Abigail Spanberger CIA

OOPS SEE MAIN

DIRTY TRICKS, SEE American Action Network, modeled on the Center for American Progress,

Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF) is a Super PAC dedicated to electing Republicans to the U.S. House of Representatives.^[1] The Super PAC, which is closely linked to former House Speaker John Boehnerand House GOP leadership, was founded in 2011 and spent nearly $10 million in the 2012 cycle electing Republican candidates.^[2] Following Boehner's resignation from the U.S. Congress and the election of Paul D. Ryan as Speaker of the House, Congressional Leadership Fund has become closely linked to Ryan.^[3] The Super PAC is currently headed by Corwin Albert "Corry"**Bliss**who serves as Executive Director to both CLF and the linked American Action Network.

6 22 AN ad day after Roe ~

stop pelosi AOC scary palin eyes pix, angry latina, saved pix

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2018/08/what-is-the-congressional-leadership-fund/

A Democratic candidate alleged Wednesday that a GOP super PAC got ahold of her C.I.A. security clearance application to use for political purposes, according to The New York Times.

Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic nominee in Virginia’s 7th District, said the Congressional Leadership Fund is using the highly sensitive information found in the application to attack her campaign. Spanberger is challenging Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.).

A spokeswoman for the super PAC responded to Spanberger’s accusation saying it had lawfully obtained the application through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The Congressional Leadership Fund is a powerful and influential GOP super PAC that has already raised nearly $100 million for the 2018 election cycle.

The super PAC, which formed in 2011, has rapidly become a major contributor to GOP politicians, closely aligned to House Speaker Paul Ryan.

The Congressional Leadership Fund has raised $96.6 million in 2018 year-to-date, a sizable increase from $51.1 million raised during the 2016 election cycle and $12.6 million raised for 2014 elections.

At this point in the 2018 election cycle, the super PAC has spent $3.2 million supporting Republican candidates and$24.2 million opposing Democratic candidates.

The super PAC’s biggest spend in support of a candidate so far this cycle was $1.2 million supporting Troy Balderson, the Republican who went on to win the hotly contested special election in Ohio’s 12 District.

Congressional Leadership Fund’s biggest spend opposing a candidate was $6.1 million against Jon Ossoff, the Democratic candidate who lost in Georgia’s 6th District in a 2017 special election.

The super PAC’s stated mission is to focus on bringing more Republicans into the U.S. House of Representatives to strengthen the party’s majority, according to the Congressional Leadership Fund’s website.

Corry Bliss is the executive director for both the Congressional Leadership Fund and the American Action Network, a politically active nonprofit focused on center-right policies that doesn’t have to disclose its donors.

Major Republican donors Sheldon and Miriam Adelson have been the leading contributors to the super PAC since its creation. The Adelsons donated $15 million a piece to the super PAC in 2018 and a total of $20 million in 2016.

The Congressional Leadership Fund was also created to oppose Democratic super PACs, like the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and to support former House Speaker John Boehner,according to the super PAC’s website.

RELATED TOPICS

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/republican-pac-publishes-security-application-former-cia-agent-running-democrat

Abigail Spanberger is the Democratic candidate in Virginia’s 7th district, and a former officer in the CIA. The Congressional Leadership Fund is a Republican Super PAC associated with Paul Ryan, which plans to hand out over $100 million to GOP candidates for the election this fall. But money isn’t the only thing that the PAC is handing out. They’ve also produced the application Spanberger submitted in seeking security clearance with the CIA, making her personal information public. How the PAC obtained this form is an open, and important, question.

According to **the New York Times**, the Republican Congressional Leadership Fund has both published the form, with some personal information redacted, and made it available to reporters. Security applications, by their nature, provide highly detailed background information. They may require that the person involved produce information on actions that could potentially be embarrassing, even if not illegal.

