2026 Virginia Candidates Meet & Greet (1):Michael Duffin,David Williams,Lorena Bruner,Maria Padmore,Tony Sabio,Mo Seifeldein

My name is Michael Duffin. I am running as a Democrat in Virginia's 8th congressional district. I spent 12 years at the State Department, including a decade countering terrorism. I'll go right into the question. The cuts by the Trump administration have greatly reduced our ability to counter Chinese influence, both in the United States and around the world. Specifically, domestically, DHS, the CISA, which works on cybersecurity, their staff and resources have been diminished, so it's harder to identify Chinese propaganda, election interference. Overseas, obviously, the elimination of USAID has impacted our strategic competition with Russia and China. We need to hold all violators of human rights, civil rights accountable, and we need to make sure that we're not helping the Chinese Communist Party defeat us. We need to look at our investments, and we need to make sure that we're identifying Chinese propaganda online, because right now, social media is a breeding ground for hate and polarization. We've seen during the pandemic and before and after the hate that's been directed towards the Asian American community, which is wrong. I've worked on countering hate and polarization. I believe in a strong State Department. I want to restore USAID, and we need to look carefully at policies regarding data centers and AI. It's a concern, the impact on our economy, on our energy, on the environment, but I also know that China is investing in quantum computing, and if they are able to crack our codes, our encryption, that's going to be a significant detriment to, that's going to impact our national security. I'm grateful to be here. I'm running to reinstate federal workers, to make life more affordable for middle-class people. Everyone deserves a shot at the American dream, and a big part of living in northern Virginia is working for the government, and so people who came here, I came from Illinois, and other people came from other countries and became American citizens. It was their dream to work for the government, and they were kicked out, and that reminds me of a communist country. Is that the I'm done, or 30 seconds? My website is duffin4va.com. I would be grateful if you checked out my website. I would be grateful if you supported, and I want to be a partner, a friend to the Asian American communities. Thank you so much for your time. My name is David Williams. I am running for U.S. Senate, so I plan on retiring Mark Warner once we get through the primaries. So, just a little bit about myself. I'm a proud father and husband. I also served many years fighting our nation's battle in the Navy, in the Marine Corps as an infantry officer, and then as a U.S. diplomat, and so I understand this. I understand what the Democrats are, well, moving further and further to the left with socialism. We see DSA is becoming a big influencer in New York, and it's going to continue to grow, because you know what? When you say free stuff, when you offer people free stuff, socialism and communism, that is what it grows, and I know many of you understand how it starts, and so what you're seeing is it's taking root here in our country, in the U.S., and so for me, I could not stand and watch that happen, so I got in the race. I got in the race because Virginia needs good candidates, someone that can actually win, and we are absolutely going to win, so when we talk about this, what you have to do is you have to defeat, and you have to win elections. We haven't won elections here on the conservative side for many years, and that is why you're seeing these movements take shape, and so when we come and we're speaking about this, it's we need to be real. What is it? What are we seeing here? And that is what we're seeing. We're seeing a takeover of our government. We're seeing cultures collapse, and we're seeing this confluence of what we believe to be a capitalist society, which believes in the economy, free-flowing economy, let the economy grow, and let it expand to something that is more, like I said, we're talking about communistic and controlling the government and controlling people, and that is something we have to fight against, and like I said, the way we're going to do that is we have to win elections. My name is David Williams. Go to DavidWilliams4VA or follow me on Instagram or whatever social media platform you are, Williams4VA, and let's start winning elections. Thank you very much. God bless you all. My name is Lena Brunner, and I'm running for District 8 Democratic Virginia Congress. I'm the only woman running against four men, one of which is the incumbent, and the reason I'm running is, I'm going to say this, this is the elephant in the room. The fact of the matter is my background has a lot to do with a woman who is fighting for the rights of women, minorities, and families as a whole. My past experience has been with, as a teacher, a minority woman, a former military spouse of an air force officer that's been overseas, a former public policy board member for the American Association of the University of Women of Virginia as a VP of public policy. My platform has largely centered on federal education, progressive economic reforms, and social safety nets. Now, this thing is that I am for putting more women, minority women and families, into Congress. It's a little known fact that the female population in the United States is apparently 55, 50.5 percent to 50.9 percent of the total population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau quick fact. And by the way, I have worked for the Census Bureau enumerator for four years. Also, women make up about 28 percent and men make up about 72 percent of the voting members of the 119th U.S. Congress. In the Senate, women account for approximately 25 percent of members, leaving men at 75 percent, with a total share of both chambers of Congress being combined. Female representation sitting at under 30 percent, despite women making over 50 percent of the broader U.S. population. So, this is the thing. We need more women and minorities in Congress. We are here in Congress to represent you, but the thing is this. We have more men in Congress and we don't have the representation that we need. Yes, men can say, oh yeah, we represent you, but the thing of the matter is, we're not, the men in Congress aren't stepping up as much to the present administration of Trump as we are. So, please vote for Lorena Bruner. www.LorenaBrunerForCongress.com. Thank you. I'd like to recognize all my siblings from Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, China, the former USSR, and Nicaragua. We all have gone through a lot. Not only we talk about it, but we lived it. And I want to just get to it. You guys can get to know me. My business cards are there. I am not here to talk about me. I am here to talk about you. This is about you. So, neighbors and friends from Northern Virginia, 30 years ago I arrived to this country as a political asylee from Nicaragua. I have been in the shoes that you have walked. There's nothing that you can say to me that I didn't need. I was rushed out