Spanberger becomes 1st woman to serve as governor of Virginia : NPR

RICHMOND, Va. — Virginia inaugurates its governors in traditional style, complete with a swearing-in ceremony outside the Capitol building presided over by men in three-piece morning suits with coattails and an occasional top hat.

“At the conclusion of the oaths, there is a 19-gun salute by the National Guard and a jet flyby, if that has been requested,” reads the state’s protocol guide. “After the salute, the previous Governor and his family retire from the platform.”

While everyone is busy with the pomp and circumstance, the guide continues, state employees “prepare the Governor’s Office for the new Governor and his staff … to be ready for use the following day.”

But the guide will need a tweak or two now that Abigail Spanberger is set to become Virginia’s 75th governor and the first woman in the role.

“There’s no requirements for what women wear, what women do,” she said. So she’s doing her best to honor the commonwealth’s traditions — but also forge her own.

“I’m not going to wear a morning coat, not to disappoint anyone,” she added with a laugh.

Glenn Youngkin (left) and Ralph Northam wear the traditional morning suit at their inaugurations in 2022 and 2018.

Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images; Kevin Morley/AP

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Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images; Kevin Morley/AP

Spanberger, a Democrat, said she wants her inauguration — which will be complete with a parade, a small-business marketplace, and a ball — to showcase the commonwealth’s modern vibrancy and diversity. It helps that the two other leaders taking office are also breaking boundaries. Saturday, Ghazala Hashmi will become the lieutenant governor and the first Muslim woman sworn into a statewide office in the country. Jay Jones will become the commonwealth’s first Black attorney general.

Spanberger’s own historic “first” didn’t come up a whole lot on the campaign trail, perhaps because the three-term congresswoman and former CIA officer was running against another woman, Republican Winsome Earle-Sears, for the job.

Spanberger, who led in fundraising throughout the race, won a decisive 15-point victory in November after a campaign focused on the cost of living and the impact of the Trump administration’s federal cuts in Virginia. Democrats see her victory as an early test case of the party’s emerging message on “affordability,” which they are expected to deploy across the country in this year’s midterms.

Economic concerns were at the forefront of her victory speech in November. But Spanberger also paid tribute to the Virginia women in politics before her, including Barbara Johns, a Black teenage activist who led a 1951 school walkout to protest school segregation. The walkout led to a legal case that was later folded into the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education that ultimately desegregated American public schools.

“She showed us that no matter your age, you can be part of the change and the progress that you want to see here in Virginia and across the nation,” Spanberger said in her speech. “We are a nation founded on ideas, but we are a country where it is up to us, the citizens, who must put those ideas into action.”

She also recognized Mary Sue Terry, a fellow Democrat who served eight years in the Virginia House of Delegates and another eight as attorney general, making her the first woman elected to a statewide position in Virginia.

Mary Sue Terry, the first woman elected to statewide office in Virginia, is sworn in as attorney general on Jan. 11, 1986. Terry recalled to NPR that members of the legislature debated what she should wear to the inauguration. “The speaker, who had been my running mate for three elections, cut the matter short and said, ‘Hell, let her wear what she wants to wear.’ And that’s what I did,” she said.

Steve Helber/AP

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Steve Helber/AP

Terry said she was surprised and delighted to get a shout-out from Spanberger, who she said is “not just a woman, but the right woman for the job.”

In one way, Spanberger’s election felt like a vindication, she told NPR. Terry ran for governor in 1993 but lost to Republican George Allen, despite her early advantages in fundraising and the polls. During the campaign, opponents criticized her for being unmarried and childless. The attacks came to a head a month before Election Day, when Terry was accused of covering up a relationship with another woman. The allegation was baseless and came from a psychiatrist who had been prosecuted by Terry’s office for having sex with minors, but it dominated news coverage in the critical final weeks of the race. To avoid prosecution, the psychiatrist gave up his medical license.

“All I knew I could do was stay as centered as I could while internalizing the reality that after 15 years of public service in Virginia, my tenure as an elected official would be over as a result of the allegations of my sexuality and my failure to have children,” Terry recalled.

She says the episode hurt her deeply, and she worried about what it meant for other women coming behind her.

“I’m sure that there were those who would consider running who weren’t comfortable with what I went through, and the prospect of what they would go through,” Terry said. “It was terrible.”

But in her concession speech after she lost the race, Terry told her supporters she still believed another woman would succeed one day.

“Somewhere in Virginia tonight, the first woman governor of Virginia is watching,” she said, to cheers.

And while Spanberger can’t remember if she watched Terry’s speech more than thirty years ago — she was in ninth grade at the time — she does remember how excited her mother was about Terry’s candidacy, which she insisted on making “a teachable moment” for Spanberger and her two sisters.

“I know that I was watching her campaigning and excited and inspired by that,” she recalled. “Just because it didn’t go all the way to the inaugural day, doesn’t mean that it wasn’t impactful on all of us.”

Spanberger has a big job ahead of her. She’ll need to steer Virginia through a lagging economy and federal cuts to health care and the social safety net, which she pointed out will deeply affect Virginia women, particularly mothers caring for children.

“It’s becoming incumbent on states to endeavor to bridge the gap where possible to ensure that it’s not kids and their caregivers who are bearing the largest brunt of those choices,” she said.

She cited conversations with hospital systems in Virginia who may be forced to shrink or eliminate costly labor and delivery units as they weather federal shifts. She also said she would focus on policies to improve the economic reality of Virginia women, including reducing the state’s childcare waitlist to allow caregivers to more easily rejoin the workforce.

But for now, Spanberger is also relishing the chance to shape a new image of what a Virginia governor can be — particularly for the littlest Virginians. She recounted a recent example from a father she met at an event.

“When he was leaving his home that afternoon, he said, ‘Oh, I’m going to go meet the next governor,’ and his little daughter said, ‘Okay, well tell him hello.’ And he said to his daughter, ‘Actually, no, it’s a woman. The next governor is a woman.'”

“The little girl said, ‘A GIRL governor?!'”