Democrats hope gerrymandering Virginia will give them the edge they need to win back the House. But Tuesday’s special election is proving more competitive than they’d like.

Tight polling and concerns over voter turnout in an atypical April election have many Democratic party strategists and officials preparing for a close finish.

“I always thought this campaign would be close [and] 24 hours out, I believe that to be the case,” Democratic strategist Jared Leopold said on Monday, before the final day of voting.

“Anytime you're on the ‘yes’ side of a referendum, you've got the burden of proof,” he added. “It doesn't matter what the referendum is, but anytime you're arguing for ‘yes,’ the other side is going to be arguing for the status quo.”

The party anticipated its campaign to redraw the state’s congressional maps would be boosted by its massive war chest and a favorable political environment that helped elect Gov. Abigail Spanberger last November. If approved, the aggressive partisan gerrymander could deliver Democrats a 10-to-1 seat advantage in Virginia, which amounts to a net pickup of as many as four House seats.

“I think it was always going to be close,” said another Democratic strategist, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “One side is giving [President Donald Trump] power and the other side is doing a reform that a lot of them don't really want to do. That's your choice.”

The election will serve as a test of whether voters in the light blue state will set aside long-standing distaste for partisan gerrymandering to counter a redistricting fight set in motion by Trump last year. With primary elections already underway, this is one of Democrats’ last shots at offsetting or even overcoming the gains Republicans made in Texas and elsewhere before November.

If the ballot referendum fails, it would be an early embarrassment for Spanberger as governor and a high-profile loss for a Democratic Party that has cast Trump’s efforts in existential terms as “election rigging” that undermines American democracy.

The campaigns have drawn heavyweight national involvement from former President Barack Obama and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, among others, who have campaigned on behalf of Virginians for Fair Elections, which is leading the “yes” effort. On the Republican side, former Gov. Glenn Youngkin has been a vocal critic of the measure. And, after largely staying on the sidelines, Trump made a late push Monday night for the “no” campaign, joining Speaker Mike Johnson for a tele-rally where he sought to remind voters of the stakes.

“Tomorrow, your commonwealth has an incredible, and really, an important election in every sense of the word that will have major consequences for our entire country this November,” Trump said. “This is really a country election. The whole country is watching.”

Public polling suggests the race will hinge as much on persuading voters about the need for new maps as on mobilizing them to the polls for an out-of-cycle election.

A Washington Post-Schar School poll conducted last month shows the “yes” campaign leading by roughly five percentage points among likely voters. That same poll found Republicans are slightly more likely than Democrats to say they planned to vote in the special election or already had — 85 percent to 79 percent.

Many Democrats say they remain cautiously optimistic. There has been an uptick of early voting in recent days, particularly in counties in Northern Virginia, which tend to be blue-leaning. Overall, more than 1.3 million people cast early ballots, according to the Virginia Public Access Project, not much lower than the roughly 1.48 million who cast early ballots in 2025, when Spanberger was running.

“I don’t think there’s been an alteration to whether or not people like gerrymandering,” said John Bisognano, president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. “What I do think is, if this is the only way that we can keep the U.S. House of Representatives as a representative body for this nation, people are willing to do it.”

Virginia Democrats have also recently put pressure on the governor to more aggressively campaign on behalf of the “yes” effort and be more outspoken about the stakes of the special election. She was on the campaign trail over the weekend urging voters to back the measure.

“Ultimately, I do think this is more of a persuasion election than a turnout election, and so it’s a test to see if [the] ‘no’ campaign has done an effective job reaching voters,” said Noah Jennings, a Virginia-based Republican strategist unaffiliated with the “no” campaign.

Complicating Democrats’ pitch are two factors: The Virginia Supreme Court could still nullify the redistricting effort after the April election. And, in 2020, voters approved a constitutional amendment that established a bipartisan redistricting commission seeking to limit the partisan redrawing of maps.

That history has given the “no” campaign a potent line of attack.

Conservatives have painted Spanberger as a flip-flopper on redistricting and slammed her for caving to pressure from national Democrats. GOP-aligned groups have also sent out misleading mailers or run ads using past comments opposing gerrymandering to suggest that both she and Obama are “no” votes on the ballot measure.

“The Democrats have deployed over $60 million to rig Virginia’s congressional maps and yet the referendum is extremely close — as all sides acknowledge,” said Mike Young, of Virginians for Fair Maps, the group encouraging voters to vote against redistricting. “That didn’t happen by accident or dumb luck.”

Jennings said if the “no” effort wins on Tuesday, “that's a very clear showing that there's a line that you cannot cross.”

“Virginia does have that larger middle that does move independently, and I think those people don’t like the gamesmanship, and they don’t like it from either side,” he said.

The “yes” campaign says it’s unfazed.

