Next week, calenders flip over to June, which means that 2026 is already nearly half over – time flies, whether you’re having fun or not, I guess. Also, as we head into summer, Abigail Spanberger’s been governor for nearly five months, with one General Assembly mostly under her belt – with the major exception of finalizing a budget, of course.
So where do things stand at this point with Virginia’s historic first female governor, about seven months after she defeated Republican Winsome Earle-Sears in a massive, 15-point landslide, also ushering in the biggest Democratic majority in the House of Delegates in about 36 years? Here’s some good news and…well, not-so-good news.
First, the good news:
- The fact is, it should really go without saying that we are far, FAR better off with Gov. Spanberger than we would have been with a right-wingnut like Winsome Earle-Sears as governor. And that’s not meant as a backhanded compliment, either, as the 2026 Virginia General Assembly passed hundreds of pieces of excellent legislation, the vast majority of which was signed into law by Gov. Spanberger – something that would NOT HAVE HAPPENED if we’d had Gov. Earle-Sears, let alone if Earle-Sears had helped usher in a Republican majority in the House of Delegates! I’m stating this bluntly, because as obvious as it should be, I feel like a lot of people forget it, and just focus all their attention on the few things – in some cases big, important things, for sure! – that have NOT yet been done, rather than on the many good things that HAVE gotten done. As VA Speaker Don Scott put it recently, “She signed or will sign as of today of what I’m hearing 1,132 bills. Okay? So, a lot of things that we got done and passed through the governor signed and I don’t want to spend a lot of energy focusing on the hole, I’d much rather talk about the donut, which is what we got done this session….That didn’t happen when Glenn Youngkin was governor.” Bingo! So let’s celebrate those successes, even as we push for more!
- And just to highlight what I’m talking about re: good news — among those 1,132 bills, as the Virginia House Democrats recently pointed out, we’re talking about things like: “Minimum wage; increases incrementally to $15.00 per hour by January 1, 2028″; ” Contraception; establishes right to obtain, applicability, enforcement”; ” Paid family and medical leave insurance program”; “Health insurance; cost-sharing payments for insulin and diabetes equipment and supplies”; “Clean energy and community flood preparedness; market-based trading program”; and much much more (e.g., as Gov. Spanberger recently highlighted, “heat protections for workers, wage theft provisions,” “farm workforce minimum wage bill,” etc. All great stuff, and again NONE OF THAT would have happened with Republicans in charge of the Virginia General Assembly or governorship.
- Oh, and of course, because Spanberger won in a 15-point landslide, it helped Democrats sweep all three statewide offices, in addition to massive gains in the Virginia House of Delegates. That means, among other things, that we have the superb Ghazala Hashmi as our Lt. Governor, as opposed to right-wing-extremist John Reid. It also means that we no longer have to suffer with Trump/MAGA lackey Jason Miyares as Attorney General (arguably, Miyares was the second-worst Attorney General in modern Virginia history, ahead of only the HORRENDOUSLY bad Ken Cuccinelli).
So that’s the good news. Now here’s some not-so-good news, nearly five months into Abigail Spanberger’s governorship.
- First of all, I’ve got to say, I’m just continually baffled, and frankly appalled, at Democrats’ unwillingness and/or inability to put out our own narratives, and also to push back against utter b.s./false, damaging, vicious garbage spewing from Republicans. Thus, from basically the second Spanberger took the oath of office, Republicans launched an all-out attack against her, mostly based on flat-out lies and/or wild distortions, about who and what she was. For a quick reminder of what I’m referring to, see my post from January 30, Not Even Two Weeks Since Abigail Spanberger Was Sworn In as Governor, Right Wingers Are Viciously Attacking Her, which reviews the main lines of attack against Spanberger – that she’s supposedly a “white witch,” “radical extremist,” “Marxist,” “demonic radical communist psychopath,” pushing to enact a so-called “woke agenda,” with “unhinged liberal policies [that] are poisoning the state,” blah blah blah. Again, none of that is even remotely true, but who ever said Republicans – let alone MAGA/Trumpified Republicans – cared about facts or reality? On and on it went, with torrents of this crap being spewed out. Also, of course, there were accusations by Republicans/right wingers that Spanberger was going to raise a gazillion taxes, based on absolutely no evidence, other than a handful of bills introduced by General Assembly members that were never likely to go anywhere (it’s another discussion as to whether they SHOULD have gone somewhere, but the fact is, they weren’t going to and did NOT go anywhere – and Republicans presumably knew that!). And this crap wasn’t just confined to the lunatic fringes of Twitter or far-right talk radio or whatever; the utterly-false-but-highly-negative narrative spread to all kinds of media, including “mainstream” media (which frequently regurgitates/launders right-wing talking points, mostly uncritically, and rarely if ever pushes back with strong headlines stating right up front that Republicans ARE LYING). Which, of course, leaves it to Democrats, in this case the Spanberger communications folks and the Democratic Party of Virginia, to push back. But…did they? Not as far as I can tell, at least not until the negative torrent against Spanberger had gone on for weeks if not months, and even then, mostly just with random, sarcastic, one-off press releases like this one. Sorry (not sorry, actually), but that is NOT effective, and never wil be effective. I mean, my god, if I were a comms person for Spanberger, I’d be completely beside myself. Or I’d just leave, as apparently Spanberger’s Deputy Chief of Staff, Grant Neely (formerly Director of Strategic Communications at Dominion Energy and Chief Communications Officer during Gov. Ralph Northam’s administration), quietly did in the past few weeks after just a few weeks on the job. Can’t blame him, really. But seriously, are Democrats EVER going to wake the f*** up and start doing serious, proactive (as opposed to way-too-late REactive) communications? Are they ever going to start building their own media machine and stop feeding the anti-Democratic corporate media’s both-sides, false-equivalence, de facto-pro-Republican crap? If so, when???
