RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Democrat Abigail Spanberger was sworn into workplace Saturday as Virginia’s first feminine governor, amid a chilly drizzle outdoors the state Capitol after centuries of males holding the state’s high workplace.
Spanberger defeated Republican Winsome Earle-Sears to succeed Gov. Glenn Youngkin, additionally a Republican. It marks a new chapter in Virginia as Democrats pull the levers of energy in state authorities whereas Republican President Donald Trump sits within the White Home in neighboring Washington.
“The historical past and the gravity of this second are usually not misplaced on me,” Spanberger mentioned in her tackle. “I keep an abiding sense of gratitude to those that work, technology after technology, to make sure ladies may very well be amongst these casting ballots, however who may solely dream of a day like right this moment.”
Spanberger quoted Patrick Henry, Virginia’s first governor, saying, “‘Allow us to not cut up into factions, which should destroy that union upon which our existence hangs.’ That was the cost Governor Henry put to Virginia on the shut of the 18th century, and it’s the cost we should reply once more right this moment.”
Two different Democrats have been additionally sworn in. Ghazala F. Hashmi, the first Muslim woman to serve in statewide workplace within the U.S., is the brand new lieutenant governor. Jay Jones is Virginia’s first Black lawyer basic. He was sworn into his publish, notably, within the former capital of the Confederacy.
Spanberger’s inauguration because the state’s seventy fifth governor is a historic first: solely males have held the publish since Virginia first grew to become a commonwealth in 1776. And no girl served as a colonial governor earlier than then.
She can be referred to with conventional formality: “Madam Governor” or, as some officers phrase it, “her excellency.”
Based on “A Information to Virginia Protocol and Traditions,” males within the official occasion put on morning coats and girls put on darkish fits for the inauguration and lots of, together with the brand new governor’s husband, saved to that custom on Saturday.
However as the primary girl to function governor, Spanberger wore all white on Saturday, a doable tribute to the ladies’s suffrage motion. She wore a gold pin on her lengthy, white coat.
Spanberger ran on a vow to guard Virginia’s economic system from the aggressive ways of Trump’s administration. On the path, she spoke of the White Home’s gutting the civil service, rising costs of goods and adjustments impacting the state’s already fragile health care system.
The state Democrats picked up 13 seats within the Home of Delegates a 12 months after the occasion’s gorgeous losses nationwide within the 2024 presidential election.
Democrats within the statehouse have vowed to work with Spanberger to push by way of their bullish agenda, which incorporates redrawing the state’s congressional district map forward of the midterm elections this 12 months.
