Northern Virginia voters pick Connolly's successor in special election Tuesday

Andrew Menezes, CQ-Roll Call on Sep 8, 2025

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WASHINGTON — Voters in Virginia’s 11th District will pick their next member of Congress on Tuesday, and the seat appears poised to remain in Democratic hands.

Fairfax County Supervisor James Walkinshaw faces off against Republican Stewart Whitson, an Army veteran and former FBI official, in the special election to succeed the late Democratic Rep. Gerald E. Connolly, who died in May.

Walkinshaw, who served as Connolly’s chief of staff for more than a decade on Capitol Hill, is the overwhelming favorite for his former boss’s seat in a suburban Northern Virginia district outside Washington with a sizable federal workforce. Kamala Harris carried the district by 34 points last fall, according to calculations by The Downballot.

Connolly endorsed Walkinshaw to succeed him in May, shortly after announcing he would not seek another term and just a few weeks before he died. Walkinshaw parlayed that support into winning the Democratic nomination in June, defeating nine opponents in a party-run “firehouse primary.”

Walkinshaw is currently serving his second term on the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. Like Connolly, he has vowed to be an advocate for federal workers in the face of sweeping job and funding cuts to federal agencies since President Donald Trump took office this year.

“There aren’t a lot of champions, vocal champions, for federal employees in Congress, and my commitment is, I hope, to have a long career in Congress and to be a long-term champion for federal workers, just as Gerry Connolly was,” he told CQ Roll Call in June.

Early voting for the special election began in July and closed Saturday. Walkinshaw held his final get-out-the-vote rally Sunday, joined by California Rep. Pete Aguilar, the No. 3 House Democrat, as well as Virginia Reps. Donald S. Beyer Jr. and Eugene Vindman and state Sen. Ghazala Hashmi, the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor this fall.

Virginia’s 11th District is one of four current vacancies in the House, where Republicans hold 219 seats to Democrats’ 212.

The others are Arizona’s 7th District, which holds a special election later this month to succeed the late Democratic Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva; Tennessee’s 7th, where Republican Rep. Mark E. Green resigned in July for a private sector role; and Texas’ 18th, vacant since March after the death of Democratic Rep. Sylvester Turner.

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(Jackie Wang and Mary Ellen McIntire contributed to this report.)

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