Gov. Spanberger Claimed She Was A Moderate But Is A Radical

Former Democrat congresswoman Abigail Spanberger ran a Virginia gubernatorial campaign presenting herself as a centrist candidate. On the campaign trail, she incessantly cited her ranking as the most bipartisan member of Virginia’s congressional delegation. She declared her focus on kitchen table issues: “affordability and housing, health care and energy, real challenges, and a desire to see strengthened public schools, a real desire to see a growth of our economy where people with a good idea or a dream can build up their business here in Virginia.”

Yet Spanberger is no moderate, as any cursory study of her history in politics demonstrates. It has taken less than a month into her tenure as the first female governor of Virginia to expose her true colors as a leftist ideologue. It’s terrifying how quickly the examples have piled up.

Let the Radical Leftist Reprogramming of Virginia Begin

First, though Spanberger had previously said that Democrats would be able to flip Republican seats without crafting a new electoral map, literally two days after she assumed office in January she praised a proposal passed by the Democrat-controlled legislature to do precisely that. The bill, which Spanberger willingly signed and which will go to voters statewide, could very well limit a state that voted 46 percent for Trump in the last presidential election to having a single Republican representative in Congress (out of eleven total congressional seats for the Commonwealth). Spanberger (risibly) justified the decision as a “targeted” response to other states “that have taken extreme measures to undermine democratic norms.” (The proposed electoral maps are expected to soon win final passage and then move to Spanberger to sign.)

Then there’s Spanberger’s response to federal law enforcement policy on illegal immigrants. The former federal employee — who we can all be confident was a paragon of disinterested neutrality during her career in federal service — ordered Virginia law enforcement agencies to dissolve all partnership agreements with federal immigration enforcement. One of her first acts after being sworn in as governor was an executive order nullifying a policy of her predecessor Republican Glenn Youngkin that required state law enforcement agencies to enter into 287(g) agreements enabling local law enforcement to conduct federal immigration enforcement.

During Spanberger’s inaugural speech in Richmond, she praised Virginia as “the only state in the South where a woman has the same freedom to make her own healthcare decisions as she did before the fall of Roe v. Wade” and declared that Virginia would “not fall victim” to attempts to limit access to abortion. A few days later she signed a bill to set a referendum to “protect reproductive rights” by codifying access to abortion and mail-ordered abortion drugs in the state constitution. Virginia Republicans have warned the amendment would allow abortion up to the moment of birth — a scary prospect in a state whose former governor once described having “a conversation” about what to do with a baby who survived a late-term abortion attempt.

Virginia’s New Governor Has Never Been a Moderate

In truth, we didn’t even need these actions to prove Spanberger’s true leftist commitments — they’ve been baked in since the beginning. Her mother, from whom she has acknowledged she derived her political opinions, was a “passionate backer of the Equal Rights Amendment.” A young Spanberger was a page for Virginia Democrat Sen. Chuck Robb. Before running for national office — again, encouraged by her mother — she was a member of a gun-control group, and she has called for a federal “assault weapons” ban, even though data consistently shows that most gun deaths are not caused by such weapons.

While in Congress, the “centrist” Spanberger was a member of the LGBT Equality Caucus. She acknowledged that she opposed any legislation to restrict abortion, arguing that the government should not “mandate a pregnancy.” Though even prominent environmentalists have since admitted that environmental activism has gone too far, she described climate change as “one of the greatest and most imminent threats to our economy, our national security, and our way of life.” A photo taken by The Washington Post of the Spanberger household a few months ago shows a rainbow flag, the logo of the Human Rights Campaign, and an “elect women, elect women, elect women” sticker all prominently displayed.

Virginia Is In For a Rollercoaster Ride

In January Spanberger asserted: “Above all else, my job as governor is to provide what the federal government too often has not: predictability, steadiness, and an unrelenting focus on the people we serve.” Yet far from being a centrist focused on competency, Spanberger never tires of aligning herself with the agenda of leftist activist organizations. She has no enemies to the left, as we learned last year when she stood by Democrat Attorney General candidate Jay Jones even after his murder fantasy texts were discovered.

The “moderate”-to-radical shift is a classic Democrat tactic, and, no surprise, Spanberger is drawing on that same tired playbook. Having been trained to dissemble, deceive, and exploit, she now cynically uses her expertise in misrepresentation and manipulation on the residents of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Buckle up, Old Dominion.

Casey Chalk is a senior contributor at The Federalist and an editor and columnist at The New Oxford Review. He is a regular contributor at many publications and the author of three books, including the upcoming “Wisdom From the Cross: How Jesus’ Seven Last Words Teach Us How to Live (and Die)” (Sophia Institute Press, 2026).