Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears (R) has just made her already tough gubernatorial campaign worse with her recent blowup on CNN, Politico’s Jonathan Martin wrote in a post to X on Monday.

Sears, who has struggled against Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger as national Republicans debate whether to abandon her altogether, drew headlines last week for a testy exchange with congressional reporter Manu Raju, who asked her to weigh in on the controversies surrounding fellow GOP nominee John Reid, and federal layoffs initiated by the Trump administration that have hit Virginia especially hard.

The layoff question particularly wounded Sears, wrote Martin, with her answer finding its way into an attack ad.

“I wrote last month about the despair Repubs have about their Va gov nominee,” wrote Martin. “Here’s a window on the prob: she knows she has to go on offense, agrees to do @mkraju but can’t answer a Q about DOGE layoffs in Va and her answer gets made into an ad. Which is good for Manu’s name ID in Va but not helping the GOP ticket.”

During the interview, Sears hit back at Raju’s questioning about whether she supports Trump’s layoffs by saying, “If this is the way you want to go, then go ahead, but I’m just not going to participate, okay? Because I want to talk about real issues.”

The new Spanberger ad, titled “Real Issues,” slammed Sears over the quote, playing a clip of the exchange and then saying, “Really? Not a real issue that thousands of Virginians are losing their jobs. Not a real issue that communities are suffering … Winsome Earle-Sears supports Trump, not Virginians. And that’s a real issue.”

Watch the ad below or at the link here.

– YouTube www.youtube.com