Gov. Abigail Spanberger has announced she will sign legislation to raise Virginia's minimum wage to $15/hour.
— FactPost (@factpostnews.bsky.social) February 17, 2026 at 11:44 AM
Abigail Spanberger ran for governor of Virginia on her record as one of the most bipartisan members of the House. After her first weeks in office, critics on the right are calling her a witch, a “Bond villain” and dangerous. She sees it as a sign of her success. nyti.ms/3MO2wLb
— The New York Times (@nytimes.com) February 16, 2026 at 2:00 PM
There’s an old joke: New plowhand comes to the farmer, complains he can’t get the mule out of its stall. Farmer says calmly, Let me give you the benefit of my experience. He picks up a handy 2×4, smacks the mule square between the eyes… at which point it stops kicking & meekly allows itself to be harnessed. To the plowhand, farmer explains: First, you have to get its attention.
Elisabeth Bumiller, at the NYTimes — “In First Month as Governor, Abigail Spanberger Kicks Up Heat From the Right” [gift link]:
Abigail Spanberger ran for governor of Virginia on her record as one of the most bipartisan members of the House and as a mother of three who worked undercover for the C.I.A. It was the disciplined campaign of a centrist Democrat in a purple state. Even her supporters called it boring.
Things have picked up.
In her first weeks as governor, Ms. Spanberger ended all cooperation agreements between Virginia’s state law enforcement agencies and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She signed a bill for an April vote on whether to redraw Virginia’s political map ahead of the fall midterms, potentially giving Democrats an edge in 10 of the state’s 11 congressional districts compared with their 6-to-5 margin now.
Before taking office, Ms. Spanberger demanded and got the resignations of five University of Virginia board members, who all participated in a Trump White House push that removed James E. Ryan as the university’s president, largely because of his diversity efforts.
The right wing is on fire. Suddenly, to partisan critics eager to take down a Democrat whose political future is already discussed in terms of national office, she is a witch, a “Bond villain” and dangerous…
In Ms. Spanberger’s view, the furor is a sign of the threat she poses to Republicans after winning the governorship in a rout. “It’s a good narrative,” she said of the attacks. She spoke in an interview in her office in the State Capitol, where portraits of some of the state’s previous 74 governors, all men, hang outside her top floor suite. “There’s probably plenty of reasons that one might be inclined to be critical of a Democrat who swung a state 17 points.”
Ms. Spanberger, whom friends describe as blunt and tough in private, was composed, coolheaded and approachable in the interview, a demeanor that former C.I.A. colleagues say served her well in her years as a case officer recruiting and handling foreign agents who spied for the United States. The experience gave her the national security credentials that helped her rise in politics and the training, she said, to help connect with people different from herself.
“I’ve always been a person who wants to talk to anybody and everybody,” Ms. Spanberger said in an earlier interview. “At C.I.A., that was something that I further practiced, or got comfortable with.” In her political life, she said, “I have had the experience of, ‘All right, I’m going to walk into this room and I’m going to talk to somebody who doesn’t want to talk to me.’”…
Ms. Spanberger said that one positive aspect of her new job was the authority to change things with a stroke of a pen, as she did with ICE.
“It does suit my personality,” she said.
Many people are saying…
I was initially not the biggest fan of Spanberger but it turns out she has the heart of a world class hater and that is 100% the kind of energy we need right now
— Micah (@rincewind.run) February 16, 2026 at 9:13 PM
Yep, and Republicans are REALLY going to love the "narrative" once Gov. Spanberger starts signing hundreds of progressive legislation into law…then wins the redistricting referendum, etc. :) bluevirginia.us/2026/02/mond… h/t @samshirazi.bsky.social
— Blue Virginia (@bluevirginia.bsky.social) February 16, 2026 at 6:36 PM
Spanberger probably underpriced for 2028 especially if NYT likes her, which, apparently
— post malone ergo propter malone (@proptermalone.bsky.social) February 16, 2026 at 11:06 PM
CIA Agent working as a politician: "Holy shit they just DM me the oppo this is way fucking easier than being a spy"
— Padraig2112 (@isomorphism.net) February 16, 2026 at 9:17 PM
She’s been my favorite dark horse for a while, particularly after DOGE, because you could not find a more perfect embodiment of the very targeted ethos that Elon tried his damnedest to eradicate from government but is also what makes government uniquely capable of a specific greatness.
