After this week’s primary results, Virginia’s more moderate center is all but dead. In two of the most closely watched statewide races, Democrats overwhelmingly chose far-left progressive champions over more moderate options: former Delegate Jay Jones for Attorney General and State Senator Ghazala Hashmi for Lieutenant Governor. Their victories, along with the well-established and growing bloc of progressive nominees in the General Assembly, send a clear message – Virginia Democrats are turning to their extreme left.
Jay Jones, the nominee for Attorney General, ran a campaign focused on aggressive police reform, environmental justice lawsuits, and corporate “accountability.” Ghazala Hashmi rose to prominence in the Virginia Senate for championing Medicaid expansion, reproductive rights, and leading the opposition to nearly every one of Governor Youngkin’s education reforms. These two bested more centrist candidates with campaigns proudly rooted in progressive ideals and largely funded by Clean Virginia and its related green extremist donors. These aren’t mere rhetorical shifts – they’re a redefinition of what it means to be a Virginia Democrat.
This poses a serious challenge for the top of the Democratic ticket: Abigail Spanberger.
Spanberger, a former CIA officer, has spent her political career carefully crafting a centrist image. While maintaining a lifetime progressive score of 95 percent by the AFL-CIO, and a score of 5 by the conservative Heritage Action, she touted her tough talk on government spending, kept her distance from “the Squad,” and has gone against her party on one or two visible national issues to maintain her centrist credentials. But now, she finds herself flanked by running mates and a legislative bench far to her left, all of whom will shape the Democratic message going into the general election and likely force progressive policy legislation for the next governor to sign (or veto) in the next General Assembly.
The Democratic party’s leftward momentum was on full display down-ballot, too. In key legislative primaries, challengers consistently tried to capture the more left-of-center positions. Moderates, for the most part, didn’t run. From Richmond to Northern Virginia, Democratic voters chose climate hawks, social justice advocates, and union-backed candidates to join the well-established progressives already serving in the General Assembly. The message from Democrat primary voters? Bold over balanced. Movement politics over middle ground.
Spanberger, after Tuesday, will need to decide what wing of her party she will embrace? Will it be the more centrist left that she has tried to position herself, or the much more radical left embraced by Hashmi, Jones, and Senator Louise Lucas? Tuesday’s primary showed that the money and energy in the Democratic party comes from its more extreme progressive wing. Will Spanberger have the will to go against this momentum? And if she doesn’t buck the extreme left during the campaign, is there any hope of her doing so if she is elected?
This Tuesday’s results may provide an important opening for conservative Winsome Earle-Sears, especially if Spanberger moves left or fails to differentiate herself from the new progressive left.
Winsome Earle-Sears can campaign on the sensible policies embraced by Governor Youngkin. These policies, rejected by the extreme left who share the ticket with Spanberger, have led to a strong Virginia economy, higher than expected revenue, record surpluses, $6 billion in tax cuts and rebates given back to Virginians, reduced fentanyl deaths, and a ranking as the top state for doing business. It has also resulted in high approval ratings for the Governor – especially with the important independent voter block.
On energy policy, Earle-Sears should make it clear that she supports ending the closure of hydrocarbon energy plants until and unless enough baseload energy is online to reliably service Virginia’s energy needs. She should reject the tax and spend Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) that will do nothing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but will increase costs to most Virginians. She should support laws that make the costs of green energy transparent to ratepayers. If Spanberger rejects these options, and continues to push unreliable wind and energy as she did last week in her energy plan, she will further prove her leftist lean. She will also put her party on the hook for the resulting rate hikes and potential energy outages should she win.
On education, Earle-Sears should promise to continue Governor Youngkin’s accountability standards, to support opportunity scholarships for low-income students trapped in failing schools, and pledge to protect women’s sports and spaces from biological males. These are issues that garner broad support from both the left and the right, and will again force Spanberger to decide what kind of Democrat she wants to be.
As a nonpartisan, free market think tank, our hope is that Tuesday’s election will help make it clear where the two candidates fall on the important issues facing the Commonwealth. And for Abigail Spanberger – let voters know whether she is the centrist she claims to be, willing to support good policy from the center or right, or is she beholden to the extreme policies being embraced by her running mates and the Virginia Democratic Party.
Obviously, our hope is that both candidates embrace the sensible policies that have been working in Virginia. We hope that neither party spend the next 137 days hiding behind party platitudes and silly notions that this election is a referendum (pro or con) on President Trump. The issues the Commonwealth faces are too important for either candidate to hide where they stand on critical issues unique to the Commonwealth.
Abigail Spanberger, now is the time to prove to voters that you are, in fact, a centrist.
Derrick Max is the President and CEO of the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy. He may be reached at [email protected].