BLACKSTONE, Va. — If Republicans lose the House majority next Tuesday, it will likely be at the hand of candidates like Abigail Spanberger, a former undercover CIA operative who recruited secret informants on behalf of the U.S. to fight terrorism.
Now that her clandestine career is over, Spanberger is running in a Virginia seat Democrats haven’t held since the 1970s. Seven months ago, few thought she stood a chance in the reliably red 7th Congressional District of Virginia. The race is now a dead heat.
Spanberger is one of eight female candidates who either served in the CIA or military and are running in some of the reddest districts in the country. Their races are among the first that will be called election night. If Spanberger and the other female candidates who’ve captivated voters with stories of their former lives in the world of intelligence and spycraft win, it could be a sign of huge Democratic gains across the country on election night.
Like Spanberger, Elissa Slotkin, a former Middle East analyst for the CIA specializing in Iraqi politics, is running in a Michigan seat that went for President Trump by 6 points and she has closed in on her Republican opponent. Slotkin joined the CIA after 9/11 and served under both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
Details of Spanberger’s career remain classified. Slotkin served three tours in Iraq. In Texas’s 23rd District, Gina Ortiz Jones, a former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer who served in Iraq, is challenging GOP incumbent Rep. Will Hurd, himself a former CIA operative.
Slotkin’s bid for Congress, she said during a recent debate with Bishop, “is about someone who understands public service, who believes in their country over party, and who believes, actually, our system works best when people of integrity of both parties work together.”
Slotkin and Spanberger’s success is in large part due to their former careers in the CIA. Their ability to point to a life of service in which they helped combat terrorism and worked for both Democrat and Republican administrations is a draw for voters.
On the stump, Spanberger runs through her resume. Before joining the CIA she worked narcotics cases as a federal law enforcement officer with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. Then she became an undercover operative gathering intel overseas for the CIA on issues varying from counterterrorism to nuclear proliferation.
“My experience in public service informs every aspect of who I am,” Spanberger said in an interview on Halloween, as she visited the rural communities of Blackstone and Burkesville in Nottoway County.
Coming from a career built on fact-finding and gathering intelligence from foreign assets in the field, Spanberger voiced frustration with the “post-fact” environment that’s taken over American politics. “I’m that person who says ‘allegedly,’ unless I saw it, I say ‘allegedly,’” Spanberger said, referring to her careful and deliberate way of speaking on the campaign trail or about her opponent.
Spanberger rarely mentions Trump and cringed when a voter recently advised her to make her campaign all about Trump. But Spanberger is frustrated by the president’s attacks on the CIA and other intelligence agencies. She finds it baffling that Trump doesn’t draw upon the knowledge and experience of those within the intelligence community.
“For him to not use one of the most foundational tools in his toolbox as president, it’s one more reason I think why we see a continuation of reckless policy that’s not serving this country in a good way,” said Spanberger.
In an attempt to neutralize Spanberger’s CIA service, Brat is echoing misleading attack ads from a super PAC aligned with House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., that seek to tie Spanberger to terrorism. The ads try to label Spanberger a “risk” for teaching at an academy that was attended by some students who later joined al Qaeda.
Here’s the breakdown: As Spanberger waited for her security clearance from the CIA, she took a substitute teaching job at the Islamic Saudi Academy in Alexandria for a year. The school was funded by the Embassy of Saudi Arabia and a former student, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, was convicted in 2005 of training with al Qaeda and plotting to assassinate then-President George W. Bush. Abu Ali graduated several years before Spanberger worked at the academy.
The Congressional Leadership Fund has drawn criticism for using the information about Spanberger’s brief teaching job because it is based on a confidential SF86 questionnaire that the Republican American Rising opposition research firm got ahold of when the Postal Service improperly gave it to them. Under federal law, the government is prohibited from releasing the confidential form. The CIA and Postal Inspection Service knew about her teaching gig when they cleared Spanberger to become a law enforcement officer and then a covert CIA operative.
“I won’t meet [Brat] in the gutter,” Spanberger said Wednesday. “I want to be the candidate that I want to vote for.” That’s a candidate who focuses on “country over party” and “informed decision-making over ideology,” she said.
In Kentucky, Amy McGrath is a running a campaign similar to Spanberger and Slotkin, rarely mentioning Trump by name but highlighting stark contrasts with the administration when talking about her service and leadership.
McGrath, the first woman Marine to fly an F/A-18 on a combat mission, is challenging Republican incumbent Andy Barr in Kentucky’s 6th District. McGrath’s district favored Trump and months ago appeared far out of reach for Democrats. But McGrath, like many female candidates this cycle, excited voters in the district, becoming a celebrity of sorts after the first viral ad of her walking on an aircraft carrier.
Rep. John Yarmuth, the lone Democrat in Kentucky’s congressional delegation, said the military background “resonates” with voters because they want “that kind of commitment” in their elected officials. “People just have a basic trust that they’re in politics for the right reasons,” he added of candidates like McGrath and Spanberger.
It’s no surprise to McGrath that candidates like Slotkin and Spanberger have put long-shot pickups for Democrats on the map, defying the makeup of their districts. The three joined with five other female candidates who served in the military or intelligence community for an ad highlighting their service and decision to run for elected office. The ad was made by Massachusetts Democrat Rep. Seth Moulton’s Serve America PAC.
“At this time in our history we need people who can cut through this partisan divide and folks who have served the country,” McGrath told the Washington Examiner last week.
“We served both sides because we cared about the country because that was our job and that has defined us as people,” McGrath added. “That’s why this group of veterans — or whatever you want to call them; Elissa worked for DOD — we get it in a sense that we have spent 20 years of our lives working for the betterment of this country, the benefit of this country and it didn’t matter to us what side we worked for.”
Candidates like herself and Spanberger, McGrath said, “were apolitical” and that makes them uniquely positioned to cut through the hyperpartisanship that’s “exacerbated by the current leadership.”
