“The Republican Party never saluted the Confederate flag, did not fight under the Confederate flag ... and he is our candidate, our nominee?” she said. “He does not represent the party of Lincoln. ... He is not a true Republican.”

Stewart, who is challenging Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., has distanced himself from Jason Kessler, who coordinated the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville in 2017 and a smaller rally this year in Washington, and Paul Nehlen, a far-right politician in Wisconsin who made anti-Semitic posts on Twitter.

Of specific concern to Sears was a line in a campaign speech Stewart made in 2017 when he was running in the GOP primary for governor.

Stewart said at the time that Virginians “think for ourselves. And if the established order is wrong, we rebel. We did that in the Revolution, we did it in the Civil War, and we’re doing it today.”

Said Sears: “Who are these people that claim to be Republicans and they’ve become our candidates?”

In his Senate run, Stewart, a native Minnesotan, has not put focus on protecting Confederate statues the way he did in his unsuccessful primary run for governor last year.