As an example, since obtaining Spanberger’s form, a polling company connected with the Republican PAC has conductedpush pollsasking voters if they would be less likely to support the Democratic candidate “if she knew that the candidate had taught at a school funded by the Saudi royal family that had ‘numerous students arrested for terrorism.’” The Republican PAC has also put out a “news release” on this topic.

Spanberger is currently running strongly against Republican Representative Dave Brat in what the GOP had regarded as a “safe” district. With a broad range of endorsements and support, this represents another district that Republicans are finding a challenge in 2018 after a series of walk-over elections. So it’s understandable that Republicans are desperate to find an edge.

The problems is: Where did they find it? The Congressional Leadership Fund claims that the form was obtained through a FOIA request to the Post Office,where Spanberger worked briefly while waiting for clearance from the CIA. But the version of the document, and the fact that the copy given to reporters seems to be unredacted, does not square with the version that should be produced through a FOIA request. In fact, the unredacted form cannot be released under the Privacy Act.

The Democratic candidate has sent a cease-and-desist letter to the executive director of the Congressional Leadership Fund, demanding that the PAC destroy all copies of the form and “agree to not use the information in any fashion.” And the real question boils down to: Is someone within the Trump White House handing out classified information to be used against Democratic candidates?

The Richmond Times-Dispatch shows how Republicans are attempting to use even the controversy about how they obtained this document to harm Spanberger. A spokeswoman for the Congressional Leadership Fund replied to questions that “It should surprise no one that Ms. Spanberger would want to hide from voters that she worked at a school that produced some of the world’s most dangerous terrorists.”

Spanberger was a substitute teacher at a prep school for wealthy students, filling in for a teacher on maternity leave, between the time she finished her Masters degree and before she took her Post Office job. No student she taught has been connected to terrorism in any way. She also waited tables. Republicans have not yet produced a news release claiming that she served a plate of eggs to Osama bin Laden … but there’s still time.

Daily Kos Elections rated the VA-7 race as “Leans Republican” on Aug 22. The Cook Report has moved the race to “Toss up.”

sleazy fuckery

https://congressionalleadershipfund.org/clf-issues-statement-what-is-abigail-spanberger-hiding/

WASHINGTON – In a desperate attempt to prevent Virginia voters from learning about her record and background, Virginia’s 7th Congressional District Democratic nominee, Abigail Spanberger, today sent a letter to the Congressional Leadership Fund (@CLFSuperPAC) – which her campaign then shared with select members of the media – threatening legal action over information about Spanberger that was obtained through legal channels. CLF is responding by releasing a copy of that letter to voters in Virginia’s 7th Congressional District as well as documentation from the Freedom of Information Request (FOIA) and the records that were obtained from the United States Postal Service as the result of that request.

This included information about Spanberger’s tenure working at the Islamic Saudi Academy in Northern Virginia, which the Associated Press reported was dubbed “Terror High” after 12 U.S. Senators and a federal commission wanted to shut it down. Spanberger’s former employer produced a number of well-known terrorists including Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, valedictorian of the academy in 1999, who was convicted in 2005 on charges of providing material support to the al Qaeda terrorist network. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison. This led U.S. Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer to issue a press release in 2005 calling for a full-scale probe of the controversial Islamic school and questioning whether the Islamic Saudi Academy was “another madrassa.” In addition, CLF is redacting the document to exclude personal information such as home addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth and social security numbers, even though this information was released by the USPS as part of the response to the FOIA request.

CLF spokesperson Courtney Alexander made the following statement about Spanberger’s politically-motivated gambit today:

“It should surprise no one that Ms. Spanberger would want to hide from voters that she worked at a school that produced some of the world’s most dangerous terrorists. CLF follows the letter of the law in examining any candidate’s background and Ms. Spanberger was no different. That she’s threatening legal action, however, should raise serious questions for voters about what else she is trying to hide. For any interested parties, CLF is happy to provide redacted copies of the information Ms. Spanberger is trying to hide from voters in Virginia.”

