Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger attended the NAACP Alexandria 2026 Freedom Fund Dinner, where she accepted the chapter's Breaking Barriers Award for being Virginia's first female governor and urged Virginians to make their voices heard this November, including on the three constitutional amendments on the ballot.
Speaking at the sold-out 93rd annual Freedom Fund Dinner in Alexandria, Spanberger said the point of breaking barriers is that they become normal on the other side. "Because when you break barriers for people, you change their idea of what is possible," she said, recalling a teenage girl who told her, "If you are going to be the Governor, I am going to run for President!"
The governor pointed to a record number of Black legislators and women in the General Assembly, Virginia's first Black Speaker of the House, Chief Justice Cleo Powell as the first African American woman to lead the Supreme Court of Virginia, Lieutenant Governor Ghazala Hashmi as the first Muslim woman elected to statewide office in the country, and Attorney General Jay Jones as Virginia's first Black attorney general.
Spanberger criticized federal voting rights developments, saying the U.S. Supreme Court has dismantled protections in the Voting Rights Act and that states have used that opening to close polling places and purge voter rolls. She said she has signed an expansion of the Virginia Voting Rights Act, extended the process for absentee and provisional ballots, and is laying groundwork for automatic voter registration.
She said Virginia remains one of only three states that permanently strips voting rights from citizens with felony convictions, and that restoration currently depends on the governor alone. She said her administration has restored the rights of well over a hundred thousand people after inheriting what she described as a backlogged, paper-based process.
"This is why I am standing shoulder to shoulder with Attorney General Jones asking people to vote 'yes' for our constitutional amendment to automatically restore voting rights to Virginians," Spanberger said, noting early voting has begun. She said that for those who fall in the gap before the amendment passes, her administration will see the process through.
Spanberger also said barriers created by federal policy, specifically H.R.1, will continue to affect Virginia, and that her administration is working to protect access to healthcare and education. "We will break down those barriers," she said.