Virginia Democrats are falling in line and falling in love.
With Levar Stoney’s strategic retreat — rather than risk a pasting for the 2025 gubernatorial nomination, he’s risking a pasting for the 2025 lieutenant governor’s nomination — Democrats are forgoing a contest for their top spot to rally behind Abigail Spanberger, whose politics and posturing seem to give almost everyone in a party still whining over Glenn Youngkin’s squeaker victory in 2021 something to cheer about.
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Beyond discouraging polling and even more discouraging fundraising, Stoney’s gubernatorial ambitions were a casualty of his over-ambition as a 40-something who’s worked only in politics — even when he wasn’t.
The Richmond mayoralty, which Stoney twice won by plurality in 2016 and 2020, is proving for him what it was for his predecessors since the city returned to a popularly elected chief executive in 2004: a dead-end job. It’s not that the majority-minority city is ungovernable; it’s that its problems — including grinding, enduring poverty that contrasts sharply with its glittery, youthful vibe — are confounding and interrelated.
They’re made more so by a continuing conflict over where mayoral authority ends and councilmanic authority begins; a tax base limited by the seemingly unlimited and tax-exempt presence of state government and the blame reflexively affixed to whomever’s mayor because — when it comes to local government — residents don’t care about politics and personalities. They want to know streets are safe and clean, schools work and that bureaucrats at City Hall can untie knots often of their own making.
Stoney also wasn’t helped by the company he keeps. As a protégé of Terry McAuliffe, Stoney — unfairly or not — was a convenient substitute target for Democrats relitigating the ever-ebullient Macker’s slender loss to Youngkin for a second nonconsecutive term as governor. That fed Democrats’ appetite for a fresh face and one who’s demonstrated — as Spanberger has over three terms in Congress, since defeating a MAGA incumbent in the anti-Trump tsunami of 2018 — an ability to simultaneously engage voters, friendly and hostile.
Spanberger, having established bases in the vote-rich, blue-trending Richmond and Northern Virginia suburbs, checks lots of boxes.
For those who are certain politics has an enduring seamy side, she’s been pushing restrictions on stock trading by members of Congress. For those angry over expensive prescription drugs, she’s been an advocate for price caps. For those convinced congressional Democrats are captive to the left, she opposed Nancy Pelosi for House speaker.
As a pistol-packing U.S. Postal Service inspector and, later, a CIA operative, she’s not exactly a wimp on firearms. As the only Virginian on the House Agriculture Committee — and in its Democratic minority, to boot — she watches out for the countryside, never mind that most of it is wedged into Republican districts whose representatives seem more concerned about God, gays and guns.
And don’t underestimate the lift Spanberger gets from the call of history: Virginia has yet to elect a woman as governor. To borrow a term popular in swinging 1920s London and Hollywood, Spanberger is the “it girl” — new, clever, a source of curiosity.
Currently, 12 states and one U.S. territory have female governors — nine Democrats and four Republicans. Forty-nine women have been become governors since the first was elected nearly 100 years ago. Virginia has breached the racial redoubt, installing the first elective Black governor in 1989 and three times electing people of color as lieutenant governor. That includes the incumbent, Republican Winsome Earle-Sears, herself considering a run for governor that could make her the first woman elected to the job.
Should Earle-Sears be her party’s nominee next year — she’ll have to get past Attorney General Jason Miyares, the first Hispanic person elected statewide in Virginia — it raises the intriguing prospect of a two-woman contest in a Southern state between a Black Republican and a white Democrat. To entice election-deciding independents, both work assiduously to blur the crisp distinctions demanded by contemporary, either-or politics.
Earle-Sears, whose handlers have been circulating since late March friendly polling that shows her stronger among Republican activists than Miyares, wants the GOP to move on from former President Donald Trump, though she stands firm on such Trumpy non-negotiables for her party, such as gun rights. It’s a stance illustrated by that widely circulated photo of Earle-Sears, a former Marine, brandishing a military-style rifle.
That 19 months before Virginians choose their next governor, Democrats have — in Spanberger — a putative nominee who is well financed and widely supported, may instill a measure of panic among members of both parties, fearing that the primaries will needlessly burn cash and leave losers and their voters feeling burned.
Thus, Democrats might press for consensus candidates for lieutenant governor and attorney general. Republicans conceivably have all three statewide nominations to settle should Earle-Sears and Miyares battle for the gubernatorial perch. But neither party should fear competition, recognizing that the perils, notwithstanding, primaries are tools for enlisting and energizing voters and testing and refining ideas.
In 1985, a bitter and lengthy fight for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination between Lt. Gov. Dick Davis and Attorney General Jerry Baliles — it was decided by caucus and convention, the equivalent of hand-to-hand trench warfare — dispirited activists. But Baliles went on to lead a Democratic sweep, winning by 110,000 votes and carrying every congressional district.
Nearly 40 years on, Spanberger is likened by some to Baliles, sharing a serious, no-nonsense approach to policy, a surprising wit and knack for functioning comfortably in a variety of settings. That she speaks several languages, including Spanish, allows her to campaign among New Virginians in their preferred tongue.
And in 2021, Youngkin — an unknown political rookie whose Croesus wealth accumulated on Wall Street allowed him to become known in a hurry — turned back six opponents for the Republican nomination, including a former House speaker, in drive-through caucuses during the coronavirus pandemic. Excitement over Youngkin’s surprise victory spilled into the general election fight with McAuliffe, who — even Democrats acknowledged — ran as a retread more interested in talking about what he did as Virginia’s 72nd governor than what he would do as its 74th.
For Youngkin, Republicans — desperate to end their statewide losing streak — quickly fell in line. Almost four years later, it’s not clear they fell in love.