“While Republicans have spent nearly $34 million flooding this race with MAGA misinformation, the YES Campaign has been doing the work — knocking over 600,000 doors, communicating directly with Virginians, organizing in every corner of the state, and driving historic early vote turnout,” said Dan Gottlieb, a spokesperson for Virginians for Fair Elections.

The outcome of Tuesday’s election could reverberate well past Virginia. After Trump pushed to redraw congressional boundaries in Texas last year, the fight escalated into a tit-for-tat battle, with each party trying to lock in an advantage ahead of November.

In California last year, voters overwhelmingly approved new congressional districts, offsetting GOP gains out of Texas. Florida could redraw its own maps as soon as next week, which could counter any Democratic gains in Virginia — should the ballot measure pass.

The GOP's escalating infighting over immigration now has a pair of PACs lining up millions of dollars on opposing sides of Republican primaries across the country.

The dueling pledges turn a congressional fight over Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar's (R-Fla.) Dignity Act into an electoral proxy war between hardliners and moderates over how far the Republican Party should go on immigration reform. It’s putting the bill's 20 House GOP co-sponsors in the spotlight.

The Homeland PAC, backed by immigration-restrictionist Republicans, launched last week in an effort to primary some of those co-sponsors. Meanwhile, American Business Immigration Coalition Action, a pro-immigration group, secured $1.2 million to protect them through its Building America’s Economy PAC and hopes to raise $5 million in total, according to plans first shared with POLITICO.

The Dignity Act, a bipartisan bill, has faced an onslaught of criticism from conservative MAGA influencers and allies of President Donald Trump, who view it as a nonstarter. While the bill doesn't create pathways to citizenship, it would allow millions of unauthorized immigrants to eventually gain work permits and remain in the U.S. legally.

Republicans like battleground Reps. Gabe Evans (Colo.) and Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.) have signed onto the bill. But critics pan it as “amnesty” and signal that the future of the Republican Party hinges on this debate.

“Donald Trump is not going to be around forever,” said Ryan Girdusky, the GOP strategist behind Homeland PAC. “The goal is to focus and to put our efforts into the future, and make sure Republicans know that the demand for stronger borders and for reforms to legal immigration and illegal immigration means something. We are not going to roll over and go back to business as usual.”

The clash is playing out as the White House recalibrates its own message on immigration amid plummeting public perception. The administration has shifted away from using the phrase “mass deportations” in public messaging and says it is focusing on deporting the “worst of the worst.”

“Extreme-right internet influencers have escalated their attacks, and we want to ensure the leadership on commonsense immigration reform are protected,” said Rebbeca Shi, CEO of ABIC Action, whose PAC is seeking to defend Republican co-sponsors of the Dignity Act.

Salazar has defended her bill, saying it offers workers “dignity.” But former Trump adviser Steve Bannon called it the “screw American workers” bill. Conservative pundit Megyn Kelly said the bill “is not going to go over well with the GOP base, with the America Firsters.” And conservative members of Congress, including Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas), slammed the bill as a betrayal to Trump’s base.

Girdusky, whose Homeland PAC is dedicated to “ending the career of every Republican who supports amnesty and sells out the American people on immigration,” won’t reveal which specific lawmakers he’s targeting or how much money he plans to spend. Several of the Dignity Act’s cosponsors are retiring or represent competitive districts, but Girdusky said his group will focus on those in safe-red seats with primary challenges.

“If any of these members have a change of heart and say, ‘Wow, this is actually a terrible bill for American workers and for the border and enriches human traffickers, I'm going to drop my support of it,’ I'm not going to challenge them in a primary,” he said.

Several hardline immigration groups have jockeyed for influence with the Trump administration, hoping to convince the president to keep his promise to enact the largest deportation initiative in history. But leaning into such an approach risks turning off voters, many of whom disapprove of the president’s handling of immigration so far.

New results from The POLITICO Poll shows that Americans’ views of Trump’s deportation campaign remain broadly negative in the three months since its enforcement surge in Minneapolis. Half of Americans, including one quarter of Trump’s 2024 voters, said his deportation campaign is too aggressive.

Shi said her group will defend the Dignity Act’s cosponsors — both Republicans and Democrats — in primaries, as well as Republicans who voted to reinstate temporary protected status for Haitians last week. She believes signing off on a bipartisan immigration reform bill like the Dignity Act would be a smart political move for the White House ahead of the midterms.

“The White House is very sensitive to the polling on this, and the numbers haven’t changed since Minneapolis,” Shi said. “That’s why the next logical step to win in November is to actually have solutions.”

DAYS THE BUDGET IS LATE: 20

BACK AT CITY HALL: Hassan Naveed, who was fired as New York City’s hate crimes prevention chief in 2024, is back in the municipal ranks — even as he continues to sue the city and the former mayor over allegations that his termination stemmed from religious-based discrimination.

