During the 2025 gubernatorial election the voters of Virginia believed they were choosing between pragmatic Democrat Rep. Abigail Spanberger and lackluster Republican Lieutenant Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears. The former was well funded and portrayed favorably by the corporate “news” media as a centrist, while the latter struggled to raise money and was labeled an extremist because of her strong support of gun rights. In the end, Spanberger won by double digits and most Virginians thought they were getting a slightly more liberal governor than her predecessor, Glenn Youngkin. Yet the moment she took office, it became obvious that Gov. Spanberger was no moderate.
This is something to remember as the 2026 midterms approach. Every Democrat who utters the word “affordability” should be regarded as a grifter.
Immediately upon assuming office, she signed an executive order that reversed her predecessor’s policy whereby state and local law enforcement were required to cooperate with federal immigration authorities to detain illegal aliens convicted of criminal offences. This order sent a clear message that Spanberger viewed immigration through the ideological lens of far left Democrats like Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz rather than the moderate perspective she espoused during the election. She didn’t deign to tell Virginia’s voters how limiting cooperation with DHS would protect them and their families from criminals who are in the country illegally. Instead, she recited the tired shibboleths echoed in every sanctuary state:
Ultimately, I am looking to every step forward that we can take as a commonwealth to ensure that our communities are safe and protected … Frankly, the fear and concern that we’ve seen in other places where people without any sort of designation — unannounced, wearing masks — are taking people off the streets, the level of fear that that’s created and the level of distrust and confusion is certainly not contributing to any strengthening of our communities, let alone keeping our communities safer.
Spanberger further revealed her far left ideological governing philosophy when she moved to bring Virginia back into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). As the American Energy Alliance explains, “RGGI is a regional cap-and-trade program in the Northeast that requires power plants to buy “allowances” to emit carbon dioxide. These allowance costs are naturally passed on to the consumer, inevitably raising electricity prices.” Former Gov. Glenn Youngkin had pulled the Old Dominion out of RGGI. According to Youngkin, from the time the state originally joined RGGI until the time it finally pulled out in 2024, the Commonwealth’s residents paid $828 million in a regressive interstate tax imposed via their electricity bills.
Why would Spanberger who yammered endlessly about “affordability” rejoin RGGI knowing full well that it will increase the cost of living for everyone in Virginia? The obvious answer is that her desire to bring down the cost of living is far outweighed by her allegiance to the leftist ideology that is rapidly infiltrating the Democratic Party. Nowhere is this more obvious than the avalanche of new taxes under which the Old Dominion’s hapless residents will soon be smothered. As abc7 reports, “Virginia Democrats have introduced more than fifty new tax proposals this legislative session.” Surely this is an exaggeration? Nope. The following is a partial list of new taxes Gov. Spanberger and her legislative accomplices are seriously considering:
- Additional local sales tax in all Virginia counties and cities
- New personal property tax on electric leaf blowers and electric landscaping equipment
- Large employer tax
- Gun and ammunition tax
- Delivery tax on Amazon, Uber Eats, FedEx, and UPS orders in Northern Virginia
- Investment income tax
- Event tax
- Storage facility tax
- Gym membership tax
- Dog walking tax
- Dog grooming tax
- Counseling tax
- Digital personal property tax
- New car taxes and highway use fees
- Increase in the hotel tax in Arlington
- Vehicle repair tax
- Home repair tax
- Dry cleaning tax
But wait, there’s more: “Virginia Democrats are also looking at proposing a 4.3% tax on rideshare trips and an additional 1.9% tax on top of that for trips in Northern Virginia.” One would expect that a governor who ran on “affordability” would veto almost all of this proposed theft — and that’s what it is — but Spanberger will sign any tax bill that her Democrat-dominated legislature slaps on her desk. Why? She believes this money can be more efficiently spent by the state than by the people who earned it. Yet there is no small amount of poetic justice in all of this nonsense. Spanberger and her co-conspirators in the General Assembly were elected by he bureaucrats who colonized Northern Virginia. Now they pay — albeit with your money.
This is something to remember as the 2026 midterms approach. Any Democrat who uses the word “affordability” should be regarded as a grifter. Any Democrat described by the corporate media as a moderate will pick your pocket without hesitation. There is no such thing as a moderate Democrat. Abigail Spanberger is not an outlier. She is all too typical of the party to which she belongs. They are all leftwing extremists and determined to “fundamentally transform” the U.S. into a dystopian hellhole if they are returned to power.
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