Virginia Ann Foxx

Current office and 2026 campaign

Virginia Ann Foxx (R) is the U.S. Representative for North Carolina's 5th Congressional District, a seat she has held continuously since January 3, 2005 ¹⁸. She was sworn in for her current term on January 3, 2025 ¹. She filed for re-election as a Republican on December 9, 2025 and is on the November 3, 2026 general-election ballot alongside Democrat Chuck Hubbard and Libertarian Robert B. Luffman ³. Counting from her first swearing-in in January 2005, the 2026 election is for what would be her twelfth consecutive term.

Foxx won the March 3, 2026 Republican primary with 53,627 votes, about 74.5 percent of the votes recorded for the four candidates, ahead of Joseph "Joey" Osborne (7,934), Steve Girard (6,404) and Roman H. "Chad" Williams II (3,979), per precinct results published by the North Carolina State Board of Elections ⁴.

Under the lines used for the 2026 election, NC-05 covers Alexander, Alleghany, Ashe, Caldwell, Guilford, Rockingham, Stokes, Surry, Watauga and Wilkes counties ³.

Her principal campaign committee (FEC candidate ID H4NC05146) reported $1,662,603.66 in receipts, $1,204,803.60 in disbursements and $3,369,068.64 cash on hand for the 2026 cycle through June 30, 2026 ⁵.

Foxx is registered as a Republican voter in Watauga County with a registration date of October 18, 1969; the state voter file lists her birth year as 1943 and her birth state as New York ⁶.

Background and education

Per her official House biography, Foxx holds an A.B. in English and an M.A.C.T. in sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and an Ed.D. in curriculum and teaching/higher education from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro ². Her campaign biography states she was the first member of her family to graduate from high school or college ⁷.

Career

Her official House biography states that Foxx began her career as a secretary and research assistant at UNC-Chapel Hill; taught at Caldwell Community College; was a sociology instructor at Appalachian State University and held several administrative positions there, including Assistant Dean of the General College; served as Deputy Secretary for Management in the North Carolina Department of Administration under Governor Jim Martin; and was president and later a consultant at Mayland Community College from 1987 to 1994 ². The same biography states she was elected to three four-year terms on the Watauga County Board of Education ².

Office history

Foxx served in the North Carolina Senate from 1995 to 2005 ⁸; her official biography describes this as ten years in the chamber before her election to Congress and dates her election to the Senate to 1994 ². She has represented NC-05 in the U.S. House since January 3, 2005 ¹⁸.

She served as Secretary of the House Republican Conference; her official biography gives the dates as 2013 to 2016 ², while NC Newsline reports 2013 to 2017 ⁸. NC Newsline reports that she held both the chair and the ranking-member positions on the House education committee at different points between 2017 and 2025 as majority control of the chamber changed ⁸; committee records confirm she was Chairwoman of the Committee on Education and the Workforce in December 2023 ⁹.

In January 2025, Speaker Mike Johnson appointed Foxx chair of the House Committee on Rules for the 119th Congress, succeeding retired Rep. Michael Burgess of Texas; the appointment was ratified by the full Republican conference ⁸. She remains the committee's chairwoman ¹⁰¹. NC Newsline described her in January 2025 as "the dean of North Carolina's congressional delegation" ⁸.

Her current assignments, per Clerk of the House member data published July 6, 2026, are: Chair of the Committee on Rules; member of the Committee on Education and Workforce, serving on its Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions; and member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, serving on its Subcommittee on Government Operations ¹. In the 119th Congress she is a member of the education committee, not its chair ¹.

Certified results from the North Carolina State Board of Elections: in the 2022 general election Foxx received 175,279 votes to Democrat Kyle Parrish's 102,269, or 63.2 percent to 36.8 percent of the two-candidate vote ¹¹; in the 2024 general election she received 238,304 votes to Democrat Chuck Hubbard's 162,390, or 59.5 percent to 40.5 percent ¹².

Legislative record and accomplishments

Foxx was the sponsor of H.R. 803 in the 113th Congress, introduced as the Supporting Knowledge and Investing in Lifelong Skills (SKILLS) Act ¹³. H.R. 803 was enacted on July 22, 2014 as Public Law 113-128, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, which amended the Workforce Investment Act of 1998 ¹⁴. Her official House biography credits her with leading that workforce-development overhaul as chair of the House Subcommittee on Higher Education ². Her campaign site additionally lists the Strengthening Transparency in Higher Education Act and the Unfunded Mandates Information and Transparency Act among her legislative achievements ⁷.

