Two months. That’s how long Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger has been in office. In that time, she’s proposed more than 50 new taxes. Fifty. Including a tax on dog grooming. Your golden retriever’s haircut is now a matter of state revenue.
Welcome to “affordability,” Democrat style.
Spanberger ran for governor on making Virginia more affordable. That was the pitch. That was the yard sign. That was the reason suburban moms in Northern Virginia pulled the lever. And now, 60 days into the job, she’s rolled out a tax pinata that would make even California blush: gym memberships, rideshare services, dry cleaning, repairs, and — we cannot stress this enough — dog grooming.
She’s also proposing a 10% income tax. Virginia’s current top rate is 5.75%. She wants to nearly double it. On the same voters who elected her to make their lives cheaper.
The list reads like a parody. Like someone at the Heritage Foundation wrote a fake press release about what a Democrat would do if you actually let one run Virginia. But it’s real. All 50-plus taxes are real. Your Uber to the airport? Taxed. Your gym membership you bought in January and stopped using in February? Taxed. Getting your dress dry-cleaned for a job interview? Taxed. Taking Buster to PetSmart for a trim? The Commonwealth of Virginia would like its cut, please.
This is what happens when Democrats win in purple states. They campaign like moderates and govern like they just discovered a printing press in the basement. Spanberger spent years in Congress building a “centrist” brand. She was the reasonable one. The pragmatist. The grown-up. Two months as governor and she’s trying to tax every service that exists between waking up and going to bed.
And she’s not even the worst one. Up in New York City, new Mayor Shahana Mamdani — three months into his own tenure — wants to slash the estate tax exemption from $7.35 million down to $750,000. That’s not a trim. That’s a 90% reduction. He also wants to jack the estate tax rate from 16% to 50%, freeze rents on two million apartments, and raise taxes on anyone the city considers “wealthy,” which in Manhattan means anyone who can afford a one-bedroom apartment.
This is the Democrats’ midterm problem, and they’re building it themselves. No Republican had to lift a finger. The party’s national message for 2026 is supposed to be “affordability” — the cost of groceries, the cost of housing, the cost of living. And their own governors and mayors are running around proposing the exact opposite of affordability in real time.
A recent poll from America’s New Majority Project found 77% of Americans oppose tax increases on the middle class. Seventy-seven percent. And Spanberger’s response to that number is apparently: “Hold my dog grooming tax.”
The GOP doesn’t need to run attack ads in Virginia. They just need to read the governor’s tax proposal out loud. “She wants to tax your gym. She wants to tax your Uber. She wants to tax your dog’s haircut.” That’s not an attack ad. That’s a news summary.
Every Republican running in a purple district in 2026 should send Spanberger a thank-you card. She’s doing more for the GOP midterm message than any campaign consultant could dream of. When your opponent campaigns on making life cheaper and then proposes 50 new taxes in her first 60 days, you don’t need a strategy. You need a photocopier.
Tax the dog grooming. That’s where we are. That’s the Democrat Party in 2026. They’ll tax the lint off your jacket if they think they can write a line item for it.