New govs expose ‘moderate’ Democrats’ true colors

 With their new leaders in Virginia and New Jersey, Democrats this week showed the country an undeniable truth: There’s no such thing as a moderate in their party anymore.

Throughout the 2025 campaign cycle, national media presented a fundamentally false story about the Democratic candidates for governor in the Old Dominion and the Garden State.

Even as commentators acknowledged that Zohran Mamdani represented a move leftward in New York City, legacy media framed former roommates Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill as the centrists in the party.

“Ms. Spanberger and Ms. Sherrill are moderate women,” The New York Times reported as fact.

“The two congresswomen, both moderates, have shared a Capitol Hill apartment for the past four years,” wrote Washington Post columnist Karen Tumulty — and were so close, in fact, that “they sometimes finished each other’s sentences.”

Those sentiments were echoed endlessly: CNN, MSNBC, NPR and others all parroted the line that both women were moderates, pragmatists, centrists or even bipartisan.

What a difference a day makes.

Right after inauguration, both new governors announced their attacks on law and order.

As her first official act this week, Spanberger rolled back former Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s order instructing state and local officials to cooperate with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement and border patrol.

In New Jersey, Sherrill compared current days to the Revolutionary War’s revolt against the king of England, argued that the duly elected President Donald Trump is “illegally usurping power,” and claimed ICE officers represent Trump’s “militia.”

“The protesters have been peaceful, but ICE hasn’t been,” Sherrill told ABC.

“I think the president’s trying to incite the protesters so that he can take America’s eyes off the fact that his militia that he’s building around this country is actually attacking American citizens.”

Does that sound moderate to you? 

How far is that, really, from Mayor Mamdani calling for ICE to be abolished entirely?

For her part, Spanberger announced a leftist agenda perfectly aligned with the majority-Democrat state legislature in Richmond, whose radical bills will sail through to her desk.

On crime, outgoing Attorney General Jason Miyares noted that the Democrats’ plan will erase mandatory minimum sentencing for “rape, manslaughter, assaulting a law enforcement officer, possession and distribution of child pornography, and other repeat violent felonies.”

“So much for restraint,” he sniped.

Despite inheriting a multibillion-dollar budget surplus, Spanberger’s plan for Virginia is to tax everything that moves, and some things that don’t.

Democrats introduced a new 4.3% tax on every retail delivery in Northern Virginia — hitting services from Amazon to UPS to Uber Eats.

And they want more localities to install money-grubbing speed cameras, just in case those drivers are in a rush.

The approach is modeled on taxes put in place by Minnesota’s Tim Walz, always a good sign of centrist intent.

Virginia Democrats plan to create new taxes or raise existing ones on income, services, hotels, personal property, investments, dry cleaners and gyms. 

They even want to tax “property delivered electronically to an end user.”

Yes, that “tudum” is the sound of your Netflix subscription going up.

Spanberger’s Democrats want to ban gas-powered leaf blowers — but also will tax the electric-powered equipment landscapers will have to buy as replacements.

“Was a landscaper mean to Abby Spanberger in high school or something?” wondered one observer on X.

Democrats don’t just want to cement lax COVID-era election laws; they want to expand them.

That means starting early voting even earlier, accepting ballots even longer after Election Day, and making it illegal — yes, illegal — to count ballots by hand.

In 2025, many Virginians had already cast early votes when news broke of Democrat Jay Jones’ texts gleefully fantasizing about the deaths of a Republican colleague’s children.

Spanberger, who dodged criticism on the scandal, apparently wants to lock that in.

And the partisanship doesn’t stop there.

Spanberger’s party is pushing a constitutional redistricting amendment that would likely take Virginia’s current congressional delegation from a 6-5 Democratic advantage to a lopsided 10-1 Dem gerrymander.

A Spanberger-backed constitutional amendment would turn the commonwealth into the only state in the South offering abortion on demand up until birth. 

Abortion is already legal in Virginia until the 27th week, but that’s not enough for these “moderates.” 

After all that litany of leftism, they might have forgotten one — but don’t worry, they will indeed replace Columbus Day with “Indigenous Peoples Day,” too.

This is what Democrats do when they get power.

This is who they are.

It doesn’t matter who claims there’s some pragmatic, centrist version of this madness.

There isn’t.

And next time the media calls someone a moderate, don’t believe it.

Ben Domenech is editor at large of The Spectator and a Fox News contributor.

https://nypost.com/2026/01/21/opinion/new-govs-expose-moderate-democrats-true-colors/