Earlier this afternoon, I had the chance to chat (at her campaign’s request) with VA11 Democratic candidate Amy Roma, who is one of seven Democratic candidates listed on VPAP (the others being Joshua Aisen, Candice Bennett, Leopoldo Martinez, Stella Pekarsky, Irene Shin and James Walkinshaw (plus, just this afternoon, Amy Papanu; also Dan Lee) running to succeed the late, great Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA11) in the US House. See below for a lightly edited transcript of the interview with Amy Roma. Also, keep in mind that the Democratic nomination (which will almost certainly determine the next Congressperson in the 9/9/25 special election, given that this is a deep-blue district) will be determined in a “firehouse primary” on June 28, although the rules haven’t been completely set (or at least publicly announced) at this point…so stay tuned – and may the best candidate win!
Blue Virginia: “Welcome to the 11 CD race, along with many other candidates.”
Amy Roma: “It has been a sprint, for sure”
Blue Virginia: “It’s quite a crowded field already…and it’s moving very quickly too. Anyway, so I guess maybe we can just start off with – I don’t think probably a lot of voters know who you are in the 11th congressional district amongst Democrats, so maybe just quickly tell us a little bit about yourself and why you’re running, maybe a little bit about your past activism or engagement with the Democratic Party.”
Amy Roma: “Yep, so my name is Amy Roma. I live in Vienna, Virginia with my husband Ryan, whose Zoom line we are on, and my two amazing kids Finn and Grace. I also help take care of my sister who has Down syndrome and early-onset Alzheimer’s. i’m an energy attorney based in Washington DC. I’m the global head of the energy practice at my law firm. It’s a big law firm in Washington, DC, and I have been working for the last 20 years on climate change and bringing kind of clean energy to deployment. So a lot of my work has been in the critical infrastructure energy space. But I do a huge amount of work on the pro bono side, like thousands of hours a year on pro bono. And so some of the work that I’ve done includes going to the southern border to volunteer with families in detention facilities when Trump was separating parents and children. I continue to work with some of the families I met at the detention facility, including helping them pursue their asylum applications. I evacuated hundreds of people out of Afghanistan after Kabul fell. I led a pro bono active shooter tabletop exercise after the Sandy Hook tragedy. And I was actually just thinking of it today, because now there’s a Trump travel ban 2.0, I did a human rights document with the International Refugee Assistance Project back under the first go-around with this, and I’m reading it in the news today and it like well looks like we’re back at it again. So a very strong track record of public service through humanitarian projects over the last 20 years of my career.
And I’m running for office because right now we need a Democratic candidate who knows how to get things done. I think that career politicians are struggling to figure out how to compete against something like Trump. Our country is absolutely being torn apart. We’re seeing the rule of law thrown out the window. We have a president who’s taken over… the executive branch has taken over the other branches of government. So Congress isn’t doing anything…we don’t have Congress literally not passing laws and not controlling the purse strings anymore, they’ve just kind of ceded their jurisdiction to the executive branch. We have a judicial branch that’s doing the best it can, but has been weakened by poor judicial appointments over the years, including at the Supreme Court. And so we’re seeing a president asserting virtually unchecked power and breaking the law, with none of the checks and balances keeping it into play. And so I’m running for Congress because we need stronger people in Congress who understand how to use the levers of government in order to hold Trump accountable.
And I think that’s going to be a multi-pronged approach. One is what do you do on day one when you’re a minority in the House. What do you do if we take back the House on the midterms. And then what do you do for for kind of like long term on kind of how to fix polarization in government? So like day one, you need to have a Congress be a legal watchdog to hold Trump accountable for the violations that he’s having both on, I mean he’s violating the law left and right, especially with respect to like agencies that he’s gutting…Congress needs to be doing something to bring some visibility onto some of the things that are happening and also to help translate to some of the Republican colleagues what the impacts of this are. And I’m in the energy sector; a couple weeks ago Trump issued executive orders restructuring the Nuclear Regulatory Commission which is an independent government agency, and saying that DOGE and the White House were going to rewrite the regulations for nuclear safety. Like that can’t happen – and we need people who understand how agencies work, how the law work and how to hold the government accountable even when you’re a minority in Congress. And then when you get the midterms, you got to go gunning to pass laws that prevent executive branch overreach, put ethics back in government, and then rebuild up the government agencies that are getting gutted, and to undo some of the most devastating impacts that we’re going to see with the cuts to Medicaid and food stamps and other social services.
