«I don’t care that much about what happens in the city of New York,» Spanberger said on the campaign trail. Other Democrats should listen.
Five years ago, as Democrats grappled with a disappointing congressional election that saw their House majority decline by more than a dozen seats despite Joe Biden’s win in the presidential election, then-Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D–Va.) voiced her frustration with the party’s lurch toward the political left.
If Democrats didn’t shift back toward the center, «we will get fucking torn apart», she warned on a conference call with some of the Democrats’ top brass. «And we need to not ever use the words socialist or socialism ever again.»
History sometimes has a sense of humor.
On Tuesday night, as New York City was poised to elect a new mayor who had expressly embraced the socialist label and become a national champion for the far-left wing of the Democratic Party, Spanberger also emerged victorious. She will be the next governor of Virginia—and the state’s first female governor—after defeating Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, the Republican nominee.
CNN called the race less than an hour after the polls closed, with Spanberger leading Earle-Sears by about nine points with 33 percent of precincts reporting.
It’s a result that, when paired with Zohran Mamdani’s likely victory in the other big race on this low-key Election Day, offers Democrats two divergent paths as the party heads into next year’s midterm elections and beyond. And while Mamdani’s win, like his campaign, gets more media attention, it is the result in Virginia that probably says more about what Democrats need to do if they want their party’s brand to be more viable on the national stage.
They can start by taking some lessons from how Spanberger has bluntly dissected the party’s recent troubles. During her three terms in Congress from 2019 through 2024, Spanberger earned a reputation as one of the most interesting and independent members of the Democratic caucus. She criticized her own party for failing to recognize that «inflation is a problem» in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and blamed Biden for overreaching politically.
