Six years in the past, Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill were roommates and freshmen members of Congress, a part of a record-breaking wave of ladies who helped Democrats win again the US House.
On Tuesday, the 2 made history as soon as extra. NCS projected that Spanberger will probably be Virginia’s first feminine governor and Sherrill would be the first Democratic girl elected as governor of New Jersey.
Their wins come at a time when Democrats are navigating troublesome questions over who the subsequent leaders of the celebration needs to be and what messages will work to win over voters who shifted towards President Donald Trump final yr.
Spanberger and Sherrill’s victories provide a minimum of one path ahead for Democrats. Both ran aggressively on affordability points and guarantees to decrease well being care, housing and utility prices. It seems to have resonated with voters: Spanberger and Sherrill each surpassed the entire variety of votes their predecessors gained in 2021 earlier than votes were absolutely tallied in their states.
“Tonight we sent a message,” Spanberger informed supporters at her election night time rally. “We sent a message to the whole world that in 2025, Virginia chose pragmatism over partisanship.”
Spanberger, a former CIA officer, and Sherrill, a former Navy helicopter pilot, each gained Republican-held seats in 2018 by working as nationwide security-minded centrists. In Congress, they – together with Rep. Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, now-Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and former Rep. Elaine Luria of Virginia – fashioned the Mod Squad, a extra centrist model of the progressive Squad.
Years after they ran and gained their first races, the 2 latest members of the Democratic Governors Association will enter this subsequent section of their careers side-by-side as effectively. Spanberger described the sensation of working in one among this yr’s few aggressive races alongside her good friend as “amusing.”
“Being able to compare notes has been fun,” she informed NCS not too long ago. “But I think what I’m most excited about is just — I know what I’m about to say sounds cheesy, but I mean it sincerely — how hardworking she is … I think there will be some really interesting value in thinking through different issues or different challenges because we’re aligned in many places, but we get to the same place from different directions.”
Spanberger, 46, and Sherrill, 53, moved in with one another after rising uninterested in residing on Capitol Hill on their personal. The pair ate dinner off Sherrill’s gold-rimmed marriage ceremony china and sat on a two-decade-old sofa Spanberger introduced out of storage, they told the Washington Post last year.
They’re each eldest of three ladies. They each have a number of youngsters – Spanberger has three youngsters, Sherrill has 4. The Virginia governor-elect was born in New Jersey, whereas the incoming New Jersey governor grew up in northern Virginia.
“I don’t think either of us thought we were going to run for office until in 2018 we felt called to serve again and have been in it ever since,” Sherrill told NCS last month.
During a marketing campaign occasion this summer season, Spanberger informed reporters they were each keen to fulfill voters throughout their districts once they challenged longtime incumbent Republicans in 2018.
“I maintain my friendship with her, so I know a bit about what she’s been doing across the campaign trail, and she’s been traveling everywhere in New Jersey,” Spanberger mentioned. “The common thread is that we’re relentlessly focused on the issues that people across our communities bring to us.”
After their races were referred to as, the 2 governors-elect additionally mirrored on the historic nature of their wins. Sherrill talked about “the little girls who come up to me and say they’re going to be a governor, or they’re going to be a president.”
Spanberger famous that her husband had informed their three daughters minutes earlier that their mom can be the state’s subsequent governor.
“And I can guarantee that those words have never been spoken in Virginia ever before,” she mentioned. “The history Virginia is making tonight is yours.”
NCS’s Edward-Isaac Dovere contributed to this report.