Democratic Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger said the American Founders would be “pretty surprised” by her becoming Virginia’s governor in a university commencement speech Friday.
The governor, 46, gave a commencement speech at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University during commencement ceremonies, which run from May 9 to May 16. She argued that America’s history “is not a straight line” and said she thought the country’s founders would be “pretty surprised” by her holding Virginia’s highest public office and also by some of those in the audience. Spanberger won election as the state’s governor in November 2025 against former Republican Virginia Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears.
“Every generation gets to decide whether the words on those founding documents are simply ink on parchment or if whether mean something tangible in our country today,” Spanberger said. “And Class of 26, so do you. You get to choose what the words on your diploma mean for you.” (RELATED: Abigail Spanberger’s Sprawling Gun Crackdown Hits Legal Wall Right Out Of The Gate)
She noted that their diplomas marked their academic success and the difficulties they had surmounted.
“And just like our individual paths in life, the path of our shared American story is not a straight line,” Spanberger continued. “And if our founders were here today, I feel like they would be pretty surprised to see me standing here as the governor of Virginia, and pretty surprised to see some of you sitting here in the audience. But that’s exactly the point, as we are marching forward as individuals, as a commonwealth, as a country. And you, as new graduates of Virginia Tech. We get to follow the compass of where we want to be, who we are, and where we are going.”
The Founders declared the U.S. free and independent in 1776, a time when women holding formal political power was rare outside of a handful of royal figures, such as the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa and Russian Tsar Catherine the Great. A New Jersey state constitutional reform in 1790 allowed propertied women to vote, though this changed in the intervening years in some elections, with an 1807 statute stripping the vote from women and black men for all elected offices in an apparent move to end discrepancies, according to the American Revolution Museum. Wyoming extended the vote to women in 1869 when it was a territory, and female adult citizens in Virginia gained the right to vote after the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1920.
The Daily Caller reached out to the Office of the Virginia Governor for comment.