Four years after Republican Glenn Youngkin won Virginia’s governorship by openly opposing gender ideology in schools, Old Dominion’s latest Democratic gubernatorial candidate is refusing to address her party’s increasingly unpopular commitment to the issue.

Former Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, who is currently running for the office of governor of Virginia, recently dodged questions from the press related to allowing transgender-identifying biological males into girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms. When asked if she supports such policies, which have proven controversial across the state, Spanberger stammered, “Well, the circumstances this legal case plays out is really one of — we’ve had court cases settled or judged here in Virginia, in the fourth district.”

“The former Gavin Grimm case related to bathroom usage. And in fact, the argument is, the assessment is, there needs to be much clearer guidance in terms of what is an executive order’s binding assessment of Title IX versus what has been a decision of a court,” the gubernatorial candidate continued. When pressed to clarify whether or not she supports policies allowing biological males into girls’ bathrooms, Spanberger remained silent. Her staff eventually asked reporters to stop asking the question.

The following week, Spanberger was again asked about her potential support for transgender bathroom policies and again refused to answer the question. Instead, she began addressing school sports policies. “I would support a bill that would put clear provisions in place that provide a lot of local ability for input, based on the age of children, based on the type of sport, based on competitiveness,” she responded, not mentioning bathroom policies at all. “I’m the mom of three daughters in Virginia public schools, and they participate in all activities across the board. I recognize the concern that families and community members might have about the safety of their own kids, about competitiveness, about fairness,” the Democratic candidate continued. “And I think the process that was in place for 10 years was one that was working. It was one that took individual circumstances and individual communities into account, and I think that is the process that Virginia should continue to utilize.”

Transgender bathroom policies have been a controversial and increasingly unpopular issue in Virginia for years. In Loudoun County, transgender bathroom policies allowed for two teenage girls to be raped and sexually assaulted by a biological male identifying as “genderfluid.” More recently, Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) disciplined a group of boys who expressed discomfort when a biological female who identified as transgender came into their locker room. In Fairfax County, the school board’s transgender bathroom policies recently allowed a bearded biological male to enter the girls’ locker room. “It’s unbelievable how many scandals there are in Fairfax County, right? It’s like some kind of corrupt New York City from the 1920s. This is like Tammany Hall,” commented Fairfax County mom Stephanie Lundquist on Friday night’s episode of “Washington Watch.”

“A friend of mine got ahold of me and said that she didn’t find out that this was happening — her daughter was … one of the ones in the locker room at the time — she didn’t find out this was happening until it was reported on local news in the evening,” Lundquist shared. “They didn’t let the parents know that the girls were being subjected to this. … Just a complete disregard to women and girls’ privacy in the most intimate spaces in their schools,” she added.

“All policies at the district level that are political in nature, they’re keeping from the parents,” Lundquist observed. “They’re giving our kids really invasive surveys about their pronouns, ‘get to know you’ surveys about, ‘What are your preferred pronouns?’ The district is undergoing an investigation, a criminal investigation, for allegedly facilitating abortions, helping facilitate abortions of girls who are minors in the schools and allegedly also paying for them,” she noted, referring to a recent Fairfax County scandal. “So we just have so many, so many issues here. A violation of Title IX, violation of parental rights. I mean, there are so many problems in this district that need to be addressed at the district level. And this is happening not just in West Springfield High School, but across the entire district.”

Lundquist pointed out that Democrats and their policies are often forced on school principals and teachers by left-wing school boards and school district leadership. “This starts from a very, very woke superintendent and a school board, which is 12 members, all Democrat endorsed,” the mother emphasized. “Basically, you have a school district that’s sponsoring predatory behavior.”