On Wednesday, Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-VA), the newest member of the 119th Congress, delivered his first remarks in the House. He shared that most of his Northern Virginia constituents know a federal worker who’s lost their job. Without a major shift in current policies, Walkinshaw continued, “families everywhere will know someone who has lost their job because of the DOGE cuts, the tariffs, the budget bill, or our failure to address the rising costs on everything from groceries to rent to prescription drugs.” These observations earned him a sizable helping of boos.
Presumably, he knew the job was dangerous when he took it. (Later, Speaker Mike Johnson tried to lighten the mood during a ceremonial swearing-in for the cameras, telling Walkinshaw, “You can have a long career here and a short drive home.”)
The contest that sent Walkinshaw to Capitol Hill turned out to be billed as advertised. Republican Stewart Whitson ended up on the receiving end of a nearly 50-percentage-point beatdown in the special election to replace Walkinshaw’s mentor, the late Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA), who died of esophageal cancer in May. The Associated Press called the election for Walkinshaw 36 minutes after the polls closed.
Walkinshaw, a former county government official, had served as Connolly’s chief of staff for a decade beginning in 2009. (Wondering how many chiefs of staff have moved up to the top slot? Bloomberg has the list.) His political trajectory mirrored his boss’s. Both men headed to Capitol Hill after serving on the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, the local governing body of the Northern Virginia suburb.
The victory chipped away at the GOP margin in the House. Democrats now have 213 seats to the Republicans’ 219, no small thing in Capitol Hill’s dysfunction junction. A September 23 special election in Arizona’s Seventh Congressional District could send Adelita Grijalva, a member of the Pima County Board of Supervisors and daughter of the late Rep. Raúl Grijalva, who died in March, to Washington.
Virginia’s 11th Congressional District, one of the wealthiest in the country, is home to an estimated 80,000 federal workers, about 13 percent of the Fairfax County workforce. Which meant that challenger Whitson, an Army combat veteran and former FBI special agent, came into the contest already headed into sacrificial lamb territory. Most voters didn’t make the effort to cast a ballot. Turnout was just under 30 percent in the district’s two localities, Fairfax City and Fairfax County.
Walkinshaw talked a good game on the campaign trail, slamming the Trump administration’s attacks on federal workers’ civil service protections and benefits torpedoed by what he called “the big BS bill.” He has a long list of priorities, from preventing domestic violence, to creating more affordable housing, to supporting Ukraine.
Some of his issues, such as “tackling climate change and protecting our environment” and “strengthening our local economy and supporting innovation” can conflict. The new representative’s environmental credentials have been praised, most recently by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY). But Walkinshaw’s acceptance of support from a cryptocurrency PAC and his own embrace of artificial intelligence and blockchain technology reflect Northern Virginia’s investments in increasingly controversial data centers that serve as the literal powerhouses for these state-of-the-art tools.
In Fairfax County, most of its data centers are near homes. Despite the healthy tax revenues that these facilities generate, growing numbers of residents in Fairfax County and elsewhere in Virginia are pushing back against the noise pollution, carbon emissions, and colossal water and energy usage that come with them.
Meanwhile, Democratic Party leaders haven’t had much to celebrate in the past eight and a half months, so they crowed about how Walkinshaw’s victory contributed to a trend of “massive overperformance” in pivotal races this year. The trouble is that Democratic massive overperformance in a special election in a Democratic stronghold across the Potomac River from Washington is an indicator of, well, Democratic overperformance in a special election in a Democratic stronghold across the Potomac River from Washington.
That is, these strings of victories provide “vibe checks” of a particular place, at a particular time, and among a particular set of voters. Now, Democrats have seen gigantic swings in their direction in other special elections around the country. But these tend to be very low-turnout events that reflect the party’s increasing appeal to hyper-engaged voters, rather than an indication of what will happen in a general election. Parsing these permutations of overperformance keeps data geeks and party officials happy, but shouldn’t raise expectations about tsunamis anywhere else.
If the Walkinshaw-Whitson contest presages anything, it’s the main event, the race for governor, between former Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger and Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears. One poll currently shows a closer fight with an important caveat: A Virginia Commonwealth University poll released on Tuesday showed Spanberger ahead of Earle-Sears by nine percentage points, 49 percent to 40 percent—down from a 12-percentage-point margin for the Democrat in July. Overall, 10 percent of respondents remain undecided. But almost half of independents, 48 percent, are undecided. Cost-of-living increases registered as the top issue.
Early voting in Virginia begins September 19.