My own sister, she relies on Medicaid a lot for the support services that she has, with her Down Syndrome and her early-onset Alzheimer’s. And every day I sit there and watch this bill and I think about how much that this is going to hurt my own family and my own sister at a time when we’re already struggling to get her the services she needs with like a 10-year waiting list for people who are disabled to get into group homes. So that’s why I’m running for Congress: we need action, we need smart leaders, and we need people who are good effective leaders with a demonstrated track record of getting things done, and I have 20 years of experience across various sectors showing how I can do that.”
Blue Virginia: “And on your background with the Democratic Party or specifically in Fairfax County or the 11th Congressional District, do you have any of that? I mean, I’ve been involved since 2005 with Virginia politics, I don’t know you but I don’t know everybody, I don’t know tons of people, so maybe you were heavily involved and I just had no idea. But like, were you on the Fairfax County Democratic Committee or the…?”
Amy Roma: “No. A lot of the activism that I did was direct, like it was one-on-one with the people who needed it. So you know, when I sat there and looked at what can I do right now to help people, it was I need to bring clean energy, which is what I’ve been doing for 20 years; but also I need to help immigrants, I mean I’m working on seven or eight different asylum applications right now so with families that either came in at the southern border or Afghans that are in the United States. So like that’s where I have been spending my time is on the proono work.”
Blue Virginia: “And you’ve never run for office before, right?”
Amy Roma: “Nope.”
Blue Virginia: “Yeah, it’s just interesting, because some of the candidates here definitely have a long history and like James Walkenshaw obviously was Gerry Connolly’s chief of staff for 10 years, I met him in like 2006 or something like that…anyway a long time ago. And he’s on the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. You have Stella Pekarsky, who was a school board member [and now a State Senator], and this is a typical like resume – it’s not always, I mean some people run who aren’t elected officials and don’t have that, but I’m just kind of curious.”
Amy Roma: “I do think there’s an element, like I appreciate career politicians and the public service that they provide, but I have an MBA from the University of Virginia, I have a JD, I’ve been a practicing lawyer for 20 years, I’ve testified before Congress multiple times, I provided input on bills, I have helped advise on things, I’ve briefed the Senate Intelligence Committee on energy issues like maybe a dozen different times. I’m very active. I go to the Hill once a month and brief members on issues that are important for economic purposes or national security. Like, you can’t be in DC and not; there’s very few jobs that are in DC that aren’t actually very involved in what the Hill is doing. And I certainly am a regulatory lawyer so I know agencies inside and out. So my substantive knowledge on things like energy data centers, the law, regulations, I don’t actually think there other, maybe there’s other lawyers running…
Blue Virginia: “I think Leo Martinez…”
Amy Roma: “I mean from a legal perspective that’s what you study in law school and that’s what I’ve been doing for 20 years and that’s what Congress does – Congress passes laws. And so it’s a field I know really well, it’s something I’ve been very active in and I actually think that experience the real world experience with the understanding of how laws kind of get translated and applied and implemented, how they impact people, is much more important than than being a career politician right now. it’s also I think we’re at a point where we need fresh blood and new ideas to the Democratic Party in order to not just figure out how we’re going to combat, Trump but how do we stop someone like Trump from becoming president again.”
Blue Virginia: “Yeah, I was going to ask you if you think the Democratic Party needs major changes or is basically okay as it is. It sounds like you probably are more in the major changes camp, but you can tell me.”
