By Laura Vozzella

RICHMOND — Former congresswoman Abigail Spanberger vowed Tuesday to support union labor and federal workers if elected Virginia’s 75th governor, using her first public event as the Democrats’ official nominee to tap into the economic angst created by the Trump administration’s firings and tariffs.

“When you elect me, you will elect a governor who won’t be afraid to stand up for Virginia’s workers,” Spanberger said at a rally at a recreation center in suburban Richmond. “When you elect me, you will elect a governor who believes in not creating chaos, but creating jobs.”

Coming just days after Spanberger and Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears (R) secured their parties’ respective gubernatorial nominations, the event showcased the importance Democrats are putting on workers’ rights early in the campaign to succeed term-limited Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R). While Democrats have long courted labor — and benefited from union campaign contributions and volunteers for phone banking and door-knocking — workers’ rights have not been a major focus in recent Virginia governor’s races. Cultural issues, such as parental rights and abortion, have typically grabbed far more attention.

But that could change given the upheaval that President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service are causing in a state that is home to more federal workers and contractors than almost any other. The impact is likely to be felt most in vote-rich Northern Virginia.

“Virginia is ground zero for the cutbacks,” said Bob Holsworth, a veteran Richmond political analyst. “Spanberger … is really thinking that with all the cutbacks, particularly given the effort to attack unionization in the federal workforce, this is a big winner in Northern Virginia.”

Earle-Sears, who had no public events scheduled this week, has sought to portray Spanberger as too close to labor. She has warned that the former congresswoman would do away with the state’s right-to-work laws, which prohibit requiring workers to join a union or pay union dues as a condition of employment. The business-friendly policy has helped Virginia earn top honors in rankings of best states for business.

Right-to-work laws were not mentioned at the rally. Spanberger has said that she was discussing the issue with labor and business leaders and had not taken a position on it. Her campaign confirmed that was still the case Tuesday.

“Abigail Spanberger has no business lecturing Virginians about the right to work or the cost of living,” Earle-Sears spokeswoman Peyton Vogel said in an email to The Washington Post. “She backed job-killing policies that raised costs and hurt Virginia families. Winsome trusts working families and small business owners to drive Virginia forward — not Washington politicians with a failed agenda.”

Earle-Sears, a former small-business woman, has offered herself as an extension of the pro-business “Youngkin-Sears” administration, touting the state’s job growth and low unemployment.

She and Youngkin have noted that federal layoffs, some of them rescinded for now under court orders, have yet to rock the state’s economy. Both have expressed confidence that displaced workers will be able to find jobs in Virginia’s robust private sector. They often note that the state has 250,000 available jobs, though many of those are mismatches with the skills of federal workers.

At Tuesday’s rally, Spanberger, prominent state legislators and labor leaders drew cheers from a crowd of about 100 union members, many in T-shirts emblazoned with the logos of their local union chapters.

LaChae Kelly-Taliaferro, an assistant manager at a Kroger supermarket in Smithfield, recalled the struggle she faced caring for her husband after his heart transplant six years ago. Her full-time job provided no paid family medical leave.

“The hospital would call me and I would have to leave work, and my manager would say, ‘Well, you need to find someone else to cover you,’” said Kelly-Taliaferro, a member of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union Local 400. “I was our family’s only income. We still had bills to pay and three children to support. No one chooses to get sick, but how we respond to sickness as a society is a choice.”

Spanberger, a former CIA officer who carved out a moderate image over three terms in Congress, committed to phasing in a $15-an-hour minimum wage but otherwise spoke in broad strokes — promising to support expanded worker rights and paid family and medical leave, for instance, without endorsing specific plans.

While union leaders called for giving all public employees the right to collective bargaining, Spanberger spoke generally of making “sure more Virginians can negotiate for the benefits and fair treatment that they’ve earned.” Her campaign declined to say if she supports the push for public-sector unions, something allowed under Virginia law only if the city or county employing them signs off.

Virginia AFL-CIO President Doris Crouse-Mays, who attended the rally, welcomed the attention being paid to workers even if Spanberger has yet to take a position on repealing right-to-work, which she said remains a priority for labor.

“We’re at a crossroads and we’re going to make sure that we’re going to put Virginia workers first,” she said. “This is about us.”

State Sen. Lamont Bagby (D-Henrico), the newly elected chairman of the Democratic Party of Virginia, told the crowd he would find more common ground with Spanberger than he has with Youngkin or Earle-Sears.

“I’m not expecting her to sign every piece of legislation that I think is good,” he said. “We’re going to go back and forth on some of this, but we’re going to make it right and we’re going to do right by you.”

A few speakers mentioned Trump and Musk by name, with House Speaker Don Scott (D-Portsmouth) mocking the latter for his failed effort to sway a Wisconsin Supreme Court election last week, in part by offering two $1 million prizes.

Yet Scott made a point of saying Spanberger was running forsomething, not just against Musk or Trump, whose unpopularity in Virginia helped power four years of Democratic wins the last time he was in the White House.

“Democrats are ready,” Scott said. “We’re ready to lift wages, ready to defend workers’ rights, ready to stand up to these bullies and these billionaires that think they can come in here and run roughshod over Virginia.”