By Michael Martz

WASHINGTON — Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-7th, didn’t have to be in the House of Representatives chamber on Jan. 6, 2021, as Congress prepared to certify the results of the bitterly contested 2020 presidential election.

Most members weren’t, because voting was hours away and they were following health protocols during the still-rampant COVID-19 pandemic.

But Spanberger was sitting in the House Gallery with other colleagues because she was interested in the discussion about counting disputed Electoral College votes from Pennsylvania and Arizona, two of the states in which supporters of President Donald Trump had refused to concede his loss to former Vice President Joe Biden.

It would be a long, terrifying afternoon, as Trump supporters forced their way into the U.S. Capitol, battling violently with police who sought to block them from reaching lawmakers to stop Congress from certifying Biden’s victory.

But Spanberger, a former CIA officer and U.S. Postal Service inspector, said she understands why some people recall that day differently than she does.

“If you weren’t there and you didn’t hear the screaming, you didn’t hear the yelling and you didn’t hear the doors banging; you didn’t see the fear, actual fear in the faces of the Capitol Police officers; and you didn’t smell the bear spray and you didn’t hear the humming of all the gas masks, it’s possible to lie to yourself about how bad it was,” she said.

Spanberger, who lives in western Henrico County, arrived in Congress almost six years ago, with Trump in the White House and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., presiding over the House. She worked and battled with both leaders (she voted against Pelosi as speaker twice) and served almost four years under Biden.

She now prepares to leave next month with Trump returning to power and Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., leading the House after a Republican Party leadership feud last year left it rudderless for almost three weeks.

A different challenge

She leaves for a different kind of challenge as the presumptive Democratic nominee for governor next year in what could be a historic battle with Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, the presumptive Republican nominee, to become the first woman elected to lead Virginia in its history.

Spanberger says she’s ready for the job.

“If I can be as effective as I’ve been in this place, in this kind of chaos, then I know I can be effective in Richmond,” she said during a 45-minute interview in her makeshift office in the Capitol complex as a new Congress prepares to move in.

In Earle-Sears, Spanberger would face a charismatic opponent with experience in state government, having presided over the Virginia Senate for three years, as well as serving one term in the House of Delegates 20 years ago and sitting on the State Board of Education after then-Gov. Bob McDonnell appointed her in 2011.

Earle-Sears, who served in the Marine Corps, also previously owned and operated an appliance repair, plumbing and electric business.

The lieutenant governor’s role is largely procedural and parliamentary, but state Republican Party Chairman Rich Anderson said of Earle-Sears: “She is already a member of the executive branch and an understudy for a fairly popular governor” — Republican Glenn Youngkin, who led a GOP sweep of statewide offices in 2021.

“I think Winsome brings an executive-level skill set in Virginia state government that can be leveraged to do a lot of good things,” said Anderson, a former delegate who is considering a run for lieutenant governor next year.

Earle-Sears, who casts tiebreaking votes in the Senate, has a reputation in both parties for doing her homework on issues facing state government. Last year, for example, she attended all three days of the Senate Finance & Appropriations Committee’s annual budget retreat, held then in Northern Virginia. She serves on a range of boards and commissions across the state.

“She asks good questions,” said former Del. Chris Saxman, R-Staunton, who served with her in the House and led her transition as lieutenant governor. “She’s inquisitive.”

Saxman, now executive director of Virginia FREE, a statewide business organization, said both candidates will have to make the case that they can do the job in one, four-year term. “The job of governor is running a very large staff and getting them all on the same page every single day,” he said. “You have to be a very effective manager and leader.”

During the Virginia Press Association’s Day at the Capital on Thursday, Matt Moran, a senior political adviser to Youngkin, said Earle-Sears and Spanberger are both strong candidates and Virginians should “give this thing a chance to unfold.”

“I think Lieutenant Governor Sears has been underestimated every step of her political career,” Moran said. “She’s a dynamic candidate with an amazing story.”