As of this morning, Naveed is the new chief of staff to Deputy Mayor for Community Safety Renita Francois. That makes him the first high-profile addition to Francois’ team since Mayor Zohran Mamdani tapped her in March for the newly-created post, which comes with oversight of Mamdani’s signature Office of Community Safety.

Naveed, who also served on Mamdani’s transition team, declined to comment on his new gig.

But Naveed’s lawyer, Luna Droubi, confirmed to Playbook today that her client is continuing to pursue his lawsuit against former Mayor Eric Adams, the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice and two employees in that unit over allegations that Naveed was terminated as the city’s executive director of hate crimes prevention in April 2024 because of his Muslim faith.

So far, the city Law Department has represented Adams, the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice and the two employees against Naveed’s suit. At least one of the two named employees remains in city government, records show.

Naveed’s return to City Hall creates a potentially messy dynamic, in which he’s now working for the same government — and alongside at least one of the same government officials — he’s continuing to sue. The awkward situation is arguably heightened by the fact that Mamdani’s Law Department is continuing to provide Adams and the other defendants with taxpayer-funded legal representation as they continue to contest Naveed’s claims.

A spokesperson for Mamdani confirmed this afternoon that Naveed is back in city government, but said Naveed will need to recuse himself from any matters related to issues raised in his lawsuit. The spokesperson also said the Law Department is in the process of reviewing whether Naveed’s case can be resolved and if Adams and the other defendants are entitled to taxpayer-funded representation.

“Hassan Naveed brings deep experience across the core issues at the heart of the Office of Community Safety’s work,” the spokesperson, Sam Raskin, said. “That experience will be essential as we build a more coordinated, whole-of-government approach to public safety and mental health that ensures our systems respond to New Yorkers' needs with urgency and dignity.”

Since Mamdani took office, the Law Department has already moved to strip Adams of taxpayer-funded legal representation against a civil lawsuit accusing him of sexually assaulting a transit police colleague in 1993. Adams has denied wrongdoing in the assault case as well as in Naveed’s lawsuit.

There does not appear to be any city laws barring Naveed from continuing his suit against Adams while in city service.

While declining to comment on Naveed’s specific case due to confidentiality protocols, Carolyn Miller, executive director of the city Conflicts of Interest Board, said public servants are generally only prohibited from acting as “an attorney or counsel against the interests of the city in any litigation to which the city is a party.”

“As a general matter, a public servant is not prohibited from seeking redress against the city for wrongs allegedly caused by the city,” said Miller. “For example, if I believe that I have been the victim of a wrongful arrest by an NYPD officer or medical malpractice by a Health + Hospitals physician, the conflicts of interest law does not prohibit me from pursuing those claims.”

Todd Shapiro, a spokesperson for Adams, said the former mayor “does not comment on pending litigation.”

“That said, throughout his tenure, Mayor Adams maintained a strong and consistent record of standing up for religious freedom and protecting all communities from hate and discrimination,” Shapiro said. “His administration made historic investments in hate crime prevention and worked closely with diverse faith-based communities across New York City to ensure every New Yorker felt safe and respected.”

Naveed’s religious-based discrimination suit, which was filed in October 2025 and asks for monetary damages, alleges he was “singled out” for discrimination by Adams and members of his staff after Hamas militants killed some 1,200 people and took hundreds more hostage during the Oct. 7, 2023 terror attack in Israel.

For instance, the suit charges that Naveed confronted Adams in mid-October 2023 about social media posts from some of the then-mayor’s staffers that Naveed considered “anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian.” According to the suit, Adams dismissed Naveed’s concerns and told him that Muslims in New York City were experiencing hate because they had failed to adequately condemn Hamas after the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks, which prompted Israel to launch a war in Gaza that has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians.

Adams also told Naveed that pro-Palestinian demonstrations playing out in the city at the time were akin to “Klu [sic] Klux Klan protests,” according to the suit.

Naveed’s suit says he was ultimately fired as a result of the alleged anti-Muslim sentiment inside Adams’ administration. Adams spokesperson Kayla Mamelak denied that last year and said Naveed was terminated for “poor job performance.”

A former Adams administration official, granted anonymity for fear of legal retaliation, said Mamdani is making a poor hire because Naveed “was bad at his last job.”

“He completely ignored segments of the city and he never reached out to anyone,” the former official said. — Chris Sommerfeldt

From the Capitol

GOP BACKS BLAKEMAN BUCKS: Republicans in the state Legislature have introduced a bill that would force New York to let GOP gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman access $3.5 million in public campaign matching funds.

Blakeman was booted from the program after a partisan vote by the Public Campaign Finance Board last month for failing to fill out a nonexistent form identifying his running mate. The new measure from Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt and Assembly Minority Leader Ed Ra, announced Monday, would give their fellow Republican additional time to rectify any paperwork infirmities.

