Richmond, VA – On Saturday, the Washington Post editorial board endorsed Reps. Elaine Luria, Abigail Spanberger, and Jennifer Wexton on “the basis of their seriousness, tenacity and substantive achievements.”
The Washington Post highlighted the Congresswomen's achievements in making our communities safer, working across the aisle to deliver for Virginians, and their vast achievements in Congress.
The Washington Post: Here’s who The Post endorses for Congress in Virginia
By Editorial Board
October 22, 2022
A trio of Virginia’s Democratic congresswomen — lawmakers with impressive backgrounds in national security, the military and law enforcement, as well as admirable records during their two terms in the House — faces stiff challenges from Republican candidates this year in swing districts. In an election year expected to flip the House to Republican control, the three, Reps. Abigail Spanberger, Elaine Luria and Jennifer Wexton, deserve reelection on the basis of their seriousness, tenacity and substantive achievements. We endorse all three.
Even as her party has tilted left, Ms. Spanberger, who before entering Congress handled and recruited spies as a CIA case officer, has been a levelheaded, problem-solving moderate. In her four years representing Virginia’s 7th District, which reaches from Richmond to D.C.’s suburbs, she has sponsored no-nonsense bipartisan legislation and, ever independent-minded, has taken on luminaries in her own party.
She worked across the aisle to increase federal funding for local police agencies to hire and train more officers and to empower Medicare to negotiate lower prices for prescription drugs. She also led a bipartisan effort to ban stock-trading by lawmakers and their immediate family members — a practice that is a recipe for conflicts of interest. That put her at odds with some fellow Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.); Ms. Spanberger did not back down.
Her Republican opponent, Yesli Vega, a former police officer, is a first-term member of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors who attacked the FBI as “corrupt” and lauded Jan. 6, 2021, rioters as “Americans exercising their First Amendment rights.” She also theorized that rape victims are unlikely to become pregnant.
In Virginia’s 2nd District, which includes the world’s largest naval station, in Norfolk, Ms. Luria has shown herself to be another pragmatic centrist. Having served as a naval officer for 20 years, she has been ranked by nonpartisan groups as among the most effective members of Congress.
Her Republican opponent, state Sen. Jen A. Kiggans, pivoted from the center to the extremes as she eyed a congressional race. She was one of just four GOP state senators to support a bill this year that would have spent $70 million auditing the 2020 presidential election in Virginia, which Mr. Biden won by 10 percentage points.
In Virginia’s 10th District, Ms. Wexton, a former domestic abuse prosecutor and state senator, has been a measured advocate for tolerance. In Congress, she advanced legislation banning LGBTQ discrimination in housing; in Richmond, she championed bills to raise safety standards in day-care centers and to protect victims of revenge porn.
Her GOP challenger, Hung Cao, a retired naval officer, opposed U.S. aid to Ukraine, defended Jan. 6 rioters and asserted falsely, after the Uvalde, Tex., school massacre, that more “people get bludgeoned to death and stabbed to death than they get shot.”
In all three tight races, the contrast between the candidates is clear.
###