BACKGROUND:

On July 9, 2018, America Rising Corp. submitted a FOIA request to the National Personnel Records Center “for access to certain records contained in the official civilian personnel file of former federal employee Abigail Spanberger. Specifically, this request seeks records reflecting Ms. Spanberger’s employment dates, annual salaries, title, and position description.”
By letter dated July 12, 2018, NPRC/NARA forwarded the America Rising Corp. request to the United States Postal Service.
On July 30, 2018, USPS responded to America Rising’s request with their complete personnel file (“entire official personnel folder”), which included Spanberger’s SF-86.
another image usps pamela gabriel]

https://rollcall.com/2019/01/04/usps-ig-clears-conservative-group-of-wrongdoing-in-spanberger-file-release/

the U.S. Postal Service inspector general officially cleared a prominent conservative research group of any wrongdoing for getting its hands on Rep. Abigail Spanberger’s complete and unredacted official personnel file last summer.

America Rising, a conservative opposition research group contracted by dozens of conservative PACs and campaign committees each election cycle to dig up dirt on Democratic candidates, went through the proper channels, submitting a Freedom of Information Act request for Spanberger’s file to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), the IG concluded in its report released in late December.

NARA stores official personnel files for various government agencies, including the USPS, but it is up to government agencies to respond to the FOIA requests and redact certain protected information in the file NARA provides.

An administrative assistant in the USPS’ human resources department improperly executed that FOIA request by forwarding Spanberger’s entire file to America Rising, including a confidential national security form known as Standard Form 86 (SF-86) that she filled out when she was hired as a postal inspector in the early 2000s.

The same USPS HR administrative assistant improperly handled six other FOIA requests in addition to America Rising’s request for Spanberger’s file, the inspector general found.

the USPS had previously discovered three other improperly released personnel files before the IG audit.

The release of those files to third parties without authorization violated both federal law and USPS policy and “can lead to identity theft and [an employee] becoming a victim of financial fraud,” the IG report states.

The USPS HR department was ill-equipped to handle personnel file information requests, according to the report. It had no central list of FOIA requests to the agency, no written procedures for how requests were supposed to be handled and by whom, and never trained staff responsible for handling FOIA requests on how to comply with FOIA and the federal Privacy Act.

The top Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Reps. Elijah Cummings of Maryland and Gerald E. Connolly of Virginia, and Democratic Sen. Thomas R. Carper asked the USPS IG in September to launch a probe into the matter.

Spanberger’s SF-86, like all such forms, included a questionnaire that contained her family and medical history, Social Security number and other highly sensitive info that U.S. intelligence officials must provide.

After obtaining Spanberger’s file, America Rising handed it off to the Congressional Leadership Fund, the preeminent House GOP leadership-linked super PAC.

CLF used information from that file in a series of attack ads against Spanberger, who defeated former Rep. Dave Brat in Virginia’s 7th District in November, flipping a seat from red to blue that had been in Republican hands for decades.

Spanberger disclosed on her SF-86 that she had worked as a substitute advance placement English teacher beginning in 2002 at the Islamic Saudi Academy in Mount Vernon, Virginia. The school, which is funded by the Saudi government, was thrust into the national spotlight in the mid-2000s and earned the nickname “Terror High” after the 2005 class valedictorian later admitted to joining al-Qaida and was sentenced to 30 years in prison for plotting to kill President George W. Bush.

CLF suggested in its ads that Spanberger was sympathetic to terrorist elements due to her stint at the school.

The New York Times reported in August that CLF had shared Spanberger’s file with an Associated Press reporter, who then shared it with Spanberger and revealed CLF as the source.

Spanberger’s campaign initially questioned whether CLF and America Rising had obtained her file through illicit means.

The day after the initial New York Times report, America Rising provided Roll Call with documentation showing that it had received the file in late June through a standard Freedom of Information Act request.

The IG report released last month confirms the authenticity of those documents.

