Over the weekend, Gov. Abigail Spanberger visited the Old-Time Fiddlers Convention in Galax. She was booed.
This is not about that. This is about what came after.
Republicans (including many state legislators) gleefully took to social media to share the video and talk about how unpopular Spanberger and her policies are in Southwest Virginia. I didn’t see a single Democratic state legislator rise to the governor’s defense, although lots of people with Democratic leanings chimed in, not to side with the governor but to bash Southwest Virginia.
This is where I must set aside whatever other plans I had for today’s column and take up for Southwest Virginia. The governor can take care of herself.
Spanberger’s reception did not surprise me. Southwest Virginia is a part of the state where Democrats run poorly these days. In last fall’s election, Spanberger took just 31.72% of the vote in Galax, which was distinctly higher than the 21.46% she polled in neighboring Grayson County or the 21.44% she polled in Galax’s other neighbor, Carroll County. Two of the best-known things that Spanberger has been associated with since then have hardly been designed to engender warm feelings in rural Virginia — backing a redistricting plan that would have turned much of rural Virginia over to Democratic districts snaking out of Northern Virginia and signing legislation to restrict gun ownership, a subject that is quite sensitive in rural communities. Those two things alone outweigh in the minds of many voters whatever else the governor may have done that might be beneficial for rural voters. I’m not saying that’s right or wrong; I’m just describing what I see as a resident of rural Virginia.
We also live in coarser times. There once was a time when the response in Galax might have been polite applause or no reaction at all. Those times are gone. Last Labor Day in Buena Vista, Democrats in the audience hooted down then-Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, the Republican candidate for the governor, to the point where she couldn’t be heard. I called out that behavior in a column as rude — and was promptly roasted by many Democrats, including the party’s current nominee for the 9th Congressional District. They defended the outburst as a proper response to the outrages of the Trump administration and Republicans in general. If those boos were socially acceptable against a Republican in Buena Vista, then surely they’re socially acceptable against a Democrat in Galax. I wish we lived in a more civil era where people behaved more politely, but we don’t. This is why many office-holders don’t hold town hall meetings; the odds are too great that they’ll be disrupted by people who just want to make a spectacle. We have brought this on ourselves. Both sides have come to view this boorishness as acceptable behavior. So Spanberger got booed in Galax? Is anyone really surprised?
However, what concerns me more than an audience booing the governor is those who have used this as an opportunity to bad-mouth Southwest Virginia. Some may see social media commentary as ephemeral, but this is also the town square of our times, where much public opinion is shaped, so I’m not inclined to let it go when someone with the handle “Clovis Mcdoogal” posts the following:
Funny they would boo. They have one of the highest rates of poverty in Virginia. One of the worst school systems in Virginia. They are losing jobs at a clip the rest of Virginia may not understand. What you are watching is the poor, uneducated in their natural environment.
That’s a lot to unpack and, in many cases, refute.
First, yes, the part about poverty rates is true. From 2020 to 2024, Galax had the lowest median income in the state, according to the U.S. Census Bureau — $38,675. Of the 20 poorest localities in Virginia, 13 are in Southwest Virginia, and four others are on the fringes. We can’t talk our way out of basic facts, however uncomfortable they may be.
Second, the part about “losing jobs at a clip the rest of Virginia may not understand” was true once but is out of date by about two decades. It’s certainly true that the economic pillars across Southwest Virginia — and Southside, too — crumbled about a quarter century ago. Coal, textiles, furniture, tobacco — all basically gone. This was a very real economic trauma, the civic PTSD of which lingers to this day. However, it’s not true today to say the region is “losing jobs at a clip the rest of Virginia may not understand.”
The number of workers in Galax and Carroll County (federal stats combine them) is only slightly lower today than it was in February 2019, before the pandemic hit. Lower is not good, but it’s not as if the region is hemorrhaging jobs. That happened nearly two decades or more ago. In most places, the employment numbers over the past decade have been pretty steady. The region certainly needs to build a new economy — something we could use the governor’s help in doing — but it has stanched the bleeding. Here are just three examples:
This particular commenter did not say that people are moving out of the region, but others often do, so let me post my customary reminder that we’re not seeing that either, except in a few places. Yes, overall Southwest Virginia is losing population, but that’s almost entirely because it’s an older region and more people are dying than all the other demographic categories put together. Despite that, most localities in Southwest Virginia are seeing more people move in than move out — just not enough to make up for those high death rates. Still, people are voting with their feet that they want to live in Southwest Virginia. Since the last census, 565 more people have moved into Galax than have moved out. That’s in contrast to many localities in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads that are seeing more people move out than move in.
