Spanberger Vetoes Women-Owned and Minority-Owned Businesses Bill—Says Didn’t Go Far Enough

As Democrats continue to hemorrhage support among white voters, legislation passed by Virginia’s Democrat-controlled Legislature offers a revealing glimpse into the party’s increasingly comfortable embrace of anti-white policymaking.

HB 61, known as the Small, Women-owned, and Minority-owned Business (SWaM) certification program, sought to expand preferential treatment for women- or minority-owned small businesses in state contracting and would have increased discretionary state spending directed toward such businesses by 3% annually until agencies reached a 42% target.

It also proposed reserving funds between $10,000 and $200,000 for qualifying businesses and granting them a “price preference” of up to 5%. In practice, this meant women- or minority-owned businesses could charge more than white or male competitors and still receive no-contest government contracts on the sole basis of the owners’ race or sex.

The bill was ultimately vetoed by Gov. Abigail Spanberger, though not because she objected to race-focused contracting. Instead, Spanberger argued the proposal didn’t go far enough.

“House Bill 61 would fundamentally change the SWaM program by altering the definition to limit participation to small SWaM businesses,” the governor wrote in her veto message. “These changes would limit state contract opportunities for nearly 800 women-owned and minority-owned businesses that currently participate in the program and would reduce Virginia’s current SWaM spending by at least $340 million dollars.”

The governor’s objection was not to racially biased state funding itself, but to limiting access to the existing system.

TRENDING ARTICLES

opinion

Senate GOP Leaders Pull a Bait-and-Switch With Reconciliation 3.0

Deroy Murdock

opinion

What Democrats Could Say, but Aren’t. What They Are Saying, but Shouldn’t.

Victor Davis Hanson

opinion

Victor Davis Hanson: Saluting Tulsi, Slamming Schiff

Victor Davis Hanson

Lest you assume Spanberger is unique in her view that non-minorities are less deserving of government largesse than their minority counterparts, Democrats across the nation are just as bad.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani openly defended “shifting the tax burden from overtaxed homeowners in the outer boroughs to more expensive homes in richer and whiter neighborhoods,” as part of a “Racial Equity Plan.”

Democrat-run Portland, Oregon, has likewise adopted policies tying public services and housing outcomes to race. Some homelessness and housing initiatives explicitly seek to place minority residents “at rates equal to or greater than their white peers.” The Washington Free Beacon reported that nearly $50 million in Portland spending appears directed toward programs excluding whites entirely, with hundreds of millions more tied to explicitly race-oriented goals.

Things aren’t much better for whites where Democrat voters and activists hold the reins of power.

The New York Times is currently facing litigation from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission over claims that a white, male employee was denied a promotion because of his race and sex. According to the EEOC, finalists advancing through the hiring process were exclusively non-white, and the paper ultimately selected an outside minority candidate despite the fact that she had limited experience in the required industry and internal reports flagged her as a weak option.

In this broader context, Virginia’s HB 61 was not an aberration, but part of a wider political trend. Democrat lawmakers and institutions are willing to actively worsen the lives of whites in a misguided attempt at putting their thumb on the racial scales.

And that applies to Democrats across the spectrum, from the radical leftists of Portland to the so-called moderates of Virginia.

Thus, Virginians should not dismiss HB 61 as a one-off. The bill reflects a larger and more insidious trend in the modern Democratic Party. To them, whites are a privileged group that must be torn down with the force of government. But government picking winners and losers based on race is so wildly antithetical to the vision of America, it beggars belief.

Democrats may claim Republicans are the racists, but perhaps they should look in the mirror.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.