Foy to run for Virginia gov:
America
Democratic state Del. Jennifer Carroll Foy has filed paperwork to run what could be a historymaking campaign to become Virginia’s first woman governor and the first African-American female governor in the United States.
Carroll Foy, an attorney and two-term member of the House of Delegates, hasn’t held a formal campaign kickoff, but the Virginia Department of Elections’ website shows that she registered a gubernatorial campaign committee Friday. The filing was first reported by The Virginia Mercury.
“The delegate is focused on the state’s response to the pandemic and helping her constituents manage this crisis,” her chief of staff, Josh Crandell, said in a statement.
If she were to win next year’s race, the 38-year-old Carroll Foy would be only the second woman ever elected to statewide office in Virginia. The first was Mary Sue Terry, who served as attorney general in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Carroll Foy, considered a rising star in her party, grew up in Petersburg, one of the state’s poorest cities, and was among the first women to graduate from the traditionally all-male Virginia Military Institute. She’s also been a foster parent and worked as a public defender.
She took on a high-profile role this session as one of the sponsors of a resolution that the new Democratic majority quickly advanced, making Virginia the critical 38th state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment.
She also carried a number of criminal justice reform measures, including a bill that repeals a state law that allowed police to arrest and jail an individual declared a “habitual drunkard” by a court if that person possesses alcohol or is publicly intoxicated. The law was declared unconstitutional last year.