Historic first for Spanberger after considered campaign against Trump

Virginia has had 74 governors over two and a half centuries. All were men. On Tuesday Abigail Spanberger smashed the state’s glass ceiling by winning election as the first female governor in its history.

The former US congresswoman and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) case officer won with a campaign emphasising cost-of-living issues and carefully targeting Donald Trump’s policies rather than the president himself.

Spanberger was born in Red Bank, New Jersey on 7 August 1979 and moved to a suburb of Richmond, Virginia, when she was 13. Her father was an army veteran then career law enforcement officer; her mother a nurse and volunteer.

She attended the University of Virginia, where she earned a degree in French literature. After graduating, she worked briefly as a substitute teacher before pursuing a career in public service.

“I grew up knowing that I wanted to follow in my dad’s footsteps and I did,” Spanberger told supporters at a rally in Norfolk, Virginia last Saturday.

At the US Postal Inspection Service, Spanberger worked cases involving narcotics, child predators and money launderers. She served search and arrest warrants, often being the only woman on the arrest team. She then joined the CIA and focused on counter-terrorism cases, serving undercover and overseas.

In 2014 she and her husband Adam, an engineer, reached a career crossroads. They were living on the west coast and considering another foreign posting. They pulled out a globe and asked their eldest daughter, who was in kindergarten, where they should go. Virginia, she replied, because “everyone we love lives in Virginia”.

Spanberger recalled at her rally: “And so we decided to pivot from a path of service to country, to service to community because she was right. Everyone we love lives in Virginia.”

Back in the commonwealth, Spanberger volunteered with Moms Demand Action, a group working against gun violence, and started a Girl Scout troop. In 2017 she decided to run for Congress, which people told her was a “crazy endeavour” because no Democrat had won the seventh district in half a century.

“But I saw what Donald Trump was doing with his executive power and how he was pitting neighbour against neighbour. And I saw my member of Congress over and over again vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act. And I knew I had to do something. So spoiler: I won.”

In Washington, Spanberger quickly became associated with the Blue Dog Coalition, a group of centrist and fiscally moderate Democrats. She concentrated on lower-profile issues: bringing broadband to rural areas, fighting drug trafficking and veterans’ services.

She quickly established a reputation for working with colleagues across the aisle and was consistently rated the most bipartisan member of the Virginia delegation. She was outspoken about messaging that she believed alienated moderate voters, warning her party against ideological slogans that could be weaponised in contested districts.

Along with Congresswomen Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA analyst and defence department official, and Mikie Sherrill, a former navy helicopter pilot, Spanberger was dubbed a member of the “mod squad” in contrast to the progressive “squad” of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

In November 2023 Spanberger announced she would not seek re-election for a fourth term and would instead run for governor of Virginia in 2025.

Her campaign centred on themes of public service, support for education and infrastructure and protection of democratic institutions. Her CIA background lent her credibility on national security issues and she spoke of public service as a calling rather than a career.

This helped her withstand Republican opponent Winsome Earle-Sears’s attacks on cultural issues, notably the assertion that Spanberger is an extremist on civil rights and health care for transgender people.

Spanberger, who consistently argued that local school districts should decide whether transgender students can participate in competitive sports, cast her opponent as the candidate more out of step with the middle of the Virginia electorate.