The Rise of the Democratic National Security Mom

Opinion|‘Weak, Woke and Whiny’ No More: The Rise of the Democratic National Security Mom

As political origin stories go, Abigail Spanberger, a former House member from Virginia who is now the Democratic nominee for governor, has an enticing one. It hits the sweet spot of making her seem simultaneously exceptional and relatable.

In 2014, Ms. Spanberger, then working for the C.I.A., was brainstorming with her husband and their oldest daughter about where her next posting should be. Kenya? Costa Rica? “And our daughter said, ‘Virginia!’” Ms. Spanberger recalled to a bar packed with supporters in Arlington one evening in late June. “And we said, ‘No!’”

But her daughter pressed, saying, “Why wouldn’t we go to Virginia? Everyone we love lives in Virginia,” according to Ms. Spanberger, whose parents moved there when she was 13. “The reality was, she was right.”

So after “lots of pro and con lists,” Ms. Spanberger said, she moved home to the commonwealth with her family and, as she put it, shifted “from service to country to service to community.” She took a private sector job, volunteered with the gun control group Moms Demand Action, started a Girl Scout troop.

Then the first Trump administration hit, and Ms. Spanberger, like many suburban women, was appalled by what was happening in the country. So in 2018 she made a long-shot run for Congress, becoming the first Democrat to win her House district, a sprawling, demographically diverse stretch of Northern and Central Virginia, in decades. She unseated Dave Brat, the Tea Party conservative who stunned political watchers in 2014 by beating Eric Cantor, at the time the Republican majority leader, in the primary. Now she is looking to take her service statewide, at a moment when Trump 2.0 is sowing some next-level chaos in Virginia.

Ms. Spanberger’s story is not flashy. But it introduces her to voters as a candidate with an unlikely mix of credentials, especially for a Democrat: a down-to-earth suburban mom of three who spent years tracking terrorists, narco-traffickers and other transnational bad guys. Her biography helps convey a gut-level grasp of Virginians’ everyday anxieties about schools and crime and providing for their families and experience making tough calls in life-or-death situations involving national security. Message: Here is a leader both formidable and approachable, tough and caring, driven by her commitment to service.