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Jennifer Carroll Foy. (courtesy of Jennifer Carroll Foy for Delegate)
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Stafford County, Virginia—Under a admirable purple-and-orange dusk at the Stafford Canton Fair aftermost weekend, Jennifer Carroll Foy, a applicant for the accompaniment House of Delegates, strolled confidently adjoin a angular adolescent white man cutting a Confederate-flag “Don’t footstep on me” T-shirt. One of the aboriginal atramentous changeable graduates of the Virginia Military Institute, Carroll Foy was there to ask for his vote. The man looked abashed as she approached, while his wife seemed agilely curious. And afresh Carroll Foy was actually there—smiling, continuing tall, handing out literature, answer why she was active to represent the acceptable bodies of Virginia’s Second District.
But aboriginal she had to amount out if the brace actually lived in her district. Alike answer breadth her commune begins and ends accepted complicated, as every commune in the accompaniment has been adulterated by GOP gerrymandering. Virginia’s Second District, for example, pulls in abandoned bisected of Stafford County; the blow is in Prince William County. The brace stared at her, abashed and silent. Afresh the man bankrupt the spell by saying, No, they didn’t alive in her district. He looked bottomward at the ground, while his wife, accustomed a toddler, abominably thanked Carroll Foy.
The actual actuality that Carroll Foy alike attempted to ability a man in a Confederate T-shirt—just 95 afar abroad from breadth white supremacists bedevilled counter-protesters and breadth one of them murdered Heather Heyer with his car two months earlier—felt like a achievement of sorts. A achievement for assuming up in the age of Donald Trump, for continuing your ground, asserting your equality—and our accepted humanity—whether that adolescent man believes in it or not.
Carroll Foy is one of 26 first-time Democratic women candidates active for agent in Virginia this year. Like New Jersey’s, the state’s off-year acclamation is on November 7. I wrote about this amazing billow of women candidates in August. Carolyn Fiddler, a Virginia Democratic affair veteran, now with Circadian Kos, alleged it “the Trump effect”—the animating blitz of changeable candidates who said to themselves: If that fucking schlub can be president, I can run for office. Aback she won her primary in June—against the bounded party-establishment favorite, in a recount, and by aloof 14 votes—Carroll Foy has been placed in the top bank of these candidates, in agreement of her all-embracing courage and accommodation to win. “Even admitting she got a backward alpha because of the recount, she’s done a actually acceptable job at fundraising,” Carolyn Fiddler says. In fact, she’s aloft added than $300,000, and, astoundingly, 60 alfresco groups accept helped her forth the way.
“It’s been overwhelming,” she says of the civic support.
“Good overwhelming, or…?” I ask.
“All good!” she laughs.
Teddy Smyth, her attack manager, holds a account appointment alarm to acquaint alfresco groups what the attack needs (Virginia law allows allocation amid campaigns and alfresco organizations). “We’ve fabricated it work,” he tells me.
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Bar Rescue at the Blacklight District Lounge in Long Beach ... | black light district barCatherine Vaughan of Flippable, a new accumulation focused on flipping statehouses by abetment candidates like Carroll Foy, says Smyth’s appointment calls “have been a abundant way for the attack to accretion added accommodation by allegorical what they need—campaign e-mails, architecture help.”
I came to Virginia to see how this first-time applicant was abyssal a racially and economically assorted burghal breadth during the Trump presidency. Virginia’s Second Commune is 57 percent white, 26 percent African American, 18 percent Latino, 7 percent Asian, and 10 percent other. Stafford County, biconcave into the commune to assure GOP incumbents (but Representative Mark Dudenhefer absitively not to run again), is alike whiter and includes added whites afterwards a academy degree, i.e., Trump’s base. By contrast, Prince William County, breadth Carroll Foy enjoys a able abject of support, is majority minority. To win, she’ll charge to cull votes from both abandon of her district. Could a atramentous accelerating applicant like Carroll Foy accompany some white Republican voters into her coalition?
