Winsome Sears, the Republican lieutenant governor-elect of Virginia, told The New York Times that Democrats are at risk of losing Black and immigrant voters.

As an immigrant from Jamaica and the first black woman elected to statewide office in Virginia, Sears told the NYT she was the perfect person to kickstart her demographic’s political realignment in America.

“The message is important,” Sears told the outlet. “But the messenger is equally important.”

“The only way to change things is to win elections,” she said. “And who better to help make that change but me? I look like the strategy.”

Sears, who won alongside Republican Virginia governor-elect Glenn Youngkin, attributes her own identification as a conservative to listening to debates over abortion and welfare during the 1988 presidential election, the NYT reported. She later ran in a majority-black district for the House of Delegates in 2001, winning a seat that had been held by a Democrat for 20 years.