“My [Democratic] colleagues say they are for free and fair elections. They can take the bill; they can take it from me. I’d remove my name from it, and I’d be happy to vote for it,” Ortt said. “If they don’t do it, when they talk about free and fair elections, they are full of shit.”

Read more from Bill Mahoney in POLITICO Pro. 

BUDGET CRAWL: The state's tax-and-spend plan is yet to be resolved as New York lawmakers Monday approved their fifth stopgap measure since the budget was due nearly three weeks ago.

Gov. Kathy Hochul in Buffalo earlier in the day reiterated to reporters she is seeking changes to car insurance laws that have become a key sticking point in the talks. And the governor restated her desire to reach a deal on a package of protections for undocumented immigrants, which may be included in a final budget deal.

Read more from POLITICO Pro’s Nick Reisman.

FROM CITY HALL

BAILOUT FROM ALBANY?: Mamdani’s tenant protection czar Cea Weaver urged attendees at a housing panel today to turn their attention to the now weeks-late state budget.

“I would really encourage everybody — anyone who has Kathy Hochul’s phone number — feel free to call her and ask her to give us some more money. That would be great,” Weaver, formerly a prominent tenant activist, said to some chuckles. “Or the president, for that matter”

Weaver, head of the mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants, and housing commissioner Dina Levy joined the non-profit Urban Homesteading Assistance Board for a conference exploring “social housing,” a broad term for efforts to insulate housing from private market forces by keeping units permanently affordable and community-controlled. UHAB organized the conference with the Parsons School of Design.

Weaver laid out the city’s fiscal strain in frank terms, as Mamdani has sought to do in recent months.

“We're not making it up when we say there's no money for X, Y, Z thing,” Weaver said. “The budget problems that our city is facing are extraordinarily real … That is scary, and it means that we're going to have less flexibility to do the things that we all really want to do. But the state budget is not over yet.”

She continued, “So anything that we can do to join together in a fight for more resources from Albany is going to be really important to being able to achieve the things that we want to achieve.” — Janaki Chadha

FROM THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL

AND THEN THERE WAS ONE: The Democratic field to take on Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis appears to have narrowed to one, after union electrician Allison Ziogas filed a certificate of declination with the city Board of Elections on Monday morning.

Ziogas’ apparent decision to drop out leaves Mike DeCillis, a former NYPD officer, as the only Democratic challenger for what’s certain to be an uphill battle in a district that President Donald Trump won by 24 points in 2024.

The New York Times reported that Ziogas, who appeared to be the early frontrunner in the primary, was ending her bid because of unspecified health issues. DeCillis wrote on social media that he is “sorry to hear about her health issues and we wish her the best.”

Democrats unsuccessfully tried to redraw the seat, which covers all of Staten Island and part of Brooklyn, to make it more competitive, but that effort was blocked by the Supreme Court. However, some still saw opportunity there, given recent Democratic overperformances across the country and Trump’s unpopular policies. Republicans are adamant that the seat is not in play — and Ziogas dropping out is likely to put a damper on Democrats’ optimism.

Ziogas, who entered the race in March with the help of Morris Katz, a key Mamdani strategist, quickly received an endorsement from the Staten Island Democratic Party. After she declared her candidacy, the first Democrat to enter the race, educator Troy McGhie, dropped his bid and endorsed her. Ziogas outraised DeCillis $85,000 to $32,000 in the first quarter — both paltry hauls compared to Malliotakis’ $580,000 raised.

Ziogas’ campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Read more from Madison Fernandez and Chris Sommerfeldt in POLITICO Pro.

IN OTHER NEWS

— SUDDENLY SOCIALIST: An ex-cop Assembly candidate who for years led a group that bashed socialists and boosted the GOP now praises Mamdani and lauds the DSA. (New York Post)

— UNDER DOG?: Internal polls from democratic primary candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier show incumbent Democrat Rep. Adriano Espaillat is leading by 42% in New York’s 13th congressional district with the DSA challenger trailing by 28%. (THE CITY)

— RETURN POLICY: Hochul wants the Trump administration to refund an estimated $13.5 billion in tariff payments to New Yorkers, as Monday marks the first day for importers to claim refunds following a Supreme Court ruling that struck down the import tax. (NY 1)

— CUOMO CLEARED: The U.S. Supreme court declined to take up a lawsuit from relatives of nursing home patients who died of Covid-19. (Times Union)

Missed this morning’s New York Playbook? We forgive you. Read it here.

In some other year, Analilia Mejia’s 20-point win in New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District might have been a stunning result.

But the progressive organizer’s romp on Thursday elicited little shock, despite the margin in a district former Vice President Kamala Harris had carried by just 8 points.

It was the latest in a long string of Democratic overperformances in elections since President Donald Trump took office last year, and nowhere near the biggest.

A POLITICO analysis of 229 state and federal elections since Trump’s inauguration shows Democratic candidates outperformed Harris in 193 of them. On average, Democratic candidates overperformed Harris by 5 points. In a handful of special elections, they have pulled more than 20 points to the left.