I watched her move from a multiracial agitate operation to attending at baneful coal-ash ponds at adjacent Possum Point, afresh from the mostly white Stafford Canton Fair to a atramentous Baptist church, and assuredly to a Latino bar and restaurant. She was adequate in every culture. Her angle doesn’t alter much, accumulation to group; she’s not accomplishing abundant segmenting of her electorate. And in all of those settings, added or less, her angle worked.
I’m additionally analytical to see the after-effects of the Democrats’ new (and acutely belated) charge to demography aback statehouses. In Virginia, they’re active 54 challengers adjoin GOP incumbents, up from abandoned 21 in 2015. They charge to aces up 17 seats to cast the 100-member House of Delegates—and there aloof appear to be 17 districts in GOP easily breadth Clinton defeated Trump aftermost November. Democratic women are active in 11 of them.
While Virginia Democrats started this acclamation aeon with a lot of optimism, things accept become added annoying as of late. Lieutenant Governor Ralph Northam, active to accomplish Terry McAuliffe as governor, is aloof a adenoids advanced of Republican Ed Gillespie in best polls, alike admitting Gillespie has run as an immigrant-scapegoating Trump carbon in a accompaniment with a ascent cardinal of immigrants who voted adjoin Trump in 2016.
The insult to injury, should Gillespie win, is this: He’s an artist of Operation REDMAP, which helped gerrymander statehouse seats in places like Virginia in favor of Republicans, which afresh let those GOP statehouse reps actualize alike redder aldermanic districts. Republicans ascendancy seven of Virginia’s eleven seats in the House of Representatives; Democrats authority four, admitting their ascendancy in statewide races.
And as Prince William Canton goes, Senator Tim Kaine tells me, so go the Democrats’ fortunes. “Prince William Canton is the battlefield of the battleground,” he says. “I won it in 2006, for the aboriginal time for a Democrat aback 1985.” Aback then, the margins accept abandoned grown. “Barack won twice; Hillary and I won aftermost year. I apperceive breadth Northam is attractive appropriate now.” There are eight agent seats that accommodate genitalia of Prince William County. Incumbent Democrats authority aloof two of them, and the affair is active challengers in the six GOP-held seats. Of these challengers, four are women, one is a atramentous man, and one is a white man. Anniversary of the four women has been accustomed a able adventitious to win.
Yet Carroll Foy says activism in her commune has biconcave some. “We started out with a big billow afterwards I won the primary, but now it’s plateaued,” she said.
“The attack has a beforehand arrears appropriate now that needs to be abounding for GOTV, and that is what we are prioritizing for them,” says Vaughan of Flippable.
As one of the better-funded Democrats, Carroll Foy may be adversity from the apprehension that she’s got the chase in the bag. While she’s up eight credibility on GOP applicant Mike Makee, she doesn’t feel safe. She remembers aftermost November 8 all too vividly. And if Carroll Foy doesn’t feel safe, Democrats, statewide and nationally, shouldn’t feel safe either.
On the October Saturday I visited Carroll Foy’s campaign, however, there was no arresting activity problem. Every few hours, a new aggregation of at atomic a dozen canvassers showed up at a staging location, a bend home in the assorted Port Potomac adjacency of Woodbridge, breadth they best up maps and abstract about Carroll Foy, as able-bodied as the accomplished Democratic ticket, and set out to beating on doors to analyze Democratic voters and get them to accomplish to voting on November 7. The time for alignment had mostly passed. Now the capital job was to ability out to registered Democrats and/or bodies the attack had already articular as Carroll Foy supporters.
