On the record: Abigail Spanberger

Former U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic nominee for governor, pledges a progressive agenda should she earn a four-year stay at the Executive Mansion. She has laid out ambitious agendas to reform immigration policies, uphold reproductive rights, prioritize affordability, strengthen public education, expand health care access, and further clean energy goals. 

Spanberger has held a steady lead over her Republican opponent Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears this year, although the race has narrowed in recent weeks. A Roanoke College poll released last month found 46% of likely voters would choose Spanberger, compared to 39% who would pick  Earle-Sears. Support has edged up for both candidates since the spring, when 43% said they’d vote for Spanberger and 26% chose Earle-Sears as their candidate. Spanberger has raised over $27 million and has more than $15 million in her campaign’s coffers. Earle-Sears’ campaign has raised over $11.5 million, according to her latest campaign finance filings, with $4.5 million in cash on hand.

A married mom of three daughters, Spanberger is the daughter of a career federal law enforcement officer and a nurse, and grew up in Central Virginia. She worked as a case officer at the federal Central Intelligence Agency from 2006 to 2014, investigating and deflecting terror threats against the country. She represented Virginia’s 7th Congressional District from 2018 to 2024 and built a reputation as an effective bipartisan collaborator in the nation’s capital. Just before he left office in January, former President Joe Biden signed the Social Security Fairness Act into law, legislation co-sponsored by Spanberger, that aims to boost retirement benefits for some retirees that draw public pensions, such as former police officers and firefighters.

The Virginia Mercury reached out to both campaigns to learn more about their priorities and how they match up with Virginians’, and to learn how they plan to accomplish their legislative goals. Earle-Sears agreed to an interview but canceled on the day of and has not responded to requests to reschedule and other questions. In August, Spanberger sat down with the Mercury’s team at her campaign office in Central Virginia. Here’s an in-depth review of her positions and promises.

Energy and environment

Utility companies have warned that the power demands in severe weather conditions and the growing thirst from data centers means that the commonwealth has to step up its energy production. With the Virginia Clean Economy Act mandating the transition into renewable energy sources, some lawmakers have proposed eliminating it completely. Democrats, including Spanberger, have rejected that idea but said the state should consider tweaking the law to meet the current and future energy challenges.

“I think (we need) an evaluation of where we have had successes, but also, importantly in some places, where have technologies changed?
 Battery storage technology has improved significantly and has a much greater utility than it even did five years ago,” Spanberger said. “And so I think, certainly with the same goals, (we should be) determining … where we should perhaps recalibrate or some places where we can look towards more aggressive forward leaning.”

Virginia is also on the frontlines of climate change impacts, with rapidly rising sea levels in coastal Hampton Roads and devastating impacts of severe weather now reaching all regions of the state, as seen in Southwest Virginia after Hurricane Helene. The federal government recently cut millions of dollars in funding for flood mitigation and other resiliency projects. Spanberger said she plans to return Virginia to the Region Greenhouse Gas Initiative that will bring in dollars that can be used for those projects.

“I think the governor has to lead these conversations and bring resiliency efforts into everything that the state might prioritize. Road investments, bridge investments, new structures coming to Virginia, businesses that we are attracting, agriculture space efforts to make sure that we’re doing everything possible,” Spanberger said.

Spanberger laid out her energy and environment goals in a plan, released in June.

Health care

Sweeping changes to Medicaid and hospital funding mechanisms are on the horizon, after Congress passed the sprawling reconciliation bill backed by President Donald Trump. As governor, Spanberger or Earle-Sears could sign off on future state budgets and legislation to address the impact. 

Noting her “disdain and sarcasm” in her recent interview with The Mercury, Spanberger said the “only benefit” of Congress’ pending changes having a delayed effect is that “it does give us a little bit more time to plan.” 

As thousands of Virginians could lose their Medicaid coverage, hospitals are also bracing for absorbing higher costs before being faced with cutting services, closing, or negotiating higher rates with private insurers. 

