300,000-vote advantage: 2.3 million Democrats vs. 2.07 million Republicans, and 1.7 million independents.

Despite Democrats' advantage, the Old Dominion is eminently winnable for Republicans. Kamala Harris actually lost votes here last year—about 78,000—compared with Joe Biden's 2020 turnout while Trump gained 113,000 votes overall. Closing their 260,000-vote gap in 2028 will be challenging, but possible, if Republicans focus on the right priorities.  

"Unless we start investing in changing those numbers, the Right will struggle in Virginia," Ryun said. "It's time for us to understand the fundamentals of the right numbers that lead to winning, and many times it's the registration and permanent absentee list numbers that count most here.

"Right now there's work to do if we want Virginia to be a real battleground state in 2028," he added.

Ryun's argument is simple: If early voting is on the table, Republicans must use it or lose elections, a drum he's been beating for years. In a post-COVID world used to voting early, there's simply no way to turn out enough GOP voters on Election Day to overcome weeks of voting dominated by Democrats.

John Tillman, chairman of American Culture Project, agrees. "The Left already runs a permanent campaign. We can’t just show up three weeks, three months or even three years before Election Day—we need to organize year-round, register voters, bank early votes, and build real trust in communities that are open to a new message."

By "new communities," Tillman means young, black, Hispanic, and working-class Americans—voters fundamental to the new Trump coalition. Trump wooed them "not because of slick slogans, but because he spoke to their lived realities: Rising prices, failing schools, unsafe streets.

John Tillman (Illinois Policy Institute)

"But if the center-right coalition keeps fighting today's battles with yesterday's tactics, we’ll lose that momentum," he warns.

Both experts urge conservatives to take early voting. Last July, Ryun warned strategists not to count on Election Day turnout to overcome the Democrats' political machine in an article titled "The Economics of Early Voting." It's an aspect of the permanent campaign the Left understands all too well… but the Right is still struggling to grasp, even after Trump's blowout win in November. He writes:

Voting by mail shortly after receiving your ballot costs the movement approximately $10-12 per vote, maybe even less, depending on how many calls, texts, postcard reminders or door knocks are needed. If you return it the day you get it, the cost could be as low as $2-3.

Voting in-person with the week or two after voting locations open increases the cost to around $20, but again, could be less depending on when you go. If you go the very first day of early in person voting, obviously the cost is much, much less.

Waiting to vote in-person on Election Day, however, can cost the Right as much as $100 per vote—50 times more expensive than mailing your ballot in once early voting starts in September. "Door knocks, live calls, postcards, texts, digital ads, mind you, from multiple different entities like campaigns or grassroots entities, all add up," Ryun said. "And a campaign or outside group is not going to stop contacting you until they know your vote is in."

That's crucial for Republicans to understand, because last-minute political ads in October—coming too late at a multi-million-dollar price tag—won't counter the mountain of early votes banked by Democrats. The GOP tried this in Wisconsin's crucial Supreme Court race in April, launching $6 million TV buys one week before Election Day… only to lose by 10 points in a race where Republicans actually outspent Democrats.

The takeaway: How that money was spent mattered more than how much was spent.

Likely Democrats dominated early voting 28% to 12% among likely Republicans, giving liberal candidate Susan Crawford a major advantage entering Election Day, according to data from Restoration of America. Yet just five months prior, Trump cut Harris' early vote lead by two-thirds compared with 2020 turnout and actually won in-person early voting—ultimately taking Wisconsin by 29,000 votes. That was due to the permanent campaign infrastructure built by American Majority Action and other conservative groups active across the state.

Republicans didn't need to beat Democrats at early and Election Day voting to win; we just needed to reduce their early voting lead to come out on top.

(RELATED: Losing Wisconsin is Proof We Need the 'Permanent Campaign' to Win)

Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin proved this twice in 2021 and 2023, respectively, with his Secure Your Vote campaign to convince Republicans to cast their ballots before Election Day. In 2020, Democrats dominated early voting by 31 points. A year later, their lead dropped to 19.5 points, enough for Youngkin to (narrowly) take the governor's mansion. Republicans slipped in the 2022 midterms, losing early voting by 26 points—though still not as big a margin as in 2020—but clawed their way back to a 15-point margin in 2023 with Youngkin's Secure Your Vote rerun.

Democrats retook the General Assembly that year, true, but those razor-thin majorities would've been much larger without the Secure Your Vote campaign: Perhaps 55–45 in the House of Delegates and 23–17 in the Senate, according to analysis I've seen.