Amy Roma: “I think we need a strategy, we need a better strategy. I feel like right now, I know that people are doing the best they can and I know that everybody has the best of intentions, but Trump’s power is running unchecked. And when I hear the Democratic voice, it’s we can’t do anything, we don’t have the votes. And that’s not an answer right? You still have a job to do and you still have to hold people accountable. And so there’s a lot of other tools that you can have right now, including putting some visibility on the damages that are happening across government and the impacts that are going to be felt. Like I don’t know how many Republicans really want DOGE rewriting the nuclear regulations for nuclear reactors that are in their states, right? So there’s some opportunities here to engage with the other side, to peel off some votes and try to get some of the most damaging things out of the bills that are being considered right now. And I just don’t see that happen. I’m on the Hill all the time, and when I’m sitting there with Democrats, especially in the House, when I’m sitting there with Democrats they’re like ‘I wish the Republicans knew this but they won’t talk to me.’ And when I sit there and talk to Republicans they said ‘I wish I could talk to the Democrats but they won’t talk to me.’ Our society cannot function in this environment; we need to figure out how to work together and move forward, but we also have to figure out how to do the best we can to stop all the damages to our democracy that we’re facing right now.”
Blue Virginia: “I was going to ask you where you are on the ideological spectrum – progressive, moderate Dem or whatever, and then is there anyone in Congress, based on what you just said, that you think is doing any of what you were just talking about? And is it a matter of ideology or is it just a matter of effectiveness, or what is it a matter of exactly?”
Amy Roma: “So I think so I think there are people who are trying. I think Mark Warner actually does a pretty good job at engaging on the other side and trying to kind of bring visibility to things, particularly on the Senate Intelligence Committee. There are certain areas that are more ripe for bipartisan engagement, things that have to do with our national security is one of them. Energy has also seen, particularly nuclear energy, has strong seen strong bilateral support. And there are politicians on that side, Maria Canwell is doing a good job, folks that are doing a pretty good job at kind of engaging and trying to advocate for kind of their interest but also work in areas in a bipartisan way with the other side and accomplish Democratic goals and ideas. Like even just what we could see happen…there was really strong bipartisan engagement on a lot of the provisions that went into the infrastructure bill and the inflation reduction act. We’re seeing some of them gutted but not all of them – the clean energy tax credits, we’re seeing some of them get peeled away and some of them saved. So I think that is a testament to the bipartisan work that went into engaging and preparing those bills in the first place. I think right now you have a Trump agenda that’s looking at gutting them, but you have some areas in Congress where people are like not pushing as hard as they may have otherwise wanted to, or as much as Trump may have wanted them, because they realize the benefits that it has to the constituents in their state.”
Blue Virginia: “So you mentioned Mark Warner. It’s interesting; if you go on some more liberal places like Bluesky or whatever, there’s a lot of criticism of Mark Warner and Tim Kaine for voting for ANY of the Trump nominees and working with them at all, so I guess it gets to whether you think it makes more sense to be total opposition to the Trump administration, Democrats should just shut the place down or just throw a monkey wrench in everything and just use every parliamentary tool at their disposal like Mitch McConnell might have done, or should we be still trying to work across the aisle, even though doesn’t seem to be much interest. I mean Mark Warner, just yesterday I was [watching his] weekly press availability and he was saying this budget bill or whatever bills, they’re not even talking to the Democrats, they’re just going 100% partisan Republican, they’re not consulting with the Democrats at all. So yeah, like where would you be on that?”
Amy Roma: “I mean the thing is, at the end of the day, we have to try to fix the polarization in our country. And part of that means bringing real people back into the discussion. I feel like we’ve defaulted to a political playbook on both sides, and it’s interrupted dialogue and interaction and discourse and the ability to get things done. People are sick of this, they’re sick of what’s happening right now under the Trump administration, it is tearing our country apart, it’s destroying our democracy, it’s ripping our economy apart. But people are also frustrated that we somehow got to this place, that somebody like Trump could be elected in the first place. So we need to figure out like how do we address what’s directly in front of us, number one, we got to fight Trump, we got to figure out using all the tools at our disposal how to do that. Do I think we need to obstruct everything? No, there are some appointments or some positions where he’s picked somebody that makes total sense. In others, absolutely not, he has picked terrible candidates that should not be supported and that should be vocalized and brought out during congressional hearings. So like it’s not a one-size-fits-all, but it’s much better to be strategic about what you’re going to approach or you’re just going to contribute to this polarization of American politics and we are going to be on a spiral where nobody can get things done anymore.”
