Facing no opposition in November, Virginia House Majority Leader Charniele Herring (D-4) launched her reelection campaign in Alexandria on Thursday night (April 3).
Herring was joined at Clyde’s (1700 N. Beauregard Street) in the West End by prominent Democrats, including U.S. Reps. Eugene Vindman (D-7th) and Don Beyer (D-8th), members of the General Assembly, as well as Alexandria Mayor Alyia Gaskins and members of City Council.
“What’s really important is that we keep our majority in the House,” said Herring, who has run unopposed in the last four elections.
According to the Virginia Public Access Project, she currently has about $400,000 in her campaign war chest. Since she was unopposed in the 2023 election, Herring donated $350,000 from her campaign war chest to the House Democratic Caucus.
Herring said that her party has fought against “a lot of attacks” from Republicans.
“We fought for common sense gun laws to make sure that we are safe and our communities are safe, and we will continue to fight for wages that are fair, and making sure that we’re raising the minimum wage,” she said. “We’ve had to fight back against a lot of attacks, when it comes to reproductive freedom, when it comes to safety, when it comes to wages, and at this time, when we have… chaos from the other side, from across the river, and people are actually scared. We had a session yesterday, it was unfortunate to hear giggling on the other side of the aisle. We were talking about wages. We were talking about feeding hungry children. We were talking about our public schools. Our schools, our education, our ability to vote, is a bedrock of our country. Is a bedrock of our society. It’s what makes Virginia successful. We’ve got to continue to work for that.”
Herring’s road to the House of Delegates was anything but easy. She’s the first Black woman to be majority leader, and was elected by her colleagues to the position in 2021.
She was briefly homeless while attending West Springfield High School, and lifted herself out of poverty, later graduating with an economics degree from George Mason University and a law degree from Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law. Her road to the House of Delegates was anything but easy. She won a special Democratic primary for her seat by 148 votes in 2008 and then won the general election by 16 votes.
Vindman said the upcoming elections are a referendum on the Trump administration.
“I’m really excited about the opportunity to work with a governor and a house in a vertical, integrated way, where we could actually get things done for Virginia, for the Commonwealth, because what we have right now is something between a possum and roadkill,” Vindman said. “Best case scenario, the governor (Youngkin) was rolling over, playing possum to this administration that’s harming tens of thousands of Virginians. They need to start thinking about losing the general elections, there are seats that are going to be in play in the general election, and that message is transmitted by folks like Charniele, the entire Virginia delegation in Richmond and a brand new Democratic governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general.”
Gaskins said that chaos and confusion have reigned in Washington for the last few months under the Trump administration.
“The reality is, if you’re like me, it feels like every day has been a state of chaos and confusion,” she said. “Every five minutes, there’s breaking news or there’s some other thing that is threatening the very Democracy that we fought so hard to keep. I look back and I think about who are the leaders that I want in this moment, who are the people who I know are not just going to talk about doing something, but will actually let their actions be louder than their words.”
November’s election includes races for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, the House of Delegates, the Commonwealth’s Attorney, and Sheriff. The Virginia Department of Elections will release its list of statewide primary candidates later this month.
