Who? Mamdani marched in the pride parade last month

Have you ever lived in NYC? It's not an outlier for US politics in any manner. The immigrants trend conservative, as immigrants in the US often do. There are many entire neighborhoods that are deep red enclaves (Orthodox, conservative immigrant communities, cop / firefighter communities like City Island / Seaside / Staten Island). Multiple NYC mayors have been Republicans, one of them was RUDOLF FUCKING GIULIANI. It's the beating heart of global capitalism. Mamdani came out of NYC's most progressive / leftist region of northeast Brooklyn and western Queens and would have never been elected mayor if he hadn't found a way to communicate working class values to the entire swath of US political identities.

You can repeat his success anywhere in the US if you combine his platform with a relatable local identity and a strong ground campaign. Sorry if that freaks you out, it really shouldn't.

A lot of what you're arguing is tangential to what I was trying to say, but I'll still go through it.

1. We were glad in NoVA that Spanberger won in an extremely conservative district in Northern Virgina in 2018. It was a relief compared to what was there before. The follow up in 2020 was also nice.
2. I'm not trying to say that she didn't win by enough. I don't really care about vote margins in electoral politics, I care about what politicians do in office to shift how people perceive the political process. Spanberger has been a consistent corporate vote. Better than the overt fascists. Still complicit in the erosion of our environmental and labor protections. She's part of the false binary we find ourselves in in this country between overt hyperfascism and slow neoliberal fascism. We won't know until we try it if a populist left wing candidate like a Zohran Mamdani or a Bernie Sanders could win in a general. Virginia hasn't had an opportunity to do such a thing in my lifetime.
3. I also don't think that the NYC populace is the same as Virginia. I think our left wing populism would look different from their left wing populism. I know this because I've experienced it first hand. The center of left wing life in SWVA is the Grange, the Mutual Aid Hub, and the Water Defender. In the urban centers the focus is much more on economic unions and labor unions for the factory and office worker. I've lived both lives, and have seen that organization efforts need to fall along different lines and put different focuses on confronting poverty. In the countryside you need to empower people to support eachother through their access to clean drinking water and growable food. In the urban centers you need to empower people to organize their people power to demonstrate to their bosses the ability to say "No."
4. I missed my CWA chapter endorsing her. I didn't know that the CWA endorsed her. That's my mistake. Most unionists did tend to vote for her anyway because Winsome Earle-Sears was an overt fascist. You will receive no argument from me. But this was the first time in my life that the unions refused to endorse either candidate. That's HUGE

5. If she ran unopposed in the primary, why didn’t Progressives put up a challenger? Is it HER fault she ran unopposed? That's EXACTLY the organization failure I was trying to point out. Democracy is not a single event that occurs at the ballot box in November. Even the bourgious electoral form of democracy practiced in the United states requires participation 2-3 times a year to get the best possible outcome, but moreover, it requires dedicating time to go door to door to talk to people about candidates. You get more enthusiasm to do that when people are enthusiastic about the candidates. I haven't seen that in Virginia in a decade. No one trusts any of our politicians and people dedicated to the value of democratic values have been much more focused on community organization with their neighbors. It's been a monumental shift, and one I've very much seen accelerate in the past 4 years since the western regions of the state were devestated by hurricane helene along with our North Carolinian and West Virginian brethren, with many people slowly viewing themselves less as residents of any of our states or border states, and more as being parts of the cultural communities we exist in. The people of Bluefield, Tazewell, and Boone have more in common that their political representation reflects. So why do we even pay attention to the state borders when our real connections are through our food and our water? More and more people want representation that reflects this, and if Democrats don't run a socialist who reflects this, they risk losing to a national-socialism who does Definition of fascism by Seth Tobocman. If we are to resist fascism, we must acknowledge how it takes hold. The "Virginia wants corporate dems" narrative undermines our ability to assess and resist our standing when increasingly there is a boot on our nets.

6. Not being Winsome Earle-Sears is not clear policy value. Virginians like some of her policy positions, but some of her policy positions are WILDLY unpopular, and as a result she has become increasingly unpopular. We do need to acknowledge that there is an element of misogyny driving her unpopularity. I renounce anyone who roots their criticisms of the 67th governor in her gender. Fuck that and fuck off if that's you (not you who I'm replying to, obviously, but I know there's a chance someone's reading this hating her for her gender). I'll state my stance that our last good governor was Francis Harrison Pierpont. Spanberger is a better governor than Youngkin, McDonnel, or Warner up to this point, but we do have to acknowledge what the specific issues with her governorship have been
7. You think I don't know the short sessions and long sessions are completely insane!? THEY'RE COMPLETELY INSANE!! "Oh it's to avoid a permanent professional class of politicians from running the state" bull fucking shit, the result is representatives that spend somewhere between 1 and 3 months a year doing anything, and the rest of the year schmoozing. I fuckin' hate it. I'll have to take your word for it on that it was the centrist dems mainly saying she scuttled collective bargaining and environmental protections we'd been hopeful on. That was the feedback we got from our union endorsed representative and from multiple environmental groups in our valley who spend a lot of time talking to representatives, senators, and anyone else who will listen to that we're tired of the arsenic in the New River, so it was the understanding I had taken away from this past session.

She ran virtually unopposed in the Democratic primary

If she ran unopposed in the primary, why didn’t Progressives put up a challenger? Is it HER fault she ran unopposed?

Spanberger didn't run for Congress is 2024 because she intended to run for governor in 2025. The lack of other primary candidates is obvious evidence of a party clearing the path for their chosen candidate.