“That the USPS has acknowledged this was an issue on their end is just further evidence that Abigail Spanberger wasn’t telling the truth when she falsely accused CLF of breaking the law and pitched a phony storyline to the New York Times,” CLF spokeswoman Courtney Alexander said at the time.

CLF declined to give a follow-up statement responding to the IG report.

the reports of Spanberger’s improper personnel file release shocked national security experts who have filed their own SF-86s and reviewed SF-86s of other government employees whom they have hired. The reports from the fallout ignited a debate about how political groups should handle government-confidential information they inadvertently get their hands on through clerical errors that were not necessarily their own doing.

The USPS has taken “initial corrective action” to ensure other employees’ files go through the proper redaction in response to FOIA requests, the IG report stated. Internal corrective measures include “changing and documenting procedures for handling personnel information requests, establishing a correspondence log to track personnel information requests and responses, and providing FOIA and privacy training to [HR] staff,” according to the report.

they offered /gave file to AP unredacted?

joe pounder ltr demands nyt

...

america Rising submitted a standard FOIA request seeking information from the National Personnel Records Center,which was referred to the USPS, an independent agency. The USPS responded to America Rising's request with their complete personnel file, which included Spanberger's SF-86. America Rising did not specifically request the SF-86.

A reporter from BuzzFeed

contacted the United States Postal Service and was able to verify that the agency had indeed released Spanberger's entire, unredacted personnel file in their response to the FOIA.

Requesting personnel records of candidates who have worked in the federal government is standard fare for both political parties. The USPS may have made a mistake in not redacting personal information in their response to America Rising but America Rising does not provide out personal information to the press like home addresses or Social Security numbers. By forgoing its journalistic responsibilities,

The New York Times

published false and misleading allegations that led to accusations of criminal activity or potential hacking. We would like to request an official correction to the original piece to explain this timeline fully. Sincerely, Joe Pounder CEO America Rising Corp.

https://americarisingcorp.com/letter-to-the-editors-of-the-new-york-times/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abigail_Spanberger 7 22

won 50-48%

Abigail Anne Spanberger^[1] (née Davis, August 7, 1979) is an American politician serving as the U.S. representative from Virginia's 7th congressional district since 2019. She is a member of the Democratic Party. Her district includes most of the northern suburbs of Richmond, as well as some exurban territory around Fredericksburg.Spanberger is a former CIA officer.^[2]

Spanberger defeated Republican incumbent Dave Brat in 2018, ending the Republican Party's 36-year hold on the district. She was reelected to a second term in 2020.^[3]

Early life and education

Abigail Spanberger was born in Red Bank, New Jersey, on August 7, 1979.^[4] When she was 13, her family relocated to the Short Pump area in Henrico County, outside Richmond. She attended John Randolph Tucker High School.^[2] Spanberger was later a page for U.S. Senator Chuck Robb.^[2]

Spanberger earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Virginia and a Master of Business Administration from a joint program between the GISMA Business School in Germany and Purdue University's Krannert School of Management.^[2]

Early career

In 2002 and 2003, Spanberger taught English literature as a substitute teacher at the Islamic Saudi Academy in Northern Virginia.^[5] In the early 2000s, she was a postal inspector, working on money laundering and narcotics cases.^[6]

In 2006, Spanberger joined the Central Intelligence Agency as an operations officer.^[7] She said she gathered intelligence about nuclear proliferation and terrorism.^[8]

In 2014, Spanberger left the CIA and entered the private sector. She was hired by Royall & Company (now EAB).^[9] In 2017, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe appointed her to the Virginia Fair Housing Board.^[10]

U.S. House of Representatives

Elections

2018

Spanberger speaking at a campaign rally on election day eve in 2018

:{In July 2017, Spanberger announced her candidacy for the :(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:United States House of Representatives in Virginia's 7th congressional district in the 2018 election against incumbent Republican Dave Brat, a Tea Party movement member.^[11][12][13] She made the final decision to run after the House of Representatives voted to repeal theAffordable Care Act.^[6] On June 12, 2018, Spanberger defeated Dan Ward in the Democratic primary election with 73% of the vote, receiving more votes than any other candidate in the Virginia primaries that day.^[14][15]Her campaign outraised Brat's.^[16]

