National Republicans are taking a keen interest in the Democratic primary in Northern Virginia’s 7th Congressional District, but their primary focus has been on one candidate — Eugene Vindman.
He is a political newcomer with a familiar face because of the public role that he and his twin brother, Alexander, played in the first impeachment of then-President Donald Trump.
Vindman is one of seven Democrats vying in a June 18 primary for the party’s nomination in a district based in Prince William, Stafford and Spotsylvania counties. Incumbent Abigail Spanberger is not running and is seeking the Democratic nomination for governor in 2025.
The National Republican Congressional Committee is so interested in Vindman that it quoted four prominent Virginia Democrats — including three of the four women of color who are running against him in the primary on June 18 — in a news release ridiculing him for being pictured behind a flag that strongly resembles the Virginia state seal and current state flag.
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The seal was designed by founding father George Wythe and adopted by the future state’s constitutional convention in 1776, but Virginia had adopted this particular flag under Confederate rule during the Civil War.
Vindman quickly took responsibility for what he said was an unwitting mistake, but the Republican attack may have sent a different message than the one it intended.
“It’s very clear the Republicans don’t want to run against Vindman,” said Stephen Farnsworth, director of the Center for Leadership and Media at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg.
Vindman, 48, has a national profile because of his role in the Trump impeachment. In a district closely tied to national defense, he has a background in foreign policy after 25 years in the U.S. Army, including service at the State Department and the National Security Council, working as deputy legal adviser in the White House.
He also has a knack for raising money — $3.8 million through March 31 and more than $1.8 million in the bank for the stretch run for the nomination in a race that could determine party control of the U.S. House of Representatives.
“This is a seat we must win in order to win back the House,” Vindman said during a 7th District Democratic forum in Fredericksburg last month.
Vindman faces formidable competition in the seven-candidate primary, which features four women who have won elections in Prince William County. The county holds one-third of the registered voters in a district that includes all or parts of 11 localities.
Former Del. Elizabeth Guzman, D-Prince William, is a political progressive who has won three House races, vied in a statewide primary for lieutenant governor and lost a state Senate seat by 60 votes last year.
“Voters like people who have proven they can win elections in swing districts, and I have done it three times,” Guzman said.
Del. Briana Sewell, D-Prince William, has won two consecutive House elections and worked for Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-11th; and Ann Wheeler, former chair of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors.
Margaret Angela Franklin and Andrea Bailey are both serving their second terms as Prince William supervisors.
In addition, the field includes Cliff Heinzer, a retired diplomat and former chairman of the Stafford County Democratic Committee; and Carl Bedell, a lawyer and former U.S. Army intelligence officer who lives in Greene County on the western side of the district.
“We need somebody who understands the entire district, not just the I-95 corridor,” said Bedell, who lived in Arlington County for 11 years before moving to Greene and continuing to represent veterans on their disability benefits.
Funds, local ties
Vindman, who lives in Dale City in Prince William, has a significant financial advantage over his opponents, including more than four times the money that the leading Republican candidate, Derrick Anderson, has raised.
But his opponents say their experience and name recognition in the district give them advantages he lacks.
“I don’t think the race is going to be won by money,” said Bailey, 69, who had raised $208,497, including $15,000 in loans, and had $188,044 at the end of March. “The race is going to be won by people with the experience and the know-how.”
She calls herself a “’get ‘er done’ type of Democrat” who led a push for $16 million in federal, state and local money to open a crisis receiving center in Woodbridge for people in behavioral health emergencies. She serves on multiple regional boards to address the region’s transportation challenges, especially for working-class people who rely on public transit to reach their jobs. As the wife of a 25-year Marine Corps officer, she focuses on benefits and services for military veterans.
“I’m not someone people need to get to know, like some of my opponents,” Bailey said.
Franklin, 38, touts a different kind of experience as a former staffer for eight years in Congress, working with two Democratic representatives and a senator. She works as a lobbyist for a government relations firm in Washington, D.C., in addition to her work on the Prince William Board of County Supervisors, where she said she led the creation of an affordable housing trust fund and efforts to curb gun violence in the county’s Route 1 corridor.
