Gov. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia framed the Democratic Party’s rebuttal to President Trump’s State of the Union address around three questions: Is he making life more affordable? Is he keeping Americans safe? And is he working on Americans’ behalf?
Ms. Spanberger, who took office last month, argued that on all three counts, the answer was no.
“Is the president working for you?” she asked before a supportive crowd in Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia. “We all know the answer is no.”
Ms. Spanberger’s speech — and the selection of her to deliver it — signaled how Democratic leaders want the party to be viewed in Mr. Trump’s second term: sober and serious officials who understand voters’ economic plight.
A moderate woman who is coming off a landslide election victory in Virginia, Ms. Spanberger gave a safe speech that struck the political notes Democrats are aiming to press — that Mr. Trump has hurt the economy and sowed chaos with his policies.
Ms. Spanberger, 46, is the second C.I.A. veteran in two years chosen to deliver the Democratic Party’s formal response to Mr. Trump. Last year, it was Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, a fellow moderate who also first entered Congress in 2018 and had also just won a statewide election. While Ms. Slotkin warned last year that Mr. Trump would increase the cost of living, Ms. Spanberger made a broader case that his administration was working against the well-being of the American people.
She called Mr. Trump’s tariffs a “massive tax hike on you and your family,” and argued that congressional Republicans were making life more expensive and “making it more difficult to see a doctor” while driving up the costs of energy and housing.
And she said that while Mr. Trump’s policies were hurting “regular Americans,” they were helping himself and his allies.
“He’s enriching himself, his family, his friends. The scale of the corruption is unprecedented,” she said, before ticking through details. “There’s the cover-up of the Epstein files, the crypto scams, cozying up to foreign princes for airplanes and billionaires for ballrooms, putting his name and face on buildings all over our nation’s capital. This is not what our founders envisioned.”
Ms. Spanberger’s 12-minute speech took up just a fraction of the nearly two hours Mr. Trump spent addressing the nation. But she hit several main points Democrats want to hammer home about the president, including a critique of his immigration policies.
While Mr. Trump vividly described violent crimes committed by undocumented immigrants, Ms. Spanberger recalled the scenes Americans have watched on their screens in recent months of federal agents in Minneapolis and other American cities.
“Every minute spent sowing fear is a minute not spent investigating murders, crimes against children or the criminals defrauding seniors of their life savings,” she said. “Our president told us tonight that we are safer because these agents arrest mothers and detain children. Think about that.”
The job Ms. Spanberger took on Tuesday night can be thankless: Fumbling the opposition party’s response to the State of the Union speech is a bipartisan tradition dating back decades. But she completed the task without committing a memorable or meme-able error.
Giving a party’s State of the Union rebuttal also offers a significant opportunity to make a first impression to the nation. Ms. Spanberger is known for developing a carefully curated reputation of bucking her party when she has felt it has strayed from her moderate politics.
“Nobody elected him to be F.D.R.,” she said of President Joseph R. Biden Jr. after the 2021 elections, when Democrats lost the Virginia governor’s race amid Washington dysfunction. “They elected him to be normal.”
And yet in her first month as governor, Ms. Spanberger has charted an aggressive path. She signed a series of bills aimed at lowering prices in Virginia along with legislation to redraw the state’s congressional districts in a way that would flip up to four seats to Democrats from Republicans this fall.
Her own election last fall, Ms. Spanberger said in her speech, was a referendum on Mr. Trump’s first year in office and demonstrated that voters preferred Democrats who run as a moderate counterweight to the president. This year’s midterm elections, she predicted, would continue that trend.
“I won my election by 15 points, and we won 13 new seats in our state legislature because voters decided they wanted something different,” she said, adding, “Those who are stepping up now to run will win in November because Americans — you at home — know you can demand more, and that we are working to lower costs. We are working to keep our communities and our country safe. And we are working for you.”
Reid J. Epstein is a Times reporter covering campaigns and elections from Washington.
The post Spanberger, in Democratic Response, Asks ‘Is the President Working for You?’ appeared first on New York Times.
