As political origin stories go, Abigail Spanberger, a former House member from Virginia who is now the Democratic nominee for governor, has an enticing one. It hits the sweet spot of making her seem simultaneously exceptional and relatable.
In 2014, Ms. Spanberger, then working for the C.I.A., was brainstorming with her husband and their oldest daughter about where her next posting should be. Kenya? Costa Rica? “And our daughter said, ‘Virginia!’” Ms. Spanberger recalled to a bar packed with supporters in Arlington one evening in late June. “And we said, ‘No!’”
But her daughter pressed, saying, “Why wouldn’t we go to Virginia? Everyone we love lives in Virginia,” according to Ms. Spanberger, whose parents moved there when she was 13. “The reality was, she was right.”
So after “lots of pro and con lists,” Ms. Spanberger said, she moved home to the commonwealth with her family and, as she put it, shifted “from service to country to service to community.” She took a private sector job, volunteered with the gun control group Moms Demand Action, started a Girl Scout troop.
Then the first Trump administration hit, and Ms. Spanberger, like many suburban women, was appalled by what was happening in the country. So in 2018 she made a long-shot run for Congress, becoming the first Democrat to win her House district, a sprawling, demographically diverse stretch of Northern and Central Virginia, in decades. She unseated Dave Brat, the Tea Party conservative who stunned political watchers in 2014 by beating Eric Cantor, at the time the Republican majority leader, in the primary. Now she is looking to take her service statewide, at a moment when Trump 2.0 is sowing some next-level chaos in Virginia.
Ms. Spanberger’s story is not flashy. But it introduces her to voters as a candidate with an unlikely mix of credentials, especially for a Democrat: a down-to-earth suburban mom of three who spent years tracking terrorists, narco-traffickers and other transnational bad guys. Her biography helps convey a gut-level grasp of Virginians’ everyday anxieties about schools and crime and providing for their families and experience making tough calls in life-or-death situations involving national security. Message: Here is a leader both formidable and approachable, tough and caring, driven by her commitment to service.
Ms. Spanberger is not the Democrats’ only mom with a butt-kicking résumé on the ballot this year. Representative Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, a friend and erstwhile roommate of Ms. Spanberger’s, is also running for governor. Ms. Sherrill has two boys and two girls — all teenagers, God help her. She is also a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and a former Navy helicopter pilot who flipped her Trump-loving congressional district blue in 2018. More than Ms. Spanberger, Ms. Sherrill is spotlighting her service history for her race. Campaign ads show her in her Navy wings (the leather bomber jacket in her announcement video feels very “Top Gun”) and feature plenty of military imagery.
Welcome to the year of the national security mom. Headlining this political off-year’s two hottest races, Ms. Spanberger and Ms. Sherrill stand as an emerging model of leader, one whose experience combines maternal nurturing with “Who’s your daddy?” badassery in a way that confounds partisan molds. It is one Democrats hope will help their party shed its loser status in November, then keep gaining traction. The party has been aggressively cultivating this model at least since Trump 1.0, but it feels especially relevant now, as Democrats fight the stereotype — as Cheri Bustos, a former Democratic representative, put it to me — of being “weak, woke and whiny.”
In 2019 the House saw an influx of Democratic female representatives with national security chops. Along with Ms. Spanberger and Ms. Sherrill, the fresh faces included Chrissy Houlahan in Pennsylvania (an Air Force veteran), Elaine Luria in Virginia (a former Navy officer) and Elissa Slotkin in Michigan (a former C.I.A. officer and Pentagon official). All were moms or stepmoms or both. There were national security dads in the class as well, including Colorado’s Jason Crow and California’s Gil Cisneros. But the women, all moderates who bonded during the campaign and who referred to their group as the Badasses, drew more notice as more of a novelty.
In operational terms, national security moms say their time in the military and intel worlds gave them a mission focus, which boils down to identifying a goal and concentrating all your resources on achieving it. “Campaign planning for a political campaign is not totally dissimilar from campaign planning around combat,” Ms. Slotkin told me. She won a Senate seat last year in a state Mr. Trump carried.