In August, the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC closely aligned with Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, conducted a smear campaign against Spanberger. The smear campaign, which attempted to tie her to terrorism, was based on an SF-86 application she completed to obtain security clearance, which was inappropriately released in breach of privacy rules.^[17] She won the November 6 general election by just over 6,600 votes.^[18] While Brat won eight of the district's ten counties, Spanberger dominated the two largest counties, Henrico and Chesterfield, by a combined margin of over 30,000 votes.^[19]

In a visit to the district, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon described it as "an absolute bellwether of the entire country", adding that losing the district would mean the GOP losing control of the House.^[20]

A number of sources claimed Spanberger was the first Democrat to win this seat since 1970, when four-term Democrat John Marsh retired and was succeeded by Republican J. Kenneth Robinson.^[21] But until 1993, the 7th stretched from the outer Washington suburbs through the Shenandoah Valley and Charlottesville to the outer Richmond suburbs;^[22] the present 7th is geographically and demographically the successor to what was the 3rd district before 1993.^[23]

2020

Spanberger faced a close reelection contest against State Delegate Nick Freitas, who represents much of the congressional district's northern portion. She won with 51% of the vote to Freitas's 49%. Freitas carried eight of the district's ten counties, as Brat had done two years earlier. But Spanberger again prevailed by winning the district's shares of Henrico and Chesterfield counties by a combined 43,400 votes, five times her overall margin of 8,400 votes.^[24] She was also boosted by Joe Biden narrowly carrying the district;^[25] Biden is the first Democrat to win what is now the 7th since 1948.

On November 5, days after winning reelection by a margin of 1.8%,^[26] Spanberger criticized the Democratic Party's strategy for the 2020 elections in a phone call with other Democratic caucus members that was subsequently leaked.^[27] Calling the elections "a failure" from a congressional standpoint, she singled out Republican attack ads decrying "socialism" and the movement to "defund the police" as prime reasons the Democratic Party lost seats in swing districts. She argued that Democrats should watch Republican ads before deciding how to talk about issues and "not ever use the word 'socialist' or 'socialism' ever again".^[28]

CNN political editor Chris Cillizza described Spanberger's remarks as "some hard truth" for the Democratic Party, adding that in order to succeed in the 2022 and 2024 elections, the party should "listen to the likes of Spanberger" instead of pushing for "the boldest possible progressive legislation".^[29] Spanberger's remarks were disputed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who noted that Democrats kept the House, and progressive Representative Rashida Tlaib, who said the Democratic Party should "study the results" before dismissing progressives who represent their districts.^[28] The Washington Post digital editor James Downie criticized Spanberger's view, remarking that if a losing officeholder "couldn't manage to tie his or her Republican opponent to almost a quarter of a million COVID-19 deaths in the United States, a tanked economy or a dozen other policy fiascos, that's the candidate's fault."^[30] Downie quoted progressive Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who had noted that no swing-district House Democrat who co-sponsored Medicare for All lost their seat, and had remarked in response to Spanberger's comments that "not a single member of Congress that I'm aware of campaigned on socialism or defunding the police in this general election."^[30][31]

Committee assignments

Spanberger's committee assignments include:^[32][33]

Caucus memberships

Political positions

Some commentators have characterized Spanberger as a centrist Democrat.^[37][38]

In the election for Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives on the opening day of the 116th United States Congress, Spanberger voted for U.S. Representative Cheri Bustos, an Illinois Democrat, joining 11 other Democrats who did not back Nancy Pelosi.^[39]

Abortion

Spanberger supports legal abortion.^[40]

