This is not the first time Virginia voters have braced for a government shutdown in a partisan standoff over Obamacare just a few weeks before they elect their next governor.
In October 2013, the federal government shut down for 16 days after lawmakers failed to reach a deal to fund it. President Barack Obama and other Democratic leaders loudly blamed Republicans in Congress, dubbing it the “tea party shutdown” — and polls showed that the public overwhelmingly agreed.
Weeks later, Democrat Terry McAuliffe eked out a narrow win in the Virginia governor’s election, defying a historical trend. In 11 of the last 12 Virginia governor’s races, voters elected the candidate of the party out of power in the White House. The lone exception was in 2013.
Fast-forward to the present. Republicans control the White House, the federal government barreled into a shutdown at midnight Wednesday morning, and a race for governor in Virginia is weeks away. Democratic former Rep. Abigail Spanberger has so far led Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears in both polling and fundraising.
National Republicans are already aggressively casting blame on Democrats, who are pushing to include additional health care money in the government funding bill, for the shutdown. After Spanberger has spent the entire campaign leading in public polls, the new developments raise questions about whether a shutdown could threaten her path to victory — and block the same historical trend that had been working in her favor.
“Something like this, depending how [Democrats] respond, could be a big opening” for Republicans, said Jimmy Keady, a Richmond-based Republican consultant.
Keady said Republicans “have done a pretty good job” blaming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Democrats more broadly for a shutdown.
“You’re going to now have Democrats shutting down the government, and I think that has framed in a way where Republicans can push back on that narrative of who’s actually shutting the government down,” he said.
Democrats have pushed for any funding deal to include measures that would extend expiring Obamacare subsidies and to undo President Donald Trump’s Medicaid cuts.
Republicans control the White House and both chambers of Congress, but Democrats have leverage because it takes 60 votes to end debate on legislation in the Senate and the GOP holds 53 seats.
Other Republicans expressed more ambiguity about how the blame game might play out in Virginia.
“I don’t know how this is going to bounce. I think it depends how long it goes on,” said former Rep. Tom Davis, a Republican who represented a northern Virginia district from 1995 to 2008.
Spanberger told NBC News in a statement that the shutdown would hurt Virginia’s economy, blaming Trump and Earle-Sears for the coming damage and connecting a government closure’s impact to the impact of cuts by Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency this year.
“Virginia families are already feeling the strain of high costs, and Virginia workers and business leaders are deeply worried about the impacts of an impending shutdown and the jobs cuts the Trump Administration is threatening,” Spanberger said. “Virginians are already facing the dire impacts of DOGE, reckless tariffs, and attacks on our healthcare, and now, once again, President Trump is escalating his attacks on Virginia jobs and our economy. And with each new attack, Winsome Earle-Sears refuses to stand up for Virginia’s workforce and economy.”
Earle-Sears blamed Democrats for the looming shutdown, saying in an interview Tuesday on NBC News’ “Meet the Press NOW” that Spanberger should have urged Virginia’s two Democratic senators, Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, to agree to Republicans’ funding deal.
“I’m hoping that my opponent, Abigail Spanberger, will tell her friends, Senators Kaine and Warner, who are from Virginia, not to shut down our government, to give a continuing resolution that’s clean — to vote for that, because you’re going to put all of those federal workers out of a job,” Earle-Sears said. “My opponent has been speaking about that all summer long, and she needs to come and tell them exactly that: Vote for a clean continuing resolution to keep our federal workers in their jobs.”
Davis, the Republican former congressman whose Washington-area district is home to many federal workers, said those voters had already most likely turned on Trump this year after he, through DOGE, moved to shrink the federal workforce.
“I think the administration has probably lost a lot of goodwill with federal employees after DOGE and the cuts here,” Davis said. “So in terms of who they’re likely to believe, I think it’s unclear at this point [if] what would ordinarily advantage the Republicans works for them.”
A prolonged shutdown would most likely risk adding more strain on federal workers and members of the military, who would go without pay during a government closure. In addition, Trump has threatened to fire federal workers during a shutdown. A longer shutdown might also weigh down a broader U.S. economy that is already exhibiting signs of weakness.
But Democrats still have history on their side.
“Anything is possible, but you have a group of folks that use these elections in Virginia traditionally in the last 50 years to send a message to the party in the White House,” Davis said.
Democrats, meanwhile, appear less concerned about being blamed, with lawmakers, party officials and Spanberger all expressing confidence that voters will view the shutdown as part and parcel of a broader trend of chaos in Washington sown and seeded by the Republicans who control the White House and both chambers of Congress.
Still, the real effects federal government shutdowns have in Virginia generate some unpredictability.
In an interview in February, around the time of the DOGE job cuts, Spanberger said she quickly learned as a member of Congress how dramatically shutdowns (and near-shutdowns) harmed her constituents.
“When there are government shutdowns, Virginia is the most economically impacted state,” she said then. Her time in Congress started in the middle of a 35-day government shutdown during Trump’s first term.
“When there’s even a threat of a government shutdown, we would just reiterate how damaging that is, because, in the threat of losing your salary for a small period of time, people don’t take their families out to eat. People don’t stop and buy kids candy at the convenience shop,” she said. “They don’t buy a new microwave if their microwave is on the fritz. That is only more profound at this moment, where people are worried about whether they might lose their job.”
Meanwhile, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Earle-Sears’ biggest ally, has been linking the shutdown to national Democratic leaders like Schumer.
Still, several Democratic members of Virginia’s congressional delegation were confident that voters would blame Trump for the shutdown and that the frustration would bleed into their feelings about Earle-Sears and other Republicans.
“I think people recognize that Donald Trump is the chief chaos agent. So to the extent that there’s chaos, I don’t think it’s a hard sell to convince people that Donald Trump is the genesis of that chaos, and I think that hurts any candidate who’s aligned with Donald Trump, and in Virginia’s case this year that’s Winsome Sears and the Republican ticket,” Democratic Rep. James Walkinshaw said.
Democratic Rep. Jennifer McClellan said, “You’ve had Abigail Spanberger from Day 1 saying that she would stand up and fight for all Virginians, including those harmed by the actions of the Trump administration.
“And you’ve had Winsome Sears, who’s either been silent or cheering Trump on or saying that all these federal workers that live in Virginia being fired is not a big deal,” she said, referring to Earle-Sears’ comments this year playing down the impact of the federal job cuts in Virginia.
There are warning signs for both parties in recent polling, including some that underscore difficulties Democrats could face in deflecting blame.
A national New York Times/Siena University poll conducted last week found 33% of registered voters say Democrats in Congress and Trump and Republicans in Congress deserve equal blame for a government shutdown. Another 26% say Trump and congressional Republicans would be to blame, while 19% say the same of Democrats in Congress. The poll did find some room for both parties to make their cases, with 21% saying they had not heard enough to weigh in the issue.
Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., said he had not spoken with Spanberger about a shutdown, but he said that he “can’t imagine that she wants a shutdown” and that voters would be likelier to blame Republicans because “they control the House, they control the Senate, they have the White House.”
Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., said a shutdown “helps Democrats, because the Republicans aren’t even in town.” The GOP-controlled House left town after it passed a seven-week government funding bill and is not scheduled to return until Oct. 7.
Asked whether he was concerned that Democrats — including Spanberger — would catch blame for a shutdown, Kaine said, “I think Virginians understand who’s at fault for this.”