> With polls showing her well ahead of her Republican opponent, Spanberger is heavily favored to flip the blue state’s governorship back to the Democratic column after four years of Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who cannot run for re-election. Virginia is the only state that limits governors to a single four-year term.
>As the Democratic Party wrestles with historic unpopularity and a post-2024 identity crisis, moderate Democrats point to Spanberger, a self-styled pragmatist, as a more politically viable face for the party than the likes of Mamdani.
> “Spanberger is the future of the Democratic Party if we intend to reclaim the White House from MAGA and be viable again in the Senate,” said Jonathan Cowan, president of the center-left think tank Third Way. “The message that will come out of the Spanberger win is that the noise and the fireworks might be in the bluest cities, but the road map to regaining power nationally runs through Virginia.” Candidates backed by the left-wing groups Democratic Socialists of America and Justice Democrats haven’t flipped a single seat from red to blue over the past decade, he noted.
>Asked about Mamdani as she nursed a coconut latte on a sweltering summer day, Spanberger demurred, saying she is focused on Virginia. But the 46-year-old mother of three and former three-term swing-district congresswoman has a history of pushing back on the left.
In the wake of the 2020 election, Spanberger castigated her colleagues in a private phone call, saying some Democrats’ embrace of socialism and defunding the police had caused the party to lose seats. In 2021, she chastised then-President Biden for his expansive agenda, telling the New York Times, “Nobody elected him to be FDR; they elected him to be normal and stop the chaos.”
>Biden subsequently called her, opening the conversation with, “Hello, Abigail, it’s President Roosevelt.” Nonetheless, Republicans note that she voted in lockstep with Biden’s agenda. She also backed both of Trump’s impeachments and was a high-profile advocate for the first one.
>Spanberger prided herself on working across the aisle in Congress. The Bipartisan Index, a ranking maintained by the nonpartisan Lugar Center and Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, last year dubbed her the most bipartisan member of the Virginia delegation and 19th most bipartisan member of the House overall.
>Her signature achievement, which Biden signed just before he left office, was a bipartisan bill to increase Social Security benefits for recipients of public pensions. Some fiscal conservatives criticized it for its $200 billion price tag, but it passed the House and Senate by overwhelming margins.
> Former Rep. Garret Graves, a Louisiana Republican who teamed up with Spanberger on the bill, noted that members of both parties had been trying and failing to pass the legislation for decades. Graves said he and Spanberger both had to push back on their respective parties’ leadership.
> “She and I did not always agree on strategy, and a few times we fought like brothers and sisters,” Graves recalled. But they agreed they wouldn’t make any decisions or promises without consulting each other. “I stuck to my word and she stuck to her word, and ultimately we achieved the goal of getting something done.”
>The Virginia Police Benevolent Association, which hadn’t backed a Democrat since 2009, cited the legislation in endorsing Spanberger on Aug. 13.
>Born in New Jersey, Spanberger moved to Virginia at age 13 when her father, a police officer, got a job with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. She followed in his footsteps and became a postal inspector before joining the Central Intelligence Agency in 2006.
>She worked as an undercover CIA case officer, recruiting foreign assets in countries she declines to name—work she describes as giving her an ability to connect with people from wildly different backgrounds.
>After eight years at the agency, however, she gave up her dream job and moved back to Virginia to raise her three daughters near family in the Richmond exurbs. She took a job with a consulting firm, volunteered for the gun-control group Moms Demand Action and led her daughter’s Girl Scout troop.
>In the wake of the 2016 election, she joined the first wave of the so-called “resistance,” as scores of highly credentialed women ran for office in reaction to Trump’s first election. In 2018, she defeated then-Rep. Dave Brat to flip a district Trump had carried by six points.
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> With polls showing her well ahead of her Republican opponent, Spanberger is heavily favored to flip the blue state’s governorship back to the Democratic column after four years of Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who cannot run for re-election. Virginia is the only state that limits governors to a single four-year term.
>As the Democratic Party wrestles with historic unpopularity and a post-2024 identity crisis, moderate Democrats point to Spanberger, a self-styled pragmatist, as a more politically viable face for the party than the likes of Mamdani.
> “Spanberger is the future of the Democratic Party if we intend to reclaim the White House from MAGA and be viable again in the Senate,” said Jonathan Cowan, president of the center-left think tank Third Way. “The message that will come out of the Spanberger win is that the noise and the fireworks might be in the bluest cities, but the road map to regaining power nationally runs through Virginia.” Candidates backed by the left-wing groups Democratic Socialists of America and Justice Democrats haven’t flipped a single seat from red to blue over the past decade, he noted.
>Asked about Mamdani as she nursed a coconut latte on a sweltering summer day, Spanberger demurred, saying she is focused on Virginia. But the 46-year-old mother of three and former three-term swing-district congresswoman has a history of pushing back on the left.
In the wake of the 2020 election, Spanberger castigated her colleagues in a private phone call, saying some Democrats’ embrace of socialism and defunding the police had caused the party to lose seats. In 2021, she chastised then-President Biden for his expansive agenda, telling the New York Times, “Nobody elected him to be FDR; they elected him to be normal and stop the chaos.”
>Biden subsequently called her, opening the conversation with, “Hello, Abigail, it’s President Roosevelt.” Nonetheless, Republicans note that she voted in lockstep with Biden’s agenda. She also backed both of Trump’s impeachments and was a high-profile advocate for the first one.
>Spanberger prided herself on working across the aisle in Congress. The Bipartisan Index, a ranking maintained by the nonpartisan Lugar Center and Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, last year dubbed her the most bipartisan member of the Virginia delegation and 19th most bipartisan member of the House overall.
>Her signature achievement, which Biden signed just before he left office, was a bipartisan bill to increase Social Security benefits for recipients of public pensions. Some fiscal conservatives criticized it for its $200 billion price tag, but it passed the House and Senate by overwhelming margins.
> Former Rep. Garret Graves, a Louisiana Republican who teamed up with Spanberger on the bill, noted that members of both parties had been trying and failing to pass the legislation for decades. Graves said he and Spanberger both had to push back on their respective parties’ leadership.
> “She and I did not always agree on strategy, and a few times we fought like brothers and sisters,” Graves recalled. But they agreed they wouldn’t make any decisions or promises without consulting each other. “I stuck to my word and she stuck to her word, and ultimately we achieved the goal of getting something done.”
>The Virginia Police Benevolent Association, which hadn’t backed a Democrat since 2009, cited the legislation in endorsing Spanberger on Aug. 13.
>Born in New Jersey, Spanberger moved to Virginia at age 13 when her father, a police officer, got a job with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. She followed in his footsteps and became a postal inspector before joining the Central Intelligence Agency in 2006.
>She worked as an undercover CIA case officer, recruiting foreign assets in countries she declines to name—work she describes as giving her an ability to connect with people from wildly different backgrounds.
>After eight years at the agency, however, she gave up her dream job and moved back to Virginia to raise her three daughters near family in the Richmond exurbs. She took a job with a consulting firm, volunteered for the gun-control group Moms Demand Action and led her daughter’s Girl Scout troop.
>In the wake of the 2016 election, she joined the first wave of the so-called “resistance,” as scores of highly credentialed women ran for office in reaction to Trump’s first election. In 2018, she defeated then-Rep. Dave Brat to flip a district Trump had carried by six points.