Blue Virginia: “An example is Marco. You’re not running for the Senate, you’re running for the US House, so you wouldn’t vote for confirmations, but it’s interesting though, Marco Rubio was confirmed 99-0. And I’d say he’s a disaster, I think he’s terrible, I thought he would be terrible and he was confirmed 99 to zero. So there’s something across the aisle, everybody agreed, yeah Marco Rubio.”
Amy Roma: “I think people actually thought, I do think people thought he wouldn’t be as bad as he was, right? I think there was that element of people thinking like well, here’s a reasonable person who has a good head on his shoulders. I think that’s what people were thinking…”
Blue Virginia: “I wasn’t.”
Amy Roma: “There were very few appointments that I could think of that I’m like ‘What a good choice.’ I don’t think I can look at any of them and say ‘what a good choice.’ But it’s just a matter of, and you change the perspective, like is it someone who’s bad but not as bad as it could have been or is it someone who’s just terrible.”
Blue Virginia: “Yeah, a president gets to have their people to some extent. But I mean, I just don’t see why Democrats – they were going to get confirmed anyway, so the question is what the strategy should be, should Democrats when they know the Republicans are going to get their way, they have the majority, so should Democrats be there to help them get their way or to fight them every step of the way – or what? I mean I agree with you, if there’s someone good fine, but like Kristi Noem, several Democrats including Tim Kaine, who I really like a lot…but he voted for Kristi Noem. And I’m like, why would Democrats do something like that? I asked him that…”
Amy Roma: “She was a harder one to get behind.”
Blue Virginia: “I thought she would be a disaster too, and she is – she’s a puppy-killing psychopath, I mean she literally shot her puppy and she’s really a warped individual. But anyway, I mean, so it gets at if you’re in Congress – and Gerry Connolly was a fighter, everyone talked about him as a fighter – do you see yourself more in like Gerry Connolly, I mean he didn’t shut things down but he told people what he thought for sure, he didn’t pull any punches and he did it with a sense of humor as everyone talked about at his funeral, but he definitely was a fighter, he sent a million letters – and of course people mock that to, because oh wow, another letter, like what’s that going to do – but if you’re not in the majority there only so many things you can do. But he was trying to look into a lot of the malfeasance and crimes that are being committed, on the oversight committee. So anyway, do you see yourself in the Gerry Connolly sort of mold or different?”
Amy Roma: “I’m a really strong fighter and a very strong advocate. Like I would not get to where I was in my career if I wasn’t strong. And you know, even just in my professional career, I’m one of the global thought leaders in the world at what I do. And I’ve spent 20 years advocating to like streamlining permitting for critical infrastructure so that things projects can be deployed more efficiently, and I’ve done a really good job at that. I also went to the southern border when Trump was separating parents and children. When the government couldn’t figure out how to get Afghan allies out of Afghanistan I went and figured it out – and like, there was nobody who was going to tell me I couldn’t do it, I figured out the path. By the way, when I sent the New England Patriots team plane to China to pick up an import of N95 masks at the beginning of the pandemic, that was when Trump and the Chinese government were fighting with each other and Trump and the Secretary of State were calling it the kung fu virus. I was still able to work with US government on our side and the Chinese government on their side for a humanitarian purpose. And the common goal that everybody was trying to achieve was the humanitarian goal. And like at the end of the day, people can say their talking points, they can they can do their grandstanding…what you need to do is find somebody who knows how to get things done right. And what I did was I found the people in government that wanted to get things done and I worked with them to get it done. And so you found the person at State you needed; you found the person at the FAA that you needed; you found the person at Customs was that was going to get your masks through before the federal government found out it was there and before it was seized and then given to, what the federal government was doing is was seizing PPE and then giving it to Trump-supporting states. So like we had to work with folks at Customs to get things through quickly before they found out about it. I was able to do all of that right? So like, no backing down; it didn’t matter who was going to get mad at me or like what repercussions were going to get done, I did what needed to be done because that’s what needed to be done. We needed PPE; I brought in over a billion pieces of PPE, I figured out how to get planes when nobody could get planes. You saw nation states like Air France and Canada Air taking off from China with empty planes, you can Google, it there were empty planes. None of the planes I sent were empty, because we figured out how to get the PPE through customs in China onto the planes and into the United States. That’s what I do, it’s not just I’m a fighter, but I walk the walk and I talk the talk, I figure out how to get it done and then I execute.”
