In 244 Years, America Has Never Elected A Black, Female Governor. Virginia’s Jennifer Carroll Foy Could Change That.

Jennifer Carroll Foy has seen firsthand the detrimental effect the American healthcare system can have on families. When Carroll Foy was 17-years-old, her grandmother, the woman who raised her, had a stroke. She became a quadriplegic. 

Carroll Foy remembers sitting at the dining room table with her aunt, trying to decide how to pay for her grandmother’s costly medication. 

“We were trying to decide if we were going to pay for our mortgage that month, or for the medications keeping my grandmother alive,” Carroll Foy said. 

 “That’s where my journey for governor began.”

Carroll Foy is running to be Virginia’s 74th governor. She is running in the Democratic primary against well-known members of her party, including former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, state Sen. Jennifer McClellan, and Del. Lee Carter. 

If she wins, Carroll Foy would make history as the first Black woman elected governor in the nation. 

Carroll Foy is running on a progressive platform for criminal justice reform, jobs, the economy, immigration, and healthcare; she says her lived experiences help her truly understand the issues Virginians face. 

The 39-year-old mother of twins hails from Petersburg, Virginia, named the most dangerous city to live in Virginia, with the highest murder per capita rate, in 2019. Her grandparents raised her, but she says, especially her grandmother Mary Lee, a southern Christian woman who brought Carroll Foy to church several times a week. Eventually, Carroll Foy attended Virginia Military Institute, becoming one of the first women to graduate from VMI. She obtained a law degree from Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego, California, becoming a public defender.

Her work as a public defender, representing many people who were mentally ill and impoverished, has helped form her stance on the criminal justice system. She recalled the time her client, a 12-year-old Black boy, was charged with a felony.

“He walked into the store in the middle of winter and took a coat, put it on, and walked out, and he was caught. And he was charged at the time with a felony. And so I’m asking him, ‘Why did you do this?’ And digging deeper, finding out his father was in jail, his mother was nowhere to be found. He barely had any food in the refrigerator. And he said, ‘Well, I was cold. I didn’t know what else to do,'” Carroll Foy said.

“So having to argue before the judge, should this child be stigmatized and branded as a convicted felon? Or should his parents be put on trial because they failed him? Should the school be put on trial because it failed him? Should the system now be put on trial because it failed him? And we’re holding him accountable, and no one else— a child who can’t defend himself or work to pay bills to buy a jacket or know what to do. And so he’s grieving, and no one’s hearing him.”

This work influenced Carroll Foy after she was elected to Virginia’s House of Delegates in 2017. The public defender didn’t always know she’d enter politics; it wasn’t until the 2016 presidential election of Donald Trump that she realized she wanted to run for office.

That race proved to be a bit more difficult for Carroll Foy than it might be for the average person. Three weeks after she announced her candidacy, she found out she was pregnant with identical twins. 

“People were finding out and telling me that I should drop out, saying there’s no way I could work as a public defender, and, be pregnant with twins and, you know, flip a seat from red to blue,” she said. 

“And so I just remember putting my head down, ignoring the naysayers and just running my race and winning and then giving birth to my twins.”

Carroll Foy didn’t have an easy pregnancy. She experienced constant morning sickness and swollen ankles. Towards the end of the election, doctors were trying to prevent the twins from coming early. They put her on bed rest at home and then the hospital. Her life was literally turned upside down: they were using gravity to keep the babies from being delivered early. 

“I was running a full campaign, having to have campaign meetings in my hospital room, while upside down, making calls, hiring staff, and having meetings,” Carroll Foy laughed.

She ended up winning the election. But what happened next has also been influential in Carroll Foy’s healthcare plan. 

After giving birth to twin boys, Carroll Foy says, she began experiencing intense pain. She communicated her concerns to the hospital nursing staff, only to be told, it was “normal.” She was sent home.

After a day or so of being home, Carroll Foy says the pain only intensified, so much so, that it brought her to her knees, and she couldn’t walk. Her husband rushed her to the hospital, where she was immediately admitted. 