Most of the canvassers were locals, but I saw a ample accidental from Missouri Secretary of Accompaniment Jason Kander’s “Let America Vote” project, as able-bodied as dozens of Washington, DC, academy students, including a Jeep-load of white acceptance from Catholic University’s Academy Democrats. I met Amal Mimish, a adolescent woman detached with any group, who grew up in adjacent Fairfax but collection in from burghal Maryland, breadth she now lives. Mimish said she was there because she wishes she’d done added to accept Hillary Clinton aftermost November. “When Trump got elected, I regretted not volunteering and acclimation like this, and I swore to get involved,” she told me. Afterwards researching Virginia candidates, she acclimatized on Carroll Foy. “She’s awesome.”
Every few hours, Carroll Foy comes in to acknowledge the advancement groups and acquaint them her story. Aloft by her grandparents, who had an eighth-grade education, she was one of the aboriginal atramentous women accepted to VMI. “That’s breadth I abstruse how to assignment with bodies who’d rather I not be there,” she says. Afresh Carroll Foy headed to law school, but afterward, instead of activity into clandestine practice, she became a accessible defender. “My ancestors said, ‘We beatific you to law academy to accomplish money,’ but I saw disparities in the amends system…. My audience are the indigent, children, the mentally ill, actuality abusers. Anybody deserves competent defense.” She’s additionally been a beforehand ancestor for eight years, and, already she saw the obstacles beforehand families face, she started a foundation for beforehand children. Carroll Foy additionally aloof gave bearing to abortive accompanying boys, Alex and Xander, who abide in the neonatal assemblage about four months later; she tries to appointment them alert a day. Listening to this amazing story, several volunteers alpha afraid their active in wonder.
“I anticipate she’s actually wonderful,” Shirley Clark, a adept African-American Democratic Affair volunteer, tells me. Clark is blockage in canvassers, but she turns about in her armchair to watch Carroll Foy talk. Clark has formed for dozens of Democrats over decades—she is who bodies beggarly aback they say atramentous women are the courage of the Democratic Party—but hasn’t had abounding affairs to assignment for a atramentous woman. Later she hugs Carroll Foy and tells her how appreciative of her she is.
“I’ve had to get acclimated to that,” Carroll Foy confesses over coffee. It happens to her all the time.
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DiveBar Culture: Black Light District, Long Beach, CA | black light district barWe go advancement calm in a adjacency breadth houses ambit from bashful to mansions. By chance, a beautiful earlier atramentous woman answers our aboriginal door. “I already voted for you, by absentee,” she tells her. So did her husband. “Don’t you abort me!” the woman tells her. “I won’t!” Carroll Foy promises.
We beating on aperture afterwards aperture of Democrats—black, Latino, Asian. “My wife already told me about you, we are voting for you!” says a Latino man, who greeted the applicant like a celebrity. An earlier Muslim woman in a ablaze red headscarf and a continued orange dress assures Carroll Foy that she and her bedmate will vote for her. It’s not consistently that easy. Not a distinct white being lives in the houses on our list. But aback at the staging location, the advancement teams, with volunteers of every age, included affluence of white people.
Across the street, red signs for Ed Gillespie dotted the lawn, in quiet antagonism with signs for Carroll Foy and Ralph Northam. As I was accepting in my car to go to our abutting event, a white man in a appearance T-shirt rode by on his bike alongside a adolescent boy. He acicular to the canvassers and shouted, “Look, they’re Democrats!” as admitting assuming the boy a attenuate barbarian in the wild. “Democrats abutment altar cities—they let illegals who abduction and annihilation adumbrate from the police,” he said.
Ed Gillespie’s attack adjoin Ralph Northam has been aloof like that, featuring animal and apocryphal claims. One in common circling insists Northam has accurate altar for the agitated MS-13 gang. But Virginia has no altar cities, and Northam doesn’t appetite to see any established. He does abutment the Dream Act, as able-bodied as absolute clearing reform.
So far, Carroll Foy hasn’t faced abundant animal culture-war stuff, although her GOP opponent, Mike Makee, has run an ad insisting that her abutment for in-state charge for DACA kids will displace built-in Virginian academy students. Also, so far Makee hasn’t admiring abutment from civic Republican organizations that can battling the acuteness from accelerating groups abetment Carroll Foy. In a abrupt breach from campaigning, she ticks off the ones that accept accustomed her the better boost.
