At Tuesday's rally for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger, speaker after speaker stressed one point: This election is not just about Virginia.
Virginia will “lead the way” for the 2026 midterm elections, pundit Bill Nye said. It's “almost the center of the political universe,” added former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
“We know what the stakes are in this election,” Ms. Spanberger, a former CIA handler who served three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, told a crowd of 1,300 in Charlottesville. “We can prove to the rest of the country … when we have the opportunity to make change in our state, we will take it.”
Why did we write this
Virginia is one of two states holding competitive races for governor this fall, a closely watched test of whether Democrats can find their footing after last year's election defeats.
The gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey, which take place a year after the presidential election, often attract enormous attention as pundits and party leaders scrutinize the coffee leaves to infer the mood of the country ahead of next year's midterm elections. These views don't always turn out to be very predictable: Four years ago, current Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin was widely hailed as the post-Trump archetype of the Republican Party. Today, Gov. Youngkin and his sweater vests are leaving, and President Donald Trump's dominance of the party appears complete.
So at a time when Democrats in Washington are looking for a way out of the political wilderness, Ms. Spanberger's campaign could be the way forward. But with reservations.
The Republican incumbent in the race, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earl-Sears, has eschewed traditional campaigning and fundraising and has consistently trailed in the polls, often by double digits. Notably, President Trump did not campaign on her behalf; The state GOP chairman at one point had to assure a conservative radio host that her campaign was “not a clown car” Ms. Spanberger raised the issue more than twice the money But the victory may be attributed to a weak GOP opponent rather than signaling a broader turn of the electorate against Trump that could turn the attention of congressional Republicans.
At the same time, on November 5, Democrats may find themselves with completely different candidate victory patterns that will do little to resolve the party's internal rift. The gubernatorial candidates in Virginia and New Jersey, where Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill is in a closer race against the GOP re-nominee, are moderate women with national security experience and a cautious campaign style. Meanwhile, in New York, democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani could become the first Muslim mayor after a campaign built on viral social media videos and promises worth billions of dollars.
“People are looking for [at Virginia] and they're like, “Will this predict the trend for next year?” Is this going to be the model for next year's races?” said Christy Muddiman, a civics teacher in Roanoke who was in Charlottesville for the Spanberger event. “There's a big divide in the party right now: Are we going more moderate or are we going more progressive?”
Story Hinckley/The Christian Science Monitor
Availability
Of course, running for mayor in a Democratic enclave like New York is very different from running statewide in Virginia, a swing state that has become more Democratic in recent years but which voted Republican for four decades of presidential elections before President Barack Obama flipped it in 2008.
And some in the party were struck by how similar the campaigns of Ms. Spanberger and Mr. Mamdani were.
Mike Kropf/Richmond Times-Dispatch/AP
“The party's most centrist candidate and the party's most left-leaning candidate actually agree on what the biggest problem is,” says Ben Tribbett, a Democratic strategist in Virginia. “They both come from the idea of accessibility.”
However, they talk about it differently. In an eight-page PDF document, Ms. Spanberger promises to address the cost of living problem by cutting red tape that hampers housing construction and lowering energy bills. Mr Mamdani proposes universal child care (which could be worth $6 billion) and city grocery stores in TikTok videos.
Still, some voters say they appreciate that both candidates are focused on the problem and looking for solutions.
“In previous elections, Democrats simply rebuked Republicans,” says Zach Landsman, Ph.D. student at the University of Virginia waits in line for Ms. Spanberger's event. “But between [Spanberger] and Mamdani and the clear actions they are talking about really excite me.”
Although Ms. Spanberger has run television ads linking Ms. Earl-Sears to the president's “bad budget” and calling her a “MAGA Republican,” Miles Coleman, associate editor of the Sabato Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, has been struck by how little Ms. Spanberger mentions Mr. Trump in her press releases. “During the 2021 campaign, every second word [Democratic nominee Terry] McAuliffe's mouth sounded like, 'Youngkin is Trump,' and I think he overdid it,” Mr. Coleman says. “In this race, DOGE made a good argument for not mentioning Trump by name.”
