Mike Pruitt knows what he’s up against. Virginia’s 5th Congressional District, which stretches from Charlottesville to the North Carolina border, hasn’t sent a Democrat to Congress since 2008. The district is vast, rural, and deeply conservative, characterized by some localities with shuttered hospitals, deserted main streets, and long-neglected infrastructure.
But Pruitt, a 33-year-old gay Navy veteran, attorney, and a member of the board of supervisors for Albemarle County in central Virginia, says he isn’t running to hedge his values.
He’s running to represent places like the one he came from — rural, working-class communities left behind by both parties. His campaign centers on defending Medicaid, regulating artificial intelligence, challenging corporate profiteering, fixing a tax system that privileges capital over labor, and he’s refusing to walk away from transgender rights, even as some in his party signal retreat.
“It would cost me nothing to cut tackle, and I’m not,” Pruitt told The Advocate in an interview. “I want to be able to communicate to my very red district: If I’m sticking by this population that would be so easy for me to walk away from, because I think it’s the right thing to do, because I think they’re vulnerable and hurting and being threatened in a really serious way, I hope people look at that and they say, this is a man that we can actually trust.”
Mike Pruitt Virginia running for congress
Mike Pruitt on the campaign trailCourtesy Mike Pruitt for Congress
His opponent, Republican Rep. John McGuire, is a first-year lawmaker and former Navy SEAL who won after President Donald Trump’s endorsement. McGuire has cosponsored the PROTECTS Act, which would ban federal funding for gender-affirming care for minors, and voted for Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” an exhaustive budget proposal that cuts almost $1 trillion from Medicaid.
Pruitt warns that the impact on the 5th District will be devastating. “This bill will almost certainly kick people off Medicaid,” he said. “People are going to die from treatable diseases.” In a district where clinics are often scarce, he added, even the closure of one provider can mean the difference between access and none. He cited a child psychologist in Louisa County, “the only person providing child mental health services in that entire county,” who may be forced to shut down. In Farmville, the local hospital faces cuts that could ripple across multiple counties.
“Rural health care doesn’t have redundancy,” Pruitt said. “When you lose one provider, you lose the system.”
Pruitt’s political identity is shaped by the same small-town roots he sees across the district. He grew up in what he described as “the ruins of a former mill town” in South Carolina’s Blue Ridge foothills, where the textile industry had collapsed and, as a queer teenager in the 1990s, he didn’t always feel safe. He earned a Navy ROTC scholarship during “don’t ask, don’t tell,” reentered the closet to serve, and deployed twice to combat zones. Later, he worked at the Office of Naval Intelligence before earning his law degree at the University of Virginia School of Law.
He now works as a housing attorney, suing corporate landlords. “I’ve got the career I dreamed of. I married a great guy. I have the community I love and get to give back to,” he said. “But I got here with a little bit of grit and a lot of luck. And most people in this district don’t have that kind of luck.”
Pruitt’s husband, Will, 30, an Episcopal priest from Spotsylvania County, has been a steady source of support and perspective throughout Pruitt’s public service journey.
Mike Pruitt Virginia running for congress pictured with TK FILL IN NAME
Mike Pruitt with his husband Will.Courtesy Mike Pruitt for Congress
He draws a direct line between his experience hiding his identity under DADT and the harm he believes policies like the renewed Trump transgender military ban inflict on today’s service members. He called it “baffling” that McGuire and other Republicans claim to support a stronger military while excluding qualified recruits based on gender identity.
“All they do is lean into the performative cruelty that I worry has become too much of what my opponent is leaning into.” For Pruitt, forcing transgender people to hide who they are isn’t just discriminatory, it’s dangerous. “We know from the data that forcing people to hide harms their mental health,” he said. “I don’t see how that gives us a stronger fighting force.”
Pruitt views the 5th District as a reflection of the place he came from: rural, economically strained, and often discussed but rarely heard. “We’re a district that industry has left behind, but the people are still there,” he said. “They know the Rite Aid in town is closing. They know their paycheck hasn’t gone up in a decade. They feel like there’s a boot on the back of their neck, and they’re not wrong.”
While he said some Democrats treat rural voters as charity cases or data points, Pruitt speaks from lived experience. “People in rural America aren’t helpless, they’re angry,” he said. “And I understand that anger.”
He calls Virginia’s 5th District a “sacrifice zone” for corporate and political disinterest. As AI infrastructure and data centers expand into other counties, Pruitt warns rural jobs are at risk, and Congress isn’t paying attention.
“All this technology is going to try to take away our jobs,” he said. “And Congress is doing nothing about it.”
He said large data centers, drawn by cheap land and access to natural gas, are now being sited in central and southern counties like Buckingham and Pittsylvania. “These companies aren’t putting them in Northern Virginia anymore. The land’s too expensive,” he said. “So they’re coming here.”
He recalled a conversation with a local official in Prince Edward County, also in central Virginia, who asked how to explain AI’s threat to a long-haul trucker. “I said, ‘That trucker’s job is in the crosshairs,’” Pruitt said.
This article originally appeared on Advocate: Meet the gay Navy veteran trying to flip a red congressional seat in Virginia