Senate District 30. Nearly six years after becoming the first transgender state legislator in the United States, Del. Danica A. Roem (D) is seeking a well-deserved promotion to an open Senate seat in western Prince William County. She has a solid record, including the expansion of school lunch programs for kids in need. Ms. Roem, a self-described “Tim Kaine Democrat,” broke with her party to support penalty enhancements for people who abandon someone overdosing on drugs rather than calling for help. She also bucked leadership to oppose eliminating the grocery tax because it would shortchange transportation funding. “I knew it would be on mailers and pass anyway, but I still voted against it,” Ms. Roem said. A former newspaper reporter, she has also been a strong advocate of expanding government transparency.
Her Republican opponent, Bill Woolf, has done noble work to combat human trafficking. As a Prince William County detective, he aggressively pursued the narco-gang MS-13. At the same time — and problematically — he left the force in 2017 after an internal affairs investigation found that he had been moonlighting at another job while on duty.
Senate District 31. Democrat Russet Perry is a former CIA officer and county prosecutor. She’s holding “Russet for Roe” events across the western Loudoun County district to highlight her support for protecting the status quo in Virginia, where abortion is legal through about 26 weeks of pregnancy. The procedure is allowed in the third trimester only if three doctors certify that continuing the pregnancy is “likely to result in the death of the woman or substantially and irremediably impair the mental or physical health of the woman.” Ms. Perry says this is sensible. “I don’t want my daughter to grow up with fewer rights than I’ve had,” she said. As a line prosecutor for the Loudoun County commonwealth’s attorney, she put violent criminals and child molesters behind bars while helping stand up a drug court and behavioral health docket to get nonviolent offenders the treatment they needed.
Her Republican opponent, Juan Pablo Segura, is a health-care entrepreneur who co-founded a start-up called Babyscripts. He helped bankroll a lawsuit against the school board in Loudoun County, which has been ground zero in the culture wars.
Senate District 27. Democrat Joel Griffin, a government contractor and veteran running in a military-heavy area in and around Fredericksburg, felt compelled to run for office as he watched the Jan. 6 insurrection unfold on television. As chair of the Stafford County economic development authority, he helped Germanna Community College expand its nursing and cybersecurity programs.
Also in the race are Del. Tara Durant (R), a former teacher at a parochial school, and Monica Gary, a Stafford County supervisor and an independent. Ms. Gary supports abortion rights and wants to reform the political system by putting in place ranked-choice voting and capping the size of individual donations — both good ideas. But she threatens to play spoiler in this election.
House District 21. John Stirrup (R), a former Prince William County supervisor and onetime chief of staff to then-Rep. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), was caught on tape saying he’d “support a 100 percent ban” on abortion and called a 15-week ban bill “a starting point” that “really doesn’t save that many lives.” Josh Thomas (D), a commercial real estate lawyer and Marine veteran who served in Afghanistan, is much better suited for this seat in Prince William. He supports abortion rights but has focused his campaigning on pocketbook issues. He’s eager to expand low-income housing tax credits to incentivize private-sector construction of affordable housing.
House District 65. In the Fredericksburg area, former delegate Joshua Cole (D), an assistant pastor at Zion Church and former president of the Stafford County NAACP, is trying to make a comeback after narrowly losing reelection two years ago. He warns that Republicans will try to roll back gun-control laws if they win both chambers. His Republican opponent, Lee Peters, a captain in the Stafford County Sheriff’s Office, says what he wants to roll back are some of the policing reforms that passed after George Floyd’s 2020 murder.
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