Back to this particular social media post (which I call attention to because it was so egregious and also drew a lot of response). The most offensive allegation is that Southwest Virginia has “one of the worst school systems in Virginia.” This is demonstrably false.
Years ago, the St. Paul lawyer Frank Kilgore was so fed up with people talking down the region’s schools that he took out a series of newspaper ads around the state to call attention to high test scores. Kilgore, alas, has passed on, so I will dedicate this column to him because if he were still with us, he’d have already written this and bought newspaper ads around the state to spread the word.
Let’s start with test scores, which were always Kilgore’s favorite go-to stat to refute such allegations.
For comparison purposes, let’s start with Loudoun County, the most affluent county, not just in the state, but the nation. If there’s any locality in the state that has advantages, it should be Loudoun. Indeed, its scores on the Standards of Learning tests are remarkably high.
Loudoun’s highest single score — for all students — is a 90 on writing. And yet, even though Southwest Virginia supposedly has “one of the worst school systems in Virginia,” we see Tazewell County, the 10th poorest county in Virginia, with the exact same score. Furthermore, see some localities in Southwest Virginia with even higher scores— 91 in Carroll and Floyd, 94 in Wise County, 100 in Lee County, which would be the poorest locality in the state were it not for Norton and Galax.
Is this some kind of fluke? Let’s look at some of the other scores.
In reading, Loudoun scored 82 — again, an impressive score, but just one point higher than Tazewell at 81. And then there’s Patrick County, which comes in higher at 84, and Pulaski County, which scored 85, and Wise County, which scored 88.
In history and social sciences, Loudoun scored 86. That’s hard to beat, and I’ll confess I couldn’t find a school system in Southwest Virginia that did better, but Wise County came close at 81— which isn’t higher than Loudoun but is higher than some other school systems in Northern Virginia (Arlington scores 78, Fairfax 42).
In math, Loudoun scored 82 — but so did Patrick County, and Washington County came in better at 84.
In science, Loudoun came in at 80 — while Washington County topped that at 81, and Patrick County posted 82. Just behind Loudoun at 79 were Giles County and Tazewell County.
Yes, I’m cherry-picking the top scores in Southwest Virginia and leaving out the lower ones (which usually aren’t all that lower) to make the point that you can’t make a blanket statement that the region has “one of the worst school systems in Virginia” when student test scores are often in line with others.
So what kind of blanket statements can we make? If we combine scores and look at the state’s eight school regions, here’s what we see:
In 2025, Southwest Virginia — officially Region 7 in the eyes of the state — had the best test scores in reading and writing. In history and math, it was second to Northern Virginia. Only in science did Southwest Virginia fall to third, still better than five other regions.
Objectively speaking, Southwest Virginia does not have “one of the worst school systems in Virginia.” It has one of the best. That’s not me saying that as a regional booster; that’s me just reciting state data.
Somehow, Southwest Virginia is producing high-scoring students in spite of all the other challenges it faces — high poverty rates, less school funding than any other part of the state and, in many places, outdated school buildings.
Does the region have problems? Oh Lord, yes. Just read Cardinal regularly, and you’ll see us report about many of them. We remain too dependent on industries that might have a short life span while economic opportunities pass us by. Sometimes we have local officials who are too short-sighted — I’m thinking about Buchanan County’s strangely cool response to the prospect of an ambitious four-year college that wants to rescue the county’s financially stressed law school. Sometimes we’re just prone to bad luck — regular flooding, compounded by the state’s sluggish response to distributing flood relief that political and policy reporter Elizabeth Beyer recently wrote about.
I wish audiences that don’t like a speaker would simply greet them with a stony silence rather than shout them down and deprive those who do want to hear them a chance to listen, whether that’s a Democratic governor in Galax or a Republican candidate in Buena Vista. Save the heckling for baseball umpires. But whatever you do, don’t besmirch our schools, because we’ve got data to back it up.
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