Moran added, “I think Congresswoman Spanberger is going to be a very formidable Democratic candidate. She’s got a great story — just her biography.”

“Whether I agree or disagree — and I could sit here and spout the talking points that she votes with Pelosi 92% of the time, or whatever — she has created a brand where she’s seen as a moderate.”

Questions from Democrats

Spanberger had appeared to use a fast start in raising money and collecting endorsements to clear the path to the Democratic nomination. Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney, a protégé of former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, dropped out of the race last spring.

However, she still faces questions — and potential competition — from establishment Virginia Democrats to her left about her record and goals as governor.

Rep. Bobby Scott, D-3rd, the dean of Virginia’s congressional delegation and the state’s first Black member of Congress since Reconstruction, confirmed in an interview with Punchbowl News that he has not ruled out jumping into the race.

Senate Finance Chair Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, who had supported Stoney this year and McAuliffe in his unsuccessful bid in 2021, said Friday that Spanberger “needs to get into these different pockets of the community all across the commonwealth and talk to people.”

“A lot of people might just know her name, but they don’t know anything she’s done and they don’t know what she stands for,” Lucas said after a public transit forum in Arlington County.

“The last thing in the world I want is to have Winsome Sears as my governor, but she is no joke and she’s not to be taken for granted,” Lucas said. “And so Abigail is going to have to step up her game.”

Spanberger did not respond to Lucas’ comments, but Del. Joshua Cole, D-Stafford, a Black minister in the 7th Congressional District, came to her defense.

Cole said Spanberger’s work allayed concerns among Black Democrats who thought the district, which the Virginia Supreme Court redrew in late 2021, should have been “represented by a person of color.”

He said she hired Black people to key staff positions, convened a roundtable for Black farmers in Orange County and boosted Black business owners in Prince William County.

“I think some people have these concerns for her because they just don’t know the work she’s been doing in her congressional district,” Cole said.

“She is someone who is exciting, someone who is a coalition builder, and someone who is going to hit the ground running,” he said. “And she has done that.”

Bipartisan work

Spanberger prides herself on her effectiveness as a congresswoman, passing legislation signed by Trump and Biden that required bipartisan cooperation in a polarized partisan environment.

She is on the verge of victory with Rep. Garret Graves, R-La., on legislation to reform Social Security by eliminating two 40-year-old provisions that they say have unfairly denied the full benefits due to retired public employees — firefighters, police officers, teachers — who also paid into the safety net system in other jobs, not covered by government pensions.

The House approved the Social Security Fairness Act last month after Spanberger and Graves succeeded in a rare maneuver to bypass the Ways and Means Committee with a bipartisan discharge petition that brought the measure directly to the floor for a vote under suspension of the rules.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., whom Spanberger said she lobbied at a recent Christmas party, said he will bring the measure to the Senate for a vote next week.

“I’ll be proudest when that one’s done,” she said.

Graves said their partnership proves that politics can work for the public interest, despite different political constituencies and philosophies.

“In a time of corrosive, divisive politics, a bill like this — or a partnership like this — is an indication to America that the system can work and will work if we focus on what’s important: representing the voices back home,” he said.

In regard to Spanberger’s future, Graves said, “I’ve known and worked with members of Congress whose legislative careers on Capitol Hill were, let’s say, uninspiring, who’ve gone on to impressive careers as state executives and leaders in other capacities. Some folks are cut out to be mouthpieces in the legislative body, while others are leaders who need to be placed in the right role.”

“Abigail represents her constituents fiercely and leads with purpose,” he said.

Spanberger has built a reputation as a moderate Democrat, which she has bolstered with a record that includes five consecutive years ranked as the most bipartisan Virginia member of Congress by the Lugar Center and McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University. She ranked as high as fifth most bipartisan member of the House in the previous Congress and, this year, she was 17th, two spots ahead of Rep. Jen Kiggans, R-2nd.

