Will Virginia Democrats Make the State Ground Zero for Trump Resistance Again?

If it’s not quite to the level of 2017, Lockhart thinks she knows why. “People are overwhelmed by the state of the world,” she said. “They’re protesting the government shutdown, they’re planning No Kings events, they’re struggling with all the layoffs,” with at least 150,000 Virginians working as civilian federal employees. “They’re fighting to protect their neighbors,” she adds. Virginia is among the top 10 states per capita for immigration-related arrests, even as California, Illinois, and New York dominate the news.

“I’ll be honest, I was worried about candidate recruitment after the 2024 election,” admits Williams. Ten years into the Trump era, after seeing the defeated, twice-impeached president returned to the White House last year, people don’t have the “unfettered optimism” they did in 2017, she admits, “but they know they have to give voters another option, another vision” of a fairer, freer country.

Lyzz Schwegler, cofounder of Sister District, which links blue-state volunteers to purple or red-state candidates, says their group is as fired up as in any year she’s seen—and Adams is a volunteer favorite. “I didn’t have high expectations for activism in this cycle, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised.” One thing promoting volunteerism in Virginia: State Democrats have already passed three crucial progressive bills to put constitutional amendments on the ballot for voters to decide. One would protect reproductive healthcare, from abortion to contraception to prenatal care, another would restore voting rights to felons who’ve served their time, and a third would protect marriage equality. State law requires potential constitutional amendments to pass in two legislative sessions, separated by one election. If Democrats prevail in November, the bills would pass again next year. Adams pledges to support all three. Her opponent, Kim Taylor, voted against all three.

Virginia is the last Southern state with relatively liberal abortion laws, and Adams promises to keep it that way. She made the issue personal in a compelling way, with an op-ed in the Progress-Index that revealed that she miscarried a wanted pregnancy at 12 weeks, 16 years ago. Doctors offered her what used to be standard treatment, an abortion. “I chose the natural route. I wish I hadn’t,” she wrote. “The gut-wrenching pain was some of the worst of my life. The bleeding, cramps, physically feeling the detachment. If I knew then what I know now, I would never have done that.” Adams noted that many state abortion restrictions now prohibit women from receiving care for miscarriages that don’t resolve on their own, and that puts the life of the mother in danger. Already, across the country, women have died in such situations.

“So it’s been interesting,” Adams tells me about local reaction to her op-ed. “When you have those one-on-one conversations, that’s when you really get to hear firsthand how much people appreciated me telling my story. There was one older gentleman, and he couldn’t bring himself to say the word ‘abortion.’ But he was pro-choice. He said to me: ‘I believe if a woman wants to, you know, she should be allowed to, you know.’ And I said, ‘You know what, sir? I know.’ It’s in those moments where I know I opened the door to that conversation. And when I told my story about miscarriage, there were people who said, I didn’t even think about that aspect of it. You know? We say abortion is healthcare, but sometimes you need to connect the dots for people that it’s specifically healthcare we’re talking about. Pregnancy care. And we have had women die in this day and age who are being refused that care.”

Coincidentally, according to reports, her opponent also had a miscarriage. Taylor voted to support Youngkin’s proposed 15-week abortion ban, which failed to pass. Then she proposed her own legislation that she said would protect the right of miscarrying women who needed a pregnancy termination to get one. It also failed. “It would have reduced access to later-in-pregnancy abortion,” says PPAV’s Lockhart. “The fetus would have to be nonviable, and there was no exception to save the life of the mother, or for an abortion when a fetus would predictably die shortly after birth.”

The pair differ on most other issues, too. Taylor has supported legislation expanding the power of ICE to seize suspected non-citizens; Adams opposes it.

“We have a mobile home community in my locality and we’ve had to begin volunteering, to stand at the bus stop with the kids of immigrants,” Adams tells me. “Their family members are afraid to go out, even to walk their kids and grandkids to the bus because when they leave home, they don’t know they don’t know if they’ll come back.”

With its bright red siding and colorful art everywhere, Cool Beanz beckons from a block away, amid the drab desolation of North Sycamore Street in once vibrant Petersburg. The largest city in the 82nd district, three-quarters Black, it’s a historic civil rights hub and the home of historically Black VSU. Before and during the Civil War, it had the largest population of free Black people in the Confederacy; nearby Pocahontas Island, in the 82nd, is the oldest free Black settlement in the country as well as a hub for indigenous Virginians. During Reconstruction, an alliance of Black Republicans and white populists moved quickly to elevate the status of formerly enslaved locals, founding what became VSU and providing new social and healthcare services around the city. In 1888, VSU’s first president, John Mercer Langston, was elected to Congress as a Republican, the first Black congressmember from Virginia.

