Abigail Spanberger: Democrats turn to centrist as party seeks return to relevance

On Tuesday night, Abigail Spanberger will walk out on to the historic grounds of Colonial Williamsburg and deliver the Democratic response to Donald Trump’s State of the Union address. With midterm elections approaching and Democrats desperately searching for a roadmap back to relevance, the party has turned to a moderate who once flipped a Republican-held congressional seat in the suburbs of Richmond and then parlayed that into the governorship by 15 points.

Since taking the office from Republican Glenn Youngkin in January, Spanberger has moved with lighting speed that has caught conservatives flat-footed, much to the delight of those who still identify as liberal.

She followed through on a campaign promise to end Virginia law enforcement’s cooperation agreements with ICE, and backed a potential redrawing of the state’s congressional maps ahead of the midterms. When the Trump administration pushed to remove the University of Virginia’s president over diversity policies, she forced out the board members tied to the effort.

Now that Democrats in Richmond hold the governorship, the state senate and the house of delegates for the first time in years, Spanberger has not been shy about flexing, or slowing down.

The attacks from the right have also been just as swift. Mark Levin, the Fox News host, posted on X that Spanberger is “moving at high speed to permanently radicalize and change the state” and that “she campaigned as a moderate and lied through her teeth”. The Lepanto Institute, a conservative Catholic organization, posted a doctored photo of her as the White Witch from the Chronicles of Narnia, a dig at the white outfit she wore to her inauguration to honor the suffrage movement.

Laura Loomer, the far-right Islamophobic Donald Trump administration whisperer, posted that “white liberal women are the most dangerous people in our society”, alongside a video of Spanberger signing an executive order related to ICE. Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general overseeing the justice department’s civil rights division, watched the same clip and called the governor a “Bond villain”.

The accusations have landed on a politician whose entire career was built around the idea that she was emphatically not any of the leftwing things she’s been accused of.

Spanberger spent years as a CIA case officer, running foreign intelligence sources, before running for Congress in 2018 in a competitive suburban Richmond district that required her to win over voters who had supported Trump. She was the Democrat who, after the 2020 elections, warned colleagues on a caucus call to never use the word “socialist” or “socialism” – a moment progressive activists have yet to forget. She won her governorship last November by 15 points, the largest Democratic margin in a Virginia gubernatorial race in more than six decades. It also happened on the same night as democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral victory in New York.

She will be the second former CIA official in a row to be handed the job of delivering the Democratic response to a Trump address to a joint session of Congress. Last year, that role went to Michigan senator Elissa Slotkin, another moderate who similarly built her political identity around national security credentials and bipartisan appeal. That the party has now turned to the same profile twice in succession indicates where Democratic strategists think the electoral center of gravity lies.

DNC chair Ken Martin, while on the sidelines of the California Democratic convention in San Francisco on Saturday, was direct about the reasoning behind her selection: “Clearly her message last year resonated with Virginians,” he told the Guardian. “Her focus on affordability and kitchen-table issues resulted in a very decisive win in a very purple, if not red, state.”

Spanberger’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

What has been quieter, and just as telling, is the response from the left. Spanberger’s handling of ICE has been framed in her public statements around law enforcement competence and community trust rather than immigrant rights.

Her selection highlights how the Democratic party is seemingly divided over where it should go next. While a Gallup survey from January found that 45% of Democrats want their party to move toward moderation, up from 34% in 2021, an Embold Research/New Republic poll taken the same month found that 46% want a progressive as the party’s 2028 nominee. An overwhelming majority say they want the party to fight harder against corporations and the wealthy.

Senator Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have drawn on that energy with their “Fighting Oligarchy” tour, attracting hundreds of thousands of people across the country between February and November of last year, and crowds of thousands in deep-red states such as Utah, Montana and Idaho.

While Spanberger is set to deliver the establishment Democratic response to Trump, progressives may turn to Pennsylvania democrat Summer Lee, who is delivering the Working Families party response, and the “State of The Swamp” boycott event, where a number of high-profile political and entertainment figures will also deliver alternate, resistance-toned messages from DC.

As for the governor, shewill speak from Williamsburg, she said in a statement, because the city stands as a testament to “the power of ordinary citizens to shape the future of our nation”.

She added: “I look forward to joining Virginians in this historic place to lay out the next chapter of our story – a clear vision for a stronger, safer, and more affordable future for every American who calls our nation home.”

Lauren Gambino contributed reporting