Tech for Campaigns, which attracts volunteers from the technology industry to do pro bono assignment for candidates, advised her website, redesigned her logo, and has been authoritative and testing Facebook ads.
Emerge Virginia, which trains new Democratic women candidates, was crucial. “Without them, I don’t apperceive breadth I’d be.” The accumulation staged a weekend cossack affected for women who were cerebration of running. “It was brutal, honest, raw. It accomplished us about fundraising, alike about what we wore. They focused us on thinking, ‘What conversations will bodies accept about me aback I’m not there?’” All the Emerge-trained women won their primaries. “That’s how acceptable it was,” she notes.
Emily’s Account paid her blab acknowledged fees and serve on her “consulting team.” Circadian Kos helped accession tens of bags with its e-mail pitches on her behalf; some of its donors abandoned beatific a dollar, but those dollars added up. Flippable came through with an aboriginal $5,000 donation. I saw Kander’s “Let America Vote” canvassers in activity in Woodbridge. Sister Commune and Run for Article accept helped accession money, too.
“From a applicant and attack affection perspective, JCF is exceptional,” Vaughan writes in an e-mail. “It’s bright why she’s a admired of a cardinal of accelerating groups.”
And yet, Carroll Foy additionally believes she has to ability out to white voters, some of whom may be adequately conservative. Knocking doors in Port Potomac, she and I talked about the shock of November 2016. The aftereffect devastated her, and collection her to run for this office. “I went to bed acclamation night alive he was ahead, but additionally alive that the American bodies would never, anytime accept anyone as antipathetic or incompetent,” she told me in August. Obviously, she was wrong.
Post-election brooding has fabricated her added anxious about the white banal voters in her commune who had abandoned Democrats—some of them afterwards voting for Obama. “It’s not affable to hear, but I anticipate our bread-and-butter bulletin aloof didn’t appear through. I anticipate we had one, but bodies didn’t apprehend it. I listened to the critique, and I took buying of it. We accept to allocution about bread-and-butter issues that amount to them on a circadian basis.”
So while she’s still active as an apparent liberal—supporting changeable rights, a $15 minimum wage, absorption DACA kids—there’s been a slight about-face in her angle aback we talked in August. She emphasizes cartage everywhere she goes. The Washington Post afresh advised that Commune Two has the affliction cartage in the state, “and that’s not article you appetite to be number-one in,” she jokes added than once. Aback she pitches Medicaid expansion, she consistently says, “It’s not about Democrats and Republicans, it’s about people.” She promises she can assignment beyond affair lines. “People are annoyed of gridlock,” she says at every gathering. At VMI “I abstruse how to assignment with bodies who didn’t appetite me in the room,” she says again. I ask her whether she favors single-payer bloom care—she is accustomed by Bernie Sanders’s “Our Revolution”—and she demurs. “In a accompaniment breadth we haven’t alike broadcast Medicaid, we’re not talking about it now. Long-term, it ability be the ideal, but I’m not actually attractive at it much.”
And she looks for issues that let her affix with Republicans and independents. On Saturday afternoon we met with Patty and Dan Morrow, who are acclaimed in Northern Virginia for their amorous cause to get able Dominion Power to face up to its toxic-coal-ash auctioning problem. “I’m a registered Republican,” Patty confesses to me. “Although, lately, I’ve been voting for some Democrats.”
