Virginia Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears (R) and former U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) faced off for the first and only time in a televised debate Thursday, October 9, as they head into the final stretch of a campaign to see who the commonwealth’s first female governor will be. The election, one of only two gubernatorial elections in the country (the other is New Jersey), is considered a bellwether, testing the Trump administration’s policies.
A dozen students from the Schar School of Policy and Government’s First-Year Democracy Lab learning community were invited to the Washington, D.C., studios of WUSA9, the local CBS affiliate,
to watch the debate and participate in a postdebate discussion. The intent was to shed light on what young, engaged voters took away from what turned out to be a heated and sometimes chaotic broadcast.
WUSA9 reporter Katie Lusso conducted the interview with the George Mason University students, which revealed a variety of opinions, both positive and negative, about both candidates. You can see Lusso’s interview with the students at this WUSA9 webpage.
The consensus was that Earle-Sears won the debate.
Eight students went into the interview planning to vote for Spanberger while three were undecided; one was committed to voting for Earle-Sears. In the end, one of the undecided students chose to vote for the lieutenant governor.
The results of the debate aside, the invitation by a major media outlet in the nation’s capital was a welcome opportunity to make the voices of the next generation of voters heard. It is something the Schar School students agreed should be done more, adding that the visit to the studios—and the pizza dinner—was a productive and enlightening experience.
“I got a lot of information,” said freshman Harris Barker following the event. “We had a good time being able to reflect on the collective ideas that we all had about the debate.”
WUSA9’s Lusso was impressed to hear the various perspectives of the students and their views on the issues affecting Virginia.
“You guys were so smart,” she told them afterward. “You had such good questions and such good thoughts to share on all of this and I think somebody in the group actually said ‘you know we are the future’—and I think that's important.
“I think the candidates should be listening to what's important to you guys because you are the future.”