It is a warning sign for Republicans that has continued to flash across the country every few weeks. Consistent overperformances in special elections have been an indicator of midterm shifts in the past, and the trend over the last 15 months is particularly strong. In the two-year cycle of special elections heading into 2018, margins shifted to the left in about two-thirds of special elections, according to The Downballot. In November of that year, Democrats netted 40 seats.

This cycle, Democrats have shifted races left in close to 85 percent of special elections.

“The overperformance across the country in special election after special election is a trend that can’t be ignored and proof that the American people are souring on Republicans’ broken promises,” Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesperson Aidan Johnson said in a statement.

Of course, eye-popping double-digit shifts in some special elections don’t mean every seat that Trump won by 10 points is going to be in play in November. And part of the strong numbers comes from comparing candidates to Harris, who did worse in 2024 than down-ballot Democrats on the same ballot. For example, in New Jersey’s 11st District, then-Rep. Mike Sherrill won by just shy of 15 points while Harris won by 8. Mejia, in the special election, won by 20.

“Outperforming the most unpopular Democratic presidential nominee in history is an abysmally low bar, and touting it as an achievement is embarrassing,” National Republican Senatorial Committee spokesperson Bernadette Breslin said.

And turnout in the special elections is generally much lower than in a midterm or presidential election. National Republicans argue the midterms will be different when turnout is higher.

“Democrats are cherry-picking low-turnout special elections to spin a narrative that falls apart the second you look at the full picture,” National Republican Congressional Committee spokesperson Mike Marinella said in a statement. “Republicans have the money, the message, and the momentum heading into 2026, and we are outpacing Democrats where it counts in the battlegrounds that will decide the majority.”

But Democrats’ improvements compared to 2024 extend across races and districts that are very different from one another, including special elections for the House and state legislative seats, as well as regular gubernatorial and legislative elections in Virginia and New Jersey last year. The consistent progress for Democrats has come across red and blue districts, swing and safe states — and is a signal going into the midterms that the political environment has shifted since 2024.

Morgan Bonwell, an Iowa-based Republican strategist, said Trump’s victory catalyzed Democratic voters to turn out.

“That fired Democrats up. They had a big loss,” she said. “They had an opportunity right there again to come out and turn out.”

The data reveals that Democrats’ improvements are not just a product of partisan voters in deep-blue areas: Most were in districts where Trump beat Harris. The largest gain was in a Trump-won Brooklyn state Senate district where the Democratic candidate improved on Harris’ vote share by 45 percentage points, followed by state legislative races in Rhode Island and Oklahoma that swung 28 and 27 points, respectively.

Republicans’ largest gain was in a February special election for an Alabama state legislative seat, where the GOP candidate ran 13 points ahead of Trump.

Democratic strategist Fred Hicks said he’s encouraged by voters reengaging with the party after an uninspiring 2024 that saw former President Joe Biden drop out from the presidential race and Harris’ abbreviated campaign fail to prevent Trump’s reelection.

“Trump's decisions and his announcements sobered up Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters right away, so that people realized they didn't have the luxury of sitting in their feelings,” Hicks said.

Another encouraging sign for Democrats is that some of the state legislative elections have overlapped with congressional battlegrounds. Three state legislative special elections in Iowa, for example, occurred within the bounds of the state’s 1st and 3rd Congressional Districts — top Democratic targets held by GOP Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Zach Nunn. In each of those special elections, the Democratic candidate outperformed Harris’ 2024 margin by between 12 and 13 percentage points.

Bonwell, the Iowa-based Republican strategist, warned that Miller-Meeks, Nunn and the rest of the GOP slate in Iowa will need to coordinate closely to match Democrats’ turnout in November, especially with strong candidates like Democratic gubernatorial candidate Rob Sand, who she says “has the ability to drive turnout.”

“They need to be a united front, and they need to pool resources, in my opinion, to bring them all up,” she said. “I think it’ll be challenging for sure.”

Other special elections have occurred in some of the biggest Senate battlegrounds. Since last year, there have been six state legislative special elections in Georgia, and all shifted between 2 and 10 points toward Democrats. The congressional special election for former Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s seat saw a Democrat surpass Harris’ margin in the district by 13 points. Two other special elections were in Maine — one swung 6 points toward Democrats, and the other moved by less than a point toward the GOP.

Democrats’ overperformance comes despite consistently low favorability for the party since 2025. North Carolina-based Democratic strategist Doug Wilson credited that to a focus on kitchen-table issues — the blueprint of the “affordability” playbook used by successful Democratic campaigns over the past year.

“I know that the party's brand is still not where it once was, but at the same time, I think the Democrats have done a good job of getting back to what I call Democratic roots,” Wilson said. “Remembering what it was like to be that man or that woman that's keeping themselves up at night worrying about how they're going to feed their families, how they're going to put gas in the car, how they're even going to save for retirement."

