Incumbent Delegate Charniele Herring was first elected to the House of Delegates in 2009 and was elected as chair of the House Democratic Caucus in 2015. In 2020, she was elected as House majority leader, becoming the first woman and first African American to hold the post. Herring overcame homelessness as a child and went on to attend George Mason University and Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law. Herring has lived in Alexandria for over 30 years.

Herring is a strong advocate for underserved communities in the House of Delegates. She helped create the Virginia Legislative Reproductive Health Caucus, which is dedicated to protecting women’s healthcare issues, including access to reproductive healthcare and abortion. In 2020, she sponsored the Reproductive Health Protection Act, which repealed unnecessary regulations on abortion providers. In 2021, she patroned a bill to extend health insurance coverage to include abortions. She also carried legislation to establish a task force to tackle the crisis of maternal mortality in the Commonwealth the same year.

Herring is chair of the House Courts of Justice Committee, overseeing many progressive reforms to Virginia’s criminal justice system. In 2021, she was chief co-patron of the bill to abolish the death penalty. She helped pass the Virginia Clean Slate Act, which helps expunge certain individuals’ criminal records to give them better access to housing, education, and jobs. She also sponsored the House bill for marijuana legalization and the constitutional amendment to restore voting rights to returning citizens in the Commonwealth.

After experiencing homelessness as a child, Herring was critical to getting full funding for the Homeless Intervention Protection Act. She has also advocated for affordable housing and voted for protections for renters to stay in their homes during the COVID-19 pandemic She has fought to address the rising cost of rent and housing shortages in the district to ensure that teachers, firefighters, nurses, and other critical community members are all able to afford to live in the 46th District.

When Herring was thirteen, she testified before a White House committee about the critical need to improve healthcare benefits for children in military families. Since then, she has remained an advocate for the importance of quality, affordable healthcare. She has worked to lower drug costs and voted to cap the price of insulin in 2020. She also voted to expand Medicaid to 750,000 Virginians in 2018 and supported establishing a state-run health insurance marketplace, which helps uninsured or underinsured residents who aren’t covered by an employer-provided health plan to get affordable coverage.

Herring is running unopposed for this seat. Due to her support of abortion access, criminal justice reform, working families and access to affordable healthcare, Delegate Charniele Herring is the most progressive choice for Virginia’s 4th District. Close Window