Walkinshaw launches congressional campaign

James Walkinshaw promises to work “to put the brakes on the dangerous and reckless Trump administration,” if elected to Congress.

Walkinshaw represents the Braddock District on the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. He is one of nine candidates running in a Democratic Primary for the vacant House seat formerly held by Rep. Gerry Connolly, who died last month.

A special election will be held on Sept. 9. Both the Democratic and Republican 11th congressional district committees are holding primaries on June 28.

Walkinshaw was Connolly’s chief of staff for 11 years before he was elected to the Board of Supervisors in 2019. That experience, he said, will enable him to hit the ground running if he is elected.

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At his official campaign launch on Sept. 14, Walkinshaw said, “I’m running for Congress because we’re in a five-alarm fire moment for our country.”

“The Trump administration is violating the Constitution daily,” he said. “They’re disappearing people into foreign prisons. They’re waging war on Americans in Los Angeles right now. They’re illegally purging and firing federal employees.”

Last December, Walkinshaw and other supervisors received a letter from the Trump administration threatening to put them in jail “if we don’t agree to turn our local police into Trump’s mass deportation force. … I ripped up that letter. I will never back down.”

If elected, he would implement a three-part process to deal with the Trump administration.

One part of that process is “investigating their corruption, their incompetence, and their law-breaking,” he said. “The American people need to hear the stories that federal workers know about the terrible things that are taking place in this administration.”

Another piece is litigation. “We’ve had a lot of success around the country in putting the brakes on the Trump administration in the courts. We have to continue that pressure.”

“As a member of Congress, I would look to get my constituents’ stories and voices into those courtrooms so they are heard,” he said.  

The third action is mobilizing and organizing the resistance to the Trump administration,” he said. “I will be there at every rally, at every protest, by your side.”

On the Board of Supervisors, Walkinshaw said he worked with his colleagues to ban guns from libraries and parks, implement a red flag law to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers, invest heavily in the schools, and enact collective bargaining for county workers.

“As chair of the board’s Environmental Committee, I’ve led efforts to tackle climate change,” he said. That included installing solar panels on county buildings and switching to electric vehicles.  

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During Walkinshaw’s time in Connolly’s congressional office, he said, “We passed the Affordable Care Act, we delivered millions and millions of dollars for economic development in Fairfax and Northern Virginia, and we stood up for federal employees.”

Then, during Trump’s first time, he said Democrats blocked Republicans’ efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, shut down the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, and eliminate the civil service. “We can stop Trump. We’ve done it before.”

“We’re in a critical moment right now,” he said.

“We the people control our destiny in this country,” Walkinshaw said. “Trump, JD Vance, and their MAGA allies in Congress hope that we are scared.” They are sowing chaos in Los Angeles and across the globe to make us fearful. “But we can’t be afraid, because if we stand together, they cannot beat us.”