There are still unknown factors that could shape the midterm environment. In the 2022 election cycle, Democrats struggled in special elections until the Dobbs decision brought abortion rights to the forefront, then went on a winning streak, culminating in a midterm that had mixed results for both parties.

But for now, the trend has Democrats raising their expectations for November. Democratic strategist Alex Kellner said they could be heading for a massive wave of victories reminiscent of Republicans’ huge win in the 2010 midterms.

“The ceiling is higher for Democrats than it has been in a long time for a big pickup,” Kellner said.

The latest battle in the 2026 redistricting wars will be decided Tuesday in Virginia, where a map favoring Democrats in 10 of 11 districts looks narrowly poised to spell doom for Republican incumbents — and tee up Democrats’ next big fight.

Welcome to primaries in the era of redistricting, where a Democrat-on-Democrat clash in a Washington, D.C.-adjacent district is opening a long-shot bid for one progressive candidate with a made-for-resistance background.

Veteran Bree Fram is seizing on the Virginia referendum to mount a race from the left against Rep. James Walkinshaw, a six-month incumbent who slid into the seat held by Rep. Gerry Connolly, his former boss, after Connolly died in May 2025.

Fram’s candidacy highlights an unintended consequence of Democrats’ retaliation against the redistricting wars President Donald Trump declared in an effort to retain the GOP House majority. And win or lose, it will inform the direction of a Democratic Party still seeking an exit from the political wilderness.

Fram, once the highest-ranking transgender person in the military, was forced into retirement last year when Trump declared via executive order that trans people are “not consistent with the humility and selflessness required” of service. Now, Fram and her campaign manager Sabrina Bruce, also a trans woman pushed out of the Space Force, are running their campaign like a military operation. And while they acknowledge the bid is a long shot, they think they have a chance — if Virginia voters approve redistricting in the state.

“Assuming that it does go through, there is a path to victory there, because when it comes to the landscape, when you're looking at this from a strategic sense, you can't go where your [opponent] is strongest. You have to go where they are weakest,” Bruce said.

And if redistricting fails, or the state Supreme Court blocks it? “The circumstances in that path to victory are much more out of our hands,” Bruce admitted.

At first glance, Fram has a resume expected of congressional candidates. She’s a 23-year veteran — 18 in the Air Force and five in the Space Force — and is quick to mention the high marks she earned from the military’s best schools. She’s smart — an actual rocket scientist — and has written or edited three books, including one on leadership. She’s married, with two teenage children, and lives in a house in the sprawling Washington suburbs. She talks a lot about democracy, duty and service.

But the circumstances surrounding Fram’s underdog bid against Walkinshaw are anything but ordinary — and her candidacy highlights the perfect storm that Trump swept into the American political universe. It’s a path that wanders from the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to the redistricting wars of 2026. And its terminus will be instructive as the country looks toward the future.

Fram has the type of progressive platform that will play well in Washington’s deep-blue suburbs: no money from corporate PACs, universal health care, altering the capital gains tax. She wants to keep data centers — for which the region is the global capital — away from residential areas. She’s a harsh critic of DOGE, whose decimation of the federal workforce was uniquely painful for the bureaucrats who call Northern Virginia home. And she joins a number of Democratic politicians bolstered by their military service credentials, calling Trump’s consistently unpopular war in Iran “a reckless disaster.”

Fram also isn’t afraid to bash her own party. She said she was “disappointed” by some Democrats who sought to distance themselves from trans advocacy in the aftermath of 2024. And she’s called for a constitutional amendment restricting presidential pardon power — including the type of preemptive pardons Biden issued his inner circle before leaving office.

Walkinshaw is running as an establishment Democrat — and an extension of Connolly, who served in Congress for 16 years and is mentioned five times on the webpage laying out Walkinshaw’s policy priorities. He sits on the House Oversight Committee (which Connolly chaired) and Homeland Security Committee — two high-profile panels whose Democratic members have set themselves in opposition to Trump’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files and immigration crackdown. He is also co-chair and founder of the Federal Workforce Caucus, which advocates for federal workers.

Bruce and Fram knew it would be an uphill battle to defeat Walkinshaw, who ended 2025 with more than $340,000 cash on hand. Then, days before Fram announced her campaign on Jan. 20, the Virginia state Senate and House of Delegates passed the constitutional amendment setting the stage for the redistricting referendum.

Weeks later, Democratic Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed legislation drawing a new congressional map that would take effect if voters approve the measure. Fram’s home district in that map — the “new 11th” — includes a majority of voters from surrounding districts currently represented by Reps. Suhas Subramanyam (D), Don Beyer (D) and Ben Cline (R). Walkinshaw and every other Democrat in the Virginia delegation have endorsed the map.

