Abigail Spanberger

Spanberger was sworn into the U.S. House of Representatives for her first term on January 3, 2019. In the election for Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives on the opening day of the 116th United States Congress, Spanberger voted for U.S. Representative Cheri Bustos, an Illinois Democrat, for speaker. Spanberger maintained her campaign promise to support new leadership in the House. In May of 2020, Republicans began to seek a candidate to oppose Spanberger in the November election.

On September 23, 2019 Spanberger joined six other freshmen Democrats in the House in calling for an impeachment inquiry into President Trump. They wrote in The Washington Post:

Spanberger later announced that she would vote in favor of impeachment. "The President’s actions violate his oath of office, endanger our national security, and betray the public trust," she said.

On June 12, 2018, Spanberger defeated Dan Ward in the primary election for the Democratic Party nomination with 73% of the vote, receiving more votes than any other candidate in the Virginia primaries that day. Her campaign out-raised Brat's campaign. She won the seat by a narrow margin on November 6, defeating Brat by just over 6,600 votes. While Brat won eight of the district's ten counties, Spanberger dominated the two largest counties, Henrico and Chesterfield, by a combined margin of over 30,000 votes; her margin in either county would have been enough individually to give her the victory.

In July 2017, Spanberger announced her candidacy for the United States House of Representatives in Virginia's 7th congressional district in the 2018 election against Republican Dave Brat. She made the final decision to run in the wake of the House of Representatives' vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Although not a member of Congress when it passed, Spanberger criticized the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (Trump tax cut) because of permanent tax cuts for corporations that increased the national debt.

According to FiveThirtyEight's congressional vote tracker, Spanberger votes with Donald Trump 6.9% of the time—about one seventh of the expected tally (49.1%) when factoring in the district's partisan leaning and general partisanship in Congress. In the 2016 presidential election, Trump bested Hillary Clinton with 50% of the vote to her 44% in Spanberger's congressional district.

She married Adam Spanberger and they have three daughters. In 2014, she and her family moved back to Henrico County. They live in Glen Allen, Virginia.

In 2006, Spanberger joined the Central Intelligence Agency as an operations officer. She worked overseas on classified matters of national security that included intelligence gathering on terrorism and nuclear proliferation.

Spanberger has called for a new version of the assault weapons ban that expired in 2004. She favors requiring background checks on private gun sales and supported a ban on bump stocks.

In 2002–2003, Spanberger taught English literature as a substitute teacher at the Islamic Saudi Academy. In the early 2000s, Spanberger worked as a federal postal inspector on money laundering cases, as well as intercepting shipments of illegal drugs into the United States.

Spanberger's victory ended a 38-year hold on the district by Republicans; it had previously been numbered as the 3rd District before 1993. Tom Bliley won the seat in 1981 and handed it to future House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in 2001. Cantor held it until Brat upset him in the 2014 primary. A number of sources reported that she was the first Democrat to represent the 7th in 47 years. In truth, prior to 1993 the 7th covered a dramatically different area from the current district, stretching from Winchester through Fredericksburg via Charlottesville and Manassas. Geographically and demographically, the current 7th is the successor of what had been the 3rd District for most of the 20th century.

Abigail Anne Davis Spanberger (née Davis; born August 7, 1979) is an American Democratic politician who has served as the Representative for Virginia's 7th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives since 2019. The congressional district includes most of the northern suburbs of Richmond, as well as some exurban territory between Richmond and Fredericksburg. Spanberger defeated Republican incumbent Dave Brat in 2018, and she is running for a second term in 2020.

Abigail Spanberger was born in Red Bank, New Jersey, on August 7, 1979. When she was 13, her family relocated to the Short Pump area outside Richmond, Virginia, and she attended Tucker High School. While in high school, she joined the Spanish language immersion program which sparked her interest in languages. She speaks Spanish, French, German, and some Italian. Spanberger was later a page for Senator Chuck Robb.