Trump’s agenda, DOGE cuts loom large in Virginia special election to fill vacant House seat

FAIRFAX, VA – He’s not on the ballot, but President Donald Trump is smack in the middle of Tuesday’s special congressional election in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C.

The federal jobs cuts implemented by Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), crime and immigration, transgender policies, and even the push to release the Justice Department’s files on the late convicted sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein are also in the spotlight as voters cast ballots in the Fairfax County anchored district.

James Walkinshaw, the Democratic Party nominee, told Fox News Digital the sweeping and controversial agenda Trump pushed during his first eight months back in the White House will have a “real impact” on the special election in Virginia’s left-leaning 11th Congressional District.

Republican nominee Stewart Whitson also says Trump’s in the campaign spotlight because of a “lot of the great policies that he’s been championing.”

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The winner will succeed the late longtime Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly, who died in June after a battle with cancer.

The Republicans currently control the House 219-212, with three seats controlled by Democrats vacant, as well as one held by the GOP. And if Walkinshaw tops Whitson in a district Republicans haven’t won in nearly two decades, it will further narrow the GOP’s fragile House majority.

In a district that’s home to tens of thousands of federal workers and contractors, many voters have been affected by the DOGE implemented job cuts and layoffs.

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“Folks in Northern Virginia and Fairfax are feeling the impact of the Trump policies. And I like to say we’re kind of on the leading edge of the Trump economy here. Everybody in Fairfax knows someone, probably someone on their street, maybe the parent of their kid’s soccer team, who has lost their job because of DOGE or the Trump policies,” Walkinshaw said on Election Day eve.

Walkinshaw, a Fairfax County Board of Supervisors member who previously served as Connolly’s chief of staff, argued that “if the Trump policies continue, tariffs, the so-called big, beautiful bill, that’s going to be the case all around the country. So I think we’re on the leading edge of that. And I think voters tomorrow are going to send a statement about that.”

Campaign signs for Republican Stewart Whitson and Democrat James Walkinshaw, are seen on Sept. 8, 2025, in Fairfax County, Virginia, on the eve of a special election in Virginia’s 11th Congressional District.  (Paul Steinhauser – Fox News )

Whitson, an Army veteran and former FBI special agent who oversees federal affairs for a conservative think tank, told Fox News digital that “the people in our district who have lost their job or who are worried about losing their job, they don’t need empathy. They need solutions.”

He said Walkinshaw is “claiming he’s going to fight President Trump and fight the administration. And my pitch to voters in our district is: is that going to help? Is that going to help improve the situation? The answer is no.”

“We need someone to represent the people in our district who can work with any administration, whether it’s Republican or Democrat,” Whitson emphasized.

Pointing to federal workers and contractors who lost their jobs, he said, “I want to find a way to get them back in. I also want to find other economic opportunities for them as well.”

While Trump isn’t very popular in the district — the president won just 31% of the vote in his White House re-election last year – Whitson said that Trump’s polices “center on… common sense.”

President Donald Trump, seen in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, Aug. 14, 2025, isn’t on the ballot in Tuesday’s special congressional election in Virginia, but his agenda is dominating discussions on the campaign trail. (Will Oliver/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

And taking aim at Democrats, he argued, “People in our district are realizing that the radical left has just pushed so far away from common sense… the radical policies they’re pushing on our kids behind closed doors, the reckless soft on crime policies that are making us less safe. These are issues that are important to our voters.”

Whitson, pointing to the ongoing battle over allowing transgender children to use public school bathrooms in some Fairfax County schools, targeted Walkinshaw.

“My opponent believes it is a civil right for men who identify as girls or women to go into our girls’ locker rooms and watch them change. I think this is all backwards,” Whitson charged. “I think it is a civil right for girls and women when they see a female sign on a bathroom that they know they can go in there and be safe. And again, this just comes back to common sense. I’m a father with five kids. Three of those kids are daughters.”

Walkinshaw charged that Whitson has “been really obsessed with how maybe 1% of the kids in our schools use the bathrooms, and what I hear from folks in our community, and what I’m focused on is how 100% of our kids can succeed in the classrooms. So the threats to pull federal funding, the dismantling of the Department of Education, threatens the performance of our kids in the classrooms, and that’s what I’m focused on.”

Whitson has also been trying to link Walkinshaw to Zohran Mamdani, the socialist candidate who rocked the political world in June by winning the Democratic Party mayoral nomination in New York City.

Listing Walkinshaw’s record and his proposals, Whitson charged, “This is someone who has a history of supporting a lot of the exact same type of policies that Mamdani is supporting. And so I’ll let voters… draw the comparison.”

Asked about the comparison, Walkinshaw said during his four months on the campaign trail this summer, “not a single voter has asked me about the New York mayor’s election. I don’t care what happens in the New York mayor’s election. I care what happens to folks right here in the 11th District.”

Republican congressional candidate Stewart Whitson is linking Democrat James Walkinshaw, his opponent in Tuesday’s special election, to Democratic Party mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani of New York City (pictured). (Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)

But what Walkinshaw says he has heard about on the campaign trail is the push by both Democrats and Republicans for the Justice Department to release files related to the federal investigation of Epstein, who died in prison six years ago while awaiting federal charges related to sex trafficking.

“One of these things that I hear from Democrats, independents and a lot of Republicans and conservatives who believed Donald Trump when he said there was a cover-up of the files during the Biden administration. They took him at his word, and now they’re wondering if he was lying. So yeah, it comes up, and it comes up across the political spectrum,” Walkinshaw said.

And if he wins Tuesday’s election, Walkinshaw said he will immediately sign a discharge petition by Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California and Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky. The petition, which is currently just a few votes shy of passing, calls on the House to vote to urge the Justice Department to release the files.

“I absolutely will sign it,” he said. “I think the American people deserve to know. I want to know what the Trump administration, if anything, is covering up. And right now, the discharge petition is the vehicle to do that.”

Whitson argued that “my opponent’s really late to the game on this,” and that “months ago I called for a complete disclosure of all the records from Epstein files.”

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Whitson pointed to his years as a federal law enforcement officer in declassifying documents, and charged that Walkinshaw was using the issue as a political weapon.

“How long has this case been going on, and now he finally wants to reach on those records. And so what does that mean? It means he doesn’t care about these victims at all. He’s using the pain and the suffering that they experience to try to get political gain,” he argued.

Fox News’ Kiera McDonald contributed to this report.