Both Jennifer Carroll Foy and state Sen. Jennifer McClellan made separate stops in Warrenton and Woodbridge Saturday on their final campaign swings through the state ahead of Tuesday’s Democratic primary.
In Warrenton, Carroll Foy joined a group of local activists marking the one-year anniversary of the downtown Black Lives Matter demonstrations they’ve held every Saturday morning since June 2020 in the Fauquier County town of about 10,000 residents.
In Woodbridge, McClellan, 9th, of Richmond, greeted a steady trickle of voters arriving at the A.J. Ferlazzo building for the last day of early voting ahead of primary Election Day.
Former state delegate Jennifer Carroll Foy, of Woodbridge, campaigns at a Black Lives Matter march in Warrenton on Saturday, one of her final campaign stops ahead of Tuesday's primary.
Both Carroll Foy, 39, and McClellan, 48, are seeking to make history as the first Black woman elected governor of any state in the U.S. But both are also trailing former Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, 64, who remains ahead in both polling and fundraising.
In the latest Roanoke College poll released Friday, about 49% of those questioned said McAuliffe is their top pick for the Democratic nomination for governor. Carroll Foy came in second place with 11%, while McClellan came in third with 9%. Fellow Democratic candidates Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax came in fourth with 5%, while state Del. Lee Carter, 50th, of Manassas, is in fifth with 1%. About 24% of those polled said they remained undecided.
Carroll Foy, of Woodbridge, gave a fiery speech during the Warrenton BLM rally, decrying the racial disparities that still exist in Virginia’s criminal justice system, in health care and in private businesses.
She said it is time for a “working mom to finally represent working families” in the commonwealth. To make positive change, she said, “We need everyone in the game,” and asked the crowd to vote Tuesday.
McClellan kicked off the weekend with a rally in Henrico County. She added Prince William County to a list of 15 stops around the state because the county has played an important part in turning the state blue over the last few election cycles, she said.
“Prince William has been a battleground for a while and has been really important to the blue wave in Virginia and will continue to be important,” McClellan said.
Both McClellan and Carroll Foy took aim at McAuliffe during the candidates’ June 1 debate, the last before the June 8 primary, with Carroll Foy going as far as to say that McAuliffe’s leadership “failed the people of Virginia.”
Asked Saturday if she agreed with that assessment, McClellan stopped short of saying she does but noted that McAuliffe “was the right leader [for Virginia] in 2013.”
“Virginia is very different today. I mean, we're even different than we were in 2020,” McClellan said. “So, I think we need the next generation of leadership to meet the moment we're in now.
"We need somebody who brings a new perspective, but also the experience to get things done and [who] truly understands how we build on the progress we've made,” she said.
McClellan, an attorney, has served in the state legislature for 16 years. She says she’s spent 31 years building Virginia’s Democratic Party, starting as a teenager with the young Democrats. McClellan has two children, a 10-year-old son and a 6-year-old daughter, and has made education her signature issue of the campaign.
McClellan has pledged to boost Virginia’s teacher pay and has a $4 billion plan to subsidize early education and childcare so that no family would pay more than 7% of their income on childcare expenses. For families making up to 200% of the poverty level, childcare would be free under the plan.
McClellan said she would look to sales taxes generated either through internet sales or the sale of marijuana, which Virginia will legalize in 2024, to pay for her childcare initiative.
McClellan said quality childcare and early childhood education are “foundational” to “a strong, equitable education system” as well as the overall economy.
Her message to voters in the final stretch of the campaign, McClellan said, is that she brings not only a new perspective but also the experience to “get things done on day one,” a comment that seemed aimed at distinguishing herself from Carroll Foy, who served just one full, two-year term in the state legislature and resigned her post in early 2021 to run for governor.
“The work that I have done in the party and in the legislature show that I'm ready to build on that progress and build a more united, equitable and stronger Virginia coming out of COVID,” she said.
McClellan said she’s also running for governor for her two children.
“I’m fighting the same fight my grandparents and parents fought,” she added, “And I don’t want to leave that fight up to them.”
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June 06, 2021 at 10:48PM
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'A new perspective': Carroll Foy, McClellan make local stops ahead of Tuesday's primary - Prince William Times
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