Abigail Spanberger isn’t talking about the demolition of the East Wing.
In a year where Democrats may be tempted to center their campaign pitch on the latest controversies from the White House, Spanberger has stuck to a message on the economy, specifically the cost of life for Virginians.
Spanberger was already favored to win the governor’s race in Virginia — which, as the home to a large share of government workers, has been disproportionately impacted by the Trump administration’s sweeping efforts to upend the federal government. For months, she’s hammered an economic message, arguing that costs are too high for Virginians, in part because of the turmoil in President Donald Trump’s Washington that’s spilled into her state.
“These are attacks on Virginians and on our economy, and we need a governor who will stand up against them,” Spanberger said last week at a campaign rally in Charlottesville alongside presumed 2028 Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg.
Now the shutdown is entering its fourth week, and the mounting financial ramifications — from nixed paychecks to slashed jobs to thousands being at risk of losing their food assistance when the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is forecast to run out of money on Nov. 1 — have given Spanberger a fresh way to highlight her message right before Election Day.
“If Democrats flip the governor’s seat, it will be because Spanberger made it about people feeling the consequences of Trump’s economy,” said Jesse Ferguson, a Democratic strategist and former deputy director at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
“The Trump economy has gone from theory to reality, from threat to consequence,” said Ferguson, who has experience in Virginia politics.
Centering on the economy — and the cost of living — is critical to Democrats’ rebrand following stinging electoral losses in 2024. In New Jersey, Rep. Mikie Sherill has homed in on affordability in her bid for governor. And in New York City, Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani — far to Spanberger and Sherill’s left — has also centered his campaign on lowering the cost of living for the working class.
It’s a sharp contrast with recent Democratic campaigns, including during Trump’s first term, when Democrats ran hard against the party in the White House.
“Since the very first day of her campaign, in the closing days of the general election, and in the future as the next Governor of Virginia, Abigail’s top priority will remain making Virginia more affordable,” a spokesperson for Spanberger said in a statement.
The Earle-Sears campaign did not respond to requests for comment on this story.
Four years ago, then-Democratic gubernatorial nominee Terry McAuliffe unsuccessfully nationalized his race by tying Republican Glenn Youngkin to Trump — even though Joe Biden was in the White House — and casting him as having no interest in growing Virginia’s economy. Youngkin, a political newcomer at the time, won the contest by roughly 63,000 votes.
Now, as Democrats look to take back the governor’s mansion, Spanberger has repeatedly called affordability her top priority. While voters’ frustration with Trump may shape their votes next month, Spanberger has zeroed in on Trump’s policies — particularly his economic ones — rather than just his personality.
At the Charlottesville rally with Buttigieg, for example, Spanberger pilloried the state’s GOP leadership as “leaders in Richmond who refuse to recognize the impacts of bad legislation coming out of Washington that will raise prices for Virginians,” citing the Elon Musk-led effort to slash government spending through DOGE, Trump’s trade agenda and the ongoing federal government shutdown.
Her focus on affordability comes even as the race has been shaken repeatedly in its final weeks.
Private and public polling has long shown Spanberger with a strong lead over Republican nominee Winsome Earle-Sears, though some recent pollssuggest a slight tightening of the race. That comes as Democrats have been embroiled in a scandal surrounding violent text messages that resurfaced in recent weeks that the Democratic nominee for attorney general Jay Jones sent about a GOP lawmaker.
Earle-Sears has hammered Spanberger for not calling on Jones to drop out of the race.
The Republican nominee was then given a new cudgel in the final weeks: state Democrats’ 11th-hour push to take up mid-decade redistricting, which could help the party gain more congressional seats in next year’s midterms, drawing sharp criticism from the GOP.
Still, while Republicans may have received a last-minute burst of political ammunition to fire back at Democrats, many believe it’s not enough to overcome both the economic factors and anti-Trump views animating Democratic voters.
“Trump was in the White House, and now you have this federal government shutdown, you have the DOGE stuff and … it just seems to be like an anger towards the federal worker — and we have a lot of federal workers here,” said a Virginia GOP strategist who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about state of the race.
“That’s gonna have a ripple effect. Even if [Republicans] weren’t getting most of the federal workers anyway, that’s going to have a dampening effect.”
A version of this post first appeared in POLITICO Pro’s Morning Score newsletter. Sign up for POLITICO Pro.
