WASHINGTON — For nearly a decade, former president Donald Trump has rallied voters around a cry to cut the size of the federal government and “drain the swamp.”
But now one Republican running in a key House race is trying to distance himself from the proposed cuts, and from Trump’s plan to move 100,000 federal workers out of the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia area while firing “rogue bureaucrats” — policies that could cost the area’s economy billions of dollars.
Derrick Anderson is the Republican nominee running in a competitive race to represent Virginia’s seventh congressional district in the House. The district has almost 60,000 federal employees living in it, or about 15% of the population. Even more work as federal contractors.
Anderson said in a statement to CNBC that he will “oppose any legislation that could weaken national security, raise the cost of living, or hurt VA-7 jobs, regardless of where it comes from.”
“This is my home district and I’ll do everything I can to protect it,” he said.
Virginia’s seventh district is one of the most competitive House races in the country, according to Cook Political Report. But Anderson is not alone. He is the latest example of how Republican congressional candidates in tough races are being selective about how they align themselves with Trump and how they show their independence.
Although Republicans held the House this year, their slim margins often led to chaos, an inability to move some of their major priorities and struggles to approve must-pass bills.
For Republicans to enact their agenda in 2025, they will need to win races in several districts that backed Biden in 2020, and are likely to support Harris this November.
Anderson’s opponent is Democratic nominee Eugene Vindman, the twin brother of Alex Vindman, who testified against Trump during his impeachment trial in 2019.
On a recent trip to Stafford on Aug. 27 where Vindman went door-knocking in 90-degree heat, it only took a few houses before Vindman began chatting with a self-described “govie,” a government employee, who had concerns about some of Trump’s proposals.
Anderson has been endorsed by Trump. But Vindman has a lot more financial ammunition for the race. As of June 30, Vindman’s campaign had raised $7.5 million, compared to just $1.4 million for Anderson.
In addition to moving 100,000 employees out of the area, Trump also wants to make it easier to fire career civil servants, and replace them with politically loyal staffers, as part of an executive order often referred to as “Schedule F.” This move alone could affect tens of thousands of federal employees, many of them in Virginia-O7.
In Trump’s policy plan titled Agenda 47, Trump also lays out plans to go after “rogue bureaucrats” and “firing all of the corrupt actors in our National Security and Intelligence apparatus.”
That hits close to home for Vindman. He and his brother were both fired from their White House jobs after Alexander’s high-profile role in Trump’s impeachment proceedings.
“It would be devastating to this area,” Vindman said. “Fundamentally unfair, but devastating to this area because you’re talking about thousands and tens of thousands [of] pretty well-paid jobs. It would be horrible.”
If the plan were implemented, it would not just be federal employees affected by contractors and other workers in the area, said Terry Clower, a professor at George Mason University and director of Mason’s Center for Regional Analysis.
He estimated that for every job created by the federal government in an area, another .6 of a job is created — meaning 100,000 federal workers lost would be equal to 160,000 jobs. Clower estimated that this level of projected job losses could cost the state between $27 billion and $28 billion per year.
“If all of them completely left Virginia in terms of output, that would probably be about 5% of gross state product,” he said. “That’s, by modern terms, a fairly severe recession that would cause.”