WARNING: Virginia Is At Risk of Electing A Democrat Funded by MAGA Money

Dominion Energy money. Israeli lobby money. Indefensible failure as a prosecutor. Shannon Taylor is not the people’s candidate. But Salaam Bhatti is.

In 2020 I had the honor of winning the Democratic nomination for Congress in Virginia’s First Congressional District. I’m writing today to encourage those same voters who trusted me in 2020 to select Salaam Bhatti over Shannon Taylor as their 2026 Democratic nominee. And lest this seem like a piece meant only for one part of the country, it’s much more. This is a detailed analysis of one district that reflects what is happening in hundreds of districts nationwide.

That is this. The Democratic Party establishment has a problem. And that problem is that they keep telling you who to vote for instead of earning your vote.

The irony is that for as much as the Democratic Party loves to champion “No Kings” protests, the Corporate wing of the party loves to anoint nominees before Democratic voters can even cast their ballots. Such is the case here, where the DCCC has already decided Shannon Taylor is going to be their nominee—all before a single Virginian has cast their vote. And even as Taylor’s policies are at complete odds with the overwhelming majority of Democratic and Independent voters (receipts on this below) the Party Establishment believes that with enough Corporate and PAC money behind Taylor, they can drown out actual values-aligned candidates and install her into Congress.

The Democratic Party leadership in D.C. cannot help but put their thumb on the scale. This should be offensive to anyone who believes in fair elections. If we expect our country to come back from the brink of fascism, it means not doing the same thing, or electing the same types of people that got us here. Let’s Address This.

Salaam Bhatti (L) is up against Shannon Taylor (R) in Virginia’s 1st Congressional District. This critical primary is August 4th.

The Background

When I ran for Congress in 2020, I was not the Establishment favorite. I was told my policies of universal healthcare, taxing billionaires, and getting corporate money out of politics were “too far left” and wouldn’t win the primary. Well, we defied the odds and the pundits and won the primary with record voter turnout. And then we were told we’d be lucky to get any votes in the general. Well, we earned in the general election more votes than any Democratic nominee had ever earned in the history of the district. Because the platform I ran on was one the people supported—not one that corporations wanted.

So now, I ask those same voters who voted for me, and the tens of thousands of donors who supported my campaign back then, to throw your weight and your vote behind Salaam Bhatti over the DCCC anointed pick, Shannon Taylor. And as you might expect from me, I have the receipts to back up my case.

Shannon and Salaam at a Glance

Shannon Taylor is the Henrico County Commonwealth’s Attorney. After running for, and losing the race for Attorney General of Virginia, weeks later she announced her run for US Congress. This is, transparently, a bit difficult for me to write because I have known Shannon for more than a decade. I attended her first fundraisers when she ran for Commonwealth Attorney, and I recall her promise to us that she’d always fight for working people. Sadly, the painful truth is she has not upheld that promise, and justice mandates we call it out.

Throughout her political career Shannon Taylor has taken millions of dollars in corporate money from the same corporations gouging us, underpaying their workers, polluting our environment, and also funding MAGA Republicans to reelection.

In contrast, Salaam has spent a decade as a poverty and public interest lawyer, helping over 2.5 million families nationwide unlock over $100 million in SNAP/WIC benefits. He’s helped pass seismic legislation in Virginia uniting Republicans and Democrats, as a result of which tens of thousands of families have dinner on their table right now. And he’s repealed racist laws like the drug felony ban and fought for menstrual equity in the TANF program. He’s also never taken a dime of corporate money.

Voters in Virginia’s 1st District deserve the full picture before the August 4th primary election. And the full picture on Shannon Taylor is not pretty. Here are the receipts.

1. Follow the Money: Dominion Energy’s Favorite Candidate

Let’s start where accountability starts: follow the money.

We know from polling by End Citizens United that more than 94% of Democrats want to get corporate money out of politics. Shannon Taylor loves taking corporate money.

During Shannon Taylor’s campaign for Virginia Attorney General, she accepted $800,000 in donations from Dominion Energy. Dominion, the powerful, politically connected utility company that has spent decades using its financial muscle to buy Republican and Democratic politicians to protect its profits at the expense of ratepayers and environmental justice. This includes spending money on the same MAGA Republicans undermining our democracy.

Let that number sink in. Eight hundred thousand dollars. From one energy company. To the person who would have been Virginia’s chief law enforcement officer—the person responsible for holding corporations like Dominion accountable.

The conflict of interest was so glaring that Taylor was publicly criticized during the AG race for accepting those donations. Clean Virginia—the organization dedicated to ending Dominion’s outsized influence on Virginia politics—issued a formal statement condemning Taylor’s acceptance of $275,000 in Dominion donations in that race alone. And even in her current congressional campaign, Taylor has accepted donations from a Dominion Energy Vice President.

