All eyes will be on Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger after President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night, as the rising star Democrat raises her national profile with the traditional rebuttal speech.
Spanberger was elected to lead the commonwealth just last year, ending Republican control in Richmond and defeating former Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears by roughly 15 points.
Since then, she’s been hailed as one of the faces representing the future of the Democratic Party.
The Virginia Democrat was likely chosen to lead this year’s response due to her battleground district credentials, in a year when the left is working to appeal to swing voters who are turned off by Trump.
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Spanberger was first elected to Congress during the “blue wave” of 2018 by defeating incumbent former GOP Rep. Dave Brat, R-Va., by only about 2%. She became the first woman to represent the district and the first Democrat elected there since the 1970s.
And while much media attention was focused on the far-left “Squad” Democrats elected that year — Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., and ex-Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo. — Spanberger sought to set herself apart with a clique of her own.
Indeed, she and four other Democrat women with national security backgrounds formed a group they dubbed “The Badasses” after being elected together that same year.
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Just one of those women, Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, D-Pa., remains in the House today, however.
Spanberger and ex-Rep. Mikie Sherrill, D-N.J., were both elected governor of their respective states last year. Another, Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., moved to the upper chamber of Congress. Ex-Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., lost her seat to current Rep. Jen Kiggans, R-Va.
Spanberger, for her part, is an eight-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). She worked with the agency’s clandestine services for a time and was an operations officer by the time she left for the private sector in 2014.
During her 2018 congressional campaign, Republicans seized on Spanberger’s earlier time spent teaching at the Islamic Saudi Academy in Alexandria, Virginia from 2002 to 2003, according to a Washington Post article from the time.
“Critics have dubbed it ‘Terror High’ because some students joined al-Qaeda years after graduating. Spanberger received two federal security clearances after disclosing her teaching work to the Postal Service and the CIA, which eventually sent her overseas as a covert agent fighting terrorism,” the report said.
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