For the past 18 years, the party that has won Virginia's 2nd Congressional District has also taken control of the full House of Representatives. Voters will learn next week whether that pattern holds. The district is home to the largest concentration of Navy families in the country, and the ongoing war with Iran is shaping the conversation there.
The USS San Antonio recently returned to Norfolk after two deployments that together lasted more than a year. Rena Ritter waited on the pier with her baby daughter for her husband, Isaiah Wells, an engineer aboard the ship. She said the long deployments have hurt the crew's mental health, and that sailors often go days without sleep while preparing and fixing equipment before arriving in port.
The USS Gerald R. Ford set a record for the longest carrier deployment before coming back to Norfolk this summer. At least 15 Navy ships remain in the Middle East, and more are expected to join them as the war continues.
At the Black Food Festival in Virginia Beach, Terraza Brooks said her son is serving on one of those ships. He missed his brother's graduation and his younger brother's prom, she said. Brooks and her husband Brian, a retired Navy veteran, said their votes will not be driven directly by their son's time at sea. "I'm going to vote on what's best for everybody, because that war is affecting everybody," Brooks said, pointing to high gas prices.
The two main candidates were both seeking votes at the same festival. Democrat Elaine Luria is a retired Navy officer who was first elected in 2018, during Donald Trump's first term, and lost to Republican Jen Kiggans in 2022. Luria said Republicans are showing a lack of oversight and are not pressing military and civilian leaders to answer questions about military families, national defense and readiness.
Kiggans, a nurse practitioner and former Navy pilot, recently brought Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to an event at a local college. He was one of several high-ranking Trump administration officials she has brought to the district. Asked about supply shortages on Navy ships in the Middle East, Kiggans said the demands on service members are growing longer and that she believes the country is doing its best with what it has. "When you're in a conflict part of the world, the supply chains can be tricky," she said. Her staff cut off a follow-up question about how the war affects her campaign.
According to the nonpartisan Virginia Public Access Project, about $20 million has been spent in the general election, split evenly between the two candidates.
Despite the large number of troops and families in the district, they can be hard for campaigns to reach. Many do not vote where they are stationed, and strained supply lines in the Middle East and mail problems at home can delay absentee ballots. Sarah Streyder of the Secure Families Initiative, which helps military families with voting, said the top concern from voters contacting the group this cycle is still waiting for a ballot to arrive. With the election less than a week away, she tells them not to give up.
