Freshman GOP swing district Rep. Jen Kiggans laments Capitol Hill partisanship
Reese Gorman
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VIRGINIA BEACH, Virginia — Freshman Rep. Jen Kiggans (R-VA) spent just under three years in the Virginia state Senate, where bipartisanship was the norm, members were mostly required to be in the chamber for debate, and with only three months to pass bills, there was no time to waste.
Now, as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives in a slim majority during a hotly partisan era, Kiggans is facing a much different experience than 109 miles south in Richmond, Virginia’s state capital.
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“I came from an environment where we actually were in the room for debates, we debated bills, we listened to each other, we learned from each other, pros and cons, and I think that was really important piece that we don’t do in D.C.,” Kiggans told the Washington Examiner in an interview.
Kiggans, 52, got to Congress by beating Democratic Rep. Elaine Luria in Virginia’s newly configured 2nd Congressional District. The suburban Hampton Roads district is highly competitive. In 2020, President Joe Biden would have beaten former President Donald Trump there 50.1% to 48.2%. Kiggans is among 18 House Republicans in seats where Biden would have prevailed over Trump. Each is, to varying degrees, likely to be hotly contested political terrain in the 2024 election cycle as Democrats try to overturn House Republicans’ narrow majority.
Listening goes a long way
Kiggans said she is convinced that government would be a lot better if people just listened to one another, including elected officials. There were times during debate on the floor of the Virginia Senate when the opposing party or Kiggans herself would bring up points that would make someone reconsider their position.
But in D.C., she said that isn’t the case. Listening during House floor and committee debates is scant, and people are often talking in a mostly empty room, and those who get the most attention and their message out tend to be the people who are the loudest, she said. Meanwhile, the more “commonsense” members on both sides of the aisle get overlooked, said Kiggans, a retired Navy helicopter pilot and then an adult geriatric nurse practitioner at Eastern Virginia Medical School and in private practice.
“It’s much more partisan up in D.C. even than it was in Richmond,” she said, “and that’s not good. It’s not good. There’s a lot of drama, a lot of theater majors. There’s a lot of cameras, right, so I feel like there’s a lot more performing up there than there was in the state House.”
The congresswoman recalled being speaker pro tempore and presiding over the House floor; an unnamed Democratic member — a House Veteran Affairs Committee colleague — was on the floor debating a bill. Kiggans said she and this Democratic member had a “lovely” conversation in committee hours prior to the debate, but amid floor debate, they started “talking about how terrible the Republicans are and how they’re ruining the country and the chaos” they’re causing.
Not that House Democrats have a monopoly on straying from the political center. There is “ frustration amongst the freshmen” in her own conference who come from more purple districts about their voices being drowned out by those in the Freedom Caucus.
Those tensions are likely to grow with the current fiscal year set to end on Sept. 30. If there’s no agreement on appropriations bills to fund the federal government, or at least a stopgap measure amid negotiations between the Biden White House, Senate Democrats, and House Republicans, there’s likely to be a shutdown.
Freedom Caucus members are planning to vote against any spending legislation that doesn’t include their policy priorities. Among them are a sweeping GOP border bill that has stalled in the Senate, as well as one addressing “the unprecedented weaponization” of the Justice Department and FBI and another seeking to end “woke” Defense Department policies.
And while she believes Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has done a good job grounding the conference and keeping most people on the same page, Kiggans said she still has to go back to her district and put to rest things some of the more hard-line conservatives are saying and prove that she is fighting for her district, not just her party.
“So, it is frustrating when we feel like they run the show,” Kiggans said of most conservative and outspoken House Republicans. “I think a lot of us who were from purple districts ran for Congress because we wanted to do what was best for the country. We didn’t run for Congress to make the front page of the newspaper.”
A 2024 battleground
Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District is rated R+2 and is considered to “lean Republican” by the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter. Kiggans agreed with the characterization that her district is one driven by policy and issues rather than partisanship.
“[It’s] a very commonsense district,” she said. “We care about a strong military because we [have] a lot of active duty, a lot of veterans here. We are fiscally conservative. I feel like in this district, I would say there’s more social moderates in this district, and we care about the environment because we live on the beach and the bay, and so people care about different issues.”
Navy veteran Missy Cotter Smasal on Sept. 6 joined the 2nd Congressional District race, wasting no time in swiping at the incumbent.
Kiggans “promised to stand up for Coastal Virginia and focus on military families and veterans, has not done so,” Cotter Smasal said in a statement. “She voted to cut veterans’ health benefits and then lied about it. Virginia’s veterans deserve a member of Congress who will honor our promises, not ones, like Kiggans, who vote to take away their benefits, threaten military readiness, and use servicemembers as political leverage.”
Democratic Party strategists and operatives list Kiggans as a top 2024 target.
“Jen Kiggans is the ultimate party loyalist who is enabling an extreme, partisan agenda,” Justin Chermol, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said in a statement. “By pledging fealty to Marjorie Taylor Greene and Washington, D.C. bosses, Kiggans has failed to deliver for Virginians — and instead, has voted to restrict reproductive freedoms for our servicemembers and cut veterans’ benefits.”
The DCCC has already invested in the race. Earlier this year, it rolled out a billboard campaign that took aim at Kiggans for not publicly saying whether she supports former President Donald Trump’s calls to “defund the DOJ and FBI.”
Democratic presidential candidates have won Virginia from 2008 on, and there’s little reason to think that will change in 2024. But Virginia Republicans have proven they’ve still got political game, with Gov. Glenn Youngkin winning in 2021 as a first-time candidate. The GOP also nabbed the lieutenant governor’s and attorney general’s offices and control of the state House of Delegates.
Moreover, the 2nd Congressional District, in Virginia’s southeast corner along the Atlantic Ocean and North Carolina line, has proved politically volatile over nearly the past quarter-century. Starting with the 2000 elections, Kiggans is the seventh House member to hold the seat, even as it’s been redrawn several times due to redistricting.
And while at the end of this congressional term, Republicans will have held control for 18 of 24 years, four defeats by incumbent House members offer a cautionary tale — Republican former Reps. Thelma Drake in 2008 and Scott Taylor in 2018, along with Democratic ex-Reps. Glenn Nye, in 2010, and Luria last year when she lost to Kiggans. Moreover, former Rep. Ed Schrock, a Republican, quit his 2004 reelection bid amid a sex scandal. Only former Rep. Scott Rigell, a Republican in office from 2011-17 before retiring from Congress, left on his own terms.
As an incumbent, Kiggans heads into her first reelection bid with reservoirs of political support in the district.
For Nanette Miller, a Republican who was born and raised in Virginia Beach and, after serving in the Navy, moved back and even unsuccessfully ran for city council, the attention Kiggans pays to issues such as veteran services, the military, and to her constituents are reasons why she supports her.
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She doesn’t want a representative who voices their opinion on every partisan talking point. Rather, she wants someone focused on the district.
“I think that’s one of the problems we have in Congress today; people [are] looking for the limelight in the moment, and so, you know, ‘The crazier things I say, the more limelight I get.’ But Jen is very even-keeled, and she’s thoughtful in her approach to things,” Miller said.