Your guide to the VA-01 candidates

Better representation is within reach

Greetings from Wittman Watch HQ! 👋 🇺🇸

We published our first comparison of the candidates running to unseat Rob Wittman on May 12, and made minor updates in early June. Since then, we’ve heard a lot more from our candidates and they’ve expanded their platforms. We’ve read every campaign website. We scrolled their social media. And we’ve compiled everything in one place for you, right here.

This fully updated comparison is your one-stop shop for all you need to know about the candidates.

We’ve also created a page to collect the candidates’ notable media appearances. Check that out here:

2026 VA-01 Democratic primary candidates: info, interviews, & appearances

When to vote in the Democratic primary

June 18 – August 1:
Early in-person and absentee voting

Through July 24:
Register to vote; update registration; request mail-in ballot

August 4, 2026:
Election Day

✅ You can register, check your status, or request an absentee ballot at elections.virginia.gov.

The good news for VA-01 voters is that we have real choices. Each of the seven Democratic candidates brings different priorities, different experience, and different ideas about how to represent us.

---

What they have in common

Across the seven challengers, the consensus is broad. They all want to:

• Lower prescription drug prices.

• Protect Medicaid.

• Require billionaires and large corporations to pay higher effective tax rates than teachers and firefighters currently do.

• Protect reproductive rights in federal law.

• Ensure the long-term viability of rural hospitals (most specifically Rappahannock General) that are at risk because of the cuts Wittman enthusiastically supported.

• Get big money out of politics, from banning Congressional stock trading to refusing corporate PAC money.

• Address corruption among elected officials in government.

The candidates’ differences are in approach, background, and emphasis. Below is a comparison built around the issues voters care about most.

The comparison

First, here are three tables (each with three issues) that show the candidates’ approaches. The issues are ordered by voters’ priority, and Rob Wittman’s perspective on each is included to help you compare the incumbent against his opponents.

---

Get to know the candidates

All these fine people are all better candidates for VA-01 than Wittman!

Now let’s review who each candidate is, and what each emphasizes:

Elizabeth Dempsey Beggs — Army veteran and former Tank Commander, foster parent, mother of four, William & Mary MBA student.

• Centerpiece: a “New Deal Democrat” platform of family stability, affordable childcare, public schools, veterans’ care, and reproductive rights.

• Distinctive: foster youth advocacy and military-family TRICARE focus, paired with a “treat people the way you want to be treated” framing aimed at rural and crossover voters.

Salaam Bhatti — public-interest attorney, child of immigrants who relied on WIC and free school meals.

• Centerpiece: Medicare for All, tax billionaires, restore trust in government.

• Distinctive: a broad, detailed issues platform that now spans replacing ICE with a due-process-based system, breaking up agribusiness monopolies, and restoring Congress’s war powers — including withholding funding from Israel over the war in Gaza.

Tim Cywinski — community organizer, Sierra Club communications director. Calls himself a “Reformist Democrat.”

• Centerpiece: the “Fair Shot Agenda” of campaign finance reform, $500 “Democracy Dollars” for every citizen, and lower middle-class taxes.

• Distinctive: the only candidate making Big Tech data center build-out a flagship issue, with detailed proposals to stop projects from raising your electric bill or draining water supplies. His refreshed platform now states plainly that the end goal of his healthcare plan is Medicare for All, reached by way of a public option.

Jason Knapp — 21-year Navy F/A-18 pilot, NATO officer, grew up on SNAP and Medicaid.

• Centerpiece: restoring government accountability and pushing back against political corruption, prioritizing mission effectiveness and responsibility over self-interest

• Distinctive: a concrete anti-corruption plan (stock-trading ban, blind trust, four-term self-limit) and an ACA-centered healthcare fix.

Ericka Kopp — healthcare attorney, caregiver to her disabled veteran husband, biracial, bisexual and bilingual.

• Centerpiece: a comprehensive universal healthcare system funded by taxing the wealthy and closing corporate tax loopholes, and holding officials constitutionally accountable to ordinary people rather than corporations and lobbyists.

• Distinctive: has the most progressive platform in the field, including a Green New Deal, universal childcare, universal public education through trade school, abolishing ICE, releasing the full Epstein files, raising the minimum wage to $30/hour, and impeaching Trump on day one.

Shannon Taylor — currently three-term Henrico Commonwealth’s Attorney, first woman elected to that office, with a 90% homicide conviction rate.

• Centerpiece: prosecutorial credibility, protect Medicaid, lower costs, defend reproductive freedom, hold Wittman/Trump accountable.

• Distinctive: a new “Serve the People First” agenda built entirely around ethics and anti-corruption — banning Congressional stock trading, a lifetime lobbying ban, overturning Citizens United, mandatory jail time for politicians who steal taxpayer funds, and a 12-year term-limit pledge she says she’ll keep whether or not it passes.

Mel Tull — Army veteran and business attorney, former Henrico Democrats treasurer, Fortune 500 corporate counsel turned small-firm practitioner.

• Centerpiece: deliver practical, bipartisan policy solutions to lower the cost of living, protect healthcare and retirement programs, and reduce the federal deficit

• Distinctive: the most centrist framing in the field, including an “all of the above” energy approach and explicit emphasis on bipartisan cooperation and winning over moderate, rural, and independent voters.

Wittman’s platform has not changed

While his official House website has changed design, Rob Wittman’s campaign website has stayed exactly the same. We’ve documented exactly how he continues to fail VA-01, and a new website has presented the facts so voters can draw conclusions for themselves: RobsRecord.com. We won’t belabor Wittman’s record here. Suffice to say that, among many other things, he’s failed us on affordability, jobs and the economy, healthcare, immigration, and protecting the Constitution. For more, look at Rob’s Record and review our archive.

RobsRecord.com gives the facts about Rob Wittman’s votes & impact on VA-01

What’s at stake

VA-01 is now the nation’s “bellwether” race: our district represents the middle of all races across the country. If VA-01 flips Blue — if Rob Wittman loses — it’s likely the Democrats will win a majority in the House. The most recent polling of VA-01 (from a Republican firm in April 2026) showed Trump underwater in the district at 42% favorable, 50% unfavorable. Wittman himself registered just 35% favorable. Polls show that 20% of voters in VA-01 have no opinion on Wittman, and 23% don’t know who he is. How is that even possible after 19 years in office? In a head-to-head matchup (against Shannon Taylor, whom the Republican pollsters chose for their study) earlier in the campaign, the race polled dead even. Since that poll, Trump’s star has fallen even further; Wittman is joined to him at the hip, given his record of voting with Trump 100% of the time.

A Democrat can win the VA-01 race. Whichever Democrat emerges from the primary on August 4 will face a vulnerable Rob Wittman in a district that’s tilting away from him. In 19 years, he’s never had to compete for our seat like this. He’s not prepared for it. His lies are catching up with him. More and more of us see what Wittman has become: a silently complicit MAGA politician who serves wealthy donors and sells our rights, liberties, and opportunities to satisfy them.

We don’t have to suffer more years of this. America can’t afford to suffer the likes of Wittman. The choice you make in the primary matters.

Read the candidates’ websites. Follow them on your favorite platforms. Show up at candidate forums. Ask them questions. They are running to represent you.

Pick your candidate, vote in the primary, and vote for the nominee in November. We can’t afford Rob Wittman!

---

Tell us your thoughts about the candidate field in the comments.

To get the full picture on Rob Wittman, subscribe to this Substack (two emails a week, and we’ll never bombard your inbox about anything else) and any of our social media channels: Facebook, Instagram, BlueSky, or Reddit.