RICHMOND — Virginia Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger (D) will take office in January with consolidated power across state government that would be the envy of any ambitious governor, but with looming budget problems that could throw a wrench into her plans.
“I will be governor during a time when we will have to make some harder choices,” Spanberger said recently in an interview with The Washington Post that suggested she is taking a cautious approach to the mandate that comes after her resounding, 15-point electoral victory.
In a discussion that ranged from housing policy to New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and the texting scandal that shadowed Virginia Attorney General-elect Jay Jones, Spanberger made clear she’s sticking with the centrist, kitchen-table focus that drove her campaign.
“It’s about understanding your mandate,” Spanberger said, which in her view means lowering costs, improving education and ensuring communities are safe.
Spanberger, 46, a former three-term member of Congress, said she is excited about working across the aisle in a time of partisan divisiveness, promising to chart a way forward by focusing on solving practical problems to help improve the lives of Virginians.
While she said she’s working on legislation and executive orders to roll out as soon as she is inaugurated Jan. 17, she cautioned that getting results will take time.
“You can’t just flip a switch, and I think that very broadly speaking, people understand that and recognize that,” Spanberger said during the interview at her transition offices near the Virginia Capitol in Richmond. “But you can bring an intentionality to state policy both on the administration side and on the policy side.”
Her election on Nov. 4 led a Democratic sweep in Virginia. The party picked up 13 seats in the House of Delegates to expand its majority to 64-36, and Democrats won both other statewide offices: state Sen. Ghazala Hashmi was elected lieutenant governor, while Jones, a former delegate, unseated the Republican attorney general. Democrats already held a 51-49 majority in the state Senate, which was not on the ballot this year.
Democrats wielded consolidated power in 2020 and 2021 for the first time in a generation in Virginia, enacting an aggressive agenda that included abolishing the death penalty, legalizing recreational marijuana and passing an ambitious plan for reducing the state’s use of fossil fuels. That era ended when Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin took office in 2022.
This time, Spanberger and some Democratic lawmakers are preaching restraint. The governor-elect said she supports legislative priorities laid out recently by state House and Senate leaders that included raising Virginia’s minimum wage to $15 an hour and advancing constitutional amendments to enshrine same-sex marriage, protect abortion access and restore voting rights to people who serve felony sentences.
More broadly, she said, solving problems around the state will mean tailoring solutions to the needs of each locality and cooperating with Republicans in search of good ideas. Over the past few weeks, the governor-elect has attended budget workshops held by the state Senate and the House of Delegates in various parts of Virginia. At one, a Republican state senator approached her to share thoughts about how to reduce development costs and delays in building affordable housing.
“I look forward to running down every idea, both the ones that certainly I developed and pursued on the campaign trail, but ones that might be new to me, like the one that this state senator brought,” Spanberger said. She added that she is also looking to other states for policy ideas.
Those budget sessions made clear that the state is facing a new set of fiscal challenges. Virginia has enjoyed budget surpluses every year of Youngkin’s administration, enabling some $9 billion in permanent or one-time tax reductions or rebates. Youngkin said last week that he believes economic development will continue to boost Virginia’s economy and accused Democrats of overstating the likelihood of a slowdown.
But a large portion of past budgetary cushions was fueled by federal dollars, Spanberger said — from pandemic relief passed during President Donald Trump’s first term, and then from the major infrastructure bill and other programs enacted during President Joe Biden’s administration.
“I’m acutely aware of the federal dollars that came to our state because I voted for those” while serving in Congress, she said. “But those dollars are gone, and into the future our … fiscal outlook looks different.”
Trump’s cuts to the federal workforce have affected Virginia more than almost any other state. The administration’s tariffs have hurt the state’s agriculture industry and driven up costs for consumers, Spanberger said. And the Republican federal budget bill has shifted onto states an increased obligation to fund Medicaid and SNAP benefits for low-income people.
Recent General Assembly budget projections suggested that those costs will eat up Virginia’s surplus revenue for the next two years, which could limit any new policy initiatives — and then begin to threaten existing programs. “Whether it constrains us or whether it just makes it so that every decision has to be more focused — you know, I choose to view it as the latter because I have no other choice,” Spanberger said.
Are tax increases on the table? “There does not appear to be a need to do that at the moment,” Spanberger said. But “there will be people along the line that may not see the funding for their priorities,” she said, and it’s urgent to continue economic development efforts to generate well-paying jobs that, in turn, help the tax base.
