Stoney declares candidacy for Va. governor

Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney declared his candidacy for governor Monday, setting up an early contest with U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger, who announced her own run for the Democratic nomination last month. The general election will take place in November 2025.

If elected, he would be Virginia’s second Black governor, more than 30 years after the historic election of Gov. L. Douglas Wilder.

Stoney, who was elected to his first term as mayor in 2016 and re-elected in 2020, filed his paperwork last week for the Democratic gubernatorial race and had spoken about his plans to run earlier in November. In his announcement released Monday morning, Stoney tells his life story. Raised in York County by his father and grandmother in a “working poor family,” Stoney says he was the first member of his family to graduate from high school and then graduated from James Madison University, where he received a degree in public administration and political science.

He served as Virginia’s first Black secretary of the commonwealth under Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who prioritized restoring voting rights to Virginians convicted of felonies. Stoney said in his announcement that he helped restore the right to vote to nearly 200,000 people during his time in McAuliffe’s administration, which ended in 2018. Stoney resigned as secretary after launching his campaign to become Richmond’s mayor in 2016, and became the city’s youngest elected mayor at age 35.

Stoney’s tenure as mayor has been mixed, as major economic development projects he supported failed — the $1.5 billion Navy Hill development, proposed to replace the now-shuttered Richmond Coliseum, was spiked by Richmond City Council in early 2020 after strong community opposition, and a $562 million casino referendum was defeated a second time by Richmond voters last month.

Despite the faltering of those projects, Stoney’s administration has moved forward with the Diamond District, a $2.44 billion project to replace the city’s baseball stadium, home to the Double-A Richmond Flying Squirrels team, as well as add two hotels, 3,000 residential units, 935,000 square feet of office space, and 195,000 square feet of retail and community space. The new stadium is expected to open in spring 2026, a year after a deadline set by Major League Baseball for all Minor League facilities to meet new standards.

Meanwhile, the city’s Economic Development Authority and the Greater Richmond Convention Center Authority have selected four development teams that will compete to redesign the 9.4-acre downtown site that includes the Coliseum, although the city declared a concert venue will not be built there.

In 2020, Stoney received praise from some quarters for removing Richmond’s Confederate statues on Monument Avenue, following large racial justice protests sparked by the police killing of George Floyd in May 2020 in Minneapolis. That summer, Richmond was the site of daily protests, including one in which police tear-gassed a crowd of protesters at the former Robert E. Lee monument.

Stoney, who spoke against police brutality in the days following Floyd’s murder while also standing with Richmond’s police, faced local anger after the tear-gassing incident, which ultimately ended in a civil rights lawsuit against city police. In 2022, the suit was settled for an undisclosed amount.

The mayor’s announcement for governor highlights the building of new city schools, creating a budget surplus and reducing the poverty rate by 22% during his tenure. In March, Richmond’s Office of Community Wealth Building reported that the overall poverty rate in the city was 19.8%, and according to the U.S. Census’ American Community Survey, about 21% of children in Richmond and 21.4% of Latinos were living below the poverty line in 2021, about half the number recorded in 2012.

In addition to serving as mayor and secretary of the commonwealth, Stoney was president of the Democratic Mayors Alliance and served as executive director of the Democratic Party of Virginia. In 2022, he married Brandy Washington, a manager of Altria Group, and in Monday’s announcement, Stoney says they are expecting their first child, a girl, this spring.

Although Spanberger and Stoney are the only two gubernatorial candidates who have officially launched campaigns for 2025, on the Republican side, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears and Attorney Gen. Jason Miyares are likely candidates. Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin is barred from seeking consecutive terms under Virginia law. Spanberger has received significant endorsements since declaring, including from former Gov. Ralph Northam and former U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello, a member of the state’s more progressive Democratic wing.