“We were aware that the terrain and the battlefield had shifted slightly in our favor with redistricting,” Bruce said. “That chaos is a ladder, and when you have an opportunity to exploit that, to take advantage of it, it's clear that you can use that to win.”

The campaign is operating under the assumption that the referendum, which is polling very narrowly in Democrats’ favor, will pass. So far, that’s involved a “listening tour” of the new 11th — inspired by a commander’s first order of business when they take over a new base or squadron: Speaking to all the people who work for them to understand their needs.

But Fram is still the underdog.

An internal poll commissioned by Fram’s campaign and shared with POLITICO shows Walkinshaw with a major lead. In a head-to-head contest between the two, 43 percent of Democratic primary voters in Virginia’s new 11th district said they would support Walkinshaw, and only 9 percent said they would vote for Fram — while 48 percent said they weren’t sure. In the same poll, after being presented with information about both candidates, Fram cuts into the gap, if only slightly: Walkinshaw carries 42 percent, and Fram garners 21 percent.

Then there’s the money.

Fram’s campaign raised just over $250,000 in the first quarter of 2026 and had about $135,000 cash on hand at the end of March, according to FEC filings. Her campaign has received donations from every state and D.C., and every county in the new 11th district. None of it came from PACs.

Walkinshaw raised more than $630,000 over the same period, nearly $210,000 of which came from PACs. His campaign reported nearly $800,000 cash on hand as of March 31. Donald Brownlee, Walkinshaw’s campaign manager, said in a statement that over the past year, they received more than 6,000 individual donations, averaging $25 each.

“The grassroots energy we saw in our special election last year remains strong and [Walkinshaw] is focused on helping deliver a win for the Yes campaign in next week’s redistricting referendum,” Brownlee said.

Despite their differences, Fram is focused on running a campaign that steers clear of trench warfare. Fram and Walkinshaw are on the same team, the campaign says.

“I think that there is a line between winning, and being happy with the way that you won,” Bruce said. “And for a campaign that is centered on hope, centered on building something that is better than what we have, I don't think we can stray too far from that and start attacking fellow Democrats. How are we going to get away from this malaise that Trump has put us in if we don't try to be better ourselves?”

To understand Fram’s motivation for running, her background is important. The fact that she is trans, Fram says, is “the 17th most interesting thing about” her. When she was promoted to Space Force colonel in 2024, Fram became the highest-ranked openly trans person in the entire military. But then came the Supreme Court’s emergency stay on Trump’s executive order ousting Fram and thousands of other trans service members.

“That was devastating, because that was the day I knew the Supreme Court had just fired me,” Fram said.

Fram’s journey to the military began decades earlier with an episode of “Star Trek: Next Generation.” A young Fram was drawn to the character Geordi La Forge, helmsman of the show’s Enterprise-D starship. “I saw Geordi and I’m like, ‘That's my job. I want to make the warp engines go. I want to help humanity expand into the stars,’” she said. Fram graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2001 with a degree in aerospace engineering and began looking for jobs at places like NASA and Boeing.

But the Sept. 11 attacks changed Fram’s trajectory. In the days after, Fram was driving from Minneapolis to Duluth to visit her girlfriend — now wife — when she saw an American flag draped from an overpass. She started to cry. “I walked into her apartment and said, ‘I'm going to join the Air Force,’” Fram recalled. By January 2003, Fram reported to officer training school, just as former President George W. Bush was beginning his second term and plotting the invasion of Iraq.

During her first 13 years in the Air Force, Fram told only two people in the military she was trans. In one close call around 2014, Fram recalled, she reported to work on a Saturday and accidentally brought a personal phone — which contained female-presenting photos of herself — into a classified zone. After quickly realizing and turning over the device to the security office, Fram waited in terror. “My wife thought that black helicopters were going to appear over our house,” she said. But five days later, security officers pulled Fram aside and asked if she could be blackmailed over the pictures. She said no, and they told her to pick up her phone on the way out.

On June 30, 2016, the Obama administration declared that “effective immediately, transgender Americans may serve openly, and they can no longer be discharged or otherwise separated from the military just for being transgender.” Fram was ready: She had drafted an email coming out to her colleagues and a Facebook post to come out to the world. She took a couple breaths. And then she hit send.

Fram scurried to the Pentagon gym, where she got on the elliptical and “went nowhere faster than I'd ever gone anywhere in my life,” she said. When she returned to her desk, her colleagues walked up to her one by one to shake her hand and say it was an honor to serve alongside her.

Four months later, Trump won his first presidential election.

On the 2016 campaign trail, Trump’s comments about trans people were fairly moderate. In April of that year, he said they should “use the bathroom they feel is appropriate.” Mostly, he avoided the topic altogether.

But in July 2017, the president said in a post on Twitter that, “After consultation with my Generals and military experts … the United States Government will not accept or allow … Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. military.” Fram wasn’t sure what to make of the missive — was a tweet an official order? — but she knew something had shifted.

