In Virginia, The Mask Comes Off The ‘Moderate’ Democrat

Abigail Spanberger’s inauguration as the Old Dominion’s 75th governor on January 17 and the subsequent unveiling of her legislative agenda shared by her Democrat colleagues in the legislature have once again proven a very important point: You cannot take Democrats at their word when they claim to be moderate. Once they win, they will drop the mask.

During last year’s campaign for governor, Virginians were told again and again that Spanberger was a moderate, a pragmatist, a bipartisan problem-solver who would govern from the center and resist the ideological excesses of today’s Democrat Party.

The New Yorker ran an article just two days before election day titled: 

Abigail Spanberger Thinks That Democrats Need to Listen More: The front-runner for Virginia governor has long made the case for moderation.

In an interview with The Times of London, a liberal pundit said this about Spanberger:

“The last word you would use [about] Spanberger is populist,” says Colin Mortimer, founder and director of the Centre for New Liberalism. “She is a pragmatic, grounded, moderate Democrat who is hyper-focused on delivering results for Virginia.

Voters were assured that campaign slogans about “working across the aisle” and choosing “pragmatism over partisanship” meant something real, as Spanberger herself emphasized on the campaign trail and on election night.

Now that the election is over and governing has begun, Virginians can see the truth clearly: Spanberger’s promises of moderation should be thrown into the trash, where they belong.

The legislative agenda now being advanced by Democrats in the General Assembly is not by any means a moderate agenda. It is not a centrist agenda. It is not a pragmatic agenda. It is a radical leftist agenda, clearly aligned with priorities laid out by Democrat leadership in Richmond.

Win McNamee/Getty Images

Even though outgoing governor, Republican Glenn Youngkin, left the new governor with a $2.7 billion budget surplus, Virginia’s Democrats want new and higher taxes on income, investments, landscaping equipment, food deliveries, and hotel stays.

Spanberger’s agenda also includes new restrictions on free speech near abortion clinics, taxpayer-funded education for illegal aliens, eliminating mandatory minimum sentences, lowering the criminal penalties for robbery, and potentially eliminating Virginia’s right-to-work protections.

Spanberger also wants to change the way elections are administered in Virginia. She wants to extend the time absentee ballots can be received and counted after Election Day, extend the deadline for ballot curing, ban the hand counting of machine-readable paper ballots, allow people to cast votes electronically, and add Virginia to the National Popular Vote Compact, which destroys the Founders’ vision for the Electoral College.

This is not a bait-and-switch in theory; it is bait-and-switch in practice.

That should not surprise anyone who has been paying attention to how modern Democrats govern. It should matter to voters, however, who were explicitly told that this governor would be different.

The agenda now being pushed through the General Assembly reflects the same ideological commitments we have seen from Democrats nationwide: more government, more mandates, more power centralized in Richmond, and less deference to parents, taxpayers, and local communities. It reflects a belief that government knows best, and that, once the election is over, dissenting voices should be ignored.

This is the fundamental problem with the “moderate Democrat” brand. It exists entirely as a campaign tactic. Once power is secured, the mask comes off, the talking points fade, and the base demands results. And when the leftist base of today’s Democrat Party demands results, it demands policies that are anything but moderate – a reality even acknowledged by some of the Democrat Party’s best strategic thinkers.

Virginia voters were told they were electing a governor who would check the excesses of her party. Instead, they are watching a governor who appears ready to sign off on those excesses.

To be clear, this is not about one bill or one issue. It is about an overall governing philosophy. Taken as a whole, the legislative package being rapidly advanced by Democrats in Richmond represents a sharp turn to the radical Left – on spending, on regulation, on social policy, and on the role of government in everyday life.

This is not what Virginians were promised.

Elections have consequences, and governors are entitled to advance their priorities. But voters are also entitled to honesty. If a candidate intends to govern as a reliable partner of radical leftist lawmakers, voters deserve to know that before Election Day, not the morning after the inaugural ball.

We should all take note and remember that when it comes to Democrat governance, moderation is just a campaign costume, discarded the moment the votes are counted.

* * *

Jenny Beth Martin is Honorary Chairman of Tea Party Patriots Action and host of The Jenny Beth Show.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.