Mike Kropf/Richmond Times – AP submission
Mr. Trump's massive cuts to the federal workforce through his Department of Government Effectiveness have become the defining issue in this race—Virginia is home to more than 155,000 federal employeessecond only to California and Washington, DC. And it's compounded by a government shutdown now in its fourth week, with hundreds of thousands of government workers furloughed. The impact was especially severe in the northern Virginia suburbs, where Democrats need large margins to win the state.
When Mr. McAuliffe campaigned in northern Virginia in 2021, there were “red flags,” says Dominic Thompson, executive director of Fairfax Democrats. “We could tell that turnout would be more volatile.” Now, “we're seeing the layoffs of all our neighbors in NoVa. The National Guard in D.C. This election is so nationalized because we've seen the consequences. It usually takes a while to see those national consequences reach the people.”
Asked by the Monitor on the campaign trail in Williamsburg last week if she was concerned that federal layoffs and furloughs could affect the race, Ms. Earl-Sears said Ms. Spanberger should tell Virginia's two Democratic senators to end the shutdown. “Abigail Spanberger has been playing political football with federal employees all summer, claiming to love federal employees more than anyone else on this Earth,” Ms. Earl-Sears said. “Love is like keeping federal employees in their jobs.”
Obstacles to the Campaign
That event in Williamsburg—a brief appearance in a restaurant parking lot in front of a dozen or so supporters—was in many ways indicative of Ms. Earl-Sears's campaign, which was characterized by high staff turnover And low party support. The event focused on Virginia school bathroom and locker room policies for transgender students, an issue the lieutenant governor has made a cornerstone of her campaign.
Ms. Earl-Sears campaigned on a promise to “keep up the good work” and continue many of Mr. Yankin's policies. She often speaks of her moral opposition to abortion, an important issue in last southern state without abortion ban. Although she has supported 15- and 6-week bans in the past, Ms. Earl-Sears said during one gubernatorial debate earlier this month that the policy “would not be my view, it would be the majority view.”
Even if Ms. Earl-Sears ran away more traditional campaignshe would likely have to face an uphill battle given the national political currents and the peculiar dynamics of this race. In every gubernatorial race here except one since the late 1970s, Virginians have favored the party outside the White House.
“We were happy with 2024,” says Matthew Hurtt, chairman of the Arlington Republican Party, who acknowledges the presidential victory is making life difficult for Republicans this year. “If you’re not passionate about politics, you’re not going to be encouraged to go out and do something.”
Ms. Spanberger's election campaign did not go entirely smoothly. Despite all the criticism from the right about how Ms. Earl-Sears ran her campaign, confronting “a black female Marine who [already] “being elected statewide” is no small thing, Mr. Tribbett said. After one gubernatorial debate, Ms. Spanberger was criticized for her long, sometimes evasive answers.
The race has been dominated in recent weeks by violent text messages from Democratic attorney general candidate Jay Jones in which he fantasized about killing the Republican House speaker. Ms. Spanberger condemned the reports but did not call on Mr. Jones to withdraw. Still, she ran the campaign without “any significant mistakes,” Mr. Tribbett says. He adds that her voting record in Congress has prevented Republicans from portraying her as a Mamdani-style progressive candidate in a state that elected a Republican governor four years ago.
A mother of three from suburban Richmond, Ms. Spanberger is accustomed to appealing to Republican voters: She flipped the GOP district in 2018, the same year Ms. Sherrill was elected. (It was also the same year that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a democratic socialist like Mr. Mamdani, burst onto the scene, ousting the veteran Democratic congresswoman in New York.)
Mrs. Spanberger, who was counted among majority of bipartisan members During her time in the House of Representatives, she criticized calls from some of her colleagues to “defund the police.” In her bid for governor, she has earned the support of the Virginia State Police Benevolent Association, which has split its support this year by backing Ms. Spanberger and Republican candidates.
Tanya and David Samples, who live near Charlottesville, say Ms. Spanberger is the person to win the centrist vote needed to win Virginia's gubernatorial election. But like many other Democrats in the state, they also hope she can jump-start a Democratic comeback across the country.
“This state is going to lead New Jersey,” said Ms. Samples, who came to hear Ms. Spanberger and Mr. Buttigieg at the rally in Charlottesville. “I pray that these two Democrats win the gubernatorial elections so that maybe the House Republicans will wake up.”