It also gave them a different perspective on what constitutes a hard decision. In September 2019 the Badasses, along with Mr. Cisneros and Mr. Crow, wrote an opinion essay in The Washington Post calling for an impeachment inquiry into Mr. Trump. Because they represented pro-Trump districts and previously opposed impeachment, these national security moderates’ change of heart altered the dynamic in their caucus. As Ms. Slotkin recalled, “We all looked at each other and said, ‘You know, there has to be something more important than just getting re-elected. And we’ve done hard things, arguably harder than just writing an op-ed and taking a political risk.’”
The same goes for bucking their party. Ms. Spanberger, Ms. Sherrill and Ms. Slotkin came into office swinging at their own caucus leaders, as three of the 15 Democrats who did not support Nancy Pelosi for speaker of the House. “People in Congress sometimes act as if standing up to leadership is a really hard thing or a real act of courage or bravery,” Ms. Sherrill told me. “I’ve seen acts of courage and bravery, and that doesn’t fall into that camp for me.”
Many advantages of a national security background are less about the nuts and bolts of serving in elected office than about persuading voters you are fit for the job. Ms. Slotkin credited her Senate victory to two major factors: No. 1, being “obsessively focused” on the cost of living, she said, “then No. 2, I had a couple ounces more alpha energy than the average Democrat.” Alpha energy is a hot topic for Ms. Slotkin, by which she means passion and a fighting spirit, something many Democratic voters complain that the party’s leaders sorely lack.
“If you look at what helped me win, it was doing better in a lot of white working-class, union-heavy communities of Macomb County and western Wayne County,” she said. “That, to me, has to do less with any one policy proposal and more just, how do people perceive you? You know, are you going to fight? Are you tough?”
It’s worth noting at this point that the presumed appeal of national security moms isn’t that national security is a top policy concern for voters. Except in rare circumstances, American elections rarely turn on issues of national security or foreign policy. This is more about stature, toughness, courage. Ms. Spanberger posits that for voters sizing her up, her work at the C.I.A. can serve as a “shortcut to ‘She’s tough. She’s hardworking. She’s thorough.’”
The desire for a political fighter has been turbocharged by the Trump era and the rise of “toughness as political currency,” Betsy Fischer Martin, the executive director of the Women & Politics Institute at American University, told me. “After Trump’s kind of brute strength set the tone, voters were looking for leaders to project some of that same resolve.”
Among Democrats, this means leaders with enough, well, alpha energy to stand up to an out-of-control Trump administration. As Ms. Sherrill sees it, people “are wanting to see leaders who are going to take on the really tough challenges that we have now and drive — in my case the State of New Jersey — on a different path forward than we see coming from Washington.”
This quality cuts across ideological lines, though it can be harder for political moderates to convey. Thus the potential benefit of a candidate having done time in war zones or other dangerous places.
That said, a national security bio also makes it harder for Republicans to portray Democratic candidates as lefty extremists. “With someone who was previously a federal agent and then in the intel community, it’s clearly contradictory for someone to lob the reductive attacks about Democrats not being focused on public safety,” Ms. Spanberger, who served in federal law enforcement before joining the C.I.A., told me.
It also cuts against the idea that Democrats aren’t patriotic. “A lot of people I come across think that Democrats don’t love America,” said Ms. Slotkin. A service background, she said, can act as “shorthand for people to understand that you love your country and that you put yourself at risk to protect your country.”
If all this is an advantage for national security Democrats generally, it can serve double duty for women. Gender bias — unconscious and very conscious — remains alive and well in electoral politics.
There is “this constant sort of, ‘Is this woman strong enough and tough enough, and particularly, to be the head of a state?’” Debbie Walsh, who heads the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, said. Executive offices, like governor and, obviously, president can be particularly challenging. “When you look at research that’s been done about voter attitudes, there’s more of a comfort level with women in legislative positions. It fits the stereotype of women working well together in groups,” she said.
This stubborn dynamic has taken on fresh relevance in the age of Trump, with male piggishness in vogue and women’s rights under attack.
Ms. Walsh pointed out that there are 12 women serving as governors — basically the high-water mark. (For a few shining weeks early this year, before South Dakota’s Kristi Noem decamped for the cabinet, there were 13.) Ms. Spanberger would be Virginia’s first female chief executive. Ms. Sherrill would be New Jersey’s second.
