With approval ratings dipping and the redistricting power grab on thin ice, Spanberger is in trouble already.

by Shaun Kenney

Unlike most prognosticators whose default positions tend to be one-side-good and other-side-bad, I desperately want Governor Abigail Spanberger to succeed. The challenges that we are about to face as Virginians — affordable energy, affordable housing, serious public education reform, a rethink of Virginia’s system of taxation and its impact on local government, the rise of artificial intelligence — is a far greater tidal wave than most anyone in state government realizes.

Running on affordability was clever. Yet affordability was clever precisely because it ignored the question as to who made America less affordable.

At present, Spanberger finds herself in a pinch between her promises to bring politics back to the center against a Democratic-controlled General Assembly that has now pinned her entire political future on an objectively unfair redistricting-for-cronies where — should it fail — Democratic congressmen such as Eugene Vindman will have to go crawling back to his own constituents explaining why he chose to fire them in April but reeeeely wants to represent them in November.

More to the point, Democrats succeeded in passing over $6 billion in new tax increases, a host of unconstitutional 2A bills, tampered with free speech, and capped it all off with a threat to tax data centers into oblivion.

Welcome to Peronism: Virginia Edition.

What’s New Buenos Aires? I’m New.

I suppose what is grating on me most are the Hillary Clinton-esque videos, the never-ending campaigning on the government dime trying to convince the rest of us that this is a spunky, happy, everything-is-awesome place now that we have new management.

Of course, it ain’t true because much of what the Democrats ran against is still theoretically in place. Much of the investment the Youngkin administration courted is still present and accounted for, the economic climate is improving but not excellent, Richmond itself is still a bit dingy and boarded up — everything is still meh, just with different tenants in the Executive Mansion.

One can’t blame Spanberger for trying.

Or we could.

Redistricting so far has been a debacle from the get-go. No one in their right mind is going to look at the proposed lines for Virginia’s 7th District and see anything but a scorpion or a lobster dreamt up in a Chicago-style fever dream. The intentionality of building districts around personalities — the much-disgraced Dan Helmer in VA-07 (D-Women) and Tom Perriello in VA-06 (D-Tahrir Square) among them — rather than the non-partisan approach of building communities of interest and having them select their representatives is about as anti-democratic as they come.

As a result, Spanberger’s approval ratings are at 53% — a far different narrative set from her 17-point drubbing of former Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears in November 2025.

Yet if there are telltales, then HD-98 with a whopping 22% swing to the GOP may not tell the whole story, but it certainly gives people an indicator as to how the grasp of Virginia Democrats may have finally exceeded their reach:

Nationally, the generic congressional ballot lead for the Dems is about half of what it was this time around in 2018 — which if you add about 5-6 points is about where the generic ballot is in Virginia in crayon-on-back-of-envelope math.

Which gets back to brass tacks. Victories aren’t always endorsements — and when your major campaign plank is affordability, piling on unaffordable tax increases and restrictions on constitutional rights followed up by a naked power grab?

Virginians are sending a message that none of this is what they voted for. Should the redistricting amendment go down in flames — and there is a strong probability that it will — then Virginia Republicans might get that second wind after all.

Shaun Kenney, former senior advisor to former Attorney General Jason Miyares, publishes the Republican Standard blog. This column was republished with permission from the Republican Standard.