Virginia Democrats showed a united front on the Capitol steps in Richmond on Tuesday as they announced the broad strokes of their 2027 legislative agenda. This comes months after Gov. Abigail Spanberger vetoed 31 bills from the Democratic-controlled General Assembly.
“I was still on the campaign trail, and they were dropping bills; the time frame was condensed, and things were moving quickly,” Spanberger said of the 2026 legislative session.
“What you will see this session, ideally, is the result of having worked on legislation together across the summer,” she continued. “We’ve had a number of conversations along the way of what is the goal and how can we get there.”
Spanberger vetoed some high-profile Democratic bills, including collective bargaining for public employees and a retail market for marijuana. She eventually worked through the differences on the latter to finalize the legislation before the state budget was signed this summer.
There was a lot of pushback against Spanberger at the time from members of her own party, including Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax, who sponsored the collective bargaining legislation, saying he was “deeply disappointed” by her decision.
Six months into her term, when asked what she had learned about the job so far, she said, “You can never actually overcommunicate.”
“And it’s actually just human nature and a busy schedule, and it’s something that I frankly should have clocked earlier,” Spanberger continued at the time. “But making sure that over-communicating needs to be the bare minimum, particularly with a legislative body that moves at such an intense pace because it’s part-time.”
On Tuesday, Surovell defended the governor, saying voters do not want politicians who blindly agree with each other even if they are in the same party.
“Intra-party disagreement is a healthy thing,” Surovell said. “I think it’s important to disagree agreeably. But right now, what you see here today is all of us standing here united behind this agenda. And so I’m happy to be here today, and I look forward to continuing our conversations.”