See below for Fairfax County Supervisor Pat Herrity (R)’s announcement of his candidacy for the 2025 VA GOP’s Lt. Governor nomination. With Herrity throwing his hat in the ring, we now have two Republicans (Herrity and John Curran) plus five Democrats (former Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney, Prince William County School Board Chair Babur Lateef, State Sen. Aaron Rouse, State Sen. Ghazala Hashmi, attorney Victor Salgado) running for their parties’ respective Lt. Governor nominations. Most likely, several other Republicans will also jump in – possibly MAGA radio host (at WRVA in Richmnond) John Reid; also possibly VA GOP chair Rich Anderson, State Sen. Glenn Sturtevant, State Sen. Tara Durant, former State Sen. Amanda Chase (for governor or LG?), etc. Stay tuned…

As for Pat Herrity, Richmond Times-Dispatch political columnist Jeff Schapiro says he’s “a NoVa Republican legacy – the son of late supervisor Jack Herrity, a close ally of the developers, homebuilders and fedl contractors whose money and muscle long kept now-heavily Democratic Fairfax safe for a biz-friendly GOP.”  We’ve written about Pat Herrity here at Blue Virginia, including Endorsing Pat Herrity’s Reelection Is Another Piece of Evidence That the WaPo Editorial Board Has Sh*t for Brains (“The WAPO editorial staff also hasn’t looked carefully at Mr Herrity’s record…Herrity is an antigovernment and anti tax [and anti-enviro, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ, etc.] Republican”); In Increasingly Blue Fairfax County, Supervisor Pat Herrity (R) Demagogues on Illegal Immigration, Overstates Legal Defense Fund Money 1,000-Fold; With His Nasty, Xenophobic, Trumpian Campaign, Fairfax Supervisor Pat Herrity (R) Demonstrates Why Republicans Keep Losing Badly in Northern Virginia; etc.

Looking at Herrity’s “issues” page on his website, you can see that he’s now pretty much a right winger (despite having previously been more “moderate”), with his view on abortion as follows: “Defend the lives of the unborn and oppose the Democrats’ radical agenda of abortion up to the moment of birth.” (note that this is a wild distortion – in fact, the VAST majority of abortions  take place in the 1st trimester, with late-term abortions almost never happening, and only then in cases where the life/health of the mother is in grave danger, the fetus isn’t viable, etc.).  On guns, Herrity pledges to “defend the 2nd Amendment in Virginia and preserve the right of law-abiding gun-owners to keep and bear arms.” Etc.

P.S. Also, note that the magisterial district Herrity has represented since 2007 on the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors – Springfield district – has been one of the least “blue” parts of Fairfax County for years. Still, Herrity came very close to losing reelection in 2019, defeating Democrat Linda Sperling by just 1 percentage point (50.4%-49.4%)…