That trans ban by tweet faced swift legal challenges, and in March 2018, the administration issued a revised policy that barred trans people from enlisting but allowed those already serving to remain if they received a diagnosis of “gender dysphoria” from a military doctor.

“It felt like being an endangered species at that point,” Fram said, “where the policies were just going to be so onerous and unpleasant that they thought we were just going to walk away, and eventually all of us would be gone.” She decided to stay and became one of the founding members of Trump’s Space Force.

When former President Joe Biden took office, he reversed the trans ban on Day One. Fram ascended the military’s ladder, climbing to the rank of colonel by the end of his term.

At the same time, Trump was stepping out of exile and back into the national political spotlight. His comeback campaign centered on anti-trans rhetoric, railing against “transgender for everybody” — a phrase he ambiguously attributed to Democrats. The GOP platform pledged to “End Left-wing Gender Insanity.” One of the Trump reelect’s most successful ads bashed Kamala Harris over the issue: “Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you,” the narrator of the ad said.

“The 2017 tweet was a lightning bolt out of a clear blue sky that no one saw coming,” Fram said. “But approaching 2024, we had $200 million spent in the last two months of the campaign demonizing trans people. This was like a hurricane you saw forming far away. You know it's coming toward you, and the question is just how bad is it going to be when it hits shore.”

As the prospect of Trump’s return to office became more of a reality, Fram was sitting on a beach in Maine when her mother asked her a jarring question: “What’s your plan to flee?”

It hit home for Fram, whose grandfather and great grandfather according to family lore left Germany at the onset of the Holocaust on a midnight train to Paris.

“I plan to stay and fight,” Fram said she told her mother. “If the uniform gave me anything, it's the courage to stand up when it's appropriate to do so.”

When the Supreme Court issued the decision that precipitated her ouster, Fram had one final meeting with the joint staff, which she attended as a colonel due to the Space Force’s small size. After delivering an update on her work, Fram informed the admirals and generals of her “unexpected departure.”

“The person sitting next to me looked over and said, ‘Oh, why? What new assignment did you get? Where are you going?’” Fram said. “And I'm like, ‘Well, I don't meet this administration's standard for military excellence and readiness, so I'm going to be placed on administrative leave in two days.’ And it took a moment for what that meant to descend upon the people in the room.”

Just like the day she came out nearly a decade earlier, Fram said each person at the meeting shook her hand and told her “it’s an honor to have served with you.”

Fram was placed on administrative leave in early June 2025. A week before her retirement — authorized for Jan. 1, 2026, after a bureaucratic delay for approval — a three-star general summoned Fram to the Pentagon to deliver a message: the normal retirement celebrations would not be available. There would be no honor guard and no band. Others from her unit would not be allowed to attend. And she wouldn’t be able to wear her own uniform.

“Every pettiness, every cruelty as part of this process was inflicted on us,” Fram said.

Neither the Pentagon nor the White House responded to requests for comment by the time of publication.

Later that month, the Human Rights Campaign Foundation hosted a ceremonial retirement in Washington for five trans service members, including Fram. Their uniforms were displayed on mannequins.

“Our uniforms are not coming off because we failed in our duty, but because we did it so well that what it represented could not be hidden away,” Fram said in that ceremony’s closing remarks. “We may be done with our military service. We are not done serving.”

On April 28, 2025, Connolly released a statement announcing that he would not seek reelection after nine terms in Congress, citing the return of esophageal cancer.

Just over a week later, on May 6 — the same day the Supreme Court ordered its emergency stay — Walkinshaw, who had served as Connolly’s chief of staff for 10 years, filed paperwork seeking the Democratic nomination to replace his former boss. Connolly endorsed him the same day and transferred $1.8 million to a PAC backing Walkinshaw, according to campaign finance records first reported by the Washington Examiner.

Connolly died on May 21, triggering a firehouse Democratic primary to replace him in the deep-blue district on June 28 ahead of a Sept. 9 special election. Even after his death, Connolly’s campaign sent emails to its listserv soliciting donations for Walkinshaw, and his X account told followers to vote early for him, the Examiner reported. Walkinshaw cruised to victory in the primary, notching nearly 60 percent of the vote.

In the background, Fram and Bruce — who had known each other since 2018 — were set on a collision course with Walkinshaw. As Walkinshaw was announcing his campaign, Bruce was driving to her Space Force reenlistment ceremony when the high court released the decision that would force her out of the service. She went on administrative leave the next week. Fram had already been eyeing a run for Virginia’s 11th District, but couldn’t retire quickly enough to jump into the special election.

But by September, Fram and Bruce began to seriously discuss their next mission: a 2026 bid.

“If this administration thinks they can kick out a bunch of highly motivated badasses without expecting it to come back and bite them in the butt,” Fram said, “this is a way to show them wrong.”