Rep. Gerry Connolly Passes Away

Leaves vacant seat in Virginia's 11th Congressional District

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AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

Veteran Democratic US Representative Gerry Connolly (D-VA) passed away yesterday after an extensive battle with cancer. He is the third member to die since the beginning of the current Congress. 

At the end of April, Mr. Connolly announced that his cancer had returned and that he would not seek re-election and would step down as Ranking Minority Member of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. At the beginning of the current Congress, he easily defeated Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) to win the committee leadership position.

Because Rep. Connolly had already announced his retirement, a campaign was already forming to succeed him in the 2026 election. Fairfax County Supervisor James Walkinshaw (D) and state Sen. Stella Pekarsky (D-Centreville) are viewed as the leading candidates for the impending regular election. It is assumed both will enter the special election that Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) will call for what is now a vacant 11th Congressional District. 

Others will likely enter, though some key potential candidates, such as former state House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn (D) and state Sen. Jennifer Boysko (D-Herndon), indicated in the days prior to Mr. Connolly’s death that they will support Supervisor Walkinshaw for the federal position.

Gov. Youngkin will likely schedule the special election for a period around Labor Day.  The 11th CD is heavily Democratic (Dave’s Redistricting App partisan lean: 67.2D – 30.7R), so the eventual party nominee is virtually assured of assuming the seat.

Virginia’s congressional district political party organizations have the power to determine their own nomination process. This means the local leadership and party organization members can choose to hold a regular primary election, a “firehouse primary,” which means a vote with very few polling places in the district, or conduct a nominating convention with local delegates. 

Democrats typically favor regular primaries, while Republican committees generally opt for a convention or the firehouse primary option. 

Rep. Connolly was first elected to the House in 2008, after serving six years as the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors chairman. He originally won the Board’s Providence District seat in 1994. 

The House Democratic Conference is now reduced to 212 members since Mr. Connolly is the third Democratic member to pass away this year. The other two were Reps. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) and Sylvester Turner (D-TX). Special elections for the previous two vacant districts are scheduled for late September (Arizona) and early November (Texas), the latter being concurrent with the regular local election schedule. 

Virginia’s 11th District is located wholly within Fairfax County and houses Fairfax City in the Washington, DC suburbs. The district begins at the Maryland border and includes the Tysons Corner community at its eastern border. The 11th hosts the Reston and Herndon communities through which it stretches to Dulles Airport, and then moves south to add the Centreville, Springfield, Burke and Lorton communities. 

The Down Ballot political blog prognosticators rank the VA-11 seat as the 81st safest Democratic seat in the party conference. President Biden carried the district with a 66-31% margin in 2024, and a 70-29% spread in 2020.

Mr. Connolly was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1950. He was 75 years of age.

Jim Ellis is a 35-year veteran of politics at the state and national levels. He has served ss executive director for two national political action committees, as well as a consultant to the three national Republican Party organizations in DC, the National Federation of Independent Business, and various national conservative groups.

Born and raised in Sacramento, California, he earned a B. A. in Political Science from the University of California at Davis in 1979. Jim raised his daughter, Jacqueline, alone after his wife died following a tragic car accident. He helped establish the Joan Ellis Victims Assistance Network in Rochester, NH. Jim also is a member of the Northern Virginia Football Officials Association, which officiates high school games throughout the region.

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Editor-in-Chief, Souls and Liberty