Six months into her term, Governor Abigail Spanberger has managed something rare: she’s disappointed almost everyone.
That’s the argument Spencer Neale lays out in The American Conservative, and the polling backs him up — 44% approval among registered voters, with her own coalition splintering.
Neale calls it a “coalition of nothing.” The idea is simple: by triangulating on every hard question, Spanberger keeps satisfying no one. Go down the list.
Neale reports that after the Virginia Supreme Court blocked the Democrat map, Spanberger declined to join her own party’s push to replace the justices. Democrats were disappointed; Republicans called it a bait and switch.
On immigration, she vetoed House Bill 1392 and Senate Bill 83 — and the ACLU of Virginia accused her of “voluntary surrender to the Trump administration’s lawless anti-immigrant agenda.”
On guns, she signed the assault-weapons ban — but only after proposing amendments to weaken it that her own party rejected.
On data centers, the essay notes she defended the corporate tax exemption even as VCU polling showed 72% of Virginians opposed it — prompting State Senator Louise Lucas, a Democrat and chair of Senate Finance, to start calling her the “Data Center Diva.” Every one of these critics is a Democrat, or a Democrat-aligned group, publicly frustrated with a Democrat governor. That’s not a Republican talking point. That’s her base.
Even the elder statesman of her party sees it. Former Governor L. Douglas Wilder told the magazine, “The governor is beginning to experience the realities of governing. The honeymoon appears to be over.”
Neale’s closing line is the one to sit with: “The only question left will be whether a governor who satisfies no one can help assemble a coalition of anyone.” Virginia elected a governor who campaigned as the reasonable center. What it got is a governor stuck in what the essay calls “the lonely middle” — too cautious for the left, too far left for everyone else, and running out of people willing to defend her.
