L. Douglas Wilder was the governor of Virginia from 1990-1994.
Virginia has inaugurated a new governor, Abigail Spanberger (D), and with that moment comes both celebration and responsibility. She did not campaign as a woman seeking recognition for being the first to do so; she campaigned to govern.
That distinction matters.
The earliest days of any administration are often dismissed as ceremonial; they are not, they are revealing. They disclose priorities, instincts and governing philosophy. They test whether ambition is aligned with mandate.
When I was elected governor, I quickly learned that not only were we broke, but we were nearly $250 million in the hole. In response, we established the Rainy Day Fund and placed its maintenance into our constitution to ensure fiscal discipline and long-term stability.
Today, Virginians face a different but no less serious reckoning. The basic costs of living continue to rise. Housing, food, transportation, health care and education are not just abstract talking points, they are daily burdens. Families are forced to choose between essentials. Seniors are rationing care. Young people are delaying dreams.
In times like these, we must distinguish between niceties — the policies that may sound appealing or politically rewarding but do little to ease the pressures Virginians face — and necessities, those actions that directly address affordability, economic security and opportunity. Government must focus first on what helps families remain afloat, not on what merely satisfies ideological impulses.
The temptation of new leadership aligned in policy and purpose is to move quickly and expansively. Yet the first question must always be the same: Who will pay? And can they afford it?
Members of the General Assembly have rushed to introduce bills eliminating mandatory minimum sentences for numerous crimes, raising taxes and expanding spending. Each of these proposals deserves debate, but discussion without discipline becomes indulgence.
Will raising taxes shift the burden primarily to those with the greatest ability to pay, or will it squeeze working families already stretched thin? Will increased spending result in measurable improvements in public services, or will it drive the state toward deficits that future generations must repair? Will eliminating sentencing standards improve justice and public safety together, or produce unintended consequences that communities later regret?
Good intentions do not replace careful judgment. Every policy choice carries consequences, financial and otherwise. Gov. Spanberger must demonstrate that she is willing to exercise discipline and resist excesses that extend beyond the mandate voters entrusted to her.
As governor, she must be the driving force and steady commander of our ship of state. Her advisers, capable though they may be, must not become an insulation from the people she was elected to serve. Leaders cannot govern from behind layers of staff and strategy. They must remain directly accountable to citizens, listening to their concerns and responding to their realities. That may cause discomfort at times, but it is a small price to pay for genuine representation.
I need not restate the governor’s and our shared values, but I will restate my lifelong effort to remind those in power that government exists to further what my mentor, Mordecai Johnson, former president of Howard University, called the “high possibility of the individual.” Setbacks will occur, but leadership means ensuring that they remain temporary, not permanent conditions.
Gov. Spanberger now stands among those who can make a difference. I believe she intends to be a servant of the people, all of the people. But that service must be disciplined, because every initiative has a cost, every promise has a price, and every reform must be measured not only by intention, but by consequence.
Justice and fiscal responsibility are not opposing goals, they are inseparable. Lasting reform requires financial stability. Programs that cannot be sustained eventually collapse, leaving those they were meant to help worse off than before. True justice demands solutions that endure.
Virginia deserves leadership that understands the difference between momentum and mandate. The people deserve nothing less.
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