Measures her congressional office announced in the 119th Congress include the Protect Economic and Academic Freedom Act, introduced July 30, 2025 with Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), which her office describes as legislation "that prohibits colleges and universities from receiving federal student aid if they engage in commercial and academic boycotts dictated by those in the boycott-sanction-divest (BDS) movement"; the SOAR Act Improvements Act, introduced September 9, 2025, which her office describes as making "targeted improvements to the only federally funded school choice program in the nation" in Washington, D.C.; and the Transparency in Billing Act, introduced May 4, 2026 with Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA) ¹⁵. In January 2026 her office announced nearly $40 million in FEMA Public Assistance grants for 5th District counties affected by Hurricane Helene ¹⁵.

On her campaign site, Foxx describes herself as "a proud member of the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus, Congressional Prayer Caucus and Values Action Team," and lists protecting the unborn and religious freedom, immigration, Second Amendment rights, affordable healthcare, national security and defense, workforce development, education, taxes and spending, energy, and reducing the size of government as her issue priorities ¹⁶.

Documented disputes and controversies

2009 remarks on the Matthew Shepard hate-crimes bill. Reporting on House debate over hate-crimes legislation, the Winston-Salem Journal wrote on May 6, 2009: "During recent debate on the bill, Foxx, R-5th, called attempts to label Shepard's 1998 murder a hate crime 'a hoax.' She said that he was killed during a robbery and not because he was gay." The Journal reported that "Foxx's remarks caused an uproar, and she later issued a statement saying that her use of 'hoax' was 'a poor choice of words,'" that she sent a handwritten note of apology to Matthew Shepard's mother, Judy Shepard, and that "The Matthew Shepard Act passed the House 249-175. Foxx voted against the bill." The paper reported that in a WXII-TV interview Foxx said she had been "speaking off the cuff, and I just simply chose a poor word," and that she declined to say whether she then considered Shepard's death a hate crime. It quoted Becky Dansky of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force saying the apology "shows that she doesn't necessarily understand what it was that she said wrong," adding, "It wasn't just her word choice, it was the sentiment she expressed." ¹⁷

December 2023 campus-antisemitism hearing. As chair of the Education and the Workforce Committee, Foxx presided over the December 5, 2023 hearing "Holding Campus Leaders Accountable and Confronting Antisemitism," at which the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and MIT testified. In her opening statement she told the witnesses they would "answer to and atone for the many specific instances of vitriolic, hate-filled antisemitism on your respective campuses that have denied students the safe learning environment they are due," and said: "Institutional antisemitism and hate are among the poisoned fruits of your institutions' cultures. The buck for what has happened must stop on the president's desk, along with the responsibility for making 'never again' true on campus." ⁹¹⁸ Roll Call reported that "at various points during the lengthy hearing, GOP lawmakers blamed the rise in anti-Jewish bias on university diversity policies, a failure to read the Bible and a campus climate that silences conservatives" ¹⁹. Penn president Liz Magill resigned four days after the hearing, in what NPR described as following "what critics have called disastrous testimony on Capitol Hill" ²⁰.

July 2025 Rules Committee vote on Epstein records. On the night of Monday, July 14, 2025, the Rules Committee, which Foxx chairs, voted against attaching an amendment by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) to a procedural measure related to the GENIUS Act and a defense funding bill. Axios reported the vote as 5 to 6, with Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) joining the panel's four Democrats; the amendment "would have forced Attorney General Pam Bondi to publish all documents related to Epstein on a 'publicly accessible website' within 30 days." Axios reported that "Republicans said the amendment was not pertinent" to either underlying bill. Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA), the panel's top Democrat, said: "This is about trust. Republicans said, 'Trust us. Vote for us and we will release these files.' Well, here we are - they're backtracking." Foxx said after the vote: "I think most of us believe what's appropriate will be released when it is time for the president to release it." ²¹

Business interests and wealth source

Foxx's official House biography states that prior to her entering Congress she and her husband owned a nursery business in Watauga County ². Her campaign site states that for more than three decades they ran a nursery and landscaping business serving North Carolina's High Country, and that it is now operated by their daughter ⁷.

Sources