Getting to know Adam Dunigan: Former ‘wild kid,’ CIA officer running for Congress

The campaign of Adam Dunigan reached out to me last week to see if we’d consider giving some attention to his upstart effort to unseat Don Beyer in Virginia’s Eighth Congressional District.

The Eighth – Arlington County, Alexandria and Falls Church, parts of Fairfax County – is a two and a half-hour drive from our home base, but it’s in Virginia, and Virginia is our home base, right?

***

I’ll say here up front, I’ve seen no reason to believe that Don Beyer needs to be retired by the voters. There are Democrats in Congress who I wouldn’t mind seeing moved over to the alumni section – Chuck Schumer comes to mind; John Fetterman, without a doubt; Hakeem Jeffries as House Speaker concerns me – but Beyer seems like one of the good ones.

He is facing four challengers in the Aug. 4 primary – in alphabetical order, Lorena Bruner, Michael Duffin, Adam Dunigan, Mo Seifeldein.

It was Duffin who, at a candidates forum last week, said it is “99 percent likely” that Beyer will win, and given the advantages of incumbency, and the supposition that the four challengers would split whatever anti-establishment vote there would be, that’s probably fair.

Dunigan, at the forum, which got, shall we say, contentious, noted that it’s important that the contest, at the end of the day, stay above board.

“This is why we are out of power. We self-cannibalize. It’s counterproductive,” said Dunigan, a political rookie, who resigned from his job in the CIA earlier this year to be able to run for the Democratic Party nomination in the Eighth.

***

Dunigan is a self-described “wild kid” who said he spent more time growing up in Southern California “in the Los Angeles punk scene than I did on academics.”

The Marine Corps was his lifeline; he enlisted after high school, served a combat tour in Afghanistan, among his assignments, and matured from punk kid who barely graduated high school into college grad who eventually would earn a master’s in international relations at Harvard.

Dunigan became a case office in the CIA in 2014, “and in that capacity, I saw the very real threats facing our country. I made hard choices, lived tough days. And I entered politics in January 2026 to ring the alarm bell: the real danger is here at home.”

***

“Our democracy is backsliding,” Dunigan said. “Our elected leaders are either unwilling or unable to stop the authoritarian project currently underway. I never wanted to be a politician. I have no interest in the spectacle of our current politics. But too much is at stake, and doing nothing is not an option. Especially when Congress continuously fails to protect or provide for the people of Virginia’s Eighth.”

The Eighth District, indeed, was hit hard by the massive, not at all thought out cuts made by Elon Musk’s DOGE, which formally wrapped up operations last week.

Virginia lost 23,500 federal government jobs due to DOGE, concentrated in the Eighth; I’ve not seen hard data on the number of federal contractor jobs that were also lost, but a report from House Oversight Democrats pegged the number of terminated federal contracts at 13,400, with an additional 15,800 grants eliminated, suggesting massive job losses on that side of the ledger.

“Civil servants deserved protection from DOGE,” Dunigan said. “We could have avoided the affordability crisis. We should have kept our educators and universities safe from political interference, reformed our healthcare system, and prevented the lawless excesses of ICE. Now, if we fail to reverse the worst impulses of this administration, the progress we’ve fought so hard to achieve for civil rights, individual freedom, and enlightenment values in this country will be lost for generations.”

***

Dunigan’s platform is one to rally around: “term limits, big money out of politics, accountability under the law, and an affordable quality of life for every citizen.”

“These concepts aren’t controversial, and they shouldn’t be political. They’re the only guiding principles that can give us a shot at freeing this country from the stranglehold of corporate politics and a captured power structure,” Dunigan said.

“The choice we face in 2026 is simple: the Democratic Party must either change up the roster and evolve, or stay as it is and accept obsolescence. On August 4th, we all have to decide which side we’re on.”