With all eyes laser-focused on Virginia’s 2021 Gubernatorial race between Terry McAullife (D) and Glenn Youngkin (R) this November, another election cycle looms just around the corner with Virginia’s 2022 midterm elections in the rear-view mirror. In VA-08, a progressive challenger has emerged seeking to unseat three-term incumbent and former Virginia Lieutenant Governor, Donald S. Beyer (D-VA).

Victoria Virasingh, an Arlington-native and a daughter of immigrants who came to America in search of greater economic opportunity, recently launched her bid to become the first woman and person of color, to represent Virginia’s 8th Congressional District which encompasses parts of Arlington County, the cities of Alexandria and Falls Church, alongside a portion of Fairfax County.

As an active member of the Arlington community, Virasingh spends her free time engaged with various social and political organizations, including, but not limited to, Bridges to Independence, Communities in Schools, Saint Agnes Catholic Church, the Arlington Branch NAACP, Democratic Asian Americans of Virginia (DAAV), and the Democratic Latino Organization of Virginia (DLOV). She currently serves as Vice-Chair for Outreach with the Arlington County Democratic Committee.

PW Perspective sat down with Virasingh to hear first-hand about what prompted her candidacy and what she seeks to bring to the table in a pivotal year for Democrats nationwide as they seek to defend a slim House majority.


Tell me a bit about your background and your family’s history, what was life like from them raising you in Arlington, Virginia?

“I was born and raised in Arlington, Virginia, and my parents are both immigrants who came here from their home countries. My mom is from Ecuador and South America and my father is the son of Punjabi Sikh refugees and was born and raised in Bangkok, Thailand. Neither of my parents are college-educated. My mom worked as a manicurist and my dad held a number of different jobs growing up, including retail. We lived on minimum wage and sometimes we survived on just my mom’s minimum wage job. When I was born, my parents didn’t have a place to stay, so we stayed at a friend’s place for a few years and then we moved into an apartment that we shared with other families, and then we finally moved into our very own apartment. Eventually, my parents saved enough money to put a down payment on a townhome here in Arlington.”

How did that family upbringing leave a lasting impact on you throughout your young adulthood?

“My parents really instilled the value of education in me and they said, ‘In America, you can be whoever you want to be if you work hard.’ So, I hit the books, studied as hard as I could, and eventually received a scholarship to go to Stanford University. I ended up receiving my Master’s Degree in International Relations as I had family that lived abroad and grandparents who had previously gone through a refugee crisis. I was very aware of the opportunities I was afforded due to being born in the United States, and just how important America’s place is on the world stage, and how impactful our international foreign policy is and can be. As a result, I was intent on joining the United Nations, World Bank, or another multinational institution, but the United Nations was not giving out full-time contracts and the World Bank was undergoing a restructuring at that time. So, while I continued to search for a job out in California circa 2010, I saw the rise of technology and the role it was going to play across our international institutions, and ended up getting a position at a tech company out there called Palantir.”

Was there a specific moment or circumstance that propelled your interest in politics at that time?

“While I was at Palantir, 2016 happened and I was absolutely devastated after the election of Donald Trump. It inspired me to pursue work facilitating private-public partnerships in the Midwest, using data to tackle pervasive issues such as homelessness, affordable housing, and education. It was through my travels to places such as Detroit, Cleveland, Minneapolis, and Illinois, that I received an even greater sense of what working people’s needs were across the nation. When I traveled back to California and to our remote office in Washington, people were always quick to tell me, ‘Oh, the economy is great! The stock market is booming!’ and I remember rebutting them with, ‘But, for who? Because it’s not for the communities that I’ve spent my time in, or which I grew up in here in Northern Virginia.’ That reality really clicked something in me. I remember sitting around in my apartment, thinking to myself, ‘Oh, I can pay my rent, I can buy groceries, I went to college, I don’t have debt, and it hit me that I had achieved the American dream.’ When I looked around me, I didn’t see very many people who looked like me and I didn’t see people who shared a similar background to me, and at that point, I had also worked on Capitol Hill in the office of a U.S. Senator, so I had seen first-hand how a lot of decision making was made. All of those experiences really reinforced within me how important it is to have diverse perspectives at the table because the outcome is so much better when you have multiple voices to contribute who have been directly affected by such inequity.”

