Virginia Republican Rep. Jen Kiggans has staked a moderate position on health care, leading a dozen GOP colleagues on an Oct. 21 letter urging House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., to find a path toward extending expiring health care tax credits once the government reopens. The credits, which expire on Dec. 31, are at the center of the government shutdown: Democrats are demanding they be extended before they vote to reopen the government, while Republicans are refusing to negotiate until the government reopens. Kiggans is the lead sponsor of a bipartisan bill that would extend the enhanced credits for one year without any changes to their structure.
Getting to Congress: After earning a degree in international relations from Boston University in 1993, Kiggans went to the U.S. Navy and spent the next decade as a helicopter pilot. Out of the service, she earned nursing degrees from Old Dominion University and Vanderbilt University and became a nurse practitioner in geriatric care. She first ran for elected office in 2019, winning a seat in the Virginia Senate. Three years later, she made her bid for Congress against incumbent Democrat Elaine Luria. Kiggans sailed to the top of the GOP primary with more than twice the votes of the next-highest vote-getter. In a closely watched race, Kiggans defeated Luria in the 2022 general election by just over 3 percentage points.
Her District: The 2nd District covers much of Virginia’s coastal regions, including the outskirts of Norfolk and the state’s eastern shore, which is connected to the mainland by the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, a 17.6-mile tunnel and bridge system spanning the mouth of the bay, with annual ridership in the millions. The city of Virginia Beach is a major tourist destination, with more than 14 million visitors contributing $3.8 billion to the local economy in 2023, according to the Virginia Beach Convention and Visitors Bureau. Thanks to its proximity to a major naval installation in Norfolk, the 2nd District is home to a significant number of veterans, making up 15 percent of the adult population. Politically, the solidly purple district has flipped between Republican and Democratic representation in the past decade: Kiggans, like Luria before her, has won by single-digit margins.
What’s New: Kiggans led a group of GOP veterans on an Oct. 10 letter to the seven Democrats in the Senate who are veterans, urging them to support a short-term continuing resolution that would reopen the government. Appealing to their shared backgrounds as veterans, the signatories cited concerns about troops going without pay as a result of the shutdown. “Let us be clear: passing this continuing resolution is not a concession by one side or the other,” they wrote. “It is an act of solidarity with those who continue to serve.”
Point of Interest: Kiggans co-chairs the Congressional Military Family Caucus with Rep. Sanford D. Bishop Jr., D-Ga. Kiggans doesn’t have to look far to find a military family: Besides herself, her father and grandfather served in the armed forces, her husband is a Navy veteran and she has children pursuing military careers.
Sandhya Raman, Jessie Hellmann and Rebecca Kheel contributed to this report.
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