Del. Michael Feggans, D-Virginia Beach, on the left, and Former Del. Tim Anderson, a Republican, are vying to represent House District 97 in the 2025 House of Delegates election. (Photos courtesy of campaigns)
Just two years after House District 97 flipped from Republican to Democrat, the Virginia Beach district is being closely watched as a key race that could determine if Democrats will maintain their majority in the House, a hold they gained in 2023.
Democratic incumbent Michael Feggens is facing off against Republican former Del. Tim Anderson in the highly competitive contest. Combined, the campaigns have raised over $1 million, with Feggans pulling ahead with over $627,000 as of the end of August, compared to Anderson’s nearly $385,000.
Over half of the district voted for Kamala Harris for president in 2024, 53.1%, a major increase in Democratic votes from the 2016 election where Hillary Clinton narrowly won the district with 46.6%. In 2021, Republican Glenn Youngkin won the district by 50.6%.
The district has changed since 2021 when redistricting redrew many of its boundaries. In 2023, Republican Karen Greenhalgh ran against Feggans and lost. Anderson, who had represented House District 83, which was effectively eliminated in redistricting, said he did not want to run in a primary against the two other Republicans who ran for the new House District 97 seat. He ran an unsuccessful campaign for the state senate that year.
Anderson initially ran in 2020 during a previous trifecta of Democratic control of state government, in hopes of bringing more conservative representation. Now Anderson wants is back in the fight to try and take GOP control of the House.
“It’s exactly the same metrics of why I ran last time, it was a seat we have to win. I didn’t run for it last time because I didn’t want to challenge the incumbent, but she lost, and so I think it’s the right thing to do to try to claim that seat back for the team,” Anderson said.
Feggans is a 20-year Air Force veteran who previously interned for U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va. and former Gov. Terry McAuliffe before launching his campaign for delegate in 2022.
“We’ve been really focused on legislative solutions that focus on the environment, small businesses, and a lot on veterans and military families,” Feggans said. “I have a lot of contractors, government civilians, retired military, active duty military families (in my district), and that’s what a lot of our legislation has been focused on over the past two years.”
Here are the top issues in the district, which are shaping the race.
Coastal flooding
Virginia Beach is on the frontlines of managing coastal flooding and erosion impacts from climate change. For Feggans, it has been one of his key concerns during his two years in the House of Delegates. He is in support of returning the state to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which Youngkin removed Virginia from because it tacked on an additional tax on utility bills. The program also generated millions of dollars that the state put towards energy efficiency and flooding mitigation projects, a process Feggans supports reviving.
“I had HB 673, which was the resilient Virginia revolving fund that really focused on low income areas and making sure that nature-based solutions are included in the grants that are sent out,” Feggans said. “My HJ 434, that in the shortest way to explain it was, we don’t have a formula for localities to figure out how much they should project out when, when requesting funding from the state and federal government.”
Anderson is strongly against Virginia being added back to RGGI. He also believes that a recent bond referendum in Virginia Beach that is funding a pumping project will be a major solution for flooding in the district.
“It’s terrible to see that people’s houses, you know, have water coming into them when it rains heavily, but there is light at the end of the tunnel here that the pumping stations and the tidal flood gates that Virginia Beach has by 2029 and certainly by 2033 will be mitigated.”
Virginia Clean Economy Act
The Virginia Clean Economy Act, landmark 2020 legislation that put the commonwealth on the path towards an emissions-free future by requiring utilities to transition to 100% clean energy by 2050, is a major flashpoint in the district. The candidates stand firmly on opposite sides of the argument when it comes to ramping up renewable energy sources.
“We can use natural gas to solve our energy demands while we also are building the small modular reactors that, right now, are mostly going to come online for the data centers. But you know, the concept is, you know, Virginia needs more energy, and you can’t take the reliable energy offline,” Anderson said, who is calling for an end to VCEA. “It has to be repealed. It can’t even be fixed. It has to be repealed and start over.”
Feggans said he would be open to supporting changes to the VCEA that help support its original goals. He is focused on bolstering the offshore wind workforce after Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed his related bill earlier this year.
“I’ll be reintroducing that bill again next year,” Feggans said. “We’re seeing, unfortunately, that the federal government is not going to be a willing partner. We have to continue to, especially with the investments that have already been put into CVOW, how close it is to completion.”
Data Centers
The General Assembly is again expected to debate data centers’ impact on the state’s resources and how they should be regulated. While there are not as many in the Virginia Beach area as there are in the northern part of the state, the winner of the House District 97 race will have to weigh how the state will power the data centers and potentially regulate environmental impacts of the projects.
“There is no surefire answer on the data centers, especially, but for my Hampton Roads region perspective … we must look at making sure that the environmental impact is thought about first and the energy usage is thought about before moving forward with any potential projects,” Feggans said.
Anderson is in favor of making the data center companies pay a higher rate for their energy — an idea the state’s largest utility Dominion Energy recently proposed to state regulators — and investing in the energy infrastructure needed to meet their demands.
“You know, these things are power suckers. They just absorb power. But they’re going to have nuclear, small modular reactors that are going to feed these, and they’re paying for them,” Anderson said. “They’re going to pay the higher rates for the small modular reactors. And I think that’s the right way to respond to companies that just suck in power.”
Affordability
Both candidates said they’re focused on bringing down costs for consumers where they can. Feggans supported a bill that would have provided first time home buyers with a $10,000 grant, but it didn’t pass the legislature. Feggans has also been part of a bipartisan committee investigating the impacts of federal cuts to Virginia agencies and programs and learning how it will impact residents of the commonwealth.
Anderson has campaigned heavily on repealing the car tax and removing the tax on veterans retirement, a pivotal issue in a district where veterans comprise 16% of the population. Anderson would also like to begin the phase out of the state’s income tax and said Virginia could offset some of those funds by mirroring Tennessee’s sales tax model.
Election day is Nov. 4.
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