Abigail Spanberger will take to the historic grounds of Colonial Williamsburg on Tuesday night to deliver the Democratic response to Donald Trump’s State of the Union address. As the midterm elections loom, and Democrats desperately search for a road map back to reality, the party is turning to a moderate who flipped Republican congressional seats in suburban Richmond before winning the governorship by 15 points.
Since taking over from Republican Glenn Yonkin in January, Spanberger has moved at a pace that has caught conservatives off guard, much to the delight of those who still identify as liberals.
She followed through on a campaign promise to end Virginia law enforcement’s cooperation agreement with ICE and supported redrawing the state’s congressional map before the midterm elections. When the Trump administration pushed to remove the president of the University of Virginia over diversity policies, she ousted board members associated with the effort.
Now that Richmond Democrats hold the governorship, state Senate and House seats for the first time in years, Spanberger isn’t shy about taking action or slowing down.
The attack from the right was equally swift. Fox News host Mark Levin posted on The Lepanto Institute, a conservative Catholic organization, released an altered photo of her as the White Witch from “The Chronicles of Narnia,” mocking the white outfit she wore at the inauguration to commemorate the suffrage movement.
Laura Loomer, a whisperer of far-right Islamophobia in Donald Trump’s administration, posted that “white liberal women are the most dangerous people in our society” along with a video of Spanberger signing an executive order related to ICE. Assistant Attorney General Hamit Dhillon, who heads the Justice Department’s civil rights division, watched the same video and called the governor a “Bond villain.”
These accusations fall on a politician whose entire career has been built on the idea that she is absolutely not any of the left-wing figures she has been accused of.
Spanberger worked for years as a CIA case officer, managing foreign intelligence sources, before running for Congress in 2018 in the hotly contested Richmond suburb, which required her to win over pro-Trump voters. She is a Democrat who warned colleagues in caucuses after the 2020 election not to use the word “socialism” or “socialism” — something progressive activists have yet to forget. She won the governorship last November by 15 points, the largest Democratic margin in Virginia’s gubernatorial race in six years. It also happened on the same night that democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani won the New York mayoral election.
She will become the second consecutive former CIA official to serve as the Democratic response to Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress. The position was held last year by Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin, another moderate who also built her political identity around national security credentials and bipartisan appeal. That the party has now pivoted to the same image twice in a row is a sign of where Democratic strategists see the electoral focus.
On the sidelines of the California Democratic Party convention in San Francisco on Saturday, Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin spoke directly about why she was elected: “Clearly her message last year resonated with Virginians,” he told the Guardian. “Her focus on affordability and tabletop issues resulted in a decisive victory in a very purple, if not red, state.”
Spanberger’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
The reaction from the left was quieter but no less persuasive. Spanberger’s approach to ICE has centered around law enforcement capabilities and community trust rather than immigrant rights in her public statements.
Her choice underscores what appears to be a divide among Democrats over where to go next. While a January Gallup survey found that 45% of Democrats want their party to go moderate, up from 34% in 2021, an Embold Research/New Republic poll conducted the same month found that 46% want a progressive as the party’s 2028 nominee. A large majority said they wanted the party to fight harder against corporations and the wealthy.
Sens. Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez used that energy to launch a “Fight the Oligarchy” tour that drew hundreds of thousands across the country and thousands more in deep red states like Utah, Montana and Idaho between February and November last year.
While Spanberger will address establishment Democrats with his response to Trump, progressives are likely to turn to Pennsylvania Democrat Summer Lee, who is delivering a response from the Working Families Party, as well as the “Swamp State” boycott event, in which a number of high-profile political and entertainment figures will also deliver alternative, resistant messages from Washington.
As for the governor, she will speak in Williamsburg, she said in a statement, because the city exemplifies “the power of ordinary citizens to shape our nation’s future.”
She added: “I look forward to working with Virginians on the next chapter of our story in this historic place—creating a clear vision for a stronger, safer, and more affordable future for every American who calls our state home.”
Lauren Gambino contributed reporting