The backlash to Reconstruction gave way to Jim Crow laws that enforced racial segregation and blocked Blacks from voting. Still, Petersburg was one of the first sites of civil rights resistance. Local pastor Wyatt Tee Walker, assisted by his friend the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., cofounded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Walker’s work led to the integration of the local library, public transit facilities and lunch counters in the early ‘60s, just as movements to do that were getting underway in other Southern cities. Petersburg was the first city in the nation to make King’s birthday a holiday just after his assassination in 1968.

Despite racial repression, more Black people came to Petersburg in the 1940s and ’50s for growing job opportunities in the area’s thriving steel, chemical, tobacco, and railroad industries. Adams’s father was an active member of the United Steelworkers, and imbued his daughter with a sense of labor pride. “I grew up in a home where my daddy taught me the worker is what makes the business run,” she tells me. “It makes sense now that I’m so pro-labor and I’m fighting for the worker, because that’s how I grew up.” She would vote to repeal the state’s anti-union “right to work” law, she says, but notes that advocates need to “rebrand” the issue, since the law sounds misleadingly like it favors work and workers.

Deindustrialization and offshoring hit Petersburg’s local industries hard, and white flight after school desegregation further reduced the city’s resources. The 82nd district consists not just of Petersburg but also whiter, wealthier suburbs in Dinwiddie and Prince George’s County, and rural Surry County. Those areas have fought against Petersburg in a series of annexation battles, in which Petersburg tried to expand its tax base. Even when the city won its battles (it would lose some), continued white flight helped reduce the tax base. Those racial and fiscal tensions persist and make cross-district cooperation more difficult. Adams, who grew up in adjacent Hopewell, another city where whites are in the minority, and now lives in suburban Dinwiddie, thinks her broad experience across the district, as well as her work as an auditor and accountant, will help her reduce the resource squabbles that stall progress in the 82nd.

Republican Kim Taylor, meanwhile, is perceived by voters I spoke to as looking out for the interests of the whiter, wealthier suburbs and decidedly not Petersburg. She owns three auto-repair shops with her husband, and also lives in Dinwiddie. “I just don’t believe that Taylor will do anything to benefit us. I think we will lose as a community,” Harris says. “She’s all about businesses, and the suburbs.”

One recent conflict between Taylor and Petersburg leaders erupted over the revenue that will be created by a $1.4 billion casino and resort project, which was backed by 80 percent of city voters in a referendum earlier this year. Taylor supported a bill that would have forced Petersburg to share casino revenues with surrounding, wealthier counties, and Petersburg leaders fought back. It recapitulated the old annexation battles of the 1980s and ’90s, and locally, public opinion was overwhelmingly negative. Petersburg city leaders denounced the bill for denying the city much-needed infrastructure, public safety, and education funding. The bill’s sponsor was forced to withdraw it, and Taylor blasted her critics for “partisan attacks” and “namecalling.”

Nikki Harris savored the victory. “I think the people of Petersburg have been shit on enough.”

“Can I say this?” Adams asks as we say goodbye. “I hope you’ll call to congratulate me on election night!” As I promise I will, campaign manager Jasmine Singh tries to hustle her away, as is her job, but Nikki Harris has people for the candidate to meet—a group setting up for a VSU homecoming event that night. (VSU homecoming “weekends” are weeklong events here.) Black VSU students click away on laptops at cafe tables; CoolBeanz honors their meal plans. In fact, the restaurant feels like an impeccably decorated community center. It hosts game nights, open mike nights, and regular musical performances. “Look around—no TV screens! We’re about connection, conversation,” Harris tells me. At a time when Democrats are trying to figure out how to do more than practice politics every two years—how to build stable, ongoing relationships with voters—this Virginia café owner has figured out at least part of the answer.

“We call this the portal,” she continues. “You come through the door, whatever’s going on outside really doesn’t exist for us, because we’re here to make you feel like you are beautiful, and successful, and worth it. You might be broken today, but have a cup of tea, you’ll be all right. For us, it’s the reconnection of human to human.” She’s trying to rebuild Petersburg, one customer at a time, and Harris sees Adams doing something similar.

“In a way, she’s the anti-politician. She’s one of us. She sits down and talks to us. We know her, we know her values. I would trust that Kimberly’s gonna do a brilliant job for us, and I feel like she would be a large part of the uplift of the common man, and Petersburg. I see her heart for this place.”