Blue Virginia: “So I guess I’ll take that as kind of a yes, that you see yourself somewhat in Gerry Connolly’s mold as the fighter and and effective. And… I was going to ask you about issues; are there any areas that you disagree with the Democratic Party on, whether foreign policy – I mean, there are some controversial issues, whether Israel-Gaza or Ukraine-Russia international trade – or domestic policy, abortion or immigration. Are there any big areas, major areas where you’d say you’re not in the majority of the Democratic Party?”
Amy Roma: “Not that I can think of. I’m pretty like, intimately familiar with geopolitical like geopolitical issues, energy issues, national security issues, immigration, and I think our ideologies usually align.”
Blue Virginia: “OK, yeah, I’m just trying to get an idea, because I I don’t really know you… I mean I know somewhat of your background, I looked at your profile and your website and all that, so I know somewhat, but I’m just trying to – and for people who read the interview, I want them to get a feel for where you’re coming from…you could be a very conservative Dem or a very liberal Dem or anything in…”
Amy Roma: “I’m probably right down the middle.”
Blue Virginia: “And then on the nomination process, there’s been a lot of discussion of that recently, it’s going to apparently happen very quickly; apparently there’s not going to be ranked choice voting…there’s a bunch of different rules that are being set…”
Amy Roma: “I think they’re scrambling to write them.”
Blue Virginia: “Yeah, But there’s not much time….The thing is, it’s not a big surprise; unfortunately, Gerry Connolly was sick, we knew that, and I mean candidates started declaring weeks and weeks ago…”
Amy Roma: “I mean, there was only a couple people that declared weeks and weeks ago, and it wasn’t that many weeks ago. I think it was the people who knew that Connolly wasn’t well, right? And so I think other people were left in a bit of a scramble, including to pull together a staff to run a campaign right – like that takes time, it takes a lot of time and energy and effort. And even if you know you’re going to run, like I knew I was going to run and so it was just a matter of pulling together folks and then it was very unfortunately and now we’re off to the races. But you know it’s a terrible circumstance, I don’t think anybody wants to be running in a race like this, but it’s the one in front of us and that’s what we’re going to do.”
Blue Virginia: “I’m just wondering what your thoughts are on the nomination process, would you prefer let’s say ranked choice voting or would you prefer…well obviously, it’s going to be a firehouse, I guess that’s decided…or any other rules that you think are important?”
Amy Roma: “I think everybody’s doing the best they can under the circumstances, and whatever the rules are, those are the ones that I’m going to follow. And so the governor kind of set the schedule, you had to work backwards from that, there wasn’t a lot of time, that’s really unfortunate. I think what’s really unfortunate is there not much chance to introduce people to the candidates, to help them make their choices, and there’s going to be a low turnout because it’s going to be a special election in the summertime right before the 4th of July. But this is what this is, what the facts are and we just have to to work with that.”
Blue Virginia: “Yeah, I mean so how are you going to reach voters exactly?…It seems like the general consensus is there’s not much time and you’re going to have to tap into your network, you’re going to have to probably do maybe some targeted digital and mailers and knocking doors and making phone calls and all that. Is that what you’re kind of seeing this?”
Amy Roma: “I mean that’s the best you can do with, I mean this is a full-fledged congressional run in four weeks, right? That’s insane, but it’s it is what it is so you just try to reach as many people as you can in a short amount of time.”
Blue Virginia: “So on energy, I wanted to ask you about that; I worked at the Energy Information Administration myself for 17 years, so…”
Amy Roma: “Oh did you really? I use the reports that the EIA puts out ALL THE TIME.”