What specifically prompted you to run for Congress in 2022 here in Virginia’s 8th District? 

“I think [what prompted] my decision to jump into this race was realizing how much the district has changed since I was a young girl growing up here and how much harder it has gotten for families like mine. The reality is that if you’re under the age of 35, the prospect of homeownership in the district is too often only a distant dream. I remember one day, I sat down and started writing out a list of things that allowed my family to ‘make it’ here across the district. Immediately, I thought of a living wage commensurate with the standard of living, access to affordable housing, and the reality that my family, fortunately, did not have to endure a major health crisis that could have easily eaten up 60-70% of our family income. I thought about my work experience, and I thought about the things I saw while working on Capitol Hill, such as the rise of the technology sector and the importance of data privacy; the changing needs of our labor force in-tandem with promoting alternatives to traditional post-secondary education through trade schools and apprenticeship programs; and how we are falling behind in addressing the crisis of climate change. So, when I mapped out all of those things, I realized they were all issues I could make an impact on at the federal level, not just in the best collective interest of our constituents here in CD-8, but across every community in America.”

What is Congressman Beyer either doing or not doing, that your candidacy seeks to address?

“While I thank the Congressman for his service, I think it is time for new leadership that matches the composition of our distinct. We are in a redistricting year, and I believe we should have a conversation about who currently comprises our district, what our district has become, and the issues facing the district today that are failing to be addressed. What I am hoping to bring to this district is leadership on the issues that matter to our constituents, and to present new ideas in a district that is now D+21. We have the opportunity to be leading the conversation on bold, progressive policy regarding housing, education, and a living wage. I don’t think we should have to fight every decade to increase the minimum wage, I think it should increase with the rate of inflation. My mom made $5.50 an hour in the 90s. For years, Virginia followed the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hr (enacted in 2009) and only recently has our General Assembly voted in favor of a gradual increase to $15.00/hr by 2026. Virginians working a minimum-wage job are still making only $9.50/hr as of this past May. What are we doing to say “this is not enough?’… Even a minimum wage of $15.00/hr is not enough across our district. My family and I suffered from homelessness, and when you’re worried about putting a roof over your head, policy quickly becomes personal. My mom is still on Medicare, and even with that coverage, she is still working as a manicurist at age 73. I think it is so important for our leaders to have those life perspectives so that we can begin to truly address systemic inequity and create an economy that is inclusive and provides a pathway to social mobility. That is the promise of America, that is the dream of which this nation was built upon.”

What do you want the public to know most about your bid for office?

“I want people to know that this campaign is about optimism, it’s about paving a path for a future that is providing an equal opportunity for all. You need to have dual high-income salaries to afford to move into the 8th-District these days and I would like to see us work to provide space for our federal workforce, police, firefighters, and especially our educators. My platform is about inclusivity, it’s about leveling out a playing field that has become all too steep over time.”

What words of wisdom would you offer to other young women with a similar background to yourself who are mulling a potential run for office?

“I think that whether you’re a person of color, part of the LGBTQ+ community, or any minority group, you go through life and experience many people who are like: ‘you know, maybe not now, or, you’re not the right face for this.’ I think that those types of responses can make someone experience a lot of personal doubt. I think that kind of doubt elicits two kinds of reactions: either you internalize it and believe it, becoming a smaller version of yourself in the process; or, it can become fuel, to show the world you are the right face, the right person for the moment, and that you are representative of the things so many are fighting for. In Spanish, we have a phrase, ‘se nace’, which means ‘to be born within you’, and it is with that in mind that I urge others to be true to their beliefs and what they are fighting for because no one can take that from inside you, no one can take that away from you.”

The Democratic Primary for the 8th-Congressional District will be held on June 21, 2022.

You can learn more about Victoria Virasingh on her Website, Facebook, or Twitter pages. 

PW Perspective has not made, and may not make, an endorsement in this election. We welcome Congressman Beyer for an interview at his prerogative.