Follow WTOP’s Election 2026 coverage online, on air at 103.5 FM or on the WTOP News app.
Gov. Abigail Spanberger said a handful of Republican-held U.S. House seats are vulnerable in November, even without new electoral boundaries in Virginia, but she shares Maryland Gov. Wes Moore’s concerns about potential election interference from President Donald Trump.
“We shouldn’t underestimate the efforts he might be willing to undertake to sow doubt, create challenges to, or frankly, just make people feel uneasy about getting out to vote,” Spanberger told WTOP’s Nick Iannelli in an interview.
Moore, the new chair of the National Governors Association, recently told The Associated Press that he is “very concerned” about Trump’s efforts to restrict voting by mail, obtain voter information from states and possibly deploy federal troops or agents to polling places.
Spanberger said the state Department of Elections will spend the next weeks ensuring that Virginians fully understand their rights and where and how to vote.
She also expressed confidence that Democrats will succeed in taking at least four more House seats.
“Certainly with an aggressive November election turnout, we can flip the 1st, the 2nd, the 5th, the 6th,” she said. “And I’ll be campaigning in the 1st, the 2nd, the 5th, the 6th and the 9th, because go big or go home.”
Spanberger pointed, in part, to her success with voters in the 1st and 2nd districts, which span southeastern Virginia, when she was elected governor in November 2025.
“In my statewide campaign I wasn’t necessarily intending or attempting to win the particular lines of a congressional district,” she said. “I think it speaks to the fact that on the ground there, there are sufficient voters that, you know, care about the issues that, there, may not be tied to party.”
Spanberger said voters in other House districts with GOP incumbents will be reacting to the impacts of Trump’s tariffs, the war with Iran and the “Big Beautiful Bill,” which included cuts to federal healthcare.
“I think that we have some very vulnerable incumbents, and I think importantly, we have some excellent candidates who are running to represent and to serve the communities that they love and that are, frankly, being harmed and impacted by bad choices at the federal level,” Spanberger said.
As Trump pressed majority-Republican states to redraw their own congressional maps to favor GOP candidates for Congress, Virginia Democrats attempted to create four additional districts that were friendlier to Democrats.
In April, Virginia voters approved an amendment that would have allowed the General Assembly to temporarily redraw the maps, but the state Supreme Court shot it down.
Asked whether she regretted spending political capital on redistricting in the first months of her term, Spanberger said, “I don’t have any regrets about that.”
The timing was “less than optimal,” she said, but not something that could be changed.
“And I think that ultimately, the effort to demonstrate that Virginia was going to take action in light of what we were seeing in other states was an important action to take.”
WTOP’s Nick Iannelli contributed to this report.
Get breaking news and daily headlines delivered to your email inbox by signing up here.
© 2026 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.
