{"id":15271,"date":"2025-11-05T03:20:19","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T03:20:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/democrat-abigail-spanberger-set-to-become-virginias-first-female-governor\/"},"modified":"2025-11-05T03:20:19","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T03:20:19","slug":"democrat-abigail-spanberger-set-to-become-virginias-first-female-governor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/democrat-abigail-spanberger-set-to-become-virginias-first-female-governor\/","title":{"rendered":"Democrat Abigail Spanberger set to become Virginia’s first female governor"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Democrat Abigail Spanberger<\/a> is set to become Virginia’s first female governor. The former CIA officer who served three terms in the U.S. House beat out Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears <\/a>in Tuesday’s election, NBC News’ Decision Desk projects.<\/p>\n

Spanberger, who ran on affordability, abortion rights and public safety, is seen by many as a rising star in the Democratic Party. The 46-year-old’s win could offer lessons for Democrats nationwide as the party seeks to take back the U.S. House and Senate in next year’s midterm elections. <\/p>\n

Occurring one year after the presidential election and one year before the midterms, Virginia’s gubernatorial race is often looked at as a bellwether<\/a> for national politics. <\/p>\n

Democrats, in particular, campaigned hard in the commonwealth ahead of Tuesday’s elections. Party heavyweights, including former President Barack Obama <\/a>and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, <\/a>held events with Spanberger in the closing days of the race.<\/p>\n

In an ad urging voters to back Spanberger, Obama called <\/a>Virginia’s elections “some of the most important in the country this year.” Obama won the commonwealth twice, in 2008 and 2012.<\/p>\n

While Donald Trump <\/a>endorsed Republican incumbent Attorney General Jason Miyares for reelection, the president stopped short of doing the same for Earle-Sears, who is the commonwealth’s first female lieutenant governor and the first Black woman elected statewide.<\/p>\n

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Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears on Feb. 8, 2022, in Richmond, Virginia.<\/span>Steve Helber \/ AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Also looming over the race: the ongoing government shutdown. <\/a>The commonwealth has the second-highest<\/a> population of federal employees in the country, behind only California. In the closing weeks of the campaign, Spanberger said the shutdown made clear the commonwealth needed a leader who could go toe-to-toe with Trump and Washington. <\/p>\n

At a campaign event with Shapiro in late October, Spanberger told the crowd <\/a>Virginia needs “a governor who will stand up and make clear that attacks on our federal workers, attacks on government contractors, whether it’s from a DOGE effort to fire people or a government shutdown … that those are attacks on Virginia and attacks on our economy — and we need a governor who will stand up and make clear the impacts of all of those bad efforts.” <\/p>\n

Earle-Sears’ closing message focused largely on a text scandal <\/a>involving the Democratic nominee for attorney general, Jay Jones, who shared a ticket with Spanberger. In 2022, Jones sent a message suggesting Republican Todd Gilbert, then Virginia’s House speaker, should get “two bullets to the head.” <\/p>\n

Jones later apologized, but Earle-Sears used the violent language to target Spanberger directly,<\/a> tying it to a broader attack on what she said was her support for political violence. Ads pushed by Earle-Sears’ campaign used an out-of-context comment from Spanberger — “let your rage fuel you” — to tie her to recent acts of politically motivated violence.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Allison Detzel is an editor\/producer for BLN Digital.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Democrat Abigail Spanberger is set to become Virginia’s first female governor. The former CIA officer who served three terms in the U.S. House beat out Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears in Tuesday’s election, NBC News’ Decision Desk projects. Spanberger, who ran on affordability, abortion rights and public safety, is seen by many as a rising […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15272,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trump"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}