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“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), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), and her squad.
“Ms. Spanberger and Ms. Sherrill are moderate women,” the New York Times said. The Washington Post echoed these sentiments: “The two congresswomen, both moderates, have shared a Capitol Hill apartment for the past four years.”
Spanberger herself fed the narrative. “We need to not ever use the words ‘socialist’ or ‘socialism’ ever again. Because while people think it doesn’t matter, it does matter,” she was overheard saying in 2020.
Well, now we know that the operative phrase there was “use.” You won’t catch Spanberger prattling on about replacing “the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism,” a phrase Mamdani actually used in his inaugural speech, either to scare people or simply to troll them — or both.
But, taking another page from Biden, Spanberger used her first hours in office to sign executive orders that undid much of what her predecessor, Glenn Youngkin, had accomplished in his four years, and what Trump had called for in public universities that receive taxpayer money through the federal government, especially in the areas of race, education, and immigration.
One of these first-day executive orders was on the topic that Democrats apparently believe will carry them to electoral victory later this year, opposing ICE’s enforcement of immigration laws that Republicans and Democrats voted on in Congress. She therefore rescinded a Youngkin executive order that had improved the commonwealth’s collaboration with ICE.
And no sooner was the anti-ICE executive order signed than her Democratic allies in the Virginia House of Delegates introduced a bill that forbids the enforcement of immigration laws within 40 feet of a polling place. Why that exact location was singled out, given that noncitizens such as illegal immigrants can’t vote, was not explained.
Another executive order, on higher education, was meant to undo Youngkin’s attempt to cooperate with the reforms that Trump was elected to carry out to make universities less woke.
“Under the current federal administration, Virginia colleges and universities have faced unprecedented challenges from shifts in federal policy to attacks on institutional autonomy and mission,” Spanberger’s executive order reads. “These pressures underscore the urgent need for the commonwealth to reevaluate how governing boards are appointed, ensuring they are composed of individuals dedicated to upholding the quality, independence, and reputation of our institutions.”
The education executive order calls for her education secretary to “prepare a report and recommendations on changes to the Board of Visitors appointment process for the Commonwealth’s public institutions of higher education as well as the process used by the Virginia Commission on Higher Education Board Appointments to evaluate potential appointees.”
Essentially, the boards running Virginia’s top public universities, which include some of the best in the country — the University of Virginia, William and Mary, and George Mason University, among others — are less likely in the future to run the universities.
“Strong governance is essential not just for protecting academic excellence, but for ensuring that our colleges and universities continue to prepare students to thrive in an increasingly complex and competitive world,” the executive order reads.
Power will go back to a professoriate that has been totally captured by the Left, and which will soon go back to running diversity, equity, and inclusion policies that run afoul not just of many Trump executive orders, but of the Constitution itself.
Indeed, immediately after taking office, Spanberger was able to nominate 27 candidates to college boards, with 12 going to George Mason, 10 to UVA, and five to the Virginia Military Institute. The reason she will be able to take control of these boards so swiftly is that her allies in the Virginia legislature had cleared the field for her by rejecting 22 Youngkin nominations purely on political grounds, because of alignment with Trump’s anti-DEI policies, a decision that the Virginia Supreme Court let stand.
The rejection by the Virginia Senate’s Privileges and Elections Committee especially saved George Mason President Gregory Washington, who was facing federal investigations for illegally maintaining DEI policies and a board that took these matters seriously. Unless the federal government decides to intervene, Washington will likely now beat the rap.
Regarding VMI, a venerable institution founded in 1839 and the oldest public senior military college in the United States, Spanberger allies in the House of Delegates introduced a resolution to investigate it over possible DEI policies.
“Less than a month in office as governor of Virginia, Abigail Spanberger has shown a commitment to turning the commonwealth into California,” Rep. Pat Fallon (R-TX) quipped to Fox News Digital. “The Left’s renewed focus on VMI is not intended to benefit our military.”
But the Spanberger revolution doesn’t just stop at ICE and DEI. On abortion, a constitutional amendment backed by the new governor would turn Virginia into the only state in the South to allow abortion on demand until birth, or perhaps even soon after, as one of her predecessors, Democrat Ralph Northam, once suggested.
“Abortion is already legal in Virginia until the 27th week, but that’s not enough for these ‘moderates,’” Ben Domenech wrote in the New York Post.
And then there’s taxes. Spanberger may have run as a centrist, Jonathan Turley wrote, but “once in control of the Governor’s mansion and the legislature, however, Virginia Democrats have moved quickly to fulfill the worst stereotype of a tax-hungry, economy-crushing party. The Democrats introduced an array of new taxes on every aspect of life.”
These tax bills, some version of which Spanberger will sign into law, include House Bill 378, which “imposes a 3.8% net investment income tax on individuals, trusts, and estates beginning in taxable year 2027.” This action would raise Virginia’s top marginal income tax rate on portfolio and passive income to 9.55%, on top of federal taxes.
Many may think that this tax will only hit “the rich,” but most Americans are now invested in the stock market. But all classes are to be hit with the new taxes. Another bill, HB 900, for example, imposes a new tax on retail delivery that will hit consumers of Uber Eats, Amazon, FedEx, UPS, etc.
Other taxes will hit those who purchase guns and ammunition, which will especially hit the rest of the state where Republicans hunt, and vote, though less so the effete parts of northern Virginia where the bureaucrats live.
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Just as Fallon did, Turley raised the comparison with the Golden State. “Virginia Democrats appear to be replicating California’s disastrous tax policies that have chased high earners and companies from the state.”
A year after Youngkin’s come-from-behind win in November 2021, Republicans took control of the House of Representatives, and then two years later, Trump won the presidency back. To some of us who follow these matters, this was all part of a national rejection of the Left’s attempt to take over the country culturally in 2020. We will see soon how Spanberger’s DEI, ICE, abortion, and tax policies play out.
