The Inauguration

This Saturday, Cath and I will be in Richmond, Virginia with friends attending the gubernatorial inauguration of Abigail Spanberger. We are excited and are looking forward to the event. As a bonus, she will be our first female governor.

As Chair of the Fauquier County Democratic Committee (FCDC), I received two tickets. Perhaps because of my time at West Point, I have never been much for pomp and circumstance. I have generally favored “the doing,” rather than the celebrating. Having said that, this is one event I don’t want to miss.

 

I have known of Abigail since 2017 and her first run for Congress to represent the 7th Congressional District, immediately to our south. She is a centrist Democrat. If she were not, she never would have won in the 7th. A former CIA official, she was elected to Congress three times, starting in 2018. In the first election, she won by only 6,800 votes. The district she won had been in Republican hands since 1981.

 I first met her in 2019, while marching in a Fireman’s Parade for another candidate. We spoke briefly. What I really remember is watching her throughout the parade. She stopped and spoke with everyone, including Nick Freitas, a Republican member of the Virginia House of Delegates, who would run and lose against her for Congress in 2020 by 8,400 votes.

 Her gubernatorial campaign was about affordability, although that isn’t what she called it. While her opponent spoke shrilly about bathrooms and social issues, Abigail talked calmly about the things affecting Virginians today. She spoke about pocketbook issues – the rising price of groceries, housing, and health care, and about the number of Virginians who were out of work. Her message resonated and she won by a landslide. 

 While I look forward to her inauguration, I am more excited about her term as governor. With Democratic control of both the House of Delegates and the State Senate, I expect meaningful legislation to reach her desk. 

Donald Trump won the ‘24 election by 49.8% to 48.3%, a margin of approximately 1.5 percent. He declared the people gave him an  “unprecedented and powerful mandate.” 

Abigail won the governor’s election by 57.6% to 42.2%, a margin of over 15%. If 1.5% is an “unprecedented and powerful mandate”, what do you call a margin of 15.4%, which is a tenfold increase? A “mega-unprecedented and powerful mandate?”

Fortunately for Virginia, Abigail Spanberger is a pragmatist and not a megalomaniac. The Old Dominion will do well by her.