Arlington Native Victoria Virasingh Challenges Don Beyer In Primary

NORTHERN VIRGINIA — Victoria Virasingh, an Arlington native and former technology industry employee, realizes she is waging an uphill struggle to unseat U.S. Rep. Don Beyer in Virginia's 8th Congressional District.

Beyer, who is seeking a fifth term in office, has the name recognition and served as Virginia’s lieutenant governor for two terms in the 1990s. He was involved in national Democratic Party politics until he won the 2014 election to succeed Rep. Jim Moran as congressman in the district.

Despite huge hurdles, Virasingh decided to seek the Democratic nomination for the district because she wants to serve all the people in it, including the marginalized who struggle to afford rent in an area where housing costs continue to soar.

"The policies that we are running on come from a professional and lived experience," Virasingh said in an interview with Patch. "As a daughter of a minimum wage worker, I know what it’s like to live on the minimum wage. I also know that the minimum wage today is not a living wage to allow working class families and working class people to be able to afford to live and work in Northern Virginia."

Virasingh also believes elections in a functioning democracy should be a competitive process where voters have a choice. But only a small percentage of House districts across the country are considered highly competitive. And Virginia’s 8th District is not one of them.

With the Democratic primary essentially serving as the general election, Virasingh said she doesn’t think Beyer should go unchallenged heading into November.

Virasingh is Beyer’s first primary challenger since he was elected to Congress in 2014. Beyer is the only congressional Democrat in Virginia who is facing a primary opponent this year.

It was not easy for Virasingh to get on the primary ballot. Her campaign submitted 1,628 signatures of local residents, surpassing the required 1,000 signatures, to the Virginia Department of Elections.

Even though she announced plans to run for the district in late 2021, it took until early April, only a month before early voting started, for Virasingh to receive word from the state that she had qualified to appear on the Democratic primary ballot.

Virgasingh said her campaign is fully funded by individuals and noted that her first campaign fundraiser was hosted by her kindergarten teacher in Arlington.

The daughter of immigrants, Virasingh, 29, was born and raised in Arlington. Her mother grew up in Ecuador, and her father was born to Punjabi Sikh refugees in Thailand.

Virasingh was the first in her family to go to college and attended Stanford University on a scholarship. She received a bachelor’s degree in international relations and a master’s degree in Latin American studies from Stanford and remained in the Bay Area after school, where she worked for Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) before getting a job working in the technology industry.

When she moved back to Arlington, Virasingh volunteered with Communities in Schools to help with family and education services during the pandemic. She was recruited to become an Arlington Democrats precinct captain, volunteered with the Virginia Turnout Project and served as the Arlington Democrats outreach vice chair.

Virasingh, who also currently serves as an Arlington County Board-appointed member of the Economic Development Commission, describes herself as a “pragmatic progressive.”

"With Amazon coming in, I know, as a county board-appointed commissioner for the Arlington Economic Development Commission, I understand that we want to encourage more technology industry growth here in Northern Virginia," she said.

Along with encouraging innovation and business growth, Virasingh said her campaign is pushing for businesses to hire local residents, working to ensure that families who already live in the region are not displaced by the high cost of living and promoting policies to allow small businesses to compete.

"There are a lot of things that have changed in Northern Virginia since I was a young girl," she said. "But the desire for so many of us and so many voters is to create a community where there's opportunity for all."

"Our Democracy Is Very Fragile"

Since returning to Arlington from California a few years ago, Virasingh started noticing government policies were not working as well as they could for working families.

"I believe that right now is the time to run for Congress, given where we are in our political climate today," she said. "Our democracy is very fragile. There is a lot of mistrust of our government institutions, and the amount of money in politics is enormous."

Virasingh said her campaign is creating a new voice and inspiring a lot of people to get involved in the issues. Encouraging political involvement is especially important in primary elections that tend to see fewer than 10 percent of voters show up at the polls, she said.

Early voting in the Democratic primary for the 8th Congressional District began May 6. The district includes all of Arlington County, all of the cities of Falls Church and Alexandria and portions of Fairfax County.

Any registered voter can vote in the Democratic primary, as Virginia does not register voters by party. Residents in the district can check their voter record online to confirm their voter registration and polling place.

Drop boxes are available at most polling places across the district on primary election day Tuesday until 7 p.m.

According to Virasingh, many of the differences between her and Beyer, 71, stem from lived experience.

"When you bring a lived experience of understanding what it's like to be your everyday person living here, it's a different type of leadership," she said. "The congressman has served to the best of his ability and I believe that now is a time to pass the torch and to let another generation bring a perspective that has long been absent from the halls of congress, which is the perspective of the average American."

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