Blue Virginia: “Excellent.”
Amy Roma: “So thank you for any work you did on those.”
Blue Virginia: “Well I worked in the international energy area; we put out the country analysis briefs…international energy forecasts… I worked on the international energy outlook which comes out every year…I worked on nuclear more in the early part of my career…But anyway, so I’m kind of curious about this, because I see you’re a partner and global energy practice leader at Hogan Lovells, and ‘a recognized global authority on nuclear energy and fusion’. So I’m just kind of curious about your views on – I mean, I have definite views on nuclear fusion and small modular reactors, but I’m just kind of curious what your views are…I also did 10 years of clean energy consulting…focused mostly on solar, clean tech, wind…things that can mitigate the climate crisis and deal with that. So anyway, I’m kind of curious about your views on energy in general and on nuclear specifically.”
Amy Roma: “So a couple things there. One is nuclear is over 50% of the clean power in the United States and we were not building new nuclear because we have not delivered on large critical infrastructure projects very well over the last few years. And so we built the Vogtle [nuclear] plant [in Georgia]; it was expensive, but it’s now producing an immense amount of clean energy. And so in the energy discussion, I have long held the view that we need a diverse mix of energy clean energy options in order to keep the lights on, and it’s going to be a mix of wind and solar and you know great if we could do geothermal, fantastic if fusion’s here in time. But nuclear needs to be part of the mix, because when you look at baseload power, which you know is power that is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week that’s available when you need it, there’s very few options – it’s basically fossil or nuclear or hydro, and people aren’t really building hydro and people are hoping to kind of phase out fossil from a climate change perspective. And so you’re really left with nuclear. So it’s a really good balance to those other energy mixes. And I’ve been doing some super super cool projects in the nuclear space so I’ve been working on like next-generation and advanced nuclear technologies. And so I worked on a project to put an advanced reactor at a Dow chemical plant to provide carbon-free power and processed heat. You know, and I think you probably do know, industrial decarbonization is a beast, it is going to be very difficult. So it’s a great opportunity to kind of demonstrate industrial decarbonization. I’m working on a whole bunch of nuclear data center projects in Northern Virginia right now. Data centers take up about 26% of the grid power if you look at the breakdown…I love that, you should have told me you were an energy nerd at the beginning because I wouldn’t…”
Blue Virginia: “I didn’t want to get sidetracked onto that completely, you know we could talk for hours about this…”
Amy Roma: “…but data centers, making sure we have reliable energy sources for data centers so it’s not just coming from the grid, building dedicated energy sources for data centers are going to be really big, particularly in Virginia. So like I think nuclear is really important, i think deploying next-generation nuclear energy is really important ,it creates a ton of jobs, it provides clean energy, it supports the American economy and geopolitical competitiveness. So like yeah, we we really need to be doing this.”
Blue Virginia: “OK, well, sounds like you have to go. I mean, we could talk about this for hours. And I have definite thoughts on nuclear, mostly that it’s very expensive and some of it like fusion could be decades away…it’s still a ways away, I think, and it will be expensive.”
Amy Roma: “”Well fusion’s not supposed to be as expensive, and fusion, I mean they’re building the demonstration prototypes that like in the next few years, I think we’ll have a better sense of where we are in terms of commercialization. But nuclear energy is being built now right and there’s companies that are building it because they need it. And it’s expensive when you build one of a kind and you never build it again and you lose the workforce and you don’t have the ability and skill sets to kind of standardize your design and replicate it. Everybody right now who’s building nuclear is planning on deploying a fleet. And so like the project that’s being built in Texas, there’s also a similar project being built in Washington state using the same design, the same technology, it’s going to be built in right after another, and so it’s meant to just do that fleetwide deployment that’s going to significantly reduce costs. And with that, I’m really sorry, I’m actually two minutes late for a phone call.”
Blue Virginia: “It’s okay, all right, thanks! That’s why I didn’t start the conversation with that.”
Amy Roma: “I know, you’re right, we would have gone on a tangent…Thank you so much…”
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