Virginia — 2nd District

As the Supreme Court of Virginia weighs whether to uphold the redistricting referendum that would allow the General Assembly to redraw congressional maps mid-decade, candidates in the 2nd District are gearing up for what could be familiar contest.

Incumbent Jen Kiggans, a Republican, and former Rep. Elaine Luria, acute care doctor Nila Devanath and former USAID contractor Patrick Mosolf — all Democrats — said they were filing Friday to run for Congress. Luria served two terms before losing to Kiggans in 2022.

Friday marked the first day candidates could officially file with party committee chairs to qualify for the ballot. Candidates seeking election in the House of Representatives must receive at least 1,000 signatures to appear on the ballot. Those signatures are subsequently verified. All four candidates said they had sufficient signatures to qualify.

Kiggans officially kicked off her campaign April 26 at an event that included former Republican Govs. Glenn Youngkin and George Allen. Much of Kiggans’ messaging has focused on criticism of Virginia Democrats who hold a trifecta of power with both legislative chambers and the governor’s mansion.

“There’s a lot of buyer’s remorse right now,” Kiggans said. “That’s why you saw so many people come out and vote in an April 21 special election, which is an unusual time for us to have an election.”

In last month’s election, the “yes” vote — to approve a constitutional amendment that Democrats would use to redraw congressional maps to favor their party in 10 out of the 11 districts — narrowly passed with 51.7% of the vote. More than 3 million people voted, and slightly more people voted against the constitutional amendment than voted for Republican gubernatorial candidate Winsome Earle-Sears in November.

Kiggans attributed the loss to being outspent by the “yes” campaign. She also criticized Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s ultimate support of redistricting, an issue on which the governor had initially been lukewarm. Kiggans also condemned policies passed out of the Democrat-controlled General Assembly, such as the decision to rejoin the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which she said would raise taxes and energy costs and make communities less safe.

“People are not happy about what they’ve seen from Spanberger’s administration and what’s coming out of Richmond,” she said.

It’s not clear yet if the Supreme Court of Virginia will uphold the redrawn maps. If it does, the new map would shift 25 precincts from the heavily Democratic 3rd District to the 2nd. The new district would favor Democrats by 12.6 points, according to the Virginia Public Access Project. The current iteration has a slight Republican lean. Kiggans and Luria said they would have to spend some time getting to know their potential new constituents.

“We win either way,” Kiggans said. “My district was the least-impacted. When you look at the drawn maps, I still have 83% of my old district. We have would have more work to do to meet some of the new voters in these redrawn parts of the district … we absolutely can still win.”

Luria, who had been campaigning since November, relaunched her campaign last week.

“I think it was a good point to relaunch and reintroduce ourselves to voters, especially those new ones who will be in the redrawn district,” she said. “Parts of Chesapeake have shifted between districts, and we want to make sure that everybody has our campaign on their radar.”

Luria cited Democrats’ popularity in the 2025 election, in which Spanberger won with 57.6% of the vote, and the passage of the referendum as reasons to be optimistic about her attempt to regain her U.S. House seat. She said she was hearing from voters significant concerns about President Donald Trump’s administration, including rising prices at the gas pump and the war with Iran.

“We have two aircraft carrier strike groups from Hampton Roads in harm’s way and the Ford on the longest deployment since the Vietnam war,” she said.

Democrats say the campaign is about “broken promises” and point to Kiggans’ votes on policies and last year’s spending bill, which came with significant cuts to Medicaid. Kiggans also initially expressed concern about the prospect of Affordable Care Act tax credits ending at the end of 2025 but ultimately voted against a proposed three-year extension.

Luria says this campaign is different from 2022 because of Kiggans’ voting record.

“People are paying more for everything because of her rubber stamp for the Trump administration since she’s been in Washington,” Luria said. “I think it’s clear to voters that she hasn’t done what she said she was going to to do, and I think they’ll hold her accountable this November.”

Meanwhile, other candidates are critical of the national support Luria has received ahead of the Aug. 4 Democratic primary, which they say is by no means a done deal.

Devanath and Mosolf are positioning themselves to the left of Luria on issues such as Israel and campaign finance reform. They’re running with substantially less funding than the establishment candidates — last month’s campaign finance reports showed Devanath and Mosolf had, respectively, $66,000 and $2,000 in cash on hand. That’s compared with Luria’s $2.3 million and Kiggans’ $3 million.

Still, Devanath and Mosolf say it’s important to have progressive representation in the primary and that they intend to hang in until the bitter end.

“We have seen an outpouring of community support in terms of actual people on the ground,” Devanath said. “They have said ‘you need to stay in this race,’ and the reason is because there’s nobody else in the race right now that can stand up to this establishment political branch.”

Devanath also noted Luria’s previous loss to Kiggans.

“Right now, we have a choice of whether to go forward or keep looking backward,” Devanath said. “We have a lot of establishment Democrats who were supported by the DCCC in that red to blue campaign, really before folks who are in a primary really got a chance to say anything.”

Both Democratic challengers also said there was a need for campaign finance reform. In 2018, Luria pledged to reject corporate Political Action Committee donations but did not take that pledge again in 2020. VPM reported in 2021 that she took $34,000 in corporate PAC contributions to pay down debt from her reelection campaign.

“The de facto situation of our campaigns, I think even Luria, represents a kind of status quo position on the campaign finance system,” Mosolf said. “I’m just realizing more and more how detrimental the current system in terms of campaign finance is to the function of our democracy.”

When Luria entered the campaign, she joined crowded field of Democratic challengers. But in the last few months, most have dropped out of the race.

Matt Strickler, who served as Natural and Historic Resources secretary under Gov. Ralph Northam, announced the end of his campaign last week citing the significant financial costs of campaigning. James Osyf, a Navy reservist from Virginia Beach, suspended his campaign in December to allow for focused “time, attention, and collective momentum” on the purpose of defeating Kiggans, as well as to await clarity on redistricting.

Kate Seltzer, 757-713-7881, [email protected]