FROM THE EDITOR: Bipartisanship Is a Winning Hand
Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger is taking the reins of government at a moment seemingly designed for her bipartisan style. Don't let redistricting spoil the moment.
By Martin Davis
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
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Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger took to Fox News last week to bring her affordability message to the leading media outlet for political conservatives. Among her goals was this one:
We will also build on Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s work to encourage companies to develop the next generation of energy technology, like the world’s first commercial fusion power plant being built right here in Virginia.
For the incoming governor to say something positive about an outgoing governor she has profound political disagreements with deserves a moment of reflection.
While politics has never been a place for thin-skinned people, and campaigns routinely move even the most-celebrated statesmen in the nation’s history to go low, there is tradition of politicians preserving respectful speech for their opposition in the public square.
Those days seem a distant memory.
Spanberger’s statement to FOX is a throwback to a better way of doing politics.
To be sure, her statement came with a healthy dose of political calculation. Having run her entire career as a staunch supporter of bipartisanship — routinely celebrating her record in Congress as the most-bipartisan member from Virginia and one of the most bipartisan on Capitol Hill — she has to convince those Republicans who didn’t support her that she intends to continue her bipartisan approach as Virginia’s governor.
Having covered Spanberger for five years now, however, that statement was more than simple political calculation. The Gov.-elect is genuinely concerned with the nature of political discourse and the negative impact it is having on our ability to govern ourselves in a truly bipartisan fashion.
Fortunately, she isn’t the only politician who understands the danger in governing like the current president of the United States, whose vile, dehumanizing verbiage is the very antithesis of the principles American democracy was founded upon.
Republicans See the Problem, Too
Following Sen. Bryce Reeves’ decision to end his run for the U.S. Senate, he spoke with the Advance about the challenges confronting his own party. First among them is finding a state leader who can put forward a more-productive message and help reorient the party’s base toward a better understanding of how government works.
“We need a leader who can go out and speak to the business community,” he told the Advance, “and [who] knows what needs to get done.” The base of the Republican Party, he said, “doesn’t understand how government really works. To govern you have to cover everything.”
In short, governing is about finding ways to work with those you disagree to find the solutions to the pragmatic problems we all face.
At least in the Viriginia Senate, that tradition seems to be holding.
At a candidates’ forum held last May in Fredericksburg, three State Senators — Tara Durant (R), Jeremy McPike (D), and Reeves — reacted strongly to Bobby Orrock, the most-senior member of the House of Delegates, when he complained that the just-completed session was “the most partisan I’ve ever been a part of” because Democrats didn’t docket every bill.
As the Advance reported, the three: “spoke as a group to say that on the Senate side the story is quite different. They noted that the Senate hears every bill, and a great deal of trust has been built up between the members. As such, Reeves said that he trusts his colleagues — even Democrats — to cast proxy votes for them. A sentiment echoed by Durant and McPike.
“We … try to [identify the] partisan issues, and take them out of the bill,” Reeves said. “I always view partisan issues as mold.” If you “don’t kill it with bleach,” it’ll kill everything.
While Orrock was unhappy with the partisan nature of the most-recent House session, he nonetheless understands the negative trajectory Trump’s nativism and dehumanizing speech has put the Republican Party on.
“Absent Trump,” Orrock said in an interview with Cardinal News, “I think we might have lost three to five seats,” as opposed to the 13 seats the party lost.
Outside Virginia, Republicans are similarly pushing back against the uncivil discourse and unnecessary cruelty evident on the national stage, and the aggressive push to poison state politics with similar rhetoric and tactics.
An excellent example of this is found in the Indiana State House which has refused to be bullied and re-district the Hoosier State mid-decade simply because Trump demands that they do so.
Do the Right Thing
Gov.-elect Spanberger has four years to prove that bipartisanship can work here in Virginia. There is ample reason to believe that she will. Her first two runs for Congress were in the 7th District that Republicans Eric Cantor and then David Brat held easily from 2000 until Spanberger first won it in 2018.
She held that seat for six years owing to a pragmatic approach to governing that placed solving problems over winning ideological battles.
For many, an early measure of Spanberger’s willingness to govern in a bipartisan manner will be how she handles the current push to redistrict Virginia mid-decade. The move is in reaction to Texas, North Carolina, and Missouri bending to Trump’s demands to force through mid-decade re-districtings aimed at stripping Democrats of congressional seats.
Of that push, Reeves told the Advance: “Nobody wants to play by the rules anymore …. We went through all of this [redistricting] with leveler heads early on, and that’s why we have the commission we have. And voters voted on it.”
