Shannon Taylor, on the heels of a narrow loss in the 2025 Democratic attorney general primary, announced on Monday that she is running for the First District seat in Congress in Virginia, where she will challenge MAGA Republican incumbent Rob Wittman.
Democrats will be targeting Wittman in the First and Jen Kiggans in the nearby Second District, because Donald Trump wasn’t what you’d call all that strong in the 2024 cycle in either – and because Trump is underwater in polling in Virginia.
“As Henrico’s top prosecutor, I’ve made it my mission to protect and defend Virginia families by locking up violent criminals, taking on fraudsters and scammers, and getting drugs and guns off our streets to keep our community safe,” said Taylor, who is in her fourth term as the Henrico County Commonwealth’s Attorney, after her most recent re-election, in 2023.
Taylor, a 1989 alum of UVA and 1995 grad of the University of Richmond School of Law, is casting her campaign as a prosecution of Wittman, who was first elected to Congress in the 2006 midterms – and has, as stains on his record, a vote against the Affordable Care Act in 2010 and a vote in favor of a bill that would have repealed the ACA in 2017.
“As Henrico’s top prosecutor, I’ve made it my mission to protect and defend Virginia families by locking up violent criminals, taking on fraudsters and scammers, and getting drugs and guns off our streets to keep our community safe. Now I’m taking on a new fight to prosecute the case against Rob Wittman, because he has spent nearly 20 years in Washington enriching himself while selling out the very community I’ve fought to protect,” Taylor said.
The First District did move left politically in 2024, but it was still a Trump +5 district, and Wittman won re-election in a head-to-head race with Democrat Leslie Mehta by a 13-point margin, so it’s still, on paper, an uphill battle for the Ds.
Taylor does have the advantage of having won four elections in Henrico, the largest locality in the First, and she will go into the 2026 cycle with name recognition that will rival that of Wittman.
The disadvantages for Wittman, in addition to the millstone that is Trump: March polling had him underwater in favorability and job performance, and his vote to help get the Big, Beautiful Bill that cuts Medicare and Medicaid spending by trillions of dollars is immensely unpopular with voters in the district.
“Wittman lied to us when he promised to lower costs but instead voted to rip healthcare away from tens of thousands of our neighbors and risk closing rural hospitals like Rappahannock General to fund tax cuts for billionaires,” Taylor said.
“Virginians deserve a representative who will fight for them. That’s what I’ve done in the courtroom, and that’s exactly what I’ll do in Congress.”
As Henrico’s top prosecutor, I’ve made it my mission to protect and defend Virginia families by locking up violent criminals, taking on fraudsters and scammers, and getting drugs and guns off our streets to keep our community safe.
Now I’m taking on a new fight to prosecute the… pic.twitter.com/2xpZQZtip1
— Shannon Taylor (@ShannonTaylorVA) September 8, 2025
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Chris Graham