2024 proved Virginia Republicans' best year for early voting on record: Likely Democrats won early voting by just 8.6 points, the closest yet.

That's excellent news for the GOP as we near November, but only if we maintain momentum. As in Wisconsin, the goal isn't to beat Democrats at early voting but simply to cut their lead so Republicans can overcome it on Election Day. And lacking the spending advantage in Wisconsin means Republicans don't have a choice.

Connecting Issues That Matter to Voters

Democrat Abigail Spanberger has raised close to $23 million compared with just $9 million for Republican Winsome Earle-Sears, as of writing. Outside group spending will probably favor Spanberger here as well—another reason to focus those precious resources on conservative voter turnout instead of obsolete tactics.

Note: That's "conservative voters," not "Republican voters." There's a difference.

The April Wisconsin Supreme Court race highlighted the party's difficulty in reaching Trump-only voters, part of the non-traditional coalition the Donald has crafted over the past decade. These are voters who show up for him, but rarely for other Republicans on the ballot. Until the Right figures out who these individuals are and what makes them tick, we'll struggle to earn their votes. 

Perhaps 76,000 such non-traditional conservatives voted for Trump in November and the liberal Crawford in April—despite polls showing they broke hard with her on issues like abortion and the state's voter ID law. "They can't be treated like straight-ticket Republican voters who toe the party line," Ryun points out. 

John Tillman also urges Republicans to "treat each voter as a person." 

Trump-only voters have "a mixture of policy views and varying levels of intensity on the issues. By engaging down to the voter level, campaigns can determine for each voter what is the most animating issue that will motivate them to turn out," he says. "Treating them as cookie cutter pods of voters is a losing strategy."

In other words, the key is finding issues they're passionate about and connecting those issues to Lt. Gov. Sears. The good news: She has plenty to boast about that voters would love to hear on the hated car tax, cost-of-living, energy prices, K-12 education, and illegal alien crime, all of which take the top spots in poll after poll.

Sears' basic pitch is cementing the legacy of Gov. Youngkin, who enjoys a 51% approval rating in a blue-leaning state with plenty of accomplishments under his belt:

• Nixing the commonwealth's grocery tax—a major 2021 campaign promise;
• Breaking ground on a state-of-the-art commercial nuclear fusion plant, the first of its kind in the world, that promises to lower electricity bills;
• Returning nearly $1 billion in tax relief to taxpayers despite Democrat efforts to block any tax relief;
• Ending DEI in schools and approving $290 million for new school construction;
• Arresting 500+ illegal alien criminals and overseeing a 38% drop in crime in Virginia's worst cities; and
• Vowing to abolish the highest-in-the-nation car tax over Democrat opposition in the General Assembly—whereas Spanberger, in practiced politicalese, merely backs a "path" to ending it.

(RELATED: Virginia’s Car Tax is the Highest in the Nation and Democrats Want to Keep it That Way)

It's the Economy…

The Spanberger campaign has a simple path to victory: Avoid alienating moderates and boost Democrat turnout in strongholds such as Richmond and Norfolk, as well as ultraliberal northern Virginia suburbs, where a quarter of the state's population resides.

Sears' path is trickier. She must fire up the traditional GOP base, connect herself with Trump to nab Trump-only voters, woo moderate suburban "soccer moms" in Northern Virginia with kitchen table policies, and avoid getting bogged down on the social issues… while also playing up Spanberger's radicalism.

"Sears is saying the right things to appeal to a wide spectrum of voters," James Bacon, an expert on Virginia politics and publisher of the popular commentary blog Bacon's Rebellion, told Restoration News. "On the economy, she emphasizes jobs, private-sector growth and an all-of-the-above energy policy. Her social justice themes stress equal opportunity, not equal results, freedom of school choice for the poor, and crime-free communities.

"Whether her messaging can penetrate the fog generated by her opponent and the media is another question," Bacon added.

Bacon calls it "a tall order" indeed, but "feasible" if Sears sticks with that winning slate of issues. Recent polls suggest Spanberger's lead over Sears has dropped from 10 points in January to 4 points. (These are admittedly early results; polling will pick up in the wake of the Democrats' June 17 primary.)

For his part, Ned Ryun urges conservatives not to get cold feet when they already have a winning battleplan. "Don't waste your money chasing ads while this ballot chasing infrastructure is money-starved," Ryun urges conservative donors.

It's proven advice. The question is, will the Right listen?

(READ MORE: Virginia Democrats Desperate to Fill All 100 Delegate Candidate Spots)