For now, Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger has not voiced support for mid-decade redistricting, but Congressional representative Rob Wittman (Va. - 1) recently called her out on the move, and the two engaged in a tense verbal exchange.
According to reports, Spanberger said it is something that the voters will decide.
A similar stunt was attempted in 2013 when “Republicans in the Virginia Senate broke tradition by trying to force through a mid-decade redistricting of their own in an effort to win an outright majority in the chamber, which at the time was locked in a 20-20 partisan tie,” according to a piece by David Poole earlier this month for the Virginia Mercury.
Then, according to Poole, “House Speaker Bill Howell — resisting tremendous pressure from fellow Republicans — ruled the Senate action out of order,” bringing an end to the effort.
Howell’s stance is one to admire, and Spanberger would do well to study that moment and weigh seriously the short-term benefits of re-districting vs. the long-term damage that could ensue from letting the zero-sum, nihilistic politics that Trump and Republicans in states like Texas, North Carolina, and Missouri are engaging in dictate how Virginia will conduct itself.
With majorities in both houses of the General Assembly and riding a lopsided election victory in November, Spanberger is sure to get through many of the progressive agenda items Democrats have long sought. Voters made it clear this is what they want.
Further, two of the three districts that Virginia Democrats are targeting for redistricting — Wittman’s, Jen Kiggan’s (Va. - 2), and John McGuire (V. - 5) — are well within reach without redistricting.
According to VPAP, Spanberger carried both Wittman’s and Kiggan’s districts in November. Republican Winsome Earle-Sears carried McGuire’s.
Running Democrats who, like Spanberger, campaign on constructive ideas for addressing voters’ challenges is a winning strategy.
Remember What Happened to Youngkin
While Gov. Glenn Youngkin will leave office with positive favorability ratings, his administration will be remembered as one of lost opportunities.
Rather than playing to his natural strengths — business development — Youngkin from Day One leaned into right-wing culture war issues that dogged him all four years of his administration.
While his anti-public-school rhetoric and attacks on transgendered people played well with the base, they alienated more-moderate voters. And that alienation is likely the reason Republicans never controlled the General Assembly during his tenure.
Gov.-elect Spanberger will take the oath of office on January 17 having won in a landslide. She will also have the General Assembly firmly behind her and a president in the White House who knows no bottom when it comes to insulting anyone he disagrees with, which will continue to energize Democratic voters.
The wind is at her back.
Redistricting is a headwind she, and the Commonwealth, don’t need.
For all that is going right, there are more-challenging headwinds on the horizon.
Trump’s disastrous health care policies are going to cost Virginia hospitals hundreds of millions of dollars in 2026. Thousands of Virginians are going to lose health care. New federal priorities on housing are likely to put many more Virginians on the street. And cuts to SNAP and other federal feeding programs will shift more costs to the Commonwealth.
It will take a Virginia government working in a bipartisan fashion to face these challenges.
It’s a moment made for a leader like Spanberger.
Virginia needs Spanberger to govern from her strength — the ability to lead in a truly bipartisan fashion.
Redistricting is a war that neither the Old Dominion, nor Spanberger, needs.
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As always with Mr Davis, the editorial is both predictable and wrong.
One, in this fantasy that all of the disastrous policies enacted not only by this one petty, irrational man in Washington, but also in red states such as Texas; was foisted upon us by some outside force and we must all work together to make it go away.
The problem with that canard is that many, many Americans HAVE been fighting this slow moving tsunami for at least a decade.
Hand to God, I maybe wasn't surprised when he openly mocked a disabled man without consequences (not like he's the first supposed adult that took pleasure in such cruelty pretending to be entertainment) - but when he, as an ultra-privileged draft dodger insulted a veteran such as John McCain, I thought that would bring decent people to their senses.
Yet we all know how that turned out, don't we?
But the fact is, the most disastrous of these current polices, whether it be putting a brain infected conspiracy theorist lawyer in charge of our nation's healthcare, royal decrees on taxation, open war on Democratic cities and states, with literal occupations, etc. etc. - this didn't happen in a vacuum.
It didn't.
An electoral majority of voting American citizens chose this monstrosity and abomination by their own free will. In 2016, they could've pretended they didn't know any better. But not now.
They saw it. They knew it.
It was public knowledge.
They watched the trials. Saw the evidence. The convictions.
Heard the promises of retribution, revenge and destruction of America and its ideals.
It's been right there the whole time.
Funded by billionaires who are profiting from this corruption, they even wrote a book saying how they would do it. Then did it. This was no secret plan. It was crowed from the mountaintops.
