Lieutenant Governor Winsome Sears recently brought in a new consultant firm, Coldspark, to run her campaign for governor. After recently making inroads with the MAGA crowd that she has had trouble bringing into the mix due to her comments about President Donald Trump in 2022, this move could potentially undo that progress.
Coldspark ran Nikki Haley’s unsuccessful campaign for president last year. Haley and Trump did not coalesce well in the primary against each other, to say the least, and last month, he sent out a message on social media notifying anyone who worked with Haley and many of his other enemies in the Republican Party to not even bother to apply to work in his administration.
“In order to save time, money, and effort, it would be helpful if you would not send, or recommend to us, people who worked with, or are endorsed by, Americans for No Prosperity (headed by Charles Koch), ‘Dumb as a Rock’ John Bolton, ‘Birdbrain’ Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, disloyal Warmongers Dick Cheney, and his Psycho daughter, Liz, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, General(?) Mark Milley, James Mattis, Mark Yesper, or any of the other people suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, more commonly known as TDS,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Rep. Byron Donalds, who was endorsed by Trump Thursday in his potential run for Florida governor, seems to have dropped Coldspark. Or at least he is not advertising that he has them on his team moving forward.
One of the loudest Trump supporters in Virginia, conservative talk show host John Fredericks, railed against Sears for months after she launched her campaign. He had her on his radio show recently, and they had a sort of kumbaya moment, and he announced he would now back her campaign.
“John Fredericks and Winsome Sears, after all this, can make up and reconcile,” he said. “And now I am 100% behind your campaign, and I did that in a weekend. If we can do it, MAGA can do it.”
Fredericks declined to comment for this story.