Economy

Although not a member of Congress when it passed, Spanberger criticized the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act supported by President Donald Trump, arguing that its permanent tax cuts for corporations would increase the national debt.^[40]

Spanberger has called for the passage of the USMCA trade deal negotiated between the Trump administration, Mexico, and Canada.^[41][42]

In May 2020, Spanberger voted against the HEROES Act, a proposed $3 trillion stimulus package in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.^[43] She said the bill went "far beyond" pandemic relief and had no chance of passing the Republican-controlled Senate.^[44] In November 2020, Spanberger led a bipartisan effort to secure the**340B Drug Pricing Program** against changes that would lead to significant increases in prescription medication costs.^[45]

Spanberger supports banning members of Congress from trading stocks. She has introduced legislation that would require lawmakers, as well as their spouses and dependent children, to place assets in a blind trust while in office.^[46]

Environment

Spanberger has called climate change "one of the greatest and most imminent threats to our economy, our national security, and our way of life" and promised to "stand up to attacks against science."^[40] During a Committee on Foreign Affairs meeting in 2019, Spanberger asked the Trump administration to reverse its isolationist policies, saying, "it’s in [the US's] national interest to reinforce our stature as a global leader on international environmental and energy issues."^[47]

She described the Green New Deal proposed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a "bold compilation of ideas meant to address global climate change" but criticized it for allegedly including unrelated policy proposals and not identifying specific resolutions to the problems that it identifies. "Overall I am not a supporter of the Green New Deal", she said.^[48]

Guns

Spanberger has called for a new version of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban that expired in 2004. She favors requiring background checks on private gun sales and supported a ban on bump stocks.^[40]

Health care

Spanberger supports the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).^[40] She supports a public option for healthcare via the proposed Medicare-X Choice Act.^[43] In November 2020, she described reducing the cost of prescription drugs as "the top priority of families in [her] district".^[45]

In January 2020, Spanberger sponsored the Public Disclosure of Drug Discounts Act, which passed the House unanimously. The bill requires pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), who manage prescription drug benefits for health insurance companies, to publicize the rebates, discounts, and price concessions they negotiate, via a website hosted by the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services. Spanberger also co-sponsored the Elijah Cummings Lower Drug Costs Now Act, which grants Medicare Part D the power to negotiate prescription prices directly with drug companies.^[49]

Immigration

Spanberger objected to Trump's travel bans from certain predominantly Muslim countries and argued that they would aid jihadist propaganda by allowing a portrayal of the United States as an anti-Muslim country. She has voiced her support for stronger border security measures but opposes Trump's proposed wall.^[40] She voted for a bill that included funding for border infrastructure, technology at ports of entry and more customs and border patrol agents. She said she does not support "sanctuary cities" but also called the term "a campaign slogan a lot of people get caught up in." She added that it "degrades the value of the conversation if we're not actually talking about what the real concern is."^[48] Spanberger called for a pathway to legal status for undocumented immigrants who abide by the laws, work, and pay taxes.^[40]

Spanberger voted to allow U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to be notified when undocumented immigrants attempt to purchase firearms, and voted against the House budget in summer 2019 because it failed to acknowledge the growing national debt.^[43]

Donald Trump

According to FiveThirtyEight's congressional vote tracker, Spanberger voted with President Donald Trump 6.9% of the time—about one seventh of the expected tally (49.1%) when factoring in the district's partisan leaning and general partisanship in Congress.^[50] In the 2016 presidential election, Trump defeated Hillary Clinton with 50% of the vote to her 44% in Spanberger's congressional district.^[51]

On September 23, 2019, Spanberger joined six other freshman House Democrats with national security backgrounds in calling for an impeachment inquiry into Trump. They co-wrote a Washington Post opinion piece explaining their support for an impeachment inquiry, writing: "Congress must determine whether the president was indeed willing to use his power and withhold security assistance funds to persuade a foreign country to assist him in an upcoming election." They wrote that if the allegations were true, they amounted to "a flagrant disregard for the law" and "a threat to all we have sworn to protect."^[52] Spanberger later announced that she would vote in favor of impeachment. "The President's actions violate his oath of office, endanger our national security, and betray the public trust", she said.^[53]