“Rep. Abigail Spanberger is an annual fixture in the top ranks of the Bipartisan Index,” said Dan Diller, policy director at the Lugar Center. “Her cumulative scores since she entered the House in 2019 rank second among all House Democrats during that period, making her one of the most reliable bipartisan voices in the entire Congress.”

Earle-Sears’ campaign doesn’t buy it.

“Congresswoman Spanberger is desperately trying to convince Virginians that she is a bipartisan, moderate Democrat, but her voting record proves otherwise,” said Dave Abrams, the lieutenant governor’s campaign senior adviser.

Infrastructure, insulin

Trump and Biden both signed legislation Spanberger had sponsored to combat drug trafficking, particularly shipments of fentanyl across U.S. borders. She helped pass the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement that Trump pushed through Congress to replace the North American Free Trade Act, meeting with then-Vice President Mike Pence at the White House.

But she also played a leading role in some of the biggest achievements of the Biden administration. She helped shape and pass the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which she said has already delivered more than $10 billion to Virginia, with money for a new rail bridge across the Potomac River, as well as highways, airports and broadband telecommunications. The law included her proposal to boost internet speeds in the expansion of broadband to unserved areas.

Months before the midterm elections in 2022, she appeared with Biden at a rally in Culpeper County on behalf of lowering the cost of insulin and other prescription drugs, which Congress helped achieve with passage of the Inflation Reduction Act that year.

Spanberger, now representing a district with a heavy military presence, features her work on behalf of veterans, including passage of the PACT Act to provide help for military members who were exposed to toxic chemicals from burn pits in combat zones.

She also touts her role as the only Virginian on the House Agriculture Committee, which has won her friends in state farming organizations and the most conservative parts of her district.

“She has visited with farmers across the commonwealth, held roundtables on farm issues, and cosponsored key legislation ensuring farmers have a legislative and regulatory environment that lets them produce the food and fiber that provides for Virginia’s families and economy,” Virginia Farm Bureau President Wayne F. Pryor said.

Spanberger said she has also stood up for progressive causes, such as reducing gun violence through congressional approval of firearms limitations that Virginia had already adopted for the state, and expanding access to health care as well as treatment for addiction and substance use disorders.

After retiring from federal service, she jumped into politics in 2017, having worked as a volunteer for Moms Demand Action to prevent gun violence. She was an advocate for protecting the Affordable Care Act, which Trump came within one vote in the Senate of repealing that year and now talks again of replacing with an unrevealed concept for health care coverage in his impending second term.

“It’s the disconnect from good policy and good governance that really bothered me,” she said.

Swing districts

In 2018, Spanberger upset Rep. Dave Brat, R-7th, in a district that had voted Republican for nearly half a century, stretching from the Richmond suburbs into rural central Virginia and Piedmont. She won again in the same district two years later against Del. Nick Freitas, R-Culpeper, in an election that took several days to decide because of expanded absentee voting during the pandemic.

Political redistricting threw her a trick pitch in late 2021. She ran the next year in a newly drawn district based in eastern Prince William and the Fredericksburg area, but also encompassing parts of Piedmont and tidal Virginia. She defeated Prince William Supervisor Yesli Vega by running up the vote in her opponent’s home county and holding down Republican margins in the countryside.

With her record in competitive swing districts, Spanberger became an adviser to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., on battleground elections.

“Congresswoman Spanberger has always been very effective at connecting with the district,” said Steve Farnsworth, director of the Center for Leadership and Media Studies at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg. “Her vision of a more centrist Democratic identity connected well with the old 7th District and the newly drawn one.”

“Spanberger has consistently been more of a workhorse than a showhorse in Washington,” Farnsworth said, “but she’s been effective enough in public relations to win election after election.”

State Sen. Jeremy McPike, D-Prince William, who represents part of the new 7th District, credited Spanberger for “doing the work and really listening to people about what’s important to them.”

What McPike said he appreciates most, having served in a narrowly divided Senate under Democratic control and Republican control, is her ability to work with Republicans on important legislation and policy.

“That’s the only way you get stuff done,” he said.