Abigail Spanberger urges Dems not to prolong shutdown

WASHINGTON —Virginia Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger warned fellow Democrats not prolong the record-breaking shutdown following the party’s victories in the off-cycle elections last week.

“Absolutely not,” Spanberger told CBS’ “Face the Nation” when asked if Dems’ wins — including her own — gave mandate to “hold the line in Congress and refuse to fund the government.”

“Our victory was a victory that was based on a campaign that was addressing concerns related to costs and chaos,” she said, before adding: “The government needs to open and it needs to open immediately.”

Spanberger easily won her race to become governor of Virginia last Tuesday. The state has the second-largest number of federal workers of any state after California in the country.

She served in the House of Representatives from 2019 until January 2025.

Her ex-roommate and fellow governor-elect, Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ), meanwhile cheered on the Democrats’ shutdown fight.

The North Jersey Dem having joined the House in January 2019 alongside Spanberger.

Since late September, Senate Democrats have been using the 60-vote filibuster to block a clean House-passed stopgap measure to fund the government as a means of leveraging concessions from Republicans on healthcare policy.

Republicans have offered Democrats a vote on their healthcare demands, but have been adamant it be kept separate from the shutdown fight, fearful that Dems will leverage government funding again in the future.

“It’s really important that we keep up that fight, because we see in the market, costs going up by 175% if the Republicans don’t address this health care crisis,” Sherrill told “Face the Nation” in an interview that aired Sunday.

Sherrill — who won the governor’s seat in New Jersey by making her campaign about President Trump — blamed the administration and Republicans for the chaos caused by the shutdown.

She claimed that “because the president refuses to open up the government, we’re seeing another 10% in flights being derailed.”

Pressed about her own vote against keeping the government funded, Sherrill noted that “Republicans that have the presidency, they have the majority in the Senate, they have the majority in the House.”

Notably, Republicans only have 53 votes in the Senate, which is short of the 60-vote threshold needed to overcome a Democratic filibuster on legislation to reopen the government.

Recently, Republicans have paraded around a clip of House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) admitting, “Of course there will be families that are going to suffer,” from the shutdown while stressing “it is one of the few leverage items we have.”

“Leverage to serve the American people,” Sherrill shot back when pressed about Clark’s statement. “I mean, we see again and again these Republican attacks on everything from health care.”

At the heart of Democrats’ demands is concerns about the enhanced Obamacare subsidies, which are set to expire at the end of the year and GOP-backed Medicaid reform to the One Big Beautiful Bill (now known as the Working Families Tax Cut Act).

Spanberger had agreed that “the impacts on health care are already catastrophic,” but the Virginia Democrat argued “we can’t compound that pain by keeping the government closed.”

Sherrill and Spanberger, who were both national security buffs and members of the same freshman class in Congress that were elected during the 2018 blue wave year, had briefly been roommates during their overlapping time in the lower chamber.