Amid mentions of the Second Amendment, cancel culture, reopening schools, and fighting efforts to defund the police, the seven candidates vying to be the Republican nominee in Virginia’s gubernatorial race faced a pointed question on Wednesday night: How to win over voters in heavily populated and increasingly blue Northern Virginia?

The question, posed by Shayam Menon, chairman of the Falls Church City Republican Committee, wasn’t mere idle musing. Rather, it’s something of an existential challenge for the GOP in Virginia. “We know we need to do well in Northern Virginia to win back the governor’s mansion,” Menon said.

As Republicans try to find their way back into statewide office for the first time in almost a decade, they face an unenviable political landscape. The Republican-leaning parts of the states have edged further to the right, pushing candidates for office in that same direction. (Gubernatorial candidate Amanda Chase campaigns as “Trump in heels.”) At the same time, the voter-rich areas of Northern Virginia, increasingly critical to winning any statewide election, have steadily gone in the opposite direction.

In 2000, Fairfax County narrowly went for Republican George W. Bush. Two decades later, 70% of voters opted for Democrat Joe Biden. In 2018, Democrat Jennifer Wexton unseated Republican incumbent Barbara Comstock in the 10th congressional district, ending nearly four decades of GOP control. In 2019, Democrats swept both chambers of the General Assembly — in the process defeating Tim Hugo, the last remaining Republican state delegate in Northern Virginia. That same year, Democrats flipped the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors and Prince William Board of Supervisors.

On the gubernatorial side, in 2009 Republican Bob McDonnell won the state’s highest office with the help of victories in Fairfax, Loudoun and Prince William counties. Less than a decade later, Democrat Ralph Northam claimed victory over his Republican opponent — sweeping Northern Virginia in the process.

“We keep losing because we’re not expanding the voting base. We’ve got to reach out to communities that we’ve not reached out to before,” said Sergio de la Peña, a former Army colonel and Pentagon official during the Trump administration, as he introduced himself during Wednesday’s debate. “If you want to win, you’ve got to win in Northern Virginia. The demographics have changed. We’ve got 20% of Hispanics in Northern Virginia, another 16-17% of Asians. We’ve got to reach out to those communities if we’re going to win.”

Later in the debate, Del. Kirk Cox, former Carlyle Group CEO Glenn Youngkin, and former sheriff of Roanoke City Octavia Johnson agreed more outreach is necessary in immigrant and minority communities. Amanda Chase, a state senator from Chesterfield County, said she could appeal to immigrants who left socialist countries — the Vietnamese community in Arlington and Fairfax counties has historically supported  Republican candidates — as well as women.

“Women are the key to winning Northern Virginia,” she said. “I’m an educated, professional woman which matches a lot of the women that are up in Northern Virginia, and they are rooting for Amanda Chase,” she said.

Peter Doran, an Arlington resident and former think tank executive, said he would focus on issues to appeal to Northern Virginia voters, including his pledge to zero out the commonwealth’s income tax and “schools, safety, and jobs.” Businessman and former Fairfax County resident Pete Snyder similarly focused in on reopening schools as an issue that could win back Northern Virginia voters.

Mike Ginsberg, a member of the leadership of the 11th District GOP Committee and the Suburban Virginia Republican Coalition, says peeling off Northern Virginia voters will be critical to whoever ends up being the GOP candidate. (The candidate will be chosen at a virtual party convention on May 8.) And he thinks that pandemic and the restrictions it had spurred — especially on schools — provides a good opportunity.

“Even suburban moms that have been trending toward the Democrats have been furious about the way the school reopenings or lack of reopenings has been occurring,” he says. “And so finding issues where you have a lot of Republican support, but you can also peel away independents and Democrats really will, I think, benefit Republicans strongly.”

Ginsberg says Republicans can also reach immigrant and minority communities by focusing on issues like the ongoing debate over admissions at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, pandemic-related restrictions on businesses, and public safety.

But former Republican delegate David Ramadan doubts such a strategy will work, largely because of how former president Donald Trump pushed many Republicans further to the right — and how Virginia Republicans will be choosing their candidate for November’s general election.

“[The convention] will only be attended by the by the hardcore base. And in order to win that, the candidates are catering to issues that will not work in the general elections and therefore being pro-Trump, being anti-immigration, being critical of the school systems, being critical of the COVID-19 protections and measures that the governor has taken,” he says. “All of these are issues that the average voter cares about and puts the Republicans at odds with that electorate and therefore unlikely to be able to win any statewide elections any time soon.”

A similar dynamic bedeviled Republican contender Ed Gillespie in his 2017 race against Northam; while he was long known as a moderate and establishment-minded member of the GOP, he ran further to the right after a bruising primary battle with Corey Stewart by focusing on issues like Confederate monuments and immigration. He later lamented what he called a “poisonous atmosphere” in politics.

During Wednesday’s debate, the Republican candidates tried to balance staking out positions on issues that fire up conservative activists while also proposing solutions to more practical problems. Snyder said he would ban critical race theory from schools and “take down ridiculous cancel culture.” Youngkin pledged to “stand up to Big Tech,” Chase highlighted her role as a “firebrand Republican” in Richmond, and all the candidates declared the Second Amendment to be absolute. When asked about traffic congestion, Doran proposed building a hyperloop in Northern Virginia, Snyder said he’d get rid of all toll roads, and Cox criticized former governor and current candidate Terry McAuliffe for allowing toll lanes on I-66 inside the Beltway.

Ramadan, who now teaches at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, also believes Trump’s longstanding criticism of immigrants will continue to hurt Republicans, even in local and statewide races.

“Dick Armey had this saying many years ago[–he] said you can’t call the girl ugly all year long and expect her to go to prom with you,” he says. “They have lost [the immigrant] vote. I won that vote when I ran and Barbara Comstock won their votes when she ran. However, in the last four to six years or even eight years, that vote is gone and that vote will go overwhelmingly to the Democrats.”

Still, Ginsberg thinks that Trump’s impact on the gubernatorial race may be muted by virtue of the fact that he’s no longer in office, and Democrats currently control both Richmond and Washington.

“I do think that the temperature on politics, just generally, has gone down,” he says. “As Democratic governance becomes more entrenched, people will get a feel for what [Democrats are] doing and whether they like it or not. I happen to think that they won’t.”

It remains to be seen who emerges victorious in the May 8 convention, which itself was the source of much controversy among candidates and party faithful. Chase is seen as a leading contender; she’s also a staunch Trump supporter whose views on everything from the Jan. 6 insurrection to the Derek Chauvin verdict have been public and controversial. Cox, on the other hand, is considered a more moderate Republican — though he has pushed to the right in parts of his campaign, including a recent ad decrying so-called cancel culture.

Ramadan says he doubts it will make a difference; he guesses no matter who the Republican candidate is, they will lose to McAuliffe by 10 points. (McAuliffe is not yet the Democratic nominee; the Democratic primary is June 8.) Ginsberg is more optimistic, and thinks that whoever emerges from the Republican convention will make inroads in Northern Virginia.

“I do not think Northern Virginia is a lost cause by any stretch,” he says. “I think it takes work and I think we have people who are willing to do it.”