Spanberger slammed for touting her 'diverse' Virginia cabinet

Bonnie Krenz-Schnurman is Virginia’s first female chief of staff. The Secretary of Health and Human Resources, Marvin B. Figueroa, a Honduran immigrant whose first language is not English, was described by Spanberger as, “hands down the best applicant.”

Another cabinet member is Chief Diversity Officer Sesha Joi Moon, a black woman identifies as queer who was the chief diversity officer in the US House of Representatives, an office that was dissolved in March 2024. Currently, Virginia is the only state with a chief diversity officer on the cabinet.

Recently, the black cabinet members gathered at the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia to “gain inspiration” from a photo taken during the Reconstruction Era of black legislators in the Virginia General Assembly. They think that this may be a “fleeting moment.”

Moon said, “If we don’t document, we make it easy to erase us too.” The three other white women and six white men who round out the Virginia cabinet were not in the photograph.

Spanberger’s X post currently has over 3 million views and 11,000 comments.

One user on X posted, “Where’s the diversity you’re talking about? You have an 86% Black cabinet in a state that’s only 19% Black. You have a 0% white male cabinet in a state [that’s] 32% white male.”

Another user said, “You realize you are demonstrating unequal hiring practices?”

Also, one user said, “If DEI were a picture, it’d be this one.”

Spanberger recently proclaimed Aug. 21, 2026 as Southern Black Girls Day in Virginia.

Spanberger was accused earlier this month of restoring the voting rights for felons, even those that have are dead, for mail-in ballots. By law, VA governors are not allowed to mass-restore felon voting rights. Virginia Beach lawyer, Tim Anderson, reviewing many cases of rights being restored to dead felons, said, “the order is a form order and mass restored a bunch of felons voting rights in July without reviewing anything.”