And these same Virginia Republicans chose that. And they continue to choose that by their continued association with it. They've implemented it where ever and whenever possible. And have profited as a result.
Now we're a nation that will try, convict, and kill an indigent 18 year old as an adult without hesitation.
So, it's not like we don't hold people accountable for their actions. With a lot less evidence.
Yet we give these local Republicans a pass for whatever they do on the national stage, because it's not happening here.
Why?
No one made them do it. They said this is what they wanted.
If it's not what you want, why are you not fighting back?
Why the appeasement gussied up as politeness and comity? We've tried that for 40 damn years.
It's not working.
Which from their perspective is a win, as they look to take us back to an idyllic 1950's that never was.
Our government not working IS the plan.
A good plan if you're rich and powerful and you don't want to be held accountable for your actions.
Doesn't seem to be that good for the rest of us though, does it?
Are there no rights or principles worth defending? Must we always compromise?
I say no.
Yes, work with people when you can. But not if it means abandoning everything you believe in.
Eventually there comes a point where you have to say enough.
This far and no farther.
Which comes to the second point, of equal importance.
In that if we are to be a nation, we need to recognize and accept that we are a nation.
You can decide for yourself whether you want to believe that is or is not a nation under God.
I'll give you that. That's your right.
But the fact that we should operate as one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all should not be negotiable.
Did you not put your hand over your heart and make that same pledge sometime in your life?
Did you not mean it? Were those just words to you?
This continual policy of appeasement must end.
On so many levels, just as we saw with the Articles of Confederacy, a "state's only" policy does not work.
It didn't work when we were 13 little individual nations with 4 million people clinging to the edge of the Atlantic - it works even less with over 300 million stretched across the continent and world.
We need to recognize and fight for our government to be a national government. Piecemeal governance does not work.
It makes little sense to have gun control in DC if someone can drive 15 minutes down the road to Virginia and get whatever they want.
To have almost 18,000 different agencies enforcing justice for almost 2000 separate court systems. Our health care system is just as piecemeal, as is our environmental policies, educational policies, etc.
And it's not working.
We need national policies.
Until that happens, we need to recognize that what happens in Texas affects us in Virginia, so we need to fight back. We must.
Much of the damage that has been done to Virginians in the last year can be directly attributed to this Republican Party's abdication of their Constitutional duty for oversight of both the purse and the President.
They did so in the 1st Trump term by refusing to hold him accountable during his impeachments - that was by choice - and those Senators who did so were not punished by Republican voters for their actions. Far from it.
And this time around, they are not even bothering to pretend like they'll do otherwise. By choice. As a party.
Look, I too supported the redistricting amendment. I even applied to be on the commission. And though I was disappointed in its inability to put together a map, I was pleased by the judiciary members who did so.
If they tried to change those districts for state level positions, I too would fight them. I remain pleased on how the districts are laid out for them.
But we cannot pretend that what happens in Texas does not affect us here.
The Virginia Republicans who are bemoaning how it may affect them here are the same Virginia Republicans who have chosen to belong to a party that started this crap.
Openly, willingly.
And you say they should not be held accountable for their choices when it works to their detriment?
Why?
I had a good friend back in the day, Deborah.
She had a pragmatic, country way of looking at things. and speaking which I admired. She was good at putting the world in perspective when it didn't make sense.
And though she passed long ago, I still can hear her voice:
"If you lay down with dogs, you're gonna get fleas...."
We have to suffer 2 more years of this abasement of our core ideals and cold calculated effort to thwart the will of the American people by doing nothing?
Nah, believe I'll pass on that one.
Like Governor-elect Spanberger says, let the voters decide.
But when they decide, they should be clear eyed and realistic.
What's happening in Texas and other Republican states will have a profound effect on our lives here in Virginia.
We are connected, we are affected. As one nation, we must be.
As we remain under the heel of an irrational tyrant and party bent upon retribution.
Whether it be water rights in Colorado, concentration camps in Stafford, flood relief in Maryland, or energy projects in Virginia - it's getting more outrageous rather than less.
ICYMI.
But if you're satisfied with the last 12 months, what's happened to our people, honor, decency, money, and principles - by all means - vote to keep on with more of the same.
Don't change a thing.
If you're not, you better be voting to fight back - while you still have a chance.
I know I will.
Bipartisanship works when both parties legitimately want to govern. In our current moment, only one party is willing to do the things that need doing to be a viable nation (invest for the future, build a sustainable economy, care for the poor, etc.). The Republican party, on the other hand, works to consolidate power to serve the desires of oligarchs and those who aspire to be oligarchs. That effort is not governing, and it is not sustainable.