On June 1, 2020, Spanberger tweeted criticism of Trump's reaction to the George Floyd protests, a series of protests against police brutality that began in Minneapolis on May 26. On June 2, The Washington Post and The New York Times quoted Spanberger and several other high-profile former CIA analysts' interpretations of Trump's reaction to the protests as reminiscent of the reaction of totalitarian dictators on the brink of losing control of their dictatorships. "As a former CIA officer, I know this playbook, and I know the president's actions are betraying the very foundation of the rule of law he purports to support, the U.S. Constitution", she said.^[54][55][56] Spanberger took issue with Trump after police used tear gas and rubber bullets on peaceful protestors and a priest during the George Floyd protests to clear a path so that he could have a photo op in front of St. John's Episcopal Church.^[57][54]

Spanberger opposed Democrats' attempts to amend the Insurrection Act of 1807, saying that amending the rarely used law would not accomplish what Democrats intended.^[43]

Joe Biden

As of June 2022, Spanberger had voted in line with Joe Biden's stated position 100% of the time.^[58]

In a November 2021 interview with the New York Times, Spanberger criticized Biden after the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial election, saying, "Nobody elected him to be F.D.R., they elected him to be normal and stop the chaos."^[59] She also said the Democrats had not sufficiently recognized that "inflation is a problem".^[60]

Electoral history...

ref 17

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/31/democrat-suffers-the-kind-of-smear-john-mccain-would-recognize.html

among the distinctions of John McCain’s political life was being targeted by one of the ugliest smear campaigns in memory.

Now, courtesy of Republican operatives tied to House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Democratic House candidate is giving the late Arizona senator competition even as the nation mourns him. For McCain, it was flyers and phone calls to South Carolina voters suggesting he fathered a dark-skinned child whom he and his wife Cindy actually adopted from Bangladesh after she was orphaned. For Abigail Spanberger, it is a groundless suggestion of ties to terrorism when actually she spent eight years as a CIA counterterrorism agent. The attack on Spanberger, now challenging GOP Rep. Dave Brat in Virginia’s 7th District, involved three extraordinary steps.

The first appeared to start with routine opposition research. A Republican consulting firm asked the government for Spanberger’s personnel records under the Freedom of Information Act.

What came back three weeks later was anything but routine: Spanberger’s highly confidential application for a security clearance to work at the CIA. Such “SF-86” applications are strictly shielded by privacy rules.

The Republican firm says it got the form by mistake from the Postal Service, where Spanberger once worked as a postal inspector. The Postal Service on Thursday apologized for its “human error.”

That doesn’t explain how a mistake of that magnitude occurred so rapidly. Spanberger requested her own personnel records months ago and hasn’t received them.

The second step was equally remarkable. Instead of returning the document, the research firm gave it to the Ryan-linked super PAC, the Congressional Leadership Fund.

Seeking political advantage, the fund gave it to an Associated Press reporter in hopes of drawing attention to one tidbit: at age 23, while awaiting her security clearance, Spanberger taught English at an Islamic school in suburban Washington. A graduate from before Spanberger worked there later was convicted of assisting al-Qaeda.

Wary of how Republicans obtained the form, the AP didn’t publish a story. Suggestions of impropriety were self-negating anyway, since the teaching stint occurred during an active federal background check that approved Spanberger for top-secret work.

That made the third step so audacious. Once a New York Times story publicized the form’s improper release, the Ryan-linked PAC embraced the innuendo rather than renouncing it.

“It should surprise no one that Ms. Spanberger would want to hide from voters that she worked at a school that produced some of the world’s most dangerous terrorists,” the fund declared.

The PAC offers no evidence Spanberger did anything wrong. Unless it can, the attack is a stone-cold smear.

