John Reid, the gay Republican candidate for Lt. Governor of Virginia, towered over his petite running mate outside a recent campaign event to deliver a cringeworthy line equal to the unlikely alliance that inspired it.

“It’s going to be hard to fill your shoes, or high heels as the case may be,” Reid said painfully.

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The awkward moment summed up the bizarre drama surrounding the Republican slate for Virginia’s statewide elections this year, featuring the current Lt. Governor — openly homophobic Christian nationalist Winsome Earle-Sears, running for the state’s top job — and Reid, the gay, right-wing MAGA talk radio host who wants to succeed her.

New revelations, however, have kicked up the awkwardness even more.

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A recently surfaced candidate questionnaire from 2004, when Earle-Sears made an unsuccessful run for Congress, puts her anti-LGBTQ+ views on the record from the beginning of her political career.

She responded “yes” to questions about whether she would vote to block same-sex couples from adopting children and oppose workplace protections for gay people, and agreed when asked if homosexuality is an “immoral lifestyle choice,” the Richmond Free Press reports.

Reid hasn’t responded to questions about the survey.

Earle-Sears’ answers follow another revelation from May, when it was reported she added a handwritten note to her required signature on a bill to codify marriage equality in Virginia in 2024.

“As the Lt. Governor, I recognize and respect my constitutional obligation to adhere to the procedures laid out in the Constitution of Virginia,” she wrote. “However, I remain morally opposed to the content of HB 174 as passed by the General Assembly.”

This year’s race has been fraught for Republicans since the beginning, as they face a strong Democratic ticket led by popular former Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA), and headwinds in one of the first statewide tests of the president’s popularity since his return to the White House.

Current Lt. Gov. Earle-Sears, the heir-apparent to GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin, had a lock on the job early, as the Black, female, and evangelical answer to what Republicans characterize as Democrats’ obsession with DEI.

Reid lucked into his spot on the ticket when the far more popular candidate dropped out of his race in April over a health issue.  

But Reid’s ascension spooked Virginia’s GOP power brokers, who feared a gay GOP candidate for statewide office would drag the rest of the ticket down, despite the MAGA loyalist’s far-right bona fides.

“I’m not a diversity hire,” Reid said when he announced his bid in January. “I’m the most conservative and proven candidate running, and I’ve boldly stood up for our beliefs in a way that should make my personal life a total nonissue.”

“John is uniquely positioned to take the fight to the radical progressives head-on,” his website details, “as he continues his fight against boys in girls sports and the extreme trans-agenda being forced upon our children.”

Apparently, none of that mattered, and the GOP knives came out.

First, Reid was subject to a smear campaign involving “salacious pictures” of two other men supposedly posted to Tumblr – back when it allowed adult content – by someone using Reid’s Instagram screenname, The Richmonder reported on April 25.

Gov. Youngkin took that opportunity to ask Reid to drop out, according to the candidate, who posted multiple videos documenting the effort to oust him from the race.

Reid accused a representative of Youngkin’s Spirit of Virginia PAC of assuring him the attacks would continue until Reid dropped out, while offering to “purchase the opposition research” if he quit.

A member of Youngkin’s LGBTQ+ Advisory Board resigned over the accusation, saying he was “deeply shocked” that the governor “would involve himself in a diabolical attack of this nature.”

Reid recounted another “extortion” effort by a “local religious activist” who claimed he had photos “that would destroy my life.” They were pictures of Reid attending a drag show in Richmond.

“It’s been nonstop harassment and vulgar threats calling my life an abomination, saying I’m a vile degenerate and attacking and insulting my partner of 8 years and attacking my family,” Reid said in one post to X. “I’ve been attacked online and harassed in-person on-and-off for 30 years by the radicals in my own party simply for being gay and by angry leftists who call me a traitor.”

The latest revelations about Earle-Sears’ views on Reid’s “immoral lifestyle” are going to test the gay MAGA candidate again.

“Winsome is not a conservative,” Casey Flores, who founded the Log Cabin Republicans of Richmond, told the Virginia Scope. “She’s kind of a theocratic totalitarian. She actually does care what people do in their bedrooms. And, you know, I think the Republican Party is largely past that.”

That question will be answered in November.

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