I am publishing a bit late today because I needed to complete this finance note comparing a 10-year Treasury with a utility ETF. I can’t quit the day job—yet.
Author’s note: Economic and Political Insights is a multi-topic publication covering politics, economic policy and personal finance. Readers with similarly diverse interests can receive a 50 percent discount on an annual subscription, reducing the first-year price to approximately $30.
Many of the races profiled in this series feature at least one candidate who appears mediocre, excessively ideological or badly matched to the district. Virginia’s Second District offers a welcome exception. Both candidates have served in the military and Congress—and compiled strong records in both institutions. Jen Kiggans spent ten years as a Navy helicopter pilot before becoming a geriatric nurse practitioner. Elaine Luria served for twenty years as a nuclear-trained surface warfare officer and eventually commanded approximately 400 sailors.
Luria represented the district for four years, from 2019 through 2022. Kiggans defeated her in 2022 and has represented the district since January 2023. The 2026 contest is their rematch.
The Second District occupies the southeastern corner of Virginia. It includes Virginia Beach, the Eastern Shore, Suffolk, Franklin, and portions of Chesapeake, Isle of Wight and Southampton County. Its combination of suburban communities, rural areas, coastal economies and military installations makes it one of the country’s most distinctive battleground districts.
The military is embedded in the region’s economy and culture. Joint Base Little Creek–Fort Story is located within the district, while Naval Station Norfolk and several other major installations sit nearby. Veterans and active-duty military families form an unusually large portion of the electorate.
The district is also one of the most evenly divided in the country. Joe Biden carried it by approximately two points in 2020. Donald Trump carried it in 2024 by only about two-tenths of a percentage point, 49.5 to 49.3 percent. Virginia Democrats attempted to redraw the district to make it more favorable to their party, but the Virginia Supreme Court invalidated the process in May. The election will therefore be conducted under the existing map.
Kiggans earned a bachelor’s degree in international relations from Boston University and then entered the Navy. She served for ten years as a helicopter pilot, flying H-46 and H-3 helicopters and completing two deployments to the Persian Gulf. After leaving active duty, she used the GI Bill to earn nursing degrees from Old Dominion and Vanderbilt and became a board-certified adult-geriatric nurse practitioner. She served in the Virginia Senate from 2020 until her election to Congress in 2022. Her husband is a retired Navy F/A-18 pilot.
Luria graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1997 and served for twenty years. A nuclear-trained surface warfare officer, she operated nuclear reactors and completed deployments to the Middle East and Western Pacific. She was among the first women in the Navy to spend an entire career serving on combatant ships. Luria attained the rank of commander and led Assault Craft Unit Two, a combat-ready organization of approximately 400 sailors, before retiring in 2017. She subsequently founded the Mermaid Factory, a small Virginia business.
Both candidates have made credible efforts to work across party lines. Luria belonged to the New Democrat Coalition and the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus. Kiggans belongs to the Republican Governance Group and Republican Main Street Caucus and has collaborated with Democrats on veterans’ affairs, health care and government funding. She also supported the bipartisan 2023 debt-ceiling agreement and was the only Virginia Republican to vote to expel George Santos.
On defense and foreign policy, both have records that I find reassuring. Kiggans supported aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. Luria called for a larger Navy, criticized Democratic defense proposals as inadequate and warned that the United States was not preparing sufficiently for competition with China. In 2021, she was the only House Democrat to oppose simply repealing the 2002 authorization for the use of military force in Iraq. She argued that Congress should replace it with an updated authorization rather than create a vacuum.
Health care presents the sharpest domestic difference. Kiggans recently appeared with CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz to promote $122 million in rural-health funding for Virginia. Luria has criticized Kiggans for supporting Republican legislation that reduced projected Medicaid spending and did not extend the enhanced ACA subsidies. These issues are particularly important to rural hospitals, many of which depend heavily on Medicaid revenue.
On broader economic policy, however, both have generally supported their parties’ agendas. Neither has broken decisively with her party on a major domestic initiative or adopted the pragmatic third-party economic agenda I have advocated. Even in this unusually strong field, there remains room for improvement.
I will be watching this race closely on election night. A Luria loss would signal both a narrower path for Democrats to retake the House and diminished prospects for centrists to influence the party’s future.
Author’s note: Economic and Political Insights is a multi-topic publication covering politics, economic policy and personal finance. Readers with similarly diverse interests can receive a 50 percent discount on an annual subscription, reducing the first-year price to approximately $30.