— Vibecession Forever (@ghazelleberner.bsky.social) February 16, 2026 at 11:48 PM
bsky.app/profile/chri…
— Chris Labarthe (@chrislabarthe.bsky.social) February 16, 2026 at 11:10 PM
Corporations Donating to Racist Candidate Barr
Baud
Elections have consequences.
dc
Preach it!
Gin & Tonic
WRT that last tweet, why is the dude listed first? Why not spy/astronaut? Only one of them currently holds an executive position.
MattF
Yeah, the RW noise machine has noticed her and is trying to pick a fight. And, wonder to behold… she’s ready too. I’m impressed.
Mai Naem mobile
@Gin & Tonic: 1/ because he’s a manly man and 2/ Kelly’s been on the receiving end of some major hate from Orange Ding Dong.
HeleninEire
Someone on Blusky said..”Kinda was neutral on her, but it turns out she a real hater.
😆 Yeah the Democratics need real haters.
ETA…look up. It was Micah. My bad. Sorry for not reading the whole post.
zhena gogolia
@Gin & Tonic: people seem to be resigned to never having a woman president
Baud
@Mai Naem mobile:
3/ America hates women
piratedan
you kind of get the impression that Ms. Spanberger has not lost the plot. What she got was a motherfucking mandate and she means to use it.
I adore the fact that she not only keeps receipts, she employs the same polite southern “fuck you” when confronted with the cries of the opposition, who were rarely moved by our own complaints. After years of GOP disdain for the rights of others, much less anyone who wasn’t a campaign donor, it will be nice to see this particular political worm turn.
We’ll need a distillery and distribution contract for GOP tears posthaste.
HinTN
@piratedan:
Damn right! Call it Salty Sauce.
Also, Nominated!!!
Miss Bianca
@dc: suddenly, I have a favorite candidate for POTUS…
…too soon?
eclare
@Gin & Tonic:
I don’t get the whole thing.
kindness
Odd how Republicans like their leaders chaos, but when a Democrat shakes things up Republicans get the vapors. They really are the biggest snowflakes.
Chetan Murthy
@Miss Bianca:
I would be inclined to wait a while; I remember that the tobacco lawyer gillibrand also had a reputation for being very bipartisan when she was a representative and then moved leftward when she became a senator. We all thought she was showing her true colors, but… Lately we seen that. In fact, she’s a centrist squish was perfectly happy to carry water for the crypto Bros. Hopefully er spanberger will be nothing like that. But it will be better to wait a while and see.
BretH
@Baud:
And it’s corrolary:
We have a mandate!
Bill Arnold
@BretH:
And she won a mandate with a landslide (58%) victory.
Mr. Trump (not qualified due to being an insurrectionist, sigh/14A) did not even win a majority of votes.
Miss Bianca
@Chetan Murthy: well, shucks, we don’t have Al Franken to kick around anymore, so I would guess we’re safe on thise grounds. Unless she decides to out another Democratic male politician as a sex pest, that is. Then I guess *we’d* have to start calling her a witch, amirite?
Anonymous At Work
I love her threat against the Republican haters, that she will release the chat records between them that show he was probably begging for favors and praising her and kissing her shoes.
Remember, State Senators are easier to primary if Fox and Trump get after them.
trollhattan
Good.
Next door in North Carolina they use the federal minimum of $7.25. Remember how Donny was going to fix that? Me either.
NC is NOT a cheap place to live. Pay rent slinging chicken at Popeye’s? As if.
Eyeroller
@Gin & Tonic: Aside from the concerns over women candidates (“twice burned once shy”), Kelly has broached running for President in 2028 whereas Spanberger has never indicated any interest in President or VP yet.
Eyeroller
@Bill Arnold: Sadly, he won the popular vote in 2024.
Bill Arnold
@Eyeroller:
Plurality, not majority.
Eyeroller
Since it’s an open thread, I’d just like to point out that Susie Collins has announced she supports the SAVE act, making her the 50th vote in the Senate, so if nobody else supports it Vance could break the tie, if we had majority rule.
I don’t know whether she truly supports it or if she knows that Democrats will save her with the filibuster, but at this point I don’t care whether Plattner is problematic and Mills is old, I just want her gone. Her “moderate” shtick is getting old.
waspuppet
First of all, those are all moderate policy positions.
Second of all, I love the energy of quoting her numbers. As “everyone” “knows,” Democrats are supposed to apologize for winning, and she’s having none of it.
Eyeroller
@Bill Arnold: Third party votes are irrelevant in our system. It doesn’t matter that he didn’t get over 50%, he won the most votes overall.
