McClellan will join 29 other Black women currently serving in the House. There are no Black women in the Senate.

“I feel a responsibility to ensure I’m not the last,” she said.

McClellan served 11 years in the House of Delegates and has been a member of the state Senate since 2017. McClellan ran for governor in 2021, losing in a five-person primary to Terry McAuliffe, who ultimately lost to Republican Glenn Youngkin.

McClellan’s campaign focused on her legislative victories, highlighting efforts to protect voting rights and domestic workers — issues that resonated with her family’s experiences and that she said helped shape her policy views.

She said her commitment to voting rights stems in part from the challenges faced by family members in their efforts to vote. Voting officials had tried to stop her great-grandfather from voting in Alabama due to his efforts as a Black community leader and teacher, she said. She also said her grandfather was forced to take a literacy test before he could vote.

“I brought those experiences and those stories with me into the public policy arena,” McClellan said, adding that her family’s struggle enabled her to “be a voice that for a long time was missing in the halls of the General Assembly.”

In 2021, as Republican-led states passed legislation to restrict voting rights, McClellan co-sponsored Virginia’s voting rights law to protect elements of the Voting Rights Act the Supreme Court struck down in 2013.

As a state senator, McClellan also helped pass the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights and has said that as a congresswoman, she plans to push for similar legislation, although such a bill would likely fail in the Republican-controlled House.

While campaigning, she highlighted a family background with roots as domestic workers, until her mother became the first in her family to continue her education beyond eighth grade.

McClellan sees her win as a continuation of that fight.

“I realize that in a lot of ways, I am fighting the same fight that my mom and my grandmother and my great-grandmother fought, and rather than getting despondent over that or giving up, I dig deeper,” McClellan said. “I’ve got to keep fighting those fights so my daughter doesn’t have to.” 

McClellan’s campaign also touched on abortion rights, which was a key issue for Democrats in last year’s midterm elections, with McClellan pledging her commitment to supporting the passage of a federal law codifying Roe v. Wade.

Benjamin, a pastor and Navy veteran who is also Black, had painted himself as an anti-abortion candidate opposed to teaching critical race theory in classrooms and an advocate for religious freedom.

Benjamin, who was twice defeated by McEachin, refused to concede his election loss in 2020, citing election irregularities.

Last month — Benjamin who had campaigned on a message that division was destroying America — faced backlash over a Facebook post from 2011 in which he promoted the New Life Harvest Church, where he is a pastor, and urged people to bring their “sick, disease, gay, homosexual, lesbian, transvestite, bipolar, alcoholic, drug addiction friends and love ones.”

MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart had pressed Benjamin on the issue during a January interview, asking him how he would deliver on a campaign promise to serve as a “bridge” in Congress in light of his social media post.

“I think that the LGBTQ and the homosexuals are dealing with high gas prices, inflation, the high crime, the education,” Benjamin said. “I don’t think my opponent has the compassion for all people, but I do.”