You’ve heard of the proverbial October Surprise. Over the weekend, Virginia politics got a December surprise.
The D.C.-based Punchbowl News broke the news that Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Newport News, is mulling whether to challenge Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-Henrico County, for the Democratic nomination for governor next year.
Scott didn’t sound like the most definitive candidate in the world. “Usually people running statewide take about a three-month leave and I’m not ready to do that, but we’ll see,” he told Punchbowl. On the other hand: “I haven’t ruled it out.”
Until this news, it looked as if the 2025 gubernatorial field was uncharacteristically set quite early, with Spanberger as the unchallenged candidate for the Democratic nomination and Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears as the only Republican candidate.
This isn’t the first time that Scott has looked at statewide office. In 2016, when it looked as if the ticket of Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine was going to win, Scott started making visits across the state, presumably to position himself for Kaine’s Senate seat. That didn’t happen, obviously, but the notion of Scott seeking statewide office isn’t a new one.
Let’s look at the pros and cons of a Scott candidacy.
Reasons why Scott might run
1. He’s blocked in Congress.
When Democrats held the majority in the U.S. House, Scott chaired the House Education and Workforce Committee. With Republicans in charge, he’s now the ranking Democratic member but faces two years in the minority (again). Even if Democrats win back the House in the 2026 midterms, he’d still have to contend with a Republican president for the two years after that. The earliest he could be a Democratic committee chair, with a Democratic president to sign any legislation he helped advance, would be 2029. Faced with those bleak prospects, Scott might well conclude he could get more done as governor — with a Democratic majority in the legislature. By the time he could be back in the majority in Washington, with a Democratic president, he could be wrapping up a term as governor. He’s also 77, so there’s that, too.
2. He might be closer to the Democratic activist base than Spanberger is.
In Congress, Spanberger carved out a reputation as a centrist; she opposed then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi and criticized President Joe Biden’s ambitious spending plans. “Nobody elected him to be FDR; they elected him to be normal and stop the chaos,” she once told The New York Times. That could serve her quite well in a general election but leaves some party activists on the Democrats’ left less than enthusiastic.
She’s already found herself at odds with Senate Finance Committee chair Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, who is a force to be reckoned with. When the Scott trial balloon surfaced, Lucas turned to X to post: “Bobby Scott! Everyday, all day at the Capitol, the Beach, in the Mountains, at the shipyard and the tunnels; on the trains, in the casinos and legal dispensaries, from small towns to big cities, we are all screaming BOBBY SCOTT!”
I’m skeptical that there’s a groundswell for Scott, but Scott could find Democratic voters who want a more robustly liberal approach.
Reasons why Scott might not run
1. It’s too late to start a statewide campaign for a June primary.
June may seem a long way off to those of us who still haven’t done our Christmas shopping but in political terms, it’s almost here. The relevant example is 2017, when former Rep. Tom Perriello mounted a challenge to Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, who had been considered the presumptive Democratic standard-bearer. Perriello entered the race in January that year, and positioned himself to Northam’s left. Northam won with 56% of the vote.
2. Spanberger has a ton of endorsements.
The endorsements also span the ideological spectrum. I just cited the Northam-Perriello primary of 2017; both have endorsed Spanberger. In last year’s General Assembly primaries, Stella Pekarsky ousted then-Sen. George Barker of Fairfax County. Both have endorsed Spanberger. Lucas may not be satisfied with Spanberger, but I’m not seeing a clear ideological space open for Scott to occupy.
3. Spanberger has a ton of money.
She’s already raised more than $7 million, as of the last reporting period.
4. It just looks bad.
Scott is a 77-year-old man. Spanberger is a 45-year-old woman. Are Democrats really in a mood to pick him over her? Or are Democrats more in the mood for generational change and the prospect of electing the first woman as Virginia’s governor?
You’ll notice I just listed more reasons why Scott shouldn’t run than reasons why he should. That’s not intentional, that’s just how they seemed to break.
Now for some other analysis:
We don’t know how either candidate would play statewide.
When Perriello challenged Northam, he was going up against a candidate who had already run statewide and won — first in a Democratic primary, then in a general election. Spanberger is considered a strong candidate (she’s won three close elections in a swing district, one of those in a not particularly good year for Democrats), but she’s never run statewide. Neither has Scott. The reality is we just don’t know, although Spanberger certainly has had a head start on Scott, and that’s not nothing. I saw campaign signs up for her in Roanoke this fall, more than a year before the election.
A primary might help Spanberger. Or it might hurt her.
Primaries don’t necessarily weaken the winner, although sometimes they do. It all depends on the personalities, the passions, and how they play out. If a primary forced Spanberger to “go left” to appease some in her party, that might weaken her in the eyes of independents. However, if a primary reinforced her centrist credentials, that might help — as long as some Democratic activists were so disheartened they sat out in the fall. For that same reason, Earle-Sears might benefit from a challenge from the right, as long as it didn’t pull her further in that direction. Nobody wants a primary challenge, but they are not always fatal. Sometimes they help raise a winner’s profile. Of course, sometimes they also split a party badly, as did the Bill Battle-Henry Howell contest in the 1969 Democratic primary for governor that opened the way for Republican Linwood Holton to win. History isn’t much of a guide here.
Democrats do have reason to be concerned about support among Black voters.
Trump made inroads with Black voters this year, particularly among Black men. What we don’t know (or at least I haven’t been able to find) is whether Trump made actual numerical gains among Black voters, or simply percentage gains because a noticeable number of Democrats simply didn’t vote. Because of the way that Virginia’s early votes were tallied in 2020, with all of them going into a locality’s “central absentee precinct,” it’s impossible to make comparisons between 2020 and 2024.
Regardless, we did see turnout fall in some heavily Black localities, such as Petersburg. The party can’t afford a repeat of that in 2025.
The odds seem against Scott actually running. If he does, though, we’re in for a more interesting first half of 2025 than we were counting on.
What really happened at the Republican mass meeting in Goochland County?
I write a weekly political newsletter, West of the Capital, that goes out every Friday afternoon. This week I’ll look at some of the undercurrents that were at play in this past weekend’s Republican mass meeting that nominated Luther Cifers for the state Senate seat that Rep.-elect John McGuire is vacating.
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