It's official: Abigail Spanberger is Virginia's Democratic nominee for governor

All the energy is with the Democrats this year

When the filing deadline for statewide candidates passed last week, and there was no opposition to her, Abigail became our candidate for what will be the most intensely-watched campaign this year: The 2025 race for Virginia governor.

Early on, last year, she had an opponent in former Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney. But when he saw her endorsements and financial contributions piling up, he concluded that she would be nominated and decided to run for lt. gov. instead. Good move on his part.

In fact, once she announced her candidacy it lit a fire under Virginia Democrats, who were impressed by her election for three terms to the U.S. House in our Seventh Congressional District. The district, in Northern Virginia, had been Republican for many years before she beat the incumbent in the first anti-Trump wave in 2018.

In Congress, she was lauded as part of a collection of younger women lawmakers motivated by Trump’s excesses. One of her colleagues in the House, Mikie Sherrill, is the Democratic nominee for governor in blue state New Jersey. It would be so cool to see them both elected later this year. I think that’s precisely what will happen.

As I noted in a previous post about her, she has all the right liberal instincts, if you will, but is not an ideologue and doesn’t necessarily follow “the party line.” A lot of people admire those tendencies, as I do, but especially in Virginia that kind of thing is what wins statewide elections. She truly fits the mold of such Virginia political legends as Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, both former governors who went on to the U.S. Senate.

Fighting gun violence is one of the first things that motivated Abigail to go into politics, when she got involved with Moms Demand Action. This will contrast well with her gun-toting opponent (more about her in a bit). She’ll also run on a pro-choice, pro-worker platform. In these early stages of the campaign, she’s already traveled to many small towns and rural areas, stressing that she “wants to listen” to voters everywhere.

At last year’s state Democratic convention, where I was a delegate, I’d tried intently to meet her, but didn’t get the chance. I told her that story when I saw her in Bedford back in the winter, when I was one of several people to ask questions at a “meet and greet.” She took that to heart, and when the event ended, she talked with me for a generous amount of time. Voters who meet her find her gracious and sincere, and that certainly won’t hurt.

This is Winsome Earle-Sears, Abigail’s Republican opponent. I wasn’t kidding about the “gun-toting” thing. When she was in the legislature, before her election in 2021 as lieutenant governor, she was notorious for sending out Christmas cards with her and her whole family holding a gun of some kind. It was ridiculous but I suppose she thinks it’s “cool.”

And if you ask her about gun violence, well, you’ll get the same mealy-mouthed answer you always get from the NRA types. She, too, is her party’s official nominee. There were two creepy MAGA types who tried to run against her in a primary, but they didn’t get enough signatures to get on the ballot.

So, Virginia will finally elect its first woman governor. And that’s terrific, but surely it’s a measure of progress in that regard that neither woman is talking about that much. But I think people will clearly see the difference in these two as the campaign gets more intense in late summer and fall.

Earle-Sears never accomplished much as a legislator. In the Republican Party, all that matters now is not that you suck up to Trump, but HOW MUCH you suck up. It’s all about him. Some of the more ardent MAGA shock troops remember that she supported Ron DeSantis for a while in 2024. That’s one reason there were at least two of them who wanted to oppose her in the primary.

But the rumor is that Trump will endorse her, signaling that all is forgiven. And, yeah baby, come on. Do that! Democrats would love nothing better.

If you were at one of the “Hands Off” rallies this past Saturday, as I was, then you saw the great energy and passion that has been whipped up by Trump’s Gestapo-like deportations, insane tariffs, and all his imperialist nonsense over Canada, Greenland and Gaza. As Republicans do nothing but genuflect and hide from their constituents, the courts are increasingly standing up to Trump. At least he’s being held accountable at some level.

But the evidence we saw on Saturday, and the fact that Abigail is leading in polls, well, it’s pretty clear that we, as Virginia Democrats, should win this race in November. When that happens, Trump will get yet another unpleasant reminder that his agenda is despised by so many Americans. Also, Virginians will get the kind of governor we need, after four years of Glenn Youngkin.