These centrist women in a group chat are leading Democrats in 2025

They jumped into politics in President Donald Trump’s first term. They ascended to Congress with similar résumés. They text all the time in a group chat.

Now Abigail Spanberger, Mikie Sherrill and Elissa Slotkin are all playing leading roles for the Democratic Party — a trio of centrist women with national security backgrounds who helped retake the House in 2018 and this year hope to steer their beleaguered party back toward winning.

Spanberger, 45, had already clinched the Democratic nomination for governor of Virginia heading into Tuesday’s primaries. She and 53-year-old Sherrill, the gubernatorial nominee in New Jersey, will lead Democrats on the ballot in the marquee races of 2025, testing the party’s ability to rebuild in Trump’s second term. Slotkin, a 48-year-old freshman senator from Michigan, was tapped to rebut Trump’s address to Congress on behalf of her party this year — and will soon start rolling out a “war plan” to beat Trump, as Democrats search for leaders.

“We were never going to run for political office,” Spanberger said. “That was not anywhere in our life plan.” Then Trump won the 2016 election.

The ascent of the three lawmakers signals that Democrats are in some ways reprising their playbook from Trump’s first term, elevating candidates with service records who have at times worked to separate themselves from their party brand and who proved especially successful in 2018.

It’s unclear whether that pattern will continue into the midterms, as competing Democratic factions, including the party’s more liberal wing, try to chart a different course. Slotkin, Spanberger, Sherrill and a couple like-minded colleagues were known as a centrist alternative to the liberal “Squad” during their time together in the House.

Spanberger vented after the 2020 election that Democrats had allowed themselves to be cast as far-left and declared, “We need to not ever use the word ‘socialist’ or ‘socialism’ ever again.” And Slotkin recently sparred with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), suggesting his term “oligarchy” sounds too elite. Sanders responded, “I think the American people are not quite as dumb as Ms. Slotkin thinks they are.”

“The common personality traits are we are just really used to working hard and like gutting it out,” Spanberger said.

Abigail Spanberger, right, Virginia Democratic Party nominee for governor, stands by during an event in support of her nomination at the Eastern Henrico Recreation Center in Richmond, Virginia, on April 8.

Republicans have rebuked the Democratic nominees’ billing as moderates and sought to tie them to the status quo. “The general election is officially on, and the contrast could not be more clear between Lt. Governor Winsome Earle-Sears’ record of commonsense leadership alongside Governor Youngkin versus Abigail Spanberger’s failed record in Washington,” Republican Governors Association rapid-response director Kollin Crompton said in a statement Tuesday.

All three Democratic women flipped Republican-held House districts in a Democratic wave year while touting their backgrounds. Spanberger and Slotkin worked at the CIA, while Sherrill was a Navy helicopter pilot before working as a federal prosecutor.

Candidates such as Spanberger, Sherrill and Slotkin are an ideal “antidote” to Trump, said Dan Sena, who helped lead House Democrats’ 2018 campaign efforts and worked to recruit candidates with that profile, “and so I’m not surprised that these three have sort of risen.”

In a town known for countless transactional friendships, the three Democrats say they are genuinely close.

In Congress, they quickly connected with one another and other new members with national security chops, such as Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pennsylvania). Sherrill and Spanberger shared a Capitol Hill apartment. Going out in the evenings, Slotkin said, they would talk about the changes they wanted to see in their party and country.

They occasionally refer to themselves and fellow women with national security backgrounds as the “badass caucus” — though Spanberger said she bristles a bit at the language and sometimes reminds Slotkin that she is from a “polite Southern state.”

Spanberger left Congress this year as she ran for governor. But the three women are still in touch every other day, if not daily, Slotkin said.

“In committee hearings and on the floor, people will say, like, ‘my good friend from,’ and they, like, hate each other,” Spanberger said. “We are actually real friends … at work and beyond.”

Spanberger is facing Earle-Sears, the Virginia lieutenant governor, in a purple-state race that will double as a referendum on Trump’s second term so far. Virginia’s off-year governor’s race often swings against the party in power in the White House, and Democrats hope to tap into the backlash to Trump’s policies, including dramatic cuts to the federal government that have had an outsize impact in Virginia.

Earle-Sears — who served in the Marines — has touted her policy record with Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin and said that if voters want “another typical politician,” they should “look to Washington.” But Republicans are already concerned about an enthusiasm gap, and Sears lags far behind Spanberger in fundraising.

Spanberger said she bonded with Sherrill in part because both are mothers with children around the same age. They connected over the uniqueness of parenting in their roles: Going to the store with their family can turn into a meeting with constituents. Kids sometimes forget when their moms are working in Washington.

They both struggled to get their children to stand calmly during their victory speeches in 2018.

“It’s a lifestyle job in that it sort of consumes all aspects of the way you live your life,” Spanberger said. “It’s parenting, but it’s parenting with a particularly unique slice.”

While Spanberger sailed to the nomination in Virginia, Sherrill faced a crowded, bitter primary in New Jersey this year. Her biography featured heavily in her ads and messaging.

“I was trained in the Navy that in a crisis, you run toward the fight,” Sherill said in one ad. “So, I’m running for governor to defend the state we love.”

She pitched herself as a foil to both Trump and his billionaire donor Elon Musk, vowing in ads to “fight the Trump-Musk madness,” and won her six-candidate primary by double digits. Democrats are attacking her opponent, Republican Jack Ciattarelli, for cozying up to Trump this year, while the GOP hopes to make the race a referendum on liberal leadership in New Jersey — where Trump overperformed last year.

Democratic candidate for governor, Rep. Mikie Sherrill, answers a supporter's question while at a meet and greet event at Renato's restaurant.

Slotkin is not the ballot this year. But she is eager to help her party rebound. At a conference this month for centrist Democrats, she said the party cannot win if its members don’t work together and made a comparison to the military.

“When there’s not a strong leader in the brigade, different battalions start arguing with each other,” she said. “Progressives, moderates, new generation, older folks — we turn on each other because we don’t have the vision and the game plan. And that, to me, still surprises me every day.”

In an interview later, she said her “war plan” against Trump grew out of a void.

“I think that I was expecting someone else to be producing it, and then I got tired of waiting,” she said.