Dan’s Priorities

No one has taken on Donald Trump – and won – like Dan Helmer. After Donald Trump won the first time, Dan ran for the House of Delegates in 2019 and flipped a seat held by a 17 year Republican incumbent who was one of Trump’s strongest allies in Richmond. 

Since then, Dan has been one of Virginia’s strongest champions against MAGA. As Democratic House Campaigns Chair, he led the effort to flip the chamber in 2023 – and then expanded the Democratic majority to its greatest extent in forty years. Along the way, he recruited the most diverse and progressive coalition in Virginia history, and proved the naysayers who claimed that Democrats couldn’t win rural voters wrong. 

In the House of Delegates, Dan wrote the bill to prevent January 6th rioters from holding public office in the Commonwealth, and passed a bill to ensure that the truth about that day is taught in Virginia public schools – not MAGA propaganda. He passed a bill to prevent Virginia’s National Guard from being deployed for Donald Trump’s political stunts against American citizens. 

When the White House attacked him personally in 2018, Dan stood his ground. When the NRA went after him in 2020, he did the same. And he didn’t back down this year when the Trump administration went after him again when he tried to end racist and sexist behavior at VMI. He’s been winning the fight against Trump’s MAGA cronies since 2018, and he doesn’t plan to stop.

For Dan Helmer, reproductive rights are not just a political issue — they are personal. After his wife Karen had their second son, her cardiologist told her that another pregnancy could be fatal. Access to safe and equitable women’s health care is an absolute human right, and Dan has fought to protect it in Richmond. 

Dan beat an anti-abortion extremist to win his seat in 2019, and the first bill that Dan ever passed ensured that victims of sexual assault on college campuses can report their assaults without facing repercussions. And Dan helped lead the effort to pass a constitutional amendment to enshrine Roe v. Wade as the law of the land in Virginia.

Dan is one of the Virginia legislature’s foremost champions of IVF and fertility treatment access. He passed a bill that laid the groundwork for Virginia health insurance plans to mandate IVF coverage. Elizabeth Carr — the first baby born through IVF in the United States — has praised Dan’s efforts to protect IVF coverage at a time when the MAGA right has put fertility treatment firmly in their crosshairs.

Dan has repeatedly stood up to Republicans – and Democrats – who side with corporate interests over working families. He’s been a steadfast supporter of abolishing right-to-work in Virginia, and earned the endorsement of UNITE HERE Local 25 on day one of this campaign. 

Dan took on the health care lobby by passing a bill in 2022 to require Virginia hospitals to finally establish transparency in their pricing and publish the prices for their services online. 

He’s never taken a dime of corporate PAC money, and never will. And in Congress, Dan will fight to ensure that corporations finally pay their fair share of taxes, and ban them from influencing our elections.

The deployment of National Guard troops and ICE agents against Americans is horrific and wrong. Dan has been outspoken about the need to stop ICE’s efforts in Virginia – co-leading the effort in the House to end the disastrous 287(g) agreements allowing ICE to cooperate with local law enforcement and unmasking these agents in the Commonwealth. 

After serving overseas under Democratic and Republican commanders in chief, Dan believes that the deployment of National Guard troops to intimidate Trump’s political enemies is an affront to the Constitution and American values. That’s why he authored the bill to prevent Virginia’s National Guard from being deployed on Trump’s whims. 

As a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, Dan knows that weapons similar to those he used on battlefields overseas have no place in Virginia’s schools, houses of worship, and streets. During his first run for office, Dan went viral with a video showing him purchasing a semi-automatic rifle without a background check at a gun show – a powerful demonstration of the loopholes he’s successfully fought to close. 

That’s why he’s passed an assault weapons ban through the General Assembly – even in the face of death threats. The NRA might call Fairfax home (for now), but Dan has proven to be one of their staunchest opponents – defeating their nominees at the ballot box time and again. And he’s championing legislation to ensure that gun manufacturers are held to rigorous safety standards and held accountable for lapses.

Donald Trump has taken a wrecking ball to America’s relationships and standing abroad. In Congress, Dan will work to restore our relationships with our NATO allies, and refocus American foreign policy on bolstering democracies abroad instead of cozying up to totalitarian dictators like Vladimir Putin.