If VH1 ever wants to do a reboot of “Where Are They Now?” focusing on former state legislators, I think there’s an interesting episode to be written about former Vermont State Representative Felisha Leffler Storm.
For context, I go to school in Washington, D.C., and because there are no interesting elections in Washington this year I’ve been closely following the elections across the Potomac in Virginia. As I was perusing the candidates for Virginia’s House of Delegates, I spied a familiar name and face. “Wait a minute,” I said to myself, “isn’t that former Franklin County State Representative Felisha Leffler?” Dear reader, it was in fact former Franklin County State Representative Felisha Leffler. Can’t you tell I’m great at parties?
When last we saw Rep. Leffler, she was serving her second term representing Enosburgh and Montgomery. She had defeated on-and-off-again incumbent Rep. Cindy Weed (P-Enosburgh) in 2018 and won re-election by a wide margin over another Prog, Dennis Williams, in 2020. She was one of the youngest members of the House (she was only 23 or so when she was first elected). I don’t remember her tenure that well since she declined to seek re-election in 2022 when I became dialed in to #vtpoli in earnest, but she certainly brought badly needed youthful energy to a caucus largely consisting of old men. After she left office, she fell off my radar.
That is, until I saw her listed as the Republican candidate for Virginia’s House District 84 under her married name, Felisha Storm. The 84th District is near Norfolk and Virginia Beach and contains much of the City of Suffolk and parts of its surrounding jurisdictions.
Unfortunately, Rep. Storm picked a bad year to be seeking office as a Republican in her new home state (sorry, *COMMONWEALTH*, please forgive me, Virginia readers). As former Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, romped to victory over Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears, legislative Democrats have had a field day in the Old Dominion. Storm’s opponent, Delegate Nadarius Clark (who was himself the youngest person ever elected to the House of Delegates), won his last election by a close but respectable six points. He’s now on track to beat Storm by a whopping nineteen percentage points. Hard two imagine two parts of the country more different than Enosburgh, Vermont, and Hampton Roads, Virginia, but Leffler now has the distinction of having run for office in both.
So, thus ends the comeback bid of former Rep. Felisha Storm. Always interesting to see what our former legislators get up to – I’m not aware of anyone else who’s moved away and run for office in a different state. Thus ends our brief tangent into Virginia politics, we’ll be back to your regularly scheduled Vermont content shortly!
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