Spanberger: Is Bipartisanship The Solution?
One US representative has had an overwhelmingly positive response on Twitter this week. Virginia representative Abigail Spanberger has been a member of the US Congress since 2019 when she defeated incumbent Republican Dave Brat. Before her run for Congress in 2018, she was an agent in the CIA - an intelligence agency tasked with gathering various information to assist government procedures. This week, she has been assigned to the U.S. House Intelligence Committee (how fitting!).
Spanberger is known for her effort to work across the aisle in the House. Right now, she is combing efforts from Republicans and Democrats alike to ban insider trading by Congress members. Her bill, introduced on the 12th of last month, has 50 cosponsors. For more on insider trading, check out my last blog.
In looking at the responses to her Congressional actions, I found mostly nice and civil comments. Many were praising her for her intelligence and commitment to taking care of Americans, while some were voicing legitimate concerns without name-calling. It was very refreshing to not see a slew of curses or threats to her character. She is receiving a lot of "Congratulations!", "You earned this!", and "Thank God!"s in response to her accomplishments this year.
Spanberger does post about typical Democratic values like equal rights for all and enhancing public education, but this still warrants her very few hate comments. The lack of comments made me wonder if she was immune to trolls; but, then I took a look at her Twitter following.
Compared to many other household names in Congress, she has far fewer followers. In fact, her number of followers is about half of the people who voted for her in the last election! She was elected with about 150,000 votes as an incumbent in 2022, which would explain her small following of about 70,000. Spanberger does not seem to have been involved in any large controversies, which also could explain why not as many people are keeping up with her.
After combing through the commenter's profiles, they all seem to be Democrats from the area she represents (which isn't far from D.C.). Her popularity (or lack thereof) probably saves her from the trolls that live underneath the posts of AOC, Ilhan Omar, and others.
Abagail Spanberger was a great choice in terms of choosing a woman in politics to discuss in your blog. I was doing my own research on her background and I read that she is very big on women's reproductive rights. In addition, she is also helping introduce a According to her campaign website, she is trying to help pass legislation to remove the deadline to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment as she states, “Equal rights must never be denied under law on account of sex, and I’m proud to once again help lead this effort to help enshrine the Equal Rights Amendment as the 28th Amendment to our Constitution.” This is highly inspiring to someone looking to go into politics as a woman.
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