Slightly left of centrist
U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger, the Virginia Democrat, will run for governor in 2025, the Associated Press reports this morning:
Spanberger, a three-term Democrat, made the announcement in a campaign video, highlighting the importance of lowering prescription drug prices, growing the middle class and easing inflation. In a video titled “What Matters Most,” Spanberger also emphasized the importance of recruiting and retaining teachers “and stopping extremists from shredding women’s reproductive rights.”
“Our country and our Commonwealth are facing fundamental threats to our rights, our freedoms, and to our democracy,” Spanberger said. “While some politicians in Richmond focus on banning abortion and books, what they’re not doing is helping people.”
Spanberger’s run for governor has been rumored since July. Let’s hope she has a Democrat lined up to run competititvely in 2024 for her 7th Congressional District House seat.
The former CIA officer and law enforcement officer for the U.S. Postal Service won her first congressional race in a district that had been held by Republicans for almost 50 years.
The Commonwealth prohibits its governors from serving consecutive terms. That’s led to intense speculation about Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s next political move, as well as early jockeying in effective shadow campaigns for the chief executive’s office.
As for other potential gubernatorial candidates, Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney, a Democrat, is expected to announce campaign plans soon.
A former Blue Dog and current member of the Problem Solvers Caucus, Spanberger has engaged in the against-the grain centrist and positioning that characterizes Democrats in swing districts. She won her seat from incumbent Dave Brat in 2018 by 2 points, held it by under 2 points in 2020, and won by 4.6 points in 2022 after redistricting.
Spanberger has used her past work in federal law enforcement and the CIA to appeal to independents and moderate Republicans in her swing district while energizing the Democratic base with her background as an organizer with the gun-control group Moms Demand Action.
In the House, she has sought to strike a similar balance, aligning with liberals on abortion rights, for instance, while pushing back at times against the party’s left wing. She was a vocal critic of the “defund the police” rhetoric that some Democrats voiced in the 2020 cycle.
Spanberger never backed Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for House speaker and went further last year by rebuking Pelosi’s handling of legislation that would ban members of Congress from trading stock, accusing her of putting forward legislation that was “designed to fail.”
Spanberger was critical of her party’s messaging and negotiating tactics related to President Biden’s original Build Back Better agenda, telling the New York Times in November 2021 that “nobody elected him to be FDR; they elected him to be normal and stop the chaos.”
The centrist Democrat has many of the right enemies.
Spanberger would be Virginia’s first woman governor.