Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) expressed skepticism about Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger (D) during a recent television discussion, claiming she isn’t a centrist and is misleading the public regarding redistricting.
When host Mike Slater inquired about Spanberger’s reputation in the district, Griffith didn’t hesitate: “Not well.”
He elaborated, “There are a lot of issues. For instance, the gun control measures she endorsed have left my family quite unhappy. Also, my district is adjacent to Tennessee, North Carolina, Kentucky, and West Virginia, and some constituents are saying, ‘I’m not planning to move just to cross state lines.’”
He mentioned that various voters are raising concerns about transgender matters and other extreme left-leaning ideas.
“This gender…transgender topic really bothers me. To be clear, she’s quite liberal—I always knew that,” he remarked, drawing on his interactions with her while they both served in the U.S. House, attempting to alert voters about this fact.
“That’s what I aimed to convey to the voters since I collaborated with her in the House. But she and the media have portrayed her as a centrist. She isn’t,” he pointed out.
“Her actions in the first couple of months in office have shown that she’s not a centrist,” he asserted, recalling that Democrats announced no plans for redistricting during the campaign. However, “this was the very first bill she signed.”
Indeed, Spanberger had previously stated during his campaign that there were “no plans” for re-electing Virginia. She mentioned that the constitutional amendment would initiate a new redistricting effort in Virginia, expected to be first utilized in the 2021 redistricting. “While I’m interested in what other states are doing, we have no plans to redistrict Virginia,” she had said at the time.
This situation is noteworthy, particularly since Spanberger later celebrated the passage of the state’s redistricting referendum just months after making that statement.
“Looking at her current standing, she was never really popular in my district, yet things aren’t improving for her,” Griffith said. “The people I represent are very frustrated.”
