RICHMOND — Angela Arrington, a 60-year-old housekeeper, said she had never voted before, much less campaigned for a candidate, until Democrat Abigail Spanberger inspired her last year to do both.
Now? “I’m so disappointed,” Arrington said as she marched last week in a Richmond protest against the Virginia governor’s veto of a bill that would have allowed collective bargaining for public employees. More than 100 people joined her, many carrying signs accusing Spanberger of betrayal.
Spanberger was elected in a landslide by promising to be a centrist. But she’s seeing up close how difficult that path is in a polarized country, and in a state where Democrats have a pent-up list of demands after four years with a Republican governor.
Republicans had already written her off as a closet liberal, so Spanberger finds herself the target of attacks from both ideological directions. The rocky start could raise warning flags for Democrats who looked to Virginia’s 2025 elections as a tuneup for this year’s congressional midterms and to Spanberger as a candidate with potential as a national bridge-builder.
A variety of factors have contributed to the dysfunction, which has left Virginia without a state budget as a government shutdown deadline looms at the end of June. The governor vetoed 31 bills passed by the Democratic-majority General Assembly — an unusually high number at a time of unified party control. Former governor Ralph Northam, the last Democrat to hold the office, vetoed only four bills during two years of Democratic majorities, and 54 when Republicans held legislative majorities.
Several of Spanberger’s vetoes thwarted major Democratic priorities, including collective bargaining and establishing a retail market for cannabis.
Top Democratic lawmakers complained that she failed to communicate her concerns while the legislature was in session, when they could have made changes to save the bills. Some said it demonstrated either arrogance or a failure to understand the state lawmaking process. Spanberger, who served three terms in Congress, brought top staffers from her Capitol Hill office to Richmond.
“I haven’t spent enough time speaking to her to understand whether or not she has ideological objections to the policies we advance,” Virginia Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell (D-Fairfax) said. “I think it would serve her well to spend more time talking to legislators than social media influencers or the press.”
Spanberger has said she is simply working to get good legislation, saying she supports the policy goals and hopes to one day sign them into law after flaws are ironed out. She declined an interview request for this article.
Spanberger’s team notes that she signed a raft of high-priority bills that Democrats have pursued for years, such as mandatory paid family and medical leave for businesses above a certain size, paid sick leave, and an assault weapons ban.
“A lot of the criticism is a bit unfair,” said Sen. Barbara Favola (D-Arlington), who sponsored the sick leave legislation, which requires employers to provide up to five days of paid sick leave per year for full- and part-time workers. Spanberger called and discussed the details of the bill for 45 minutes, a level of engagement more typical of a policy staffer than a governor, Favola said.
Favola acknowledged that the call came late in the lawmaking process, but said it was understandable that Spanberger needed time to get her staff in place and begin to learn the habits of the General Assembly. “I’m just chalking this first session up to mistakes because of naiveté and not understanding the rhythm and needs of the General Assembly,” Favola said, adding that she believes Spanberger and Democratic lawmakers are aligned on basic policy goals.
Nothing has inflamed Democrats as much as the governor’s veto of collective bargaining for public employees, a longtime goal of organized-labor groups that are major contributors to and foot soldiers in the party’s campaigns. Spanberger proposed amending the bill that passed the legislature to give the governor more power to control collective bargaining and localities more ability to opt out.
Lawmakers rejected her changes and sent the measure back to her for a thumbs up or down. She killed it.
Democrats also reacted with outrage this month when Spanberger vetoed a pair of bills that would have prohibited federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from making arrests inside courthouses or near polling places. She said the measures would have created legal liability for security and police officials, and instead issued an executive order requiring protocols for assessing interactions with federal agents.
“She wants to be a moderate so badly,” said one longtime Virginia Democratic operative who requested anonymity to speak candidly about the governor. “I think it’s a miscalculation on her part. … She has alienated her base.”
Spanberger’s approval rating has suffered. In a Washington Post-Schar School pollin early April, 47 percent of Virginia voters approved of her performance and 46 percent disapproved — a steep drop from her 15-point election win last November.
Spanberger frustrated some Democrats with her lukewarm embrace of the ballot referendum to redraw Virginia’s congressional map to help the party pick up as many as four extra seats in the House of Representatives, part of the national redistricting arms race touched off by President Donald Trump. But the decision to support the effort also made her a Republican target, as opponents accused her of naked partisanship.
When the Supreme Court of Virginia struck down the voter-approved maps on May 8, Spanberger was quick to pivot back to the current maps.
Earlier this month, when U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) signaled that the Democratic-friendly maps could be revived in time for the 2028 election, Spanberger told the New York Times that such talk was “premature” and distracted from the need to win elections this year.
Spanberger is also caught in a state budget showdown that hinges on a proposal by a few powerful Democratic lawmakers to end a tax exemption for data centers and use the resulting billions in revenue to pay for priorities such as education and housing.
Spanberger opposes ending the tax exemption, which she said would harm economic development. Senate leaders have shown little willingness to compromise, and they have only until June 30 to reach a deal or the Virginia government will face its first shutdown in modern memory.
On Thursday, the state Senate announced plans to return to Richmond on June 22 to work on the budget, with or without a deal. The House of Delegates announced Friday that it would also meet, on June 18. That would give Spanberger little time before the deadline to suggest changes to any resulting budget.
Surovell, in an interview, downplayed suggestions that lawmakers plan to pack several of Spanberger’s vetoed bills into budget language and dare her to veto the whole budget. But, he added, “it’s always a possibility.”
Spanberger told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that it would be “an abuse of the process” for her fellow Democrats to try such a tactic.
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