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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 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.
Occurring one year after the presidential election and one year before the midterms, Virginia’s gubernatorial race is often looked at as a bellwether for national politics.
Democrats, in particular, campaigned hard in the commonwealth ahead of Tuesday’s elections. Party heavyweights, including former President Barack Obama and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, held events with Spanberger in the closing days of the race.
In an ad urging voters to back Spanberger, Obama called Virginia’s elections “some of the most important in the country this year.” Obama won the commonwealth twice, in 2008 and 2012.
While Donald Trump 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.
Also looming over the race: the ongoing government shutdown. The commonwealth has the second-highest 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.
At a campaign event with Shapiro in late October, Spanberger told the crowd 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.”
Earle-Sears’ closing message focused largely on a text scandal 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.”
Jones later apologized, but Earle-Sears used the violent language to target Spanberger directly, 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.