Virginia congressman’s posthumous endorsement adds a new twist to Democratic age struggles

Connolly was the third House Democrat elected last November to die in office this year, elevating a Joe Biden-influenced public argument about whether the party had become a gerontocracy.

Those deaths have made it marginally more difficult for Democrats to stop Republican bills, but they haven’t stopped potential replacement candidates from running on their predecessors’ legacies.

In Arizona, former Pima county Adelita Grijalva is the favorite to win the vacant seat of her late father, Raul Grijalva. His voice and face appear in one of her paid ads, with two undated audio clips saying “they told me not to give up” and “the fight’s not over” — part of a campaign to invoke her family name.

“I am a Grijalva,” she told a TV interviewer who asked if she would approach the job differently than her father. “So, yes: I will be a Grijalva.”

Like the Tucson-based Arizona seat, the Fairfax County seat vacated by Connolly has become safely Democratic. Connolly, who was first elected to local office in 1995, helped turn it blue, defending it from the 2010 GOP wave, then building big margins as Republicans lost the northern Virginia suburbs.

This spring, after announcing that he would give up his spot as the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee and not run for another term, Connolly endorsed Walkinshaw to succeed him. The congressman’s death pushed the succession up to June 28; his former chief of staff had a head start.

“It’s been completely disproportionate in terms of resources, completely disproportionate in terms of endorsements and people wanting to not go against Gerry,” said state Sen. Stella Pekarsky, who announced her campaign for the seat the same day as Walkinshaw.

Shortly before Connolly died, and before any other candidate got into the race, Walkinshaw’s constituents got a piece of mail about how he was fighting Trump. That became the major theme of his congressional campaign, alongside his close work with Connolly.

It didn’t clear the field, but it easily minted Walkinshaw as the candidate of continuity who could pick up the congressman’s work without a pause. At a Memorial Day weekend event in one of the district’s largest cities, some Walkinshaw campaigners wore Connolly gear as they handed out literature. That didn’t draw negative attention. This week’s endorsement posts did.

Walkinshaw’s campaign did not respond to questions about the race, and the only all-candidate forum, held this week, began with a plea for everyone to be respectful.

The issues of age and legacy only came up when the Democrats were asked why the party lost in 2024; Amy Roma, a clean energy consultant, said that it had lost credibility by defending Biden’s ability to run again, then desperately taking him off the ticket.

“We need to make sure that we present candidates that people want to vote for. We also need to make sure that we let people have a choice in who their candidates are,” said Roma. “Being ‘forced’ to pick one candidate,” she said, was “not participating in democracy.”

“Each of the ten candidates in the race bring strengths,” said Walkinshaw’s spokesman Brian Garcia. Supervisor Walkinshaw brings his experience as Congressman Connolly’s Chief of Staff and his record of standing up to Trump and delivering results as Fairfax County Supervisor. The endorsement letter that Congressman Connolly wrote before he passed is a powerful testament to his belief that James is best prepared to fight for our community at this moment and the active support of the Congressman’s wife and daughter throughout our campaign is a huge asset.”

One legacy of Biden’s disastrous 2024 campaign has Democratic anger at the refusal of some elderly politicians to recognize when the time has come to cede the spotlight. Connolly was well-respected in his district, and in the House.

But when he beat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to become the top Democrat on the Oversight committee earlier this year, he was sucked into that story.

“Gerry’s a young 74, cancer notwithstanding,” Virginia Rep. Don Beyer told Axios at the time. Beyer, who turned 75 this month, is seeking re-election next year.

Democrats running in Virginia’s short primary were unusually blunt about this stuff — respectful of Connolly, but not of the idea that his preferred candidate should get the seat. They were also realistic.

Connolly would be replaced more quickly than other congressmen who died in office, because state rules require vacancies to be filled in “firehouse” primaries, short elections run by the party with a handful of voting sites.

By contrast, Houston Democrats won’t get to replace Sylvester Turner, who died weeks into his term, until November, after Gov. Greg Abbott set the primary as late as he possibly could.

Connolly also had the right to endorse a successor — something other members of Congress who died in office failed to do. Four years ago, I covered a ludicrous special election in Florida, held after Rep. Alcee Hastings ran for a final term while dying of cancer.

One candidate claimed to have been endorsed by Hastings on his deathbed, but couldn’t prove it. He lost by five votes to now-Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, who’d run twice against Hastings, and has been under an ethics investigation for more than a year.

Virginia Democrats will get their nominee this weekend, and they’ll undoubtedly hold the seat. But the 2024 aftershock has a very large radius. And maybe there’s no way for a dead congressman’s X account to post an endorsement without people saying, “huh?”

While Walkinshaw’s advertising about a Connolly endorsement ruffled his rivals in the race, his frontrunner status predated the lawmaker’s death.

Congressional staffers often run for Congress themselves, and the likelihood that Connolly’s former chief of staff would run when he retired was well-known in the district.