Since she arrived in Congress in 2019, Abigail Spanberger served as an unofficial spokeswoman for the moderate wing of the Democratic Party whose primary goal was to win elections, not start a political movement.
So when Ms. Spanberger, weeks into her term as Virginia’s governor, was chosen by the Democratic congressional leadership to deliver the party’s response to President Trump’s State of the Union speech, it served as a message to the rest of the party to follow the example she set in her winning campaign last year.
And indeed, Ms. Spanberger plans to address key themes she campaigned on when she follows Mr. Trump on Tuesday night: affordability, the chaos instigated by the president both in America and overseas, and the ways “ordinary citizens” are pushing back against the president, according to a preview of her speech themes circulated by her aides.
But Ms. Spanberger, a former C.I.A. case officer, has hardly shied away from a liberal platform since becoming governor last month. She has signed a series of bills from her “affordable Virginia” agenda, along with legislation that, if voters approve an April referendum, would redraw the state’s congressional map to flip up to four Republican-held seats to Democrats.
Ms. Spanberger plans to deliver her remarks from Colonial Williamsburg, a “living history” museum focused on 18th-century Virginia. She chose the location, her aides said, because it was the site of votes in 1776 by Virginia delegations to propose independence from England and adopt the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which later served as a key influence on the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights to the Constitution.
Reid J. Epstein is a Times reporter covering campaigns and elections from Washington.
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