WaterGirl
@HeleninEire: Oh my gosh, Friday is your big day!!! 2 more days and then THE LAST DAY.
How are you feeling? Getting real?
Baud
I do miss the fleece vests.
Chetan Murthy
@Miss Bianca: Oh no, I -supported- Sen. Gillibrand and the other female Dem Senators in that affair: I remember well that the straw that broke the camel’s back was when one senators’ female staffers reported that she -also- had been harassed by Franken. No, my beef with Gillibrand is over her support for crypto: that shit is toxic and can and will destroy our economy. It’s legalized money laundering.
hells littlest angel
Next right-winger that complains Spanberger should turn into a newt.
Pennsylvanian
@Gin & Tonic: Word.
It is far past time to take the men-only sign off of the White House. So fucking far.
Bill Arnold
@Eyeroller:
It’s not really worth arguing about, except perhaps to note that a “mandate” is a social construct, and a “mandate” through a plurality is generally considered to be at best a weak mandate.
When Trump brags about a mandate and a landslide victory, he is talking about something much weaker than Spanberger’s 58% win. E.g. she won the median voter.
Captain C
@Eyeroller: It does matter to his ego, though, and he’ll never stop resenting it or pretending it wasn’t so.
Pointing out he didn’t even reach 50% is also useful ammo against those benighted idiots who still want to claim he has a mandate.
ETA: Or what Bill Arnold said at 31.
Mr. Bemused Senior
The ICIJ has very good coverage, a series, the Coin Laundry.
Eyeroller
@Bill Arnold: Agreed he has no mandate even though he acts like it. GW claimed a mandate he didn’t really have in 2000 and he won a higher percentage.
But that’s a different issue from whether he won the popular vote. It’s their “marketing.” Claim a mandate and act like it.
bbleh
After her first weeks in office, critics on the right are calling her a witch, a “Bond villain” and dangerous.
Hit dawgs gonna holler ..
@Baud: concur with the qualification that enough of America hates women enough
ETA: and having just watched the Talarico interview — and seen all the top-of-page MSM stories about it — I gotta say, she’s not the only one that’s got their attention.
SFAW
@Eyeroller:
No, he didn’t. Gore won the popular vote (although not a majority), Bush had just under 48 percent. Orangemandias had 49-plus percent in 2024.
lowtechcyclist
I wouldn’t want to push Spanberger for 2028. Running for President is practically a full-time occupation. She’s just begun her first year of a 4-year term. If she runs for President, this one year is all we get – and really all she has to base a primary campaign on.
What I want to see is for her and the Dem majority in the legislature do so many good things for Virginia that the Commonwealth turns solidly blue by the time she’s done. Then hopefully Warner or Kaine will step down at a fortuitous time for her to run for Senator, and *then* she can start plotting her 2036 campaign for President.
bbleh
@SFAW: @Eyeroller: @Bill Arnold: always amusing to recall that the NEXT-to-last President to win an outright MAJORITY of the popular vote TWICE was Eisenhower, and the LAST was … Obama.
Baud
German Trump floats
Baud
@bbleh:
Huh? Reagan? Didn’t he win a majority in 1980?
Old School
@Eyeroller:
@SFAW:
W. claimed his “mandate” after the 2004 election.
Chetan Murthy
@Baud: And in Munich, during the Munich Security Forum: reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1r4sntk/oc_today_in_munich/
bbleh
@Baud: oops, not Bush 1 (only elected once) and not Nixon, but I thought Reagan in 1980 didn’t get over 50% of the popular vote because of Anderson, and I sit corrected — he DID in fact get 50.7% of the popular vote.
(Obama got HIGHER percentages in both elections though. Shoulda said HIGHEST since Eisenhower, not only.)
Chetan Murthy
@Old School: Mmmm …. I remember well during his first term, news articles describing him as governing as if he’d won a mandate, instead of scraping in by the skin of his teeth.
Old School
@Eyeroller:
@SFAW:
W. claimed his “mandate” after the 2004 election.
Old School
@Chetan Murthy: I was thinking of his “I have political capital and intend to use it” line.
Eyeroller
@SFAW: He still claimed a mandate (due to winning electoral college). But I may be thinking more of 2004 when he did barely win the popular vote.
For Republicans it doesn’t really matter anyway. They claim a mandate no matter how they win, so why should we even pay attention to that?
Chetan Murthy
@Old School: Ah yes, after 2004, when he went about trying to end Social Security. You’re right, that he certainly said it, and tried to do it. And Nancy Pelosi handed him his head. *grin
Another Scott
Spanberger’s tough and she’s a good fit for Virginia. Virginia is blue, but it’s not lefty-mcleftish. To win statewide here, one has to be on the centrist-side of the Democratic party (as much as I wish that were not the case).
