The 2025 Virginia lieutenant gubernatorial election was held on November 4, 2025, to elect the lieutenant governor of Virginia. The election was held concurrently with elections for Virginia's statewide offices, the House of Delegates, and other local offices. Incumbent Republican lieutenant governor Winsome Earle-Sears did not run for re-election to a second term in office and ran for governor.
WRVA radio host John Reid won the Republican nomination on April 21, and was the first openly gay man nominated for statewide office in Virginia. State Senator Ghazala Hashmi won the Democratic primary on June 17. She was nominated the first Indian American and Muslim for statewide office in Virginia.
Hashmi defeated Reid by a 12-point margin, which is the largest Democratic lieutenant gubernatorial margin since 1965. Hashmi focused on opposition to the Trump Administration while Reid made education and economic issues the main themes of his campaign. Hashmi's win was part of the Democratic sweep in the three statewide executive offices in the concurrent elections.
Hashmi was sworn in as the 43rd lieutenant governor of Virginia on January 17, 2026. She is the first Indian American elected to statewide office in Virginia and the first Muslim woman elected to statewide office in the country.
In September 2024, Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears announced her candidacy for governor of Virginia. In January 2025, Fairfax County supervisor Pat Herrity and radio host John Reid announced their candidacies for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor.
On April 21, after the filing deadline, Herrity announced his withdrawal from the race due to health reasons. This made Reid the Republican nominee by default. Four days later, The Richmonder reported that Governor Glenn Youngkin, also a Republican, had asked Reid to withdraw from the race, citing sexually explicit images and posts on a page on the microblogging platform Tumblr which had a username that matched the name Reid uses on other social media accounts. Reid denied making the posts and pledged to remain in the race, arguing the effort to remove him from the ticket was due to his sexual orientation. Reid is Virginia's first openly gay candidate from either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party for statewide office.
Following backlash from within the Republican Party, Youngkin stated he would "support the nominees and their ticket". Youngkin staffer Matt Moran, whom Reid's campaign accused of being behind the effort to remove him from the ticket, resigned as a result of the controversy.
John Curran, a business consultant from James City County, did not qualify for the ballot. Following this, Curran filed as a write-in candidate for the general election and said "I decided to give the voters an option. It's a hard option for me because people actually have to know how to spell your name and write it in. If Virginia wants me, they'll do it."
Six candidates appeared on the ballot for the Democratic primary. Prior to the election, the race was viewed to have three favored frontrunners: state senators Ghazala Hashmi and Aaron Rouse, along with former Richmond mayor Levar Stoney. In a very tight race between the three, Hashmi narrowly secured the nomination over Stoney and Rouse.
Ghazala Hashmi, the Democratic nominee, had declined to participate in a debate with John Reid, the Republican nominee. No debates had been held for lieutenant governor at the previous 2021 election. In response, Reid held a 40-minute debate without the involvement of Hashmi. Hashmi was represented by a computer monitor depicting her face, with responses delivered via artificial intelligence speech synthesis. The Reid campaign stated the responses delivered through speech synthesis were compiled and written by the Reid campaign, through information from interviews and Hashmi's website. The Virginian-Pilot noted that the on-screen attribution for the statements delivered occasionally listed far-right websites such as The Gateway Pundit. Noah Jennings, Reid's campaign manager, stated that they had aimed for a debate that was "fair and accurate to [Hashmi], not campy and overdramatic", while Ava Pitruzzello, a spokesperson for the Hashmi campaign, called it a "failed use of deepfakes" that was "desperate" and "straight out of Donald TrumpâÂÂs playbook".
Aggregate polls<br />
John Reid vs. Generic Democrat<br />
Caroline, Nelson, Prince Edward, Spotsylvania, and York counties were won by Reid, despite voting Abigail Spanberger for governor.
Counties and independent cities that flipped from Republican to Democratic
Hashmi won seven of 11 congressional districts, including one held by a Republican.
Partisan clients<br />
Official campaign websites