For women more than men, a national security background, especially one involving combat, is still something of a novelty and goes straight at questions about whether a candidate has the right stuff to lead. A woman’s history of pursuing drug cartels or flying into war zones can help answer doubts many voters may not want to recognize in themselves. “That is a profile that I would look for 24/7,” said Ms. Bustos of her days involved with recruiting House candidates.
There are, of course, pitfalls to avoid and cultural adjustments to be made.
“I think most of us who have a service background had to be coaxed into telling personal stories and reflecting on our own experience publicly because that was so drilled out of us. It wasn’t even accepted in a place like the C.I.A. or the Pentagon,” Ms. Slotkin said.
Then there is female leaders’ eternal struggle to balance likability and toughness.
“I was told when I ran for the first time in 2018 that women have to — quote — ‘be a happy warrior,’” Ms. Slotkin recalled. “And I was told early on that I was a little too much warrior and not enough happy.”
Many Democratic voters may also prefer more nuance in their elected leaders than the in-your-face aggression associated with Trump Republicanism. It’s hard to imagine a bunch of chest-thumping Pete Hegseths or smirking JD Vances faring well with much of the party. These national security moms, to varying degrees, are trying to achieve a tricky balance. “In these candidates, you see women who talk about their bipartisanship, talk about their ability to work across the aisle but also use words like ‘fight’ and ‘strength,’” said Ms. Fischer Martin. She pointed to a Spanberger ad in which the candidate is shown on a gun range and also with a gaggle of schoolchildren. “That would seem, on paper, whiplash. But it kind of works in the whole package” of national security moms.
The mom part brings its own advantages. Talking about your daughter’s theater camp (Ms. Spanberger) or about your teenage rugby players’ concussion risk (Ms. Sherrill) can help reassure people that you aren’t all sharp edges and elbows.
A great bio guarantees nothing, of course. Seasoned political watchers will recall, for instance, the cases of the Democrats Amy McGrath and M.J. Hegar, veterans who narrowly lost House races in Kentucky and Texas in 2018, followed by high-profile, extremely expensive Senate losses in 2020. And one of the Badasses, Elaine Luria, lost her House seat in 2022 to the Republican Jen Kiggans, a Navy veteran and mother of four.
As the first major contests after a presidential election year, the governors’ races in New Jersey and especially Virginia are considered bellwethers of the national political mood and referendums on the occupant of the White House. Mr. Trump isn’t exactly riding high these days, but neither is the Democratic Party. So the national winds could cut either way for Ms. Sherrill and Ms. Spanberger.
Despite New Jersey being bluer than Virginia, Ms. Sherrill is seen as facing the tougher fight, in part because she is looking to succeed a governor from her party, Phil Murphy. His approval ratings are meh, and a majority of residents are not satisfied with the state’s handling of key issues such as affordability and taxes. One of Ms. Sherrill’s top tasks is to distance herself from the Murphy administration without ticking off the party faithful.
In Virginia, Ms. Spanberger’s Republican opponent, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, is also a national security mom (though of an earlier generation), who served in the Marines. The Republican ticket has had a bumpy run so far — including weak fund-raising, a sex scandal involving the party’s pick for lieutenant governor and a midsummer shake-up of the top staff members on Team Earle-Sears. One recent poll showed the race tightening a bit, but Ms. Spanberger is still the favorite and is expected to get a big lift from the hundreds of thousands of federal workers who live in Virginia, many of whom have had their lives upended by cuts dictated by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
With the current disarray and the leadership vacuum in the Democratic Party, this is an obvious moment for leaders like Ms. Spanberger and Ms. Sherrill to make their move. To quote Petyr Baelish from “Game of Thrones,” “Chaos is a ladder.”
We will see how slippery the rungs are and how high any of these women can climb. But few people would dispute that Democrats are in dire need of leaders with proven strength, determination and competence — and an impulse to run toward the fight.
By that metric, national security moms seem like a model very much worth taking a risk on.
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Michelle Cottle writes about national politics for Opinion. She has covered Washington and politics since the Clinton administration. @mcottle
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