People need to remember that after one recent election, she came out guns-blazing that “defund the police” was toxic and (nearly) made too many good Democrats lose. She campaigned on voting against Pelosi for Speaker in her first House race, and did so. I don’t expect her to get out of the lane she has constructed for herself – she’s not a secret flaming liberal.
I think she’ll do a good job as governor. I wouldn’t be surprised if she moved up into the Senate in the 2032 election for Warner’s seat. (She was running for governor about 2 years before the actual election – she knows how to lock-up support.).
Interesting times ahead!
Forward!!
Best wishes,
Scott.
Suzanne
Yeah, that is absolutely correct.
As for Mark Kelly….. also awesome. Seeing Gabrielle Giffords as our FLOTUS would have me absolutely verklempt. But the good thing about 2028 is that I don’t have to worry about it right now. We will have multiple great candidates. It remains to be seen who will will best fit the demands of the moment.
different-church-lady
Is there such a thing as a velvet thermonuclear device?
Geminid
@lowtechcyclist: We have plenty of good candidates for 2028, and Abigail Spanberger has plenty of time to run for President. I think she’ll be 51 when she completes her term as governor in January, 2030.
Because of Virginia’s singular single term limit, Spanberger won’t run for governor again, but Tim Kaine’s Senate seat will be up that November. He’ll almost certainly retire and Spanberger will ride the same Governor-to-Senator highway Kaine and Mark Warner took. Then she can run for President as a Senator, later that decade or early in the next.
Fun Facts: New Jersey Governor Mikie Mikie Sherrill was born in Alexandria, Virginia and Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger was born in Red Bank, New Jersey. Makes me think there’s some sort of Law of Conservation of Yankees at work.
cmorenc
@trollhattan: Bojangles, a much more popular chicken n’biscuit place in NC than Popeyes, offers $14/hr to start slinging biscuits & tea, at least in the metro Triangle around Raleigh. Which doesn’t refute the point since I doubt their franchises in small towns & rural areas offer as much to start.
Shalimar
If $15 an hour minimum wage makes Spanberger a Bond villain, I am really looking forward to the James Bond/Robin Hood crossover series.
Shalimar
@cmorenc: Pretty much all fast food franchises along the Emerald Coast of Florida offer $13 per hour to start or more, because no one can afford to live in the area for less than that. And even for that, most of their workers drive from the towns 30 minutes to an hour inland to get to work.
...now I try to be amused
@Geminid:
Interestingly, Virginia state law bars a governor from serving two consecutive terms but they can run again after sitting out a cycle. Terry McAuliffe lost to Fleece Vest trying to make a comeback. I guess former governors don’t run again because it’s kinda a loser thing to do.
Eyeroller
@Another Scott: I don’t recall her campaigning about “voting against Pelosi” but I was never and am not now in her Congressional district, so don’t know. It just sounds weird and an attempt to appeal to people who wouldn’t vote for her anyway. The low-information types wouldn’t even know who Pelosi was, and the Republicans who have a knee-jerk hatred of Pelosi wouldn’t ever vote for a D, so what was the point?
WaterGirl
@Baud: Bite your tongue!
SiubhanDuinne
@HeleninEire:
Hey, how many sleeps now until the Big R? I hope your retirement is the awesomest thing you have ever done.
Another Scott
@Eyeroller: She was running in a redish House district.
PBS.org interview from November 2018:
She beat Brat 50.4% to 48.4%.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
gene108
@Another Scott:
The center of the Democratic party is far more liberal than it has ever been.
Positions like support for gay marriage, a $15/hr minimum wage, paid sick leave, etc. is where the center of the party is now. 15 years ago these were more liberal positions.
lowtechcyclist
@…now I try to be amused:
When I scroll down, I’ll probably find that Geminid beat me to this, but IIRC, Mills Godwin was elected governor in 1965 and 1973, sandwiched around Linwood Holton’s term as governor.
ETA: It’s worth adding that Godwin ran the first time as a Democrat, and the second time as a Republican, reflecting the changes of political orientation in the South in the wake of the Civil Rights legislation of the 1960s.
Geminid
@Eyeroller: Spanberger was one of several House candidates that year (2018) who told voters they would not vote for Pelosi for Speaker. They were all trying to flip Republican seats.
