VA-07: State Sen. Amanda Chase, the self-described “Trump in heels” who gave her fellow Republicans plenty of headaches even before her unsuccessful campaign for governor this year, announced Wednesday that she would take on Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger. Chase had said last week that she would wait until the redistricting process, which is being handled by the Virginia Supreme Court, was finished, but she changed her mind and decided to kick off a campaign now.
Chase joins a nomination battle that includes Bryce Reeves, a fellow state senator who joined with a majority of their colleagues in voting to censure her in January for spreading lies about the 2020 election and calling the Jan. 6 rioters “patriots.” The contest also features communications consultant Taylor Keeney and Tina Ramirez, while Del. John McGuire has filed with the FEC ahead of a possible campaign. However, these candidates don’t know yet if local Republicans will select their nominee using a traditional primary, a convention, or through a party-run firehouse primary.
It also remains to be seen how redistricting will impact this suburban Richmond seat. Joe Biden won the current 7th District by a 50-49 margin, while, according to Bloomberg’s Greg Giroux, Republican Glenn Youngkin took it 55-44 in this month’s race for governor.
Chase herself has spent years picking fights with just about everyone. In 2019, she swore at and berated a police officer at the state capitol who told her that she couldn't park her car in a secure area, and Chase’s refusal to apologize led Chesterfield County Sheriff Karl Leonard to withdraw his endorsement of her re-election campaign. Chase responded to Leonard's snub by backing his independent opponent's unsuccessful campaign and falsely accusing the incumbent of making Chesterfield a "sanctuary city." The Chesterfield County GOP in turn voted to eject her from the party.
Chase was still re-elected to her reliably red seat, but the Senate GOP found itself in the minority. After her Republican colleagues kept Tommy Norment on as their leader, though, Chase announced that she'd leave the party caucus in protest, a move that left her with just one minor committee assignment.
She drew far more attention when she campaigned for governor, including for her December 2020 Facebook post calling for Trump to “declare martial law” to stay in office. The state senator also said that month that she was bolting the party and running as an independent after the Virginia GOP opted to hold a convention instead of a primary, a move she framed as “the only way to bypass the political consultants and the Republican establishment elite who slow play the rules or even cheat.”
Chase backed down just a week later and went back to campaigning as a Republican, but she outright said months later she’d go back to running as an independent if Pete Snyder, a wealthy businessman she accused of trying to claim the nomination through underhanded means, prevailed at the convention.
Chase spent the final days of her campaign in the news when one of her aides brandished an AR-15 at another driver. Chase, who was in the vehicle participating in a virtual candidate event at the time, told the audience at the time, "Speaking of a Second Amendment moment, we just had to—oh, my goodness—we are exercising our Second Amendment rights right now [in] our car, where we had somebody road rage, trying to get in front of—get on us." The state senator heavily promoted the story afterwards.
All of this wasn’t enough, however, for her to win over party delegates. Youngkin led Snyder 33-26 in the instant runoff contest while Chase took third with 21%, and she didn’t rise much further than that before she was eliminated from contention after the fifth round of tabulations. Chase soon disappointed Democrats by supporting Youngkin instead of abandoning the party again, and she characteristically spent the final days of the general election making evidence-free allegations that Democrats were “cheating.”