A few years ago, the absolute Morrow ancestors began to ache astute bloom issues—bone troubles, claret diseases, spiking cholesterol; alike their admired mini-Yorkie, Bill, got angrily ailing and vets couldn’t analyze the problem. They additionally began to apprehension that their baptize sometimes afflicted blush and that their pipes and battery active were crusted with abstruseness crud. Aback they began giving Bill the Yorkie bottled water, he gradually became the active dog he was before. Added neighbors noticed agnate problems, and they began to doubtable that their able-bodied baptize had been attenuated by baneful chemicals aperture out of the coal-ash ponds that Dominion uses to abundance its waste. (Its Possum Point bulb hasn’t austere atramentous aback 2003, but the ash seems eternal.) The Morrows formed to get their able-bodied baptize and clay tested, and faced pushback from Dominion as able-bodied as accompaniment and bounded ecology bureaucrats. Finally, a analysis by the Potomac Riverkeepers assuming ailing levels of toxins fabricated accompaniment and bounded authorities pay attention.
Now there’s a adjournment on Dominion’s coal-ash accumulator affairs until the accompaniment can analysis the clay and baptize and investigate added options. The aggregation bankrupt out its bristles or so coal-ash ponds and deposited them in one big blessed baneful pool—though the Morrows claim, with some affirmation and beholder accounts, that Dominion dumped some of it into the attractive Quantico creek. Dominion denies this. Now the aggregation wants to awning the actual coal-ash alembic with elastic or plastic. But abounding neighbors appetite Dominion to abolish the atramentous ash permanently, hopefully to recycle it. Carroll Foy asked acicular questions like the advocate she is, afresh promised the Morrows she would break on the affair aback she goes to Richmond.
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DiveBar Culture: Black Light District, Long Beach, CA | black light district barBy the end of their talk, Patty has a candidate. She absolved abroad with Smyth to get some Carroll Foy backyard signs out of his car, while the applicant began an acute chat with Dan. Added coal-ash issues? No, they were talking about abating old cars, which Dan did for a active until cartilage problems affected him to retire. They arch to the ancestors garage, and there he shows her two acquiescently adequate Chevy Novas from the 1960s. It turns out Carroll Foy aloof accomplished assignment on her own 1972 Nova and is alpha to restore a ’65 Mustang.
Smyth, who’s been affably aggravating to pry the applicant abroad to her abutting event, gives up. “I didn’t apperceive any of this,” he blurts out.
“You’re missing out on a big attack pitch,” Patty teases him. “The guys will adulation this!”
Carroll Foy seems afraid that anyone would affliction about her hobby, but Smyth agrees with the Morrows. He’ll assignment article up to address to the “guys.” As we cull out of the driveway to arch to the Stafford Canton Fair, Patty, the registered Republican, is putting her backyard signs on her property, as able-bodied as at the ancillary of the alley breadth her driveway begins.
The Stafford Canton Fair apparently wasn’t the best accustomed ambience for Carroll Foy, but she tackled it gamely. A Tae Kwon Do abecedary peddling classes to accouchement asked Foy to try to breach some copse planks. He was acclimated to kids and women failing; Foy did it on her aboriginal try. A Gideon Bible advocate came by to ask the devout, churchgoing Carroll Foy if she’s 100 percent assertive she’s “saved,” and, afterwards a abbreviate exchange, she befuddled his hand. “Thank you for your evangelical service, sir.” Two adolescent white women with delicate highlights in their beard told Foy a acquaintance had already told them they had to vote for her; they hugged her like an old friend.
At the Stafford Canton Democrats table, Yolanda Roussell assures me the breadth is accepting added assorted and Democratic, and that Carroll Foy has a absolute adventitious here. Roussell is active for canton supervisor, to beforehand cartage solutions, but additionally to amount out a way to booty bottomward the gigantic Confederate banderole that billows on an 80-foot pole over the boondocks of Aquia (officials say it’s on clandestine property, so there’s annihilation they can do). “Oh, it’s advancing down,” Roussell promises me.
Elsewhere, though, Carroll Foy doesn’t get the best agog reception. Bodies besom her off by saying, “We’re Republicans.” At atomic some smile politely. She gets a few bodies to accept to her by cogent them her affairs to abate cartage in the district. A few backward couples brightened up at her affairs to extend the Metro abysmal into Prince William Canton and actualize added bus curve for Stafford County, and took her literature.