Meanwhile, Congress has until the end of the year to decide whether to renew expiring tax credits that help people without employer-provided health insurance purchase plans. Aetna has already announced it is leaving the Affordable Care Act marketplace by the end of the year. The reduction of credits could leave more people uninsured and increase the potential for reliance on free clinics, federally-qualified health centers and hospitals. 

To counter this, Spanberger said she is analyzing “some of the states where the delivery of Medicaid services are just top notch.”

When asked for more details, Spanberger’s team shared that she would invest in both the digital infrastructure and workforce to modernize the state’s Medicaid eligibility system so that case workers can better “help Virginians navigate a burdensome system.”

Earlier in the summer, she also unveiled her broader health care plans that include increasing generic drug manufacturing in the state’s hub of medical manufacturing companies, supporting funding boosts to the state’s free clinics, and supporting forthcoming pharmacy benefit manager reform. Supporters of the latter say it would improve accountability, lower costs and help independent pharmacies stay afloat.

Immigration

Spanberger has made clear she would take a different approach to immigration enforcement than Gov. Glenn Youngkin. 

She said she would rescind Youngkin’s Executive Order 47, which directs localities to cooperate with federal immigration authorities, calling it a misappropriation of local resources. 

“The idea that we would take local police officers or local sheriff’s deputies … so that they can go and tear families apart … is a misuse of those resources,” Spanberger said. She pointed to Prince William County, which she once represented in Congress, where she said a similar partnership with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement cost the county more than $1 million in jail expenses.

Spanberger also questioned Youngkin’s claim that joint operations with ICE resulted in the arrest of 2,500 violent criminals, saying such cases should already be documented in the criminal justice system. 

“If they were violent criminals, presumably, they were arrested on those charges for the violent crime that they committed,” she said. She argued that conflating immigration violations with criminal acts erodes trust between communities and law enforcement, making victims and witnesses less likely to come forward.

As governor, Spanberger said she would use the office to press Congress to advance  long-stalled immigration legislation. 

She cited the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, the Dignity Act and a bipartisan U.S. Senate compromise as steps toward overhauling what she called a “broken and outdated” system. 

Spanberger also defended her vote against the Laken Riley Act, which requires ICE to detain immigrants accused of theft and other crimes, emphasizing that she opposed the measure because it imposed costly burdens on localities and stripped away due process. 

“If someone is going to be arrested for a crime, they should be arrested,” she said. “But the bill … wouldn’t have stopped her murder.”

Public education

Spanberger wants to keep as much public funding flowing into Virginia’s public schools as possible, and vowed to protect LGBTQ+ students’ rights if elected governor.

In her “Strengthening Virginia Schools Plan,” released this summer, Spanberger rejected efforts to divert public funds to voucher programs championed by Youngkin, Earle-Sears and other Republicans in the state. She pledged to bolster child care and early childhood education programs, K-12 schools, and institutions of higher education, while finding solutions to stem the state’s teacher shortage.

Spanberger believes Virginia needs to focus on “strengthening its schools and expanding opportunities for all students, not defunding public schools,” she said, following reports that Virginia ranks last in the country in student math recovery post-pandemic.

As governor, Spanberger would “make it a priority to give public schools the resources to explore best and promising practices through innovative career and technical education programs and work-based learning,” her campaign stated in response to follow-up questions after her interview with The Mercury.

Spanberger also opposes policies that would harm LGBTQ+ children and has railed against reforms by the Youngkin administration that mandate students use school bathrooms that align with their sex assigned at birth rather than their gender identity and that teachers address students by the name and pronouns aligning with the students’ gender assigned at birth. Spanberger reportedly claimed the governor’s reforms could be “unconstitutional” and could hurt the commonwealth’s business prospects and economy, The National Review reported.

In her August interview with The Mercury, Spanberger expressed her views on balancing parental rights and children’s privacy. She said she supports more proactive information-sharing that enhances safety without compromising students’ rights. She also believes that Virginia has the potential to lead in addressing communication barriers related to issues such as school overdose incidents and teacher arrests involving children.

During her time in Congress, Spanberger voted against the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2023, which prohibits school athletic programs from allowing individuals whose assigned sex at birth is male to participate in programs that are for women or girls. The measure passed 219-203.

