RICHMOND, VA. — Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill rode the blue wave of the 2018 midterms, taking back the suburbs to win their seats in Congress.
Now, both moderates are seeking to become the first female Democratic governors in Virginia and New Jersey, respectively. And they’ll need to go through the suburbs to get there.
To do so, Spanberger is touting her bipartisan record in Congress and hyperfocusing on an economic message as inflation remains stubborn — and even pushing to make inroads in rural areas. She may be helped by the long-running government shutdown that is disproportionately affecting Virginians, many of whom work for Washington.
“Health care access is something that’s coming up that we’re seeing in rural areas, and I think especially with what’s coming out of Washington, and what we view as chaos coming from Washington, related to health care and the big beautiful bill,” a source within the Spanberger campaign told MSNBC.
It’s not just who wins on Tuesday that will be significant, said campaigns and strategists. It’s also by how much they do so that could provide a window into the 2026 midterms.
It’s not just who wins on Tuesday that will be significant, said campaigns and strategists. It’s also by how much they do so that could provide a window into the 2026 midterms.
“The Northern Virginia suburbs are highly problematic for the Republicans,” said nonpartisan Virginia political analyst Bob Holsworth, who thinks Trump’s improvements in that area in the 2024 election are likely to have been erased by the effect of cuts by the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency Service.
“It’s not just that,” he added. “It’s everything associated with the Trump administration and how that’s impacting Northern Virginia. I mean, you can add the ICE raids, the threat to democracy, the people losing their jobs, what Abigail Spanberger calls the chaos that comes out of Washington.”
Donald Trump made gains in both Virginia and New Jersey in 2024, despite the fact they both went for Kamala Harris. A year ago, Trump gained slight ground in the Northern Virginia suburbs and improved on his performance in critical counties such as Loudoun, Prince William and Fauquier. New Jersey also moved rightward, with Trump doing better than his previous performances in all of the state’s 21 counties.
All eyes are on heavily Hispanic Passaic County, where the president made his biggest gains in 2024 from 2020, overperforming Republican gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli’s 2021 margins to flip the county from blue to red. Results from this county could reveal whether Trump’s strong inroads with Hispanic voters were an anomaly or a new normal.
“I think what her campaign needs to be cautious of overall is that Ciattarelli is not making significant inroads with the Hispanic Latino population across the state, particularly building upon Trump’s victory in Passaic County from last year,” said Ashley Koning, director of the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling at Rutgers University.
Ciattarelli also made his most notable gains in 2021 in affluent, highly educated suburban areas in Somerset County as a foil to the Biden administration.
“When you look at Ciattarelli in 2021, he did better than Trump when it came to white voters, higher income voters and voters with college degrees, and New Jersey is a very highly educated state to accompany its status with high property taxes,” Koning said, noting suburban voters will be crucial to his chances of 2025 victory.
“I think they are key, because for them, they are especially looking at issues like property taxes and other kitchen table issues,” she said. “This is the kind of group that is most malleable to switching sides and to kind of going with the ideological wins based on how they feel.”
In Virginia, term-limited Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) narrowly won the governor’s mansion in 2021, making inroads in the suburbs. He outpaced Trump’s 2020 performance in the state with his campaign focused on transgender athletes, school choice and parents’ rights.
Meanwhile, per Virginia Democratic operative in the state, attorney general candidate Jay Jones is laser-focused on juicing high turnout in Black communities and Northern Virginia, where voters are disproportionately affected by the government shutdown and have shown strong turnout during early voting.
Spanberger pushed a closing message of being a backstop for Virginians against unpopular Trump policies.
“I’m not going to be able to stop everything, every bad policy coming out of Washington,” she said at an election eve rally in Richmond. “I want to be truthful about that, but we need a governor who is working tirelessly to mitigate every harm that might be caused by a reckless and chaotic administration.”
In both states, the opportunity to create a referendum on Trump looms large.
“If there weren’t the national context, the ground would be ripe for a Republican governor to win,” Koning said of New Jersey. “No question, it would have been Ciattarelli’s to lose, but obviously, we’re in a much different era now and have a second Trump administration.”
For some voters in Virginia, that backdrop is front of mind.
“I think it’s time to stop the cult,” Richmond voter Phil Hunt told MSNBC.
“We felt like if a Republican wins in [the] governor [race] it would complete the changeover of the country,” he said. “A Republican win in Virginia we think would be a horrible sign for the direction the country’s going.”
Julia Jester covers politics for MS NOW and is based in Washington, D.C.