Because of the sensitive medical nature, Carroll Foy chose not to share the diagnosis but said, “They informed me that had I stayed home a little while longer; I would have lost my life.”

Studies show this situation is one that many Black mothers experience. It’s a phenomenon called Black maternal mortality, where Black women are more than three times more likely to die during childbirth and postpartum because of racism and implicit bias.

Carroll Foy’s birthing situation and experience with her grandmother are why she says she has fought so hard to improve healthcare as a delegate, and why it’ll be a top priority if she is elected governor. 

As a delegate, Carroll Foy supported the expansion of Medicaid to 500,000 newly insured Virginians, she advocated for a paid family and medical leave, and she helped pass legislation to assess the feasibility of Medicaid reimbursement for doula care, among other efforts. 

As governor, she says, she will continue to recruit more minority doctors and OBGYNs, while promoting implicit and explicit bias medical training. She also says she will invest in local health clinics, create a prescription drug review board and expand broadband to 97% of Virginians so more people can access telehealth and telemedicine. She also says she will continue to improve women’s access to abortion and reproductive healthcare. 

“I hope to drive down the cost of health insurance by ensuring that people can see their doctor from the comfort of their own home,” Carroll Foy said. “I understand that healthcare is a right and not a privilege.”

Carroll Foy also says she will ensure a fully funded vaccination roll-out and that information regarding the Covid-19 vaccination is in different languages for people who don’t speak English. She’s also proclaimed she will have an all-pro-choice cabinet — something no gubernatorial candidate has ever done. 

Looking back on her time as a delegate, Carroll Foy is most proud of a few accomplishments, including passing the equal rights amendment in Virginia. The ERA was supposed to guarantee gender equality in the constitution for the first time (although because of a passed deadline and other factors, it is unclear when and if it will be ratified and added to the constitution.) She also looks back fondly on helping to expand Medicaid in Virginia, among other notable efforts.

And she has big plans if elected governor, including championing cash bail reform.  

“We have a for-profit justice system, meaning you’re more likely to sit in jail pretrial if you are a Black, innocent, and poor than if you’re a white, wealthy and guilty. And so people are sitting in jail for weeks or months at a time because they’re too poor to pay for their freedom,” Carroll Foy said.

Some other priorities for Carroll Foy, if elected, include bringing diverse, high-paying jobs to the commonwealth, including positions in cybersecurity, robotics, nanotech, renewables, and automotive systems, and training the workforce to be ready for these types of careers. She also wants to end the digital divide and increase access to virtual learning, as well as including farmers in the global economy. Another priority for Carroll Foy would be expanding childhood education so every three to four-year-old can attend full-day pre-K. She says she also wants to increase teachers’ salaries.

Currently, Carroll Foy ranks second in fundraising among those in the Democratic field, with over $1 million cash on hand. It’s an impressive haul, but markedly short of the almost $6 million raised by the man at the top of the field, former Gov. Terry McAullife. McAullife also leads in the most recent Democratic polling: a survey by the Wason Center at Christopher Newport University showed him with 26% of the vote, while Carroll Foy had just 4%. Even there, though, Carroll Foy has an opportunity – 49 percent of Democrats polled were undecided.

Still, Carroll Foy hopes her message resonates with her constituents, and that her efforts will bring Virginians to vote for her in the primary on June 8.

“I understand the challenges that everyday Virginians face because I’ve lived it, and it’s about time that we have a working mom representing working families in Richmond,” she said. “The wealthy and well connected have a lot of representation, and now it’s our time, now it’s our turn.”

If she wins, she hopes becoming the nation’s first Black, female governor will inspire future generations of Black little girls.

“They will finally be able to see themselves being an executive, being pretty much the president of the state, and that matters. I will be able to bring my lived experiences as a mom, a working mom, as a public defender, as a foster mom, as a little girl who grew up in poverty, as a person who’s gone without health care,” she said.

“You know, all of these things are important because it dictates the lens that I see things through.”

“I am a woman of the people. And I am in this to move Virginia forward and ensure that our future is better than our past.”

To read more about Carroll Foy, you can visit her website.