She declined to specify programs that might face cuts next year and said her transition team is working on legislative proposals for the General Assembly session that begins Jan. 14. State government has no direct role in the price of groceries or school supplies — areas where Democrats said they would lower costs — but Spanberger said lawmakers can “put downward pressure” on prices throughout the economy.
One example she cited: health care. Spanberger said she plans to continue the work of her predecessors, including Youngkin, in cultivating a generic drug industry in Virginia, leading to lower drug prices. Supporting rural hospitals, she said, “creates a better economic landscape” in parts of the state that are struggling.
And while the state’s responsibility for Medicaid funding stands to grow, Spanberger said her administration can work to create “efficiencies” in the system that will save money. That doesn’t mean reducing benefits, she said, but rather streamlining the way the state administers the program.
While Spanberger ran on “pragmatism over partisanship,” she also promised to stand up to the Trump administration. She has not spoken with the president since winning her election but said she worked with the White House during her time in Congress and had bills signed by Trump.
“I pushed back on the administration and I engaged with the administration when it mattered for the people of my district, and my posture will be the same as governor,” she said.
Virginia’s colleges and universities is one area where Spanberger has already taken a stand. She said in the interview that recent efforts by Youngkin to influence university governance, in concert with the Trump Justice Department, was an aberration from long-standing state practice, and she vowed to change the system to emphasize legislative oversight and university independence.
A key ally in any challenge to the White House will be the state attorney general, who has unique powers to join other states in lawsuits against federal policy. Jones, the attorney general-elect, weathered a brutal campaign after revelations of text messages he sent to a colleague three years ago in which he mused about putting two bullets in the head of the then-Republican speaker of the House of Delegates and suggested the speaker would only change his stance on policy if he felt the pain of his children’s deaths.
Spanberger denounced the violent language during the campaign but neither stood by Jones nor demanded that he step aside. Jones went on to defeat incumbent Republican incumbent Jason Miyares by nearly seven percentage points.
“I think he won rather decisively, and so it’s clear that people in Virginia want to see him do good work,” Spanberger said.
While Spanberger said she doesn’t believe any cloud should hang over Jones as he starts his new role, “I recognize that in sort of partisan and political landscapes, it might continue to exist.” Anyone who has “hesitations” about Jones, she said, should judge him based on his performance. “His priority is doing an exceptional job as attorney general,” she said.
Spanberger said she plans to meet soon with Virginia’s bipartisan congressional delegation — six Democrats and five Republicans in the House, and two Democratic senators — to hear “from my former colleagues about what it is that they need to see from my administration, in ensuring that we are able to move in lockstep” to serve the state’s interests.
In Washington, Spanberger earned a reputation as one of the most bipartisan members of Congress and, with her background in federal law enforcement and as a CIA operative, has often been touted as a new type of centrist Democrat who can lead the party into the future. Because Virginia governors are prohibited by the state constitution from seeking a consecutive second term, they inevitably attract speculation that they’re aiming for national office, and Spanberger’s big win has put her in that conversation.
Spanberger said what they all say — “My focus is Virginia” — and acknowledged her prominent profile but said she hasn’t been tracking it. “I might not be aware of the national attention until a friend of mine who lives elsewhere tells me that they saw this write-up or that write-up. And so I do recognize that there’s been a lot of eyes on our race and there will continue to be into the future,” she said.
Last month’s elections suggested two paths forward for national Democrats as they look to remake their brand following Trump’s return to the White House: Spanberger and New Jersey Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill (who roomed together while they served in Congress) represent the moderate middle, while Mamdani has thrilled the far left. Which is the party’s true identity?
“I think it’s a question of, where is someone running,” Spanberger said, adding that Virginia is a purple state whose current governor is Republican and where agriculture and the military are major economic forces.
Political observers looking at how to appeal to a broad spectrum of voters should look at how Spanberger’s campaign succeeded by focusing on “the things that people are talking about and the change, the impact, the legislation, the work, the governance that people want to see,” she said.
“And my work over the next few months,” she said, “will be to ensure that anybody who’s watching, whether they’re, you know, in any corner of our commonwealth or across the country, sees that we’re delivering.”
The post Soon to lead Virginia, Spanberger talks Trump, economy, hard choices appeared first on Washington Post.
