At a Tuesday rally for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger, speaker after speaker hammered home one point: This election is about more than Virginia.

Virginia will “lead the way” into the 2026 midterms, trumpeted Bill Nye the Science Guy. It’s “pretty much the center of the political universe,” added former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

“We know the stakes of this election,” Ms. Spanberger, a former CIA case officer who served three terms in the U.S. House, told the Charlottesville crowd of 1,300. “We can prove to the rest of the country … when we have the opportunity to make a change at home in our state, we will take it.”

Why We Wrote This

Virginia is one of two states holding a competitive race for governor this fall – a closely watched test of whether D

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