House District 65 is one of the districts to watch in the 2025 midterm elections.
Covering Spotsylvania, Stafford, and Fredericksburg, the District flipped from Republican to Democrat in the 2023 election, selecting pastor and school district employee Josh Cole. Sean Steinway, a Marine veteran and small business owner is the Republican nominee.
Cole is no stranger to politics, having won and lost then won again delegate seats by small margins. He initially ran in 2017, losing by less than 100 votes before winning a seat two years later by about 100 votes before losing again in 2021 before being elected to District 65 in 2023. If the pattern holds, this may be a hard year for Cole.
Cole’s tenure in the Legislature has been busy with three of his bills from the 2025 session making it to the Governor’s desk and awaiting signature.
That service has not been without controversy. Cole was slammed in the press earlier this year for comparing Federal spending cuts to the Holocaust and reductions in the bureaucracy to Nazi genocide. During a hearing at the VA Statehouse Cole said DOGE reductions in Federal spending “reminds me a quote from long ago that said: ‘At first they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t Jewish…. And then when they came for me, there was no one to speak up because everyone else had been taken.’”
Appalled Republicans immediately called Cole out on local and national news outlets.
“Comparing the loss of some government jobs to the Holocaust is an insult to the memory of the millions who were slaughtered [by the Nazis],” said Virginia House Minority Leader Todd Gilbert.
Lt. Governor Winsome Earle-Sears said, “Virginia Dems disgustingly compared cutting wasteful spending to the Holocaust — trivializing the murder of 6 million Jews.”
Republican challenger Sean Steinway is a political newcomer with an extensive resume in military and law enforcement including service as a Marine Officer Candidate School Instructor. He also worked as a Drug Enforcement Agency officer and instructor and a Stafford County Deputy. He owns two small businesses in the District.