Reproductive rights

Spanberger said she would “absolutely veto” any further restrictions on abortions, contraception or fertility treatments should they make it to her desk as the potential next governor. 

She said she supports an in-progress effort to enshrine reproductive rights into Virginia’s constitution. Having already passed the legislature once, it must do so again next year before it could appear on statewide ballots for voters’ final approval or rejection. 

Spanberger is advocating for the amendment’s passage now, while the entire House of Delegates is up for election this year with her. Despite other constitutional amendments advancing on a bipartisan basis, every Republican in the legislature has voted against the reproductive rights one this year. 

While Spanberger has not served in Virginia’s state government, she has represented Virginians in Congress for three terms. There, she was part of an effort to repeal the Comstock Act, a dormant federal law that could be used to block the mailing of abortion pills and equipment used to sustain or establish clinics. State governments around the country have already tried to implement the law at the local level, but have been met with lawsuits or failed to advance it. 

Still, Democrats are eyeing the act closely because of its inclusion in Project 2025, a conservative playbook that includes some policies that are already being implemented in President Donald Trump’s current term. 

Elections and voting 

Spanberger said restoring voting rights to Virginians who have served their time would be a top priority if she wins in November, putting her at odds with Youngkin’s current approach.

The Republican governor rolled back his predecessors’ system of automatically restoring rights for people with felony convictions, instead reinstating a case-by-case review that has left many in limbo. Youngkin’s policy reversal has drawn criticism for lacking transparency and consistency, and Spanberger said she would immediately move to reverse course.

“I wholly support the restoration of rights,” she said in her interview with The Mercury. 

“People have basically just languished under this governor, and from the time I am sworn in, I will work to make sure that they, if they are eligible, get their rights restored, and not only do they get them restored, but that we actually communicate it to people so they know, and that there is much greater transparency.”

Spanberger also backed a proposed constitutional amendment that would automatically restore voting rights after the completion of a sentence. 

“Getting the amendment passed is going to be important and that is something that I will campaign for,” she said.

On a separate voting issue, Spanberger said she would defer to a state commission now studying whether Virginia should end its off-year elections and shift to even years. She noted the potential for cost savings and increased turnout but said she’s glad Virginians will have a chance to vote this fall. “I support the commission,” she said.

Housing policy 

Though local governments have most control over matters like zoning ordinances and approval of construction projects, increasingly, state lawmakers are weighing in on how they can help address affordability and supply issues. Spanberger said a top-down approach won’t work.

“I don’t want to mandate to a community ‘you have to say yes to this or you have to say no to this,’” Spanberger said in the interview. 

But she is interested in encouraging localities and state legislators to streamline approval of projects. An idea she suggested: land use developments that have housing components could receive expedited review, leading ultimately to more housing stock in markets. 

She also supports strengthening Virginia’s fair housing protections to prevent discrimination. 

Criminal justice and policing

Spanberger’s background working for the CIA undergirds her more police-friendly stance on some issues — a criticism from some branches of the Democratic party. 

After George Floyd’s murder in the summer of 2020 by a police officer, criminal justice reform advocacy and protests surged nationwide. When Democrats lost ground in congressional elections that fall, Spanberger had criticized further left-leaning members of her party for the “defund the police” rhetoric some had embraced. 

 “If we are classifying Tuesday as a success . . . we will get f—ing torn apart in 2022,” she had said in a call with other party members that was shared with The Washington Post. 

This year, she’s garnered the endorsement of a state police union that typically supports Republicans. A key factor, it said, was her successful law to remove caps on social security benefits for retirees like law enforcement officers while in Congress. 

Though opponent Earle-Sears has claimed Spanberger supported eliminating qualified immunity, Spanberger has not. She did sign onto a 2020 law with provisions to “reform,” not eliminate, the concept that protects officers from lawsuits while in the line of duty. Spanberger also proposed a 2021 bill to study how to incorporate community satisfaction into police performance measurements. 

Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Samantha Willis for questions: info@virginiamercury.com.