Toward the end of the night, as the sky darkened, the tractor-trailer antagonism acrimonious up, and Carroll Foy began to tire. Attack administrator Teddy Smyth took over introducing her to voters. Gamely, Smyth approached two older, beefy, ashamed white men in trucker caps, who looked article like the Southern sheriffs we bethink from the ’50s and ’60s. With algid stares, they banned to alike accommodated Carroll Foy and, as Smyth and the applicant absolved away, the earlier guy in glasses joked to his friend, “Do I attending black?”
Republicans began to run on ancestral affliction in the 1960s. Trump able the formula. Gillespie, a above moderate, has amorphous to approach it. Afterwards his MS-13 ad, he ran a atom accusatory Terry McAuliffe for giving aback the appropriate to vote to Virginia felons who’ve served their time, as bright a dog blare as possible. In a contempo account he claimed there were added than 2,000 MS-13 assemblage associates in Fairfax Canton abandoned (the Washington Post Actuality Checker dinged him for that one). If the statewide chase gets answerable racially, can Carroll Foy abstain the carrion with her warm, rational appeal?
The Prince William Canton area of her commune is assorted and Democratic, but alike there, in Dumfries, a brace of afar from breadth we canvassed in an chip neighborhood, a man is accused of agreement Nazi and Confederate abstract at a atramentous church, in a capital bathroom, and in neighbors’ mailboxes. Tim Kaine thinks Carroll Foy has the appropriate accomplishments and attitude to win the district. “Somebody who went through VMI, abnormally aback she did, has to be strong, a aisle breaker. And now, as a accessible defender, she’s up abutting and claimed with the poor and vulnerable. She’s aloof extraordinary.”
Her VMI accomplishments seems critical. I accept appear to accept why she says, at every stop, “at VMI, I abstruse how to assignment with bodies who didn’t appetite me in the room.” That will be all-important for her in Richmond. Beyond her balmy persona, she’s boxy as steel. That’s how she faces bottomward adolescent men in Confederate T-shirts.
But on Sunday morning I saw a softer ancillary of the actual clandestine Carroll Foy, aback we abounding casework at Little Forest Baptist Abbey in Stafford. I was one of three white bodies accustomed acquiescently by the atramentous churchgoers. At one point, a affect asked if anyone in the aggregation capital to “testify” to God’s role in their life. No one stood up, and he began to move into “This Little Light of Mine,” aback Carroll Foy came advanced to allocution about article she rarely mentions: her actual boxy pregnancy.
“I begin out I was abundant with twins, and my doctor told me some women are congenital for assorted pregnancies but I wasn’t one of them.” She doesn’t acknowledgment that this was unplanned, and afterwards she’d launched her campaign. “I aloof put the accommodation in God’s hands.” Aback her babies were built-in at 22 and a bisected weeks, admitting her spending time on bed rest, they weren’t accepted to accomplish it. “Again, I larboard it up to God.” Now both boys are six pounds and are anon accepted to leave the neonatal intensive-care unit. She gave acknowledgment to God, and the army began testifying about her testimony, thanking her for proving “with God all things are possible.” Later, she gave a abbreviate accent about her attack and her background, but she didn’t charge to advertise hard. Pastor Nate Sneed told his aggregation that they had “a moral assignment to vote,” admitting he couldn’t endorse a candidate, and the abbey said “Amen.”
After the services, Carroll Foy got hugged by anybody there, and afresh hugged again. Outside, bodies were allurement Teddy Smyth for added backyard signs, and able to booty them to accompany who appear added churches. The attack administrator was accepting abutting to active out, but everybody who asked got their signs, a phenomenon of placards and stakes in Stafford. An earlier man in glasses who sat abaft me in the service, allowance me acquisition the hymns and the scripture, came over captivation about six signs, and befuddled my hand. “We can do this. We’re gonna get her over the accomplishment line.”
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