In the 2025 elections, progressives scored impressive victories in Virginia. Voters moved overwhelmingly to the left across the state, leading to significant wins for Democrats in races for governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general. Progressives also expanded their majorities in the General Assembly, growing their margin in the House from a narrow 51-49 majority before the elections to a 64-36 seat advantage after Election Day. (The state Senate didn’t hold elections this year.)

Chris Kromm with Facing South and the Institute for Southern Studies talked with Tram Nguyen, co-executive director of New Virginia Majority, about her takeaways from the Virginia elections and how progressives can deliver on their promises to tackle affordability and other key issues. Founded in 2007, New Virginia Majority organizes in working-class, people of color communities across Virginia. This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity. You can watch the full video of our interview on the Institute's YouTube channel here.

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First of all, tell us about New Virginia Majority and your work in the state.

New Virginia Majority is a statewide civic engagement, grassroots, base-building, advocacy organization. We do a mix of everything, but at the heart of the organization is making sure that we are building power for working-class communities of color.

If we can build power for communities that are typically underrepresented, marginalized, left on the sidelines, and we really put their issues and the things that they're facing front and center — and actually have leaders address those issues as we're building power and doing accountability work then we will have fundamentally changed the system in Virginia and really improve people's quality of life.

What to you are the most important takeaways from the 2025 elections in Virginia?

I don't think it'll surprise you or anybody, that when people think about what matters to them and given the current environment that we are in, I think that they are very much focused on their their livelihoods. We saw it across the board, from the top of the ticket all the way down to even local races, that affordability and cost of living and making sure that people can stay and live in their home safely and securely [were top issues]. Without fear of whether or not they're gonna have a roof over their head, if they could put food on the table, if their kids can go to school without fear.

It's not rocket science, but at the same time it's really unfathomable to me sometimes that these things that are so seemingly basic are not being addressed in America. And so cost of living, affordability, whether it's housing, healthcare, education, et cetera, were top of mind.

Every candidate ran on that with such discipline and rigor. That's the mandate that these........

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