Mikie Sherrill was one of the others and when Pelosi came to campaign for her, Sherrill started to explain to Pelosi why she had made that pledge. Pelosi cut her off and said: “Don’t worry about that. Just win, baby.”
Geminid
@lowtechcyclist: Mills Godwin won as a Democrat in 1965, and then he won as a Republican in 1973. That was like the Southern Party Realignment in a nutshell.
Eyeroller
@Another Scott: I still doubt it would have persuaded any Republicans or even “Independent” Pelosi haters to vote for her. There were almost certainly other factors.
Eyeroller
@Geminid: A D doesn’t get Republicans to vote for you. You get Independents (and get Ds to turn out). I doubt any Independents hated Pelosi that much. It was unlikely to have been a major factor.
Chasing Republican votes has been a major loser for Democrats. We should concentrate on “Independents,” who are often embarrassed Republicans but are more loosely attached and hence less tribal and so may be persuadable.
Spanberger had much better arguments in her early campaigns.
Geminid
@Eyeroller: Half a dozen or more candidates made that pledge, so they at least agreed it was a good tactic. I think the idea was to help win over conservative-leaning Independents who worried that the Democrats were too liberal and associated Pelosi with liberalism. As you suggest, it wouldn’t have changed many votes but the candidates who won all won by narrow margins.
Besides Spanberger, Mikie Sherrill, Xochitl Torres-Small and Jared Golden pledged not to vote for Pelosi. I think Kendra Horne and Joe Cunningham did too and there were a couple others.
Democrats flipped 40 seats that year and they had a majority of over 20 members when the new Congress began, so Pelosi could win the Speakership without these newcomers’ votes.
Geminid
@Eyeroller: I don’t think Spanberger made a big deal about this issue and I thought it was an exaggeration to say she “ran” on voting against Pelosi. Maybe she did center it and I did not notice, but I did know she made that pledge.
Obviously, we can’t know if this tactic made a difference. But I give successful political practitioners credit for knowing these problems better than I and so I tend not to second-guess decisions like this. And Nancy Pelosi was fine with it and she’s a very perceptive practical polician.
But if you want to know more, it’s not very hard to look up the vote for Speaker tallied in January, 2019. Although actually, I think I will because I’m curious now.
Geminid
@Geminid: According to Wikipedia, the 116th Congress met January 3, 2019 and elected Nancy Pelosi Speaker with 220 votes.
Of the Democratic freshmen class, Elissa Slotkin and Jeff van Drew voted present. Reps. Joe Cunninham, Abigail Spanberger, Mikie Sherrill and Jared Golden voted for Rep. Cheri Bustos. Max Rose and Jason Crow voted for Senator Tammy Baldwin. Ben McAdams, and Anthony Brindisi voted for other candidates.
That’s 10 who I’m guessing promised not to vote for Pelosi.
Of the non-freshman, Jim Cooper voted present and Kathleen Rice, Kurt Schrader, Ron Kind and Connor voted for others.
So it turns out I was wrong about Kendra Horn and Xochitl Torres-Small. They weren’t among the ones Wikipedia said voted present or voted for people other than Pelosi, so I assume they voted for Pelosi.
Ruckus
Nancy Pelosi is 85 years old. Now many people, including some in my and my extended family have lived a fair bit longer than that. But. There is a point to retirement and letting others take over in politics. I’m not saying that she is absolutely there, or that she’s not very good at what she does, she IS good at it, nor that there is now a much larger segment of old farts such as myself who are not all that far behind her age wise. If we live long enough I think we should retire and enjoy the time we have left – and also that the age to retire at is different for many of us.
IOW this is not an easy concept – in retirement for many it makes a difference as to how physical and/or demanding our jobs were. But as someone not all that far behind her age wise who has held physical jobs most of my life I can state that I chose to retire a fair bit later than most people do. And I am not unhappy that I have. I don’t walk as far as I used to not all that long ago but I still walk a fair bit, but not as far or as fast.
Geminid
@Ruckus: Well, Nancy Pelosi finally is retiring. So are some of her older colleagues like Steny Hoyer (MD) and Chicago are Reps. Chuy Garcia, Danny Davis and Jan Schakowski.
I’m glad you’re still walking around. You Californians are going elect a new governor this year. Have you heard much about the race and the people in it? Have you picked a favorite yet?
Bupalos
I don’t know what qualifies as “chasing..”
In the Trump realignment we’ve actually added a lot of former Republicans. To be sure, we’re losing more D’s… but really not because we’re doing more R policy. If anything, it’s because we haven’t.