Virginia’s New ‘Centrist’ Governor Goes Full California on Day One
“Nobody elected him to be [President Franklin Roosevelt], they elected him to be normal and stop the chaos,” then-Rep. Abigail Spanberger harshly said of then-President Joe Biden in 2021, after her Democratic Party lost the governorship of Virginia. Her point was that Biden had followed a radical agenda that betrayed how he had run and how the media had presented him: as a centrist.
Biden’s sudden radicalism in his first year in office, she seemed to be saying, lost her party the election.
What a difference four years make. Now that she has been sworn in as governor of the Old Dominion herself, after running as a “centrist” and being portrayed by the media as such, Spanberger is pulling a Biden on everything from abortion to anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity.
Her far-leftist playbook has conservatives shaking their heads and saying, “Told ya so,” or that old mainstay, “Elections have consequences.” People could be excused for disparaging her now with the claim, “Nobody elected her to be Joe Biden.”
Why did Virginians elect Spanberger? Many reasons, including a weak GOP candidate. But it’s impossible to ignore that 320,000 federal workers live in the commonwealth.
Sure, that is only about 5% of the 5,971,190 registered voters. But turnout was just over 50%—and that was high in an off-off-year election. So, the federal workforce was closer to 10% of the electorate, and it was very motivated to vote.
They were so mad at President Donald Trump’s cuts and overall antipathy to the bureaucracy that they didn’t just elect Spanberger, but also Jay Jones, an attorney general so depraved that he was caught saying he wanted to kill little children to achieve his political ends.
Federal workers feel entitled not just to their jobs, but to run government as they see fit, with no political accountability. Then they ran into the buzzsaws brandished by Trump and Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. They had to exact revenge.
It also assuaged their feelings that Spanberger, along with the candidate who won New Jersey’s governorship, Democrat Mikie Sherrill, were sold as centrists, the rational part of the Democratic Party, and its answer to socialists such as New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and her squad.
“Ms. Spanberger and Ms. Sherrill are moderate women,” The New York........
