Editor, The Smithfield Times:

In the 2nd Congressional District, we have two candidates who have served their country in the U.S. Navy — two women who each swore to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Unfortunately, the comparison ends there.

Congresswoman (and retired Navy Commander) Elaine Luria is STILL living up to that oath, defending the Constitution and our very democracy against a former president and his supporters who are doing everything they can to destroy our democratic way of life through lies about evidence-less voter fraud; attempts at the state level to restrict voting (and isn’t this the very bedrock of our democracy?); replacing nonpartisan election officials with partisan election deniers; and passing state laws that take away the power of state election commissions to appoint Electoral College electors and give that power, instead, to Republican-dominated legislatures.

Jen Kiggans, on the other hand, refuses — to this day — to affirm that Joe Biden was legitimately elected president. She was one of only four state senators to vote for a bill that would have wasted $70 million of Virginia taxpayer money for a “forensic audit” of the 2020 election, which Joe Biden won by a considerable 10.11% margin. Allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 election have been proven false over and over, yet Kiggans continues to be an election denier.

She also was quick to jump on the “outrage” train after FBI agents executed a search warrant to retrieve government documents — including, as we now know, many of them with national security classifications — that the former president had illegally taken with him when he left the White House. That’s against the law, whether it’s a former president or a former military member.

In fact, I’m willing to bet that if former Lt. Kiggans had taken classified documents with her when she left the Navy, she’d be in jail now, not running for Congress. Or, maybe, preservation of our democracy is just another one of her “shiny objects.”

 

Deborah Wyld

Smithfield