Jennifer McClellan – A Black woman will represent Virginia in Congress for the first time.

In the Tuesday special election for Virginia’s 4th Congressional District, Democratic state senator Jennifer McClellan easily prevailed, becoming the state’s first Black congresswoman. The Associated Press declared victory shortly after the polls closed.

The lawyer mentioned in a Tuesday morning interview that when voters elected John Mercer Langston to the House of Representatives in 1888, her new district became the first in Virginia to elect a Black man to Congress.

That we’re still setting records in 2023 astounds me, McClellan remarked. Yet, it is a tremendous honor.

McClellan pushed out Republican pastor Leon Benjamin Sr. in a predominantly Democratic district that runs from Richmond to the North Carolina border. Her victory severely reduces the GOP’s control in the House of Representatives.

After Democratic Rep. Donald McEachin passed away from cancer-related complications a few weeks after winning reelection in November, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin called the election.

Since 2006, McClellan, a Verizon corporate lawyer, has held a part-time seat in the General Assembly of Virginia. She is well-known in Richmond as a personal friend and policy expert of U.S. Senator Tim Kaine, a Democrat from Virginia who unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2021.

In the state legislature’s two years under Democratic control from 2020 to 21 she sponsored a number of significant measures, including one that overturned Republican-passed abortion restrictions and one requiring the decarbonization of Virginia’s electrical infrastructure by the year 2050.

McClellan emphasized that she has served in the Assembly for 14 years and is accustomed to working across party lines.

The first step, according to McClellan, is to genuinely listen. If possible, attempt to establish common ground, and if you can’t, keep pushing until you can.

McClellan stated that she intends to retain a portion of McEachin’s staff.

In the run-up to the 2020 election, her opponent, Benjamin, supported the lies of the late President Donald Trump and refused to accept responsibility for his own 23% loss to McEachin. In November, he suffered an even bigger defeat at the hands of McEachin.

McClellan will become the 30th Black woman to join this Congress, all of them Democrats.

McClellan’s legislative expertise and track record of bipartisan cooperation, according to Ravi Perry, a political science professor at Howard University, “would enable Democrats in Congress to get more things done,” even though they are in the minority.

Her victory tonight enhances the narrative, the strength, and the tenacity of black women in politics, according to Perry, who said in an email. “Given the history of hardship that Black women have endured in Virginia for generations,” Perry said.

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