of my house in the middle of the night with nothing, forced to get in an airplane and get to this country. I went to another country before I got to the United States. And as soon as I came here, I applied for political asylee. Please raise your hand if you were not born in this country and you have made Northern Virginia your country. Let me see you. Please raise your hand if you have somebody in your family that actually went through what I went through. So, I'm going to tell you, I am a multiracial, multicultural, multilingual, multi-ethnic individual, and I will be the first individual in perfect city to sit at that table on November 3rd when the elections come. They have not seen anybody like me with this beautiful accent and this background. But you know what? With all your help, I'm going to get there. Because my grandmother was an Afro-Brazilian woman and she said to me, Maria Jose, when you run, you don't run saying, if I win, you run saying, when you get there. So, thank you, Lorena, for saying you want to put women in politics. I want to put the first multiracial, multicultural, multi-ethnic that is a political asylee in perfect city, which is 10 miles away. So, let me tell you, what I will do and my impressions of these movies, by the way, I've seen them before, I can tell you, you may ask, what a local city person like me will do against global communist influence? The answer is very simple. We're going to fortify local freedom. We're going to absolute data privacy. We're going to make a sanctuary of security. We're going to have vibrant civic inclusion. We're going to safeguard local government and infrastructure and we're going to defend community values. Thank you so much. Military, started off as a corpsman with the Marine Corps, moved into secret service and then 11 years into CIA. CIA, counterterrorism for eight years and three years of counterintelligence. And I can tell you there's a lot of problems for America right now at five pillars. What pillar number four deals with exactly with this, what we're seeing right now. It's called Safe Communities and Secure America Act. These are bills I'm actually going to present day one. And why? Because Congress spent too much time talking about these issues, not enough time actually doing something. So, when you want a candidate actually going to show up and do something, you have the blueprint right there to hold me accountable. Now, what are we going to do with that? One, China's been a threat. Communism's been a threat. If you remember back then, I'm a conservative and what we did with Russia, we're able to take down the Soviet Union without one bullet. And how did we do that? We did it by an influence campaign with Western, a Western influence campaign. And do you think Russia ever forgets? The Soviet Union, KGB ever forgets? No, they don't. They're doing an influence campaign on us right now. We had wonderful videos just showing exactly that. And in my bills that we're going to pass, it's going to hold those people accountable for an influence. It's going to make sure our cyber is up to date for infrastructure. I could throw this in there. I'm also an interim town manager, so I understand infrastructure. I understand the vulnerabilities when our computer systems get hacked in and the water becomes unsafe. I can tell you this, I have a broad experience and what I like to do is always go and learn more. This promise for America isn't made by me, it's made by you. Listen in conversations, because one thing that I remember is through conversations, us talking together, hearing these issues, we could come up with the best solutions to these problems. That promise for America is a combination of all of you. And in Congress, I will continue this. And I also forgot to add in because I went right into it. I got a pretty happy game after your wonderful speech. I'm running for eighth congressional district as a GOP nominee. I'm not going through a primary, folks. I am the person that's already gearing up to win that election. And winning that election requires this, holding us together as a united family, regardless of political aisles, left, right, whatever you are. This is about America and America's sovereignty. Go to my website, cybercongress.com, pull up Platforms for America and read up on it. My name is Mo Saifuddin. I'm running for Congress as a Democrat in Virginia's 8th district. I was the first immigrant and African elected to the Alexandria City Council where George Washington once sat. And that is really the story of America. It's the nation of immigrants, it's democracy, and it gives people hope. I say that because everything that you guys talked about I've experienced, my family's experiencing, and I'm hoping to stop that from happening here in the homeland. So I came as a refugee from Sudan alongside my family fleeing a dictatorship. That is something really hard to swallow, and if you know anything about Sudan right now, it's going through a genocide, so it hasn't caught a break in a long time. But what I find about repressive regimes and dictatorships, they all tend to follow the same playbook, regardless of their ideology or affiliation, it's the same playbook. It's repression, it's silencing the opposition, attacking the education, attacking the arts, and making sure basically people don't have their basic rights. And that is why I decided to step down as a lawyer from the U.S. Department of Labor in protest of this administration and its attacks on institutions and civil servants. And that is not just something that I'm saying, there's actually facts behind that. Once this administration came, got rid of USAID, which is soft power, and that leaves room open for China and other regimes to go elsewhere around the world and spread their ideology. That's one way. Second way, we've seen the Supreme Court right now gut the Voting Rights Act. If our rights to vote are taken away in a meaningful way, then we have people and puppets who are just there, democracy by name, right? Democracy by name. So then we get to lose everything that we stood for and we're fighting against, and that is why it's important to make sure we push back against that. Not only that, right now, some people in Texas got a life sentence basically for protesting our First Amendment right to free speech. Now we can't call that democracy. I don't think so. I don't care what you want to call it, anything else. At the end of the day, the common theme is repression and we need people who are going to fight for justice. And that's where my background comes in, not only my lived experience, but also my work as an attorney. I got an opportunity to work at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and I got to see war crimes committed by different people, different races, different ideologies, and that is the problem here. Regardless of labels, we have to come together as people and push back against the powerful who use different ways to divide us, whether through cultural wars or something else, to stand against them and make sure that people live with dignity, whether it be in China, Sudan, Congo, Palestine, or what have you. We all have to stand together. Thank you so much.