She had raised $241,346, including a $2,500 loan to her campaign, and had $140,795 on hand at the end of March.
“I think it’s going to come down to voters deciding who can be most effective in addressing their challenges on Day One,” Franklin said.
Guzman, 51, an immigrant from Peru and a social worker in Alexandria, had raised $204,979 and had $147,800 in hand on March 31. She is also getting a big outside boost from CASA in Action, a Hispanic advocacy organization that has spent $182,112 independently on her behalf in a district in which Latinos comprise 18% of registered voters.
“Who’s going to bring out those voters?” she asked. “I’m the only one who can go to them in the language they prefer and get them to the polls.”
Sewell, 34, who has been constrained in raising money because lawmakers cannot do so while the General Assembly is in session, had raised $172,724 through the end of March and had $55,537 in hand. She said she is happy to run on her legislative record, which includes passage of a bill this year to require paid family medical leave. It was vetoed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
Last year, the Council of State Governments named her one of 20 rising leaders under the age of 40. She said she is focused on “kitchen table issues” that directly affect people who live in the district — housing, the cost of food, access to health care and a job to pay for it. She said those issues also include creating change in Congress so that it will not repeatedly take the country to the brink of a federal government shutdown that would devastate her district.
“This is not a nationalized race,” said Sewell, who grew up in Woodbridge as the daughter of two U.S. Air Force veterans. “This is a race about telling the story of the 7th District.”
Bedell, 45, who is running to demand accountability for members of Congress, had raised about $60,000, including a $14,500 loan he made to the campaign, and had half of it in the bank on March 31.
Heinzer, 63, a former Green Beret who wants to fix problems ranging from traffic congestion on Interstate 95 to the war in the Middle East, had raised almost $28,000, most of it in loans he made to the campaign, and had $23,581 in hand at the end of the quarter.
“Money helps, but it isn’t what wins,” he said.
Swing district
The 7th is one of the few swing districts that could flip either way in a high-stakes election for House control. Spanberger won her first two races when the district was rooted in the Richmond suburbs. The district shifted to Northern Virginia under a redistricting map that the Virginia Supreme Court adopted in late 2021.
Two years ago, Spanberger won again, by 4.6 percentage points, topping Republican Yesli Vega, a Prince William supervisor who had received strong backing from Youngkin. In 2021, Youngkin carried the district by 5 percentage points.
“The truth is, this year, it’s a toss-up,” said Heinzer, who chaired the Stafford Democratic committee during the last congressional race. “It’s as purple as it gets.”
Vindman has taken criticism from both fellow Democrats and Republicans for being new to politics in the region, but Farnsworth, at the University of Mary Washington, noted, “This is a district that has a lot of people who aren’t native Virginians in it.”
A native of Ukraine who arrived in New York with his refugee family when he was 4, Vindman said he has lived in Virginia three times during his service as a lawyer in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps and later the National Security Council. He has lived in the Dale City area for eight years, with two children in Prince William public schools (his son now attends the College of William & Mary), so he said he is interested in school safety and quality, as well as other issues such as protecting women’s reproductive rights, improving transportation networks and ensuring universal broadband access.
But his foremost issue is the threat to democracy that he said Trump poses as the Republican presidential nominee and Vindman asserts he demonstrated when he was president by allegedly attempting to tie U.S. aid to Ukraine to help undermine Democrat Joe Biden, who defeated Trump in 2020.
Vindman’s brother, who lives four houses away from him and had an office directly across the hall in the White House, testified against the then-president during his impeachment in 2019, and Eugene was also prepared to testify. The Senate acquitted Trump. The brothers retired from the Army after they said their careers were blocked because of their roles in the impeachment.
“I don’t have an electoral record as a politician, but I’ve been tested,” Vindman said.
He is about to be tested again, Farnsworth said. “He’s the target.”