When Abigail Spanberger ran for governor of Virginia in 2025, she worked quite hard to cultivate the image of a moderate Democrat who would govern the commonwealth with an even hand.
Once she got into office earlier this year, however, she quickly got in touch with her more radical roots, severing ties with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), promoting a gerrymandered congressional map, and attempting to ban the sale of "automatic firearms."
She also gleefully replaced the entire state parole board – the government body that is tasked with deciding which criminals get released back into society – with her own appointees. Certainly her right as governor, but also curious because she was, at the same time, working to restore voting rights to criminals.
Spanberger's parole board has proven to be decidedly pro-criminal and anti-victim, granting parole to an astonishing 10 percent of inmates who have come before them in the past seven months. Compare that with the 0.7 percent released by Youngkin's board two years ago, and it's clear where Democrats are headed with this.
More freed criminals means more Democrat voters.
This was highlighted in sharp detail on Thursday when the parole board, as reported by WJLA's Nick Minock, released 7 out of 8 felons, including murderers, rapists, child abusers, and bank robbers.
🚨New: Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s parole board has released 7/8 felons who have had parole hearings so far today. We’re talking about people who were convicted of murder, rape, child abuse, and bank robbery. Several had decades left on their sentences. Several victims… pic.twitter.com/dBu9AHiIpg
— Nick Minock (@NickMinock) October 1, 2026
🚨New: Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s parole board has released 7/8 felons who have had parole hearings so far today. We’re talking about people who were convicted of murder, rape, child abuse, and bank robbery. Several had decades left on their sentences. Several victims have pleaded with the board not to release.
Today, one inmate told the Virginia Parole Board he and his fellow inmates are thankful the board is letting them out and then told the board to have a “safe day.”
Once these convicted felons are back on the streets, many of them can expect to get another gift from Spanberger: she'll restore the voting rights they lost for being, well, convicted felons.
As RedState reported in July, the governor was quietly restoring the votes of tens of thousands of criminals, claiming she was reversing the "disenfranchisement" that was “a shameful relic of our Jim Crow past.” And it was all the fault of the Republicans who came before her, of course.
It's important to note here that Virginia Democrats are in the midst of changing the rules around parole. Earlier this year, they passed legislation that expanded parole eligibility to certain inmates whose juries were never told that Virginia had abolished parole, thus requiring those newly eligible prisoners to receive new parole interviews.
Oh, and about those restored voting rights? Here's how that's going: her administration just restored the voting rights of a felon who died a decade ago.
Democrat @GovernorVA Spanberger just restored the right to vote for a felon that died in 2016 https://t.co/SJFIiCapBj
— NOVA Campaigns (@NoVA_Campaigns) October 1, 2026
Mr. Breton passed away in January of 2016, yet had his voting rights restored by the Spanberger administration in August of 2026. There's no way of knowing just how many deceased felons will be voting in the midterm elections this year, but it's pretty clear that Spanberger and her fellow Democrats are doing everything they can to lock up the bad guy vote.