Governor Spanberger has now made two trips to western Virginia in her first hundred days. On April 16 she was in Abingdon. On April 27 she was in Roanoke. The visits happened. The way they happened is the story.
In January, before the inauguration, Cardinal’s Dwayne Yancey gave the incoming governor five pieces of advice. The third one was “show up — a lot.” He coined what he called the Roanoke Rule: a Roanoke address does not count as Southwest Virginia. Some don’t believe the New River Valley counts either. The advice was specific and the test was clear. Three months in, the test has been run.
The Regional Readiness Summit on April 16 brought more than 100 senior public safety leaders to Abingdon. Sheriffs, fire chiefs, emergency management. The kind of room a governor uses to build standing in a region she does not represent politically. The Abingdon stop was the inaugural event in what the administration is calling a Unified Readiness Framework, executed under Executive Order 12. It is exactly the kind of substantive, region-specific event Yancey was asking for…