- Second, we’ve seen the relationship between Gov. Spanberger and the Democratic-controlled State Senate and (to a lesser extent) House of Delegates go from bad to worse, with Spanberger vetoing 31 bills (per VPAP; see below for that graphic), far more than any other governor (dating back to 2000, at least, when Jim Gilmore apparently had a rough relationship with members of HIS own party in the General Assembly – Republicans like Russ Potts, John Chichester, Walter Stosch, Tommy Norment – who called Gilmore a “tyrant”, etc.) when looking at vetoed bills “from the same party as the majority in the General Assembly.” So what I’m hearing is a great deal of frustration from Democratic legislators, who are saying things like: Spanberger’s not willing to compromise/that she “thinks she gets everything” (the fact is, “legislating is a compromise process”); that “governors usually don’t take so much interest in the details of bills” (let alone completely rewriting bills after session is over); that she’s basically accusing General Assembly Democrats of supposedly not focusing on the details of bills (even though, I’m told, “some stuff we’ve been working on for six years!”), of supposedly being irresponsible and doing things for popular approval (or, alternately, of doing things “lobbyists told them to do”), etc. So clearly, there’s some frustration at the bare minimum, although what I’m hearing sounds a lot more like anger and resentment than just run-of-the-mill frustration that would be natural in any human relationships…
- Along the lines of that last point, I’m hearing that communication has largely broken down between Gov. Spanberger and top State Senate Democratic leadership – specifically, I’m told that powerful Sen. Louise Lucas (State Senate President Pro Tempore, Finance and Appropriations Committee Chair) and Caucus Chair Mamie Locke aren’t talking to Gov. Spanberger at all. Needless to say, that’s not ideal, and helps explain why Sen. Lucas has taken to posting about her frustrations with Spanberger to her large Twitter following about data center tax breaks and the budget, mostly (“That’s the budget hold up!! Once again, the Governor is wrong on the policy and knows Virginians will cook her if there is a government shutdown.”; “The Governor and the House are the ones that are gambling with our future by allowing the data centers to expand without concern for power, water, or paying their fair share of taxes.”; etc.). Sen. Lucas also pushed back hard against Gov. Spanberger for implying that some of the criticism against her, and the way she’s being treated by General Assembly Democrats, is because she’s a woman; according to Sen. Lucas, “You have gotta be kidding me! There is a record number of women in the GA and four of them are in leadership and a woman LG, yet you think this is all about you! Okay, you thought it to be a great idea but just remember, you started this mess!” And I’m told that it’s not just Sen. Lucas, by any means, but that this sentiment is widespread among Senate Democratic women, at least (it was pointed out to me that both Senate and House Dem caucuses are half female, and that 2/3 of their leadership are women)…
- Obviously, we’ve seen some real anger the past few weeks/months from core Democratic constituencies – particularly organized labor, but also grassroots Democratic activists, immigration activists, etc. – aimed at Spanberger for her vetoes (public sector collective bargaining, establishing a prescription drug affordability board, setting up marijuana retail markets, reining in ICE, etc.). I was chatting with one top Virginia Democratic insider about this, and was trying to recall a time when we’ve seen this level of confrontation between core Democratic constituencies and a Democratic governor (aside from calls for Gov. Northam to step down over the “Blackface” scandal, of course); and no, we really couldn’t think of anything comparable.
- I’m also hearing about problems internally in the Spanberger administration, with words like “arrogance,” “insularity,” “inexperience,” “lack of communication,” etc. being tossed around, including supposedly with Spanberger’s own Cabinet members. To the extent that’s accurate (and I’ve heard it from multiple sources), it’s not great, to put it mildly.
- Finally, you could argue that all of this is “inside baseball” and nobody really is paying attention, except that the early polling for Spanberger has been pretty rough: as State Navigate wrote back in mid-April, “Our findings come on the heels of the Washington Post/Schar School (GMU) poll that rocked the Commonwealth, showing Spanberger as the most historically unpopular Governor at this point in the most recent Virginia Governors’ terms. 47% of likely voters approve of Governor Spanberger, and 47% disapprove. There’s much more hardcore disapprovers than hardcore approvers, too: 41% of likely voters strongly disapprove of the Governor, while 31% strongly approve; 4% somewhat disapprove, and 11% somewhat approve. This makes Abigail Spanberger one of the most unpopular Governors in the country.” So…nope, that’s not good at all, and clearly a sign of something not firing on all cylinders, especially when you compare Spanberger’s approval rating to that of her friend Mikie Sherrill, who was elected governor of New Jersey the same time – and by a very similar margin – as Spanberger was elected governor of Virginia (according to a Rutgers-Eagleton poll in early April, Sherrill’s approval rating was +16 points, compared to Spanberger’s +1 favorable in the WaPo poll and EVEN favorable/unfavorable in the State Navigate poll…)
Bottom line: There’s plenty of time to turn things around (although time does fly, and Virginia governors only get a single, four-year term in office), and lots of good stuff has certainly gotten done, but there also really do seem to be some serious frictions, communications breakdowns, and other problems within Gov. Spanberger’s administration and between her administration and Virginia General Assembly Democrats. So we’ll see how things go in coming months; hopefully some changes for the better, including a budget deal in the next few weeks, and some serious efforts to get these crucial relationships back on track (they don’t have to love each other, but they DO need to work together effectively, to communicate even if they disagree, etc.).
UPDATE 4 pm – Interesting thoughts by VAPLAN, who follows the Virginia General Assembly closer than just about anyone…
