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Virginia Del. David A. Reid (D-Loudoun) announced his bid Tuesday for the state’s 10th Congressional District seat, adding to what is becoming a crowded field of Democratic candidates vying to succeed Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D-Va.), who is not seeking reelection for health reasons.
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Reid, 61, was reelected last week to a fourth term representing the Loudoun County area in the House of Delegates, success he said stems from his ability to work across the aisle and find solutions to the region’s most pressing problems.
“I have passed over 30 pieces of legislation with broad support in both the House and the Senate,” Reid said in an interview, touting, among other things, the creation in 2021 of an Enslaved Ancestors College Access Scholarship and Memorial Program that requires higher education institutions that benefited from enslaved labor to provide scholarships and economic development programs to descendants of enslaved people.
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“I think I have developed a reputation in the General Assembly of being accessible, thoughtful and being able to identify creative solutions to problems that had been very difficult for people to address in the past,” he said.
Reid joins a field of candidates for next year’s Democratic primary election in the competitive 10th District that includes former Virginia House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn (Fairfax) and state Sen. Jennifer B. Boysko (Loudoun). Several other Democrats have been mentioned as possible contenders, including Del. Dan Helmer (Fairfax) and Loudoun County Board of Supervisors Chair Phyllis J. Randall.
Republican Mike Clancy, an attorney and technology company executive, has announced a bid for his party’s nomination.
The open seat that Wexton turned blue after defeating Rep. Barbara Comstock in 2018 is likely to be competitive during next year’s elections.
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Reid plans to lean into his personal story as one of five siblings who spent a portion of their youth in a children’s group home in rural Rockbridge County, Va., after their mother left home and their father, unable to provide for them, surrendered his children to the organization’s care.
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Reid and a younger brother eventually went to live with foster parents, who adopted them and took them to Oklahoma. Reid returned to Virginia as a young adult and joined the U.S. Navy Reserve, where he served as an intelligence officer and retired as a commander after 23 years.
He recalled as one of his proudest moments as an elected official the day shortly after beginning his first term in 2018, when he invited children from the same orphanage — the United Methodist Children’s Home — into the General Assembly gallery.
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Reid said he introduced the children to his colleagues and shared his own story. Later, he received a thank-you letter from one of the children, which said he had been feeling hopeless until he saw in Reid that “I could do anything.”
Reid said his childhood experiences, plus those as a defense contractor working in the intelligence community for two decades, make him well-suited to represent the district, whose boundaries, he said, include low-income families struggling for economic stability and high-powered businesses with close ties to the U.S. government.
The district primarily includes Loudoun County, with portions of Fairfax and Prince William counties, extending southwest into Rappahannock County.
“My background, I think, is unique among the people that are running,” Reid said, adding that his family has lived in Loudoun since 2000. “One of the things that’s very helpful to me is that we’ve been here in the community. This is home.”
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In Congress, he said, he intends to fight to make college more affordable to low-income students, to pass a federal abortion rights law and to lower health care costs, particularly for low-income families.
State Sen. John J. Bell (D-Loudoun) is among Reid’s early supporters. He said the veteran state delegate reflects Loudoun County’s more moderate politics, which, he argued, has been lacking in both major parties.
“We have a polarized state right now,” Bell said. “We need leaders like David who have common sense and are willing to talk to everyone, who aren’t so attached to some dogma that they believe they can’t talk to everyone and they can’t do what’s best for the common good of the country.”
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