Republican Wins Upset in Deep-Blue Seat After Muslim Democrat Busted for Racist Tweets

A Republican won a deep-blue Northern Virginia county-level seat in a major upset Tuesday after revelations that her Democratic opponent made racist social media posts more than 10 years ago.

Republican Jeannie LaCroix, 64, won a special election for a Prince William County Board of Supervisors seat, defeating Democratic nominee Muhammed Sufiyan Casim, 36, a Muslim Pakistani immigrant, who in the 2010s made a series of online posts containing racist, misogynist and antisemitic content, Potomac Local News reported. 

Casim, who was in his 20s when he posted the content, apologized for the posts in an interview with the Prince William Times — saying he had used the N-word “foolishly” and suggested he had copied the behavior of “kids” of “brown ethnicity” at the time.

“I wasn’t realizing the cultural weight and the context, so I used that word foolishly, but not in a derogatory or prejudicial way,” the Democrat told the outlet, adding that he used the racial slur to refer to his black friend.

“Back in those days, a lot of kids would use that word both with kids of African American origin and people of any brown ethnicity.”

In a March 2 X post addressing the posts and confirming his intention not to drop out of the race, Casim said the rhetoric of the former Republican chairman of the Board of Supervisors, who left office seven years ago, “has emboldened neo-Nazis,” before mentioning that he is Muslim.

“As a Muslim-American who has experienced what it’s like to live in America after 9/11, discussions around cultural sensitivity are very important to me,” the Pakistani immigrant wrote in the post.

LaCroix won 43.7% of the vote while Casim received 37.0% in the Tuesday special election, according to the Prince William County Office of Elections, Potomac Local News reported.

The Republican capitalized on a split Democratic field as write-in candidates received 19.2% of the vote.

Democrat Pamela Montgomery — who lost her party’s primary to Casim — declared her candidacy as a write-in candidate just one week before Election Day, citing the fallout from the nominee’s decade-old posts, according to the outlet. 

Despite her late entry, Montgomery led the candidate field in fundraising, according to Potomac Local News.

“For Democrats, confronting racism is not optional. It is foundational,” Montgomery, who is Black, wrote in a letter published by the Prince William Times on the day of the election.

“When racist language surfaces, especially from someone seeking public office, the response should be clear: acknowledge it, condemn it, and demand accountability,” the unsuccessful Democratic primary candidate continued in her letter, making the case for her write-in bid.

The Tuesday race was held to replace Democrat Margaret Franklin, who resigned from the Board of Supervisors after being elected to the Virginia House of Delegates in January. Franklin notably defeated Casim to win the Democratic nomination for the state House seat by more than a two-to-one margin.

Prince William County, an affluent, diverse county in the Washington metropolitan area, is a Democratic stronghold that 2024 Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris carried by 18 percentage points. Democratic Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger won the county’s vote by 34 points in November 2025. Precincts in the northeastern portion of the county, where Woodbridge is located, are among the bluest in the entire county, according to 2024 election data from VoteHub.

LaCroix’s upset win marks one of the few special elections during President Donald Trump’s second term in which a seat flipped from Democratic to Republican control.

Conversely, Democratic candidates over the past year have flipped multiple state legislative seats that Trump carried by double digits in the 2024 election.

Reprinted with permission from The Daily Signal by Anthony Lafrate.

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.