Outraged Democrats, fearing other candidates remain at risk, have demanded a federal investigation. Without elaboration, the Postal Service says “a small number of additional requests for information from personnel files were improperly processed.”

Ryan distanced himself from the episode, with a spokesman insisting “we cannot speak to the activity or behavior of outside groups.” So did House GOP campaign chief Steve Stivers, whose spokesman said it “has nothing to do with us.”

Brat, an economics professor who might be expected to campaign on tax cuts and growth, hasn’t commented.

But prominent Republicans outside the party’s fight to hold its House majority share the Democrats’ outrage. "The people who made the information public should be prosecuted,” said Kori Schake, a former National Security Council aide to President George W. Bush. “What the PAC did was a gross violation of her privacy.”

Schake’s ex-colleague Fran Townsend likened innuendo about Spanberger to someone linking Bush to terrorism because he had spoken at a Washington mosque after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

“People fill out an SF-86 because they’re trying to serve their country,” said Townsend, Bush’s White House Homeland Security advisor when Spanberger started at the CIA. “If the U.S. government had a problem at the time, they would have denied her a security clearance.”

Longtime Republican strategist Dan Schnur called it a multistage “atrocity”– beginning with improper release of the SF-86 and ending with the fund’s exploitation of it.

“I’m not sure which aspect of the story is the most horrific,” he said. But as a former spokesman for the Republican National Committee, he’s wearily familiar with the impulses of his embattled Trump-era successors in the national GOP.

“It’s very easy in the heat of a campaign to decide that the ends justify the means,” Schnur explained. “My favorite quote over the years has become Twain’s, ‘History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.’”

Schnur was McCain’s communications director when Bush’s South Carolina allies circulated rumors about the parentage of the McCains’ adopted Bangladeshi daughter, Bridget. Bush’s GOP primary win there blunted McCain’s 2000 presidential bid.

Bitterness over that episode faded with time. Before he died, McCain asked Bush to speak at his Washington funeral service. Bridget McCain spoke Thursday at a service in Arizona.

thehill 11/21

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/581938-trump-in-heels-amanda-chase-launches-challenge-to-spanberger/

conservative Virginia state Sen. Amanda Chase (R) formally launched her congressional campaign for the state’s 7th Congressional District on Wednesday, setting up a potential challenge against incumbent Rep. Abigail Spanberger(D-Va.).

Chase made the announcement in a tweet, with a link to her campaign website. She originally filed to run for Congress last month.

The conservative state senator is a controversial figure in the Old Dominion, drawing the ire of Democrats andfamously describing herself as “Trump in heels.”

Chase, who ran in Virginia’s GOP gubernatorial convention earlier this year, campaigned alongside Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin(R) during the general election. She received criticism from Democrats for speaking at a rally in October where attendees pledged allegiance to a flag that was flown during the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. She also attended the pro-Trump rally that preceded the riot and called attendees “patriots,” though she is not believed to have been among the mob that broke into the Capitol.

Her candidacy makes her the latest Republican to jump into the GOP primary in the 7th District. The other candidates includeTaylor Keeney, former staffer to Gov. Bob McDonnell (R); state Sen. Bryce Reeves; Del. John McGuire; and Tina Ramirez, a former congressional staffer and religious freedom activist.

While Spanberger is seen as one of the most vulnerable members of Congress going into 2022, the Republican primary for the district stands to be contentious. One Republican operative described the race to The Hill last week as “ground zero for the struggle for the party.” The general election will also dependsredistricting and what the district will look like after the final lines are drawn.

House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik’s(R-N.Y.) E-PAC named Keeney to its “Women to Watch” list, while Lt. Gov.-elect Winsome Sears (R) appeared with Ramirez at a campaign rally in Chesterfield, Va., on Tuesday. However, Sears has not endorsed in the race.

TAGS ABIGAIL SPANBERGER ELISE STEFANIK GLENN YOUNGKIN