Every four years, Virginia repeats a familiar pattern: governors are limited to one term and elections are held twelve months after the last presidential election. A half-meaning campaign begins, but its outcome depends on national sentiment; only once in the last half century has the president's party won the governor's mansion in Richmond. Unlike New Jersey, where Spanberger's old congressional roommate Mickey Sherrill is running in another gubernatorial race this fall, in Virginia the outside candidate invariably wins, and everything that person does is seen as a national model for the party. So it's only natural for Spanberger to argue that her case for political moderation deserves serious consideration, and she may be a little tired of all the attention on Mamdani. As Election Day approaches, Spanberger, a fiery but zealous campaigner, is ahead in her race more than any other candidate in her state's recent history. Republicans tried to unseat Spanberger by publicizing the case of Jay Jones, the Democratic nominee for attorney general who was found to have sent text messages three years ago fantasizing about assassinating the GOP speaker of the state Legislature. Spanberger condemned him, but did not call for him to withdraw from the race. Yet Earl-Sears—a Jamaican immigrant and social conservative who recently insisted in a debate that opposing protections for people in same-sex marriages “is not discrimination”—has run a largely arcane and underfunded campaign. (Donald Trump only recently lukewarmly endorsed her.)
Spanberger's leadership has given her the opportunity to mount a straightforward Democratic campaign focused largely on the cost of living in her state. For optimists, this is a through line connecting candidates as disparate as Spanberger and Mamdani. Tim Kaine, a Democratic senator from Virginia, noted that both are younger than their predecessors and both highlight the issue of affordability. But in the final stretch of the race, Spanberger seemed keen to emphasize what she said was the realism of her approach. “This is what I'm going to do Job do it, right? “I am not going to make promises that I cannot keep, but I will work tirelessly to deliver on them,” she said. “There's no magic wand for lowering housing costs, but working with the General Assembly requires a commitment and a plan to change some of our laws to increase the supply of housing so that the governor's office and the administration are focused on putting together a long-term plan to lower costs, right? It's the same with health care, you can't just wave a magic wand and fix the system.”
“If you're just talking in terms that are written on bumper stickers or what's on a rally sign, you're actually underselling voters or making a promise you can't keep,” she continued. “And I think that's one of the reasons why people's faith in politics can get worse over time.”
Don Beyer, a Democratic congressman from northern Virginia, said his colleagues in the U.S. House of Representatives have looked to Spanberger's campaign since the spring as a glimmer of hope as Trump's onslaught on the capital intensified. “Everyone pointed to this: 'We know we can't pass any law, we can only use the court, we can't impeach him. But Abigail can win!” Beyer told me. He said he expects that if she does, it will help Democrats recruit stronger candidates for next year's tough midterm elections. Kaine said his fellow senators are watching the election closely, too. But, Kaine said, they are more cautious: “They view the Virginia result as one that will either create hope nationally or pour cold water on people who are already feeling a little down.”
Late last year, as Kaine crisscrossed the state campaigning for a third term in the U.S. Senate, he began to notice something missing from the messages he was seeing on his hotel television in media markets that overlapped with West Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina and Kentucky. “Other Democrats ran ads about preserving democracy or about choice. Important issues, but they didn't run ads about the economy, while Republicans ran ads about inflation,” he told me this fall. Kaine, who was elected governor of Virginia in 2005 before becoming Barack Obama's first Democratic National Committee chairman and then Hillary Clinton's running mate for the presidency, made a direct statement about his record in building roads, bridges and ships, as well as support for offshore wind energy, and voters responded positively. “It just made me angry because I thought Kamala Harris and the other Democrats had economic issues that they could put at the forefront,” he said. Kaine comfortably won re-election in a dark November for Democrats, and soon after he spoke with Spanberger about what he had seen.
She didn't need much convincing. She's been on that path for a year now, using a version of the economic- and education-focused basic approach that has served her well in her three congressional races. (The 2020 redistricting round shifted most of her seat to northern Virginia, meaning she has already earned votes from a large swath of the state.) Virginia's current governor, Republican Glenn Youngkin, won his 2021 race in part by warning about the dangers of “critical race theory.” When Earl-Sears began trying to reignite the culture war against Spanberger, whom she accused of being a closet leftist, the Democrat largely ignored it and returned to her safe space: protecting wages, fighting the fallout from tariffs, investing in rural hospitals. In the race's only debate this fall, Spanberger largely looked ahead as Earl-Sears repeatedly tried to get her to address the Jones scandal, sometimes veering into completely unrelated topics – like the car tax – to try to force the issue. Spanberger dodged a series of questions from the moderator about transgender rights, mostly by demurring and suggesting that local governments should tightly decide who can use which bathroom or play on which team.
