“The governor has been able to lean into her background in law enforcement to have a layer of credibility for her actions that isn’t always present with a governor,” says Stephen Farnsworth, professor of political science at the University of Mary Washington. “The traditional Republican argument that Democrats are weak in this area simply doesn’t apply to someone with her career experience.”
“I think one of the things that distinguishes the Trump presidency from other precedencies is that Trump really relies primarily on his own judgement,” said Stephen Farnsworth, professor of political science at the University of Mary Washington and the author of “Spinner In Chief: How Presidents Sell Their Policies and Themselves.”
Although Democrats now control the legislature and governor’s office, Stephen Farnsworth, a political scientist at the University of Mary Washington, said: “there are still big decisions to be hammered out regarding the budget and the regulation of data centers, to name two things.”
The legislation going to Spanberger has already gone through a number of filters, said Stephen Farnsworth, a political science professor at the University of Mary Washington. “When you have a big Democratic majority, you do not need to keep every member happy all the time,” he said, referring to the House’s 64-seat majority. “That Democratic majority in the House gives the speaker, and the governor, the means of keeping things away from the governor that the governor doesn’t want to see.”
Stephen Farnsworth, a political scientist at the University of Mary Washington, said that when all the leaders in the executive and legislative branches belong to the same party, “that’s when the fights get interesting.”
“I think that a lot of the success or failure of this referendum will depend on the efforts to present this case to the voters,” said Stephen Farnsworth, professor of political science at the University of Mary Washington. “People are not used to voting in April in Virginia, and the referendum has been on again-off again, because of earlier court rulings. And so now that it is definitely proceeding, there will be a lot of effort to persuade voters on both sides of this question.”
