Now we’re getting somewhere.

by Gordon C. Morse

Turns out Virginia may have a governor, after all.

You always wonder how long it will take before they get mad. Being inundated with poorly thought-through legislation — much of it portentous and progressive (abundantly so) — may have tested, with telling effect, Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s patience.

She realized that she was being had by her own Democratic Party lawmakers. They were taking her for granted. In such circumstances, even when you’re dealing with members of your own party, you either act like governor or you do not.

Spanberger has not cut the Democrats loose. Far from it. But they will now have to reckon with a new reality. Spanberger thinks for herself and that, frankly, is very good news for Virginia. We’ll see where it goes from here.

Ignore the nonsense about the budget and Spanberger’s role in it. The budget is a legislative responsibility, and the two chambers — the House and the Senate — must find agreement.

Does that leave Spanberger without a role? Hardly. She has the line-item veto and everyone knows it. Lawmakers may curse under their breath, but that gubernatorial power alone commands respect.

Political power is useless unless you use it. On Tuesday, Spanberger did. A new day beckons.

Overall, during the 2026 regular session of the General Assembly, there was little to no political restraint. The early claim that matters would be disciplined proved to be so much blather. The lawmakers threw it all in and posed for pictures.

The General Assembly, as an institution, has a systemic problem, long built into the legislative process. Too often, the lawmaking process verges on a riot. Too much gets attempted in too little time and space.

Or, as someone once put it, Virginia is on the more intense end of the spectrum among populous states.

Curiously, the membership — which includes many, many new people — has yet to back up, examine itself, and say, “Let’s think anew.” No one has raised a hand and simply asked, “Does it still make any sense to do it this way?”

So when lawmakers say, as some did on Tuesday, that exchanges (the flow of information and intent) between the Governor’s Office and the General Assembly were too few, too limited, understand that the exchanges between the General Assembly and the public it serves were too few and too limited, as well.

This is a far bigger problem than the press realizes or is willing to acknowledge.

Why is that so?

Because, like so many Virginia lawmakers, politics is new to many of them. The press — which no longer arrives with institutional backing of its own (the newspapers are kaput) — generally has no sources, no institutional memory and, therefore, no historical perspective on which to draw. The triple threat.

Collectively, when Virginia reporters go to the General Assembly, they literally do not know what they are looking at. This is not an exaggeration.

For example …

Collective bargaining for public employees, and all that pertains to it, represents a historic shift in Virginia economic and social thinking. No one in the history of Virginia (you’re welcome to show me otherwise) has ever run for office statewide on the explicit goal of establishing public employee unionization. The push in recent years has mainly been legislative, not candidate-centered.

Spanberger says, slow down. She says “slow down” on a number of fronts (gambling, for instance) implicitly arguing that we’re going too fast in too many substantive areas. She is right to do so.

Some people might say, well, she’s just working through her choices, learning the job, and so forth.

This is more than that. Spanberger and her team went into these bills with pruning shears and a jumbo magic marker.

Good.

Better than good. The fear had been that Spanberger would meekly assume former Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam’s demeanor, tiptoe quietly about the State Capitol and avoid ruffling legislative feathers.

Spanberger doesn’t get the lionheart award quite yet, but this is a nice start.

Yes, it got a little bumpy for Spanberger in the Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee on Tuesday. The natives are restless and irritated.

It was never going to be easy, anyway. Spanberger has been trying to accommodate Democratic Party urges (there are so many) that she was theoretically meant to resist. That was the general impression of her bid for high office — that she was not over there in the lefty distance — and impressions matter.

Moderation isn’t mush. It’s not a shrug. It’s a hard position, with defined edges. It requires you to make choices.

Spanberger has quite a political challenge on her hands. Black Virginia lawmakers (essential to Spanberger’s political well-being) have been falling over each other to advance one personal political agenda after another. At no time in history has there been more viable openings for doing what American politicians have always done: seek the next, best opportunity.

Thus, Mamie Locke still wants to be Senate Majority Leader, and Sen. Louise Lucas wants to be, well, Louise — a force unto herself. Attorney General Jay Jones, of course, wants to be governor, but then so does Speaker of the House Don Scott.

Ah, yes, Don Scott. The man of the moment, Spanberger notwithstanding.

Scott has come far and fast, amassed enormous political resources (money) and last fall made a few brave wagers. He heavily invested in House races that appeared to be marginal, at best.

All those bets paid off and, in politics, when you hit the jackpot, it matters greatly. Last fall’s election results in the House of Delegates were stunning and thoroughly under-reported.

This year, Don Scott became the first Speaker in a decade to succeed himself for a second term. He occupies the role like a tailored suit. Scott watches everything, goes everywhere and talks to everyone.

That is what a true political leader does. They don’t miss a trick. They live it and breathe it. They never stop doing politics.

Is Scott in full campaign mode in his bid for governor? It appears that way to many people. In that portion of the political brain where possibilities congeal, Scott has measured his surroundings, considered the likely competition and found it all to be highly encouraging. So he’s moving about the country, showing up in unanticipated places, doing unusual, clever stuff.

A notable example: Former Republican Speaker Todd Gilbert, an object of Jay Jones’s scorn and the Trump Justice Department’s animosity, will soon be a state judge. That would not have happened unless Speaker Scott wanted it to happen. Shrewd? Darn right.

Where does Spanberger go from here? When she vetoed an ill-advised attempt to ram a casino down Fairfax County’s throat and scotched a new expansion of gambling (“skill games”), she said Virginia needed to get control of a fragmented, but ballooning, industry.

There was a bigger message there. In taking those actions, along with all her many proposed legislative amendments, Spanberger has effectively staked out a position favoring the established constitutional process, governing tradition and locally-grounded decision-making.

In short, she looked every bit a Virginia governor.

Gordon C. Morse has been writing commentary and speeches in Virginia since 1983. This column his republished with permission from his Substack account Heart’s Desire.