The first message posted to the Twitter account for the Winsome E. Sears campaign, the morning after the Republican scored an upset victory for Virginia lieutenant governor, was a clip of her acceptance speech.
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The second was a meme. Featuring Sears smiling, the image shows her head photoshopped atop the tracksuit-wearing body of Kamala D. Harris, recorded as the vice president learned she and Joe Biden had won the 2020 race for the White House.
“We did it, Glenn,” the caption for Sears’s photo reads, playing on Harris’s excited phrase — “We did it, Joe” — that took on an online life of its own.
Such is the approach being taken by a small group of consultants and Sears campaign staffers, who over the past week have transformed the account into an irreverent stream of commentary on the Virginia elections.
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“The Twitter account did exactly what it was intended to,” said Diane Cullo, a senior adviser to the Sears campaign. “This was a fun way, a strategic way, to be able to make sure people know who Winsome Sears is.”
While Sears herself has a far tamer verified personal account, the @WinWithWinsome feed run by “Team Winsome” appears to be getting more engagement online, amassing more than 132,000 followers and thousands of retweets on many posts.
Cullo said a group of “three to five people” run the account but declined to identify them or say if she herself was one of them. She added that @WinWithWinsome nonetheless represents the spirit of the Sears campaign, which relied on “a small and ragtag staff” that Cullo said “was able to catapult her from the unknown to lieutenant governor-elect.” (Sears had laid off at least six campaign staffers, including her campaign manager, in early September.)
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The account’s growing popularity in conservative circles on Twitter may also demonstrate how Sears appears to be capitalizing on her moment in the national spotlight to making herself a household name in Virginia and beyond.
A onetime state delegate who disappeared from politics two decades ago amid a family tragedy, she became the first Black woman elected to statewide office in Virginia. After her historic election, she is leaning into humor — sometimes an odd kind — to show how she might preside over the Virginia state Senate.
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Last week, the account started calling Sears “Based Winsome,” utilizing a slang word about drug usage that has since been recast by the rapper Lil B, also known as “The Based God,” and taken up by Trump supporters as an earnest compliment.
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So when Vladimir Putin said minorities should not come to Russia because of their supposed allegiance to Sharia law, the Russian prime minister became “Based Putin” on social media. After Newt Gingrich attacked the Black Lives Matter movement, the former Republican House speaker was labeled “Based Newt.”
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And now that Sears won elected office in Virginia, the account started calling her “Based Winsome.”
Later last week, the account made an open call to its followers — the #WinsomeWarriors — for the best Sears-centric memes, proceeding to reshare the best of the bunch.
One draws from “Game of Thrones,” photoshopping the Republican’s face on a character from the George R.R. Martin books and declaring that “Winter is Coming.”
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Another displays her and running mate Glenn Youngkin, Virginia’s Republican governor-elect, flashing peace signs next to a fresh grave, the letters “CRT” — for critical race theory — inscribed on the headstone. (Although the pair repeatedly cited the academic concept on the campaign trail, it is not included in Virginia public school curriculums.)
Ben Tribbett, a longtime Democratic political strategist in Virginia, said the @WinWithWinsome account fits the profile of the candidate whose career he’s followed since she was a state delegate, one that he said will be a force to be reckoned with.
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“Part of her profile is these really rough edges that rub some people the wrong way, like posing with an assault weapon,” he said, referring to one of Sears’s most memorable campaign images. “But it also energizes other people to be for her.”
Still, true to Twitter form, the @WinWithWinsome account has also made sharp jabs at some online rivals, repeatedly blasting MSNBC host Joy Reid and encouraging the cable news pundit to invite Sears onto her show.
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Most recently, the account has also appeared to diss the news media and liberals, making calls “for less ‘journalism’ and more JESUS” and for “less socialism and more SALVATION.”
Even regarding Twitter itself, the Sears campaign account — which as of Monday afternoon was still unverified — didn’t hold back. “And @jack,” it wrote in a knock to the site’s founder, Jack Dorsey, “keep your silly blue check mark. We don’t want it anyway!”