It’s been little more than a week since Abigail Spanberger was sworn in as Virginia’s first female governor, and it’s clear the state’s Democratic Party isn’t wasting time flexing its power.
Last year, Democrats routed their Republican opponents to secure unified control of government for the first time since 2021. Expectations were high that Democrats would launch an aggressive campaign to protect Virginians from growing federal overreach, but before the election, few political analysts expected Spanberger and her colleagues to move so quickly in advancing four constitutional amendments that could reshape the commonwealth.
Those measures, if passed by voters in two upcoming elections, would enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution, write same-sex marriage protections into law, restore the voting rights of felons who have completed their sentences, and redraw the state’s congressional maps ahead of this year’s midterm elections. The redistricting measure will be on the ballot during an April special election, while the other three will go before voters in November.
Democrats across the nation should look to Virginia’s no-nonsense leadership as a model for how to use power to fight Republican extremism.
Abortion-rights activists demonstrate on Capitol Hill in 2022.
Abortion
Democrats’ abortion amendment does more than protect access to abortion services across Virginia. It acknowledges a fundamental right to reproductive care, including contraception and fertility treatments. That’s a big shift from former Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who vetoed efforts to protect abortion providers from federal prosecution and even suggested he’d be open to extraditing abortion providers charged with crimes by other states.
Over 60% of Virginians support Democrats’ efforts to protect abortion rights, according to a poll released early last year. And the issue played a role in Democrats flipping key legislative districts last year.
Voting rights
Spanberger is on the verge of achieving another of Democrats’ long-wished legislative goals: returning the right to vote to felons who complete their sentences.
Virginia has long been notorious for enforcing the nation’s toughest rules for voting rights restoration. It’s currently one of just three states where the governor must individually restore voting rights to ex-felons, a process which requires individuals to submit written requests. And the other two states—Iowa and Kentucky—have somewhat automated that process, unlike Virginia.
As a result, Virginia has one of the lowest rates of rights restoration in the country.
Republicans enforced those draconian limits on voting rights restoration, fearing that ex-felons—who are disproportionately Black—would be more likely to vote Democratic if their rights were restored. The data paints a more complicated picture, but that hasn’t stopped decades of Republican efforts to enforce what one expert calls an “overt and intended effort” to keep Black Virginians away from the polls.
Democrats are now on track to reverse that injustice by ending the current discriminatory process in favor of a system that automatically restores voting rights.
Two men demonstrate outside a court in Norfolk, Virginia, in 2014.
Same-sex marriage
Same-sex couples are also on the verge of historic protections thanks to a multiyear Democratic push to write marriage equality into the state constitution.
That effort took on new urgency last year when the Supreme Court appeared poised to reconsider its ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges. (It later decided not to.) And state Republicans amplified the threat by choosing anti-gay extremist Winsome Earle-Sears, who was then the lieutenant governor, as their gubernatorial candidate last year.
In 2006, the state voted to ban same-sex marriage, but recent polling shows a strong majority of Virginians now support marriage equality.
Redistricting
Most controversial is the Democratic effort to recast the state’s 11 congressional districts to favor Democrats, with some reform advocates wary that a possible map favoring Democrats by 10-1 could draw legal challenges and foment a voter backlash.
The effort comes after Texas’ similar effort redrew five Democratic-held districts to favor Republicans ahead of the 2026 midterms, and it puts Virginia on the frontline in the fight over how aggressively states should consider partisanship when drawing congressional districts.
And beyond
Few states have matched Virginia’s speed in moving forward massive pieces of legislation, and much of that is due to Spanberger’s desire to keep her campaign promise to drive major change on Day 1. In addition to four constitutional amendments, the Democratic-led legislature is tackling what Spanberger calls her “Affordable Virginia” agenda, a package of legislation designed to help Virginians address the rising costs caused by President Donald Trump’s disastrous tariff policies.
People cheer as Democrat Abigail Spanberger walks out on stage after she was declared the winner of the Virginia governor's race in 2025.
Spanberger’s sprint to turn her ideas into laws is an effective and powerful example of how Democrats must use power if they want to correct years of Republican overreach. By building a clear, actionable agenda on the campaign trail and securing buy-in from her colleagues in the state legislature, Spanberger was able to begin developing legislation before her inauguration. By the time she swore the oath of office, many of her key priorities were already on their way to votes in the legislative chambers.
Democrats have a powerful opportunity to follow Spanberger’s model this year by defining their priorities early and building real electoral coalitions that hash out the details of legislation during the campaign instead of after inauguration. Spanberger’s strength has been showing Virginians just how quickly their state government can start working again once obstructive Republicans have been cleared out of the system.
If Democrats nationwide want to replicate Virginia’s success, they’ll need to run statewide races not as a collection of individual candidates but as a governing coalition with a clear and unified plan for action. Spanberger is proving how quickly Democrats can move when they are focused. It’s time for Virginia’s strategy to go national.