Source: Clean Energy

Meanwhile, the Clean Virginia founder is supporting Salaam.

This is not a coincidence. This is a pattern. Shannon Taylor is Dominion Energy’s candidate. And Dominion Energy is not your friend.

Salaam Bhatti. Husband. Father of two boys. Lifelong fighter for working families.

2. The NICU Nurse Case: 3 Years for Nearly Killing 9 Babies

As Henrico County Commonwealth’s Attorney, Shannon Taylor’s job is to protect the most vulnerable people in her community. What happened—or more precisely, what didn’t happen—in the case of a NICU nurse at Henrico Doctors Hospital raises serious questions about whether she did that job.

Former NICU pediatric nurse Erin Elizabeth Ann Strotman, 26, of Chesterfield, was accused of breaking the bones of at least nine babies. These were infants in a neonatal intensive care unit—among the most vulnerable human beings imaginable. Strotman broke their bones by putting her full body weight on them or contorting their bodies. It was caught on camera. The videos are horrific. Facing 20 abuse charges, Strotman was expected to plead guilty. Shannon Taylor was the prosecuting attorney.

Instead, Strotman pled no contest to nine counts of felony child abuse and got Shannon Taylor to agree to a plea deal for just 3 years. Three years for breaking the bones of nine different NICU children. As a parent, I am mortified. As a voter I am enraged. And as an American I’m left wondering—if Commonwealth Attorney Shannon Taylor couldn’t even properly hold accountable a child abuser caught on camera, how is she going to hold President Donald Trump accountable for the children he abused in the Epstein Files? Her actions demonstrate that she cannot.

3. Israel Lobby Funding — While Genocide Rages

Shannon Taylor has not answered for why she failed those nine children and their families. She has not faced sustained scrutiny from the corporate media outlets that are busy covering her fundraising totals.

And the DCCC, which has endorsed her, has said nothing.

And given her apathy to the near killing of 9 infant children, is it really any surprise that Shannon Taylor refuses to call Israel’s assault on Palestinians a genocide? Even as Netanyahu has killed tens of thousands of innocent children? The United Nations, the International Court of Justice, Israeli human rights organizations like B’TSalem and Israeli Physicians for Human Rights, and Israeli scholars like Brown University Professor Omer Bertov all condemn Israel’s assault as genocide.

But Shannon Taylor, a lawyer and prosecutor who is supposed to speak up for the most marginalized and abused, refuses to do so.

Unsurprisingly, Taylor has accepted thousands of dollars from donors affiliated with pro-Netanyahu aligned PACs and donors, organizations whose explicit mission includes suppressing Democratic support for Palestinian rights and blocking candidates who speak up for Gaza. This is not incidental. This is the price of silence.

Meanwhile, Salaam Bhatti has taken zero dollars from AIPAC, DMFI, or any Israel lobby PAC. He has called the genocide what it is. He has demanded it end. He has done so without equivocation and without a check clearing first. And he has additionally called to take the tens of billions being spent on bombing Christians in Lebanon, Palestinians in Gaza, and schoolgirls in Iran, and instead spend it on food, housing, and healthcare for our children here in Virginia and across our country.

That is the difference between a purchased candidate, and the people’s candidate.

A Candidate Who Won’t Show Up

So why haven’t voters asked Taylor about her problematic views and donors at Democratic party forums and townhalls? Views and donors that, by the way, the MAGA Republican incumbent she wants to replace also shares. They cannot ask her.

Because Shannon Taylor does not show up to answer questions.

She has not participated in candidate forums held in the Northern Neck, Lynchburg, Midlothian, Hanover County NAACP, or the Rural Democrats Candidates Reception. She has not answered the candidate survey from Neighbors for Change—a grassroots voter organization that received responses from every other candidate in the race. As one voter told me: “Shannon Taylor shows up in public about as often as the MAGA incumbent she wants to replace.”

The MAGA incumbent Rob Wittman hasn’t held a town hall in nearly a decade.

If Virginia’s Democrats wanted a Congressperson with indefensible views and who refuses to face voters or answer questions—they would just vote for the MAGA incumbent. By mimicking that MAGA incumbent, Shannon Taylor is telling you that she does not believe she needs to earn your vote. She believes the DCCC’s endorsement is enough. She believes the Dominion money is enough. She believes name recognition is enough. It is this elitist mentality that helped get us into this mess—and it is one we must reject going forward.

Thus, finally and as always, I don’t write to merely cite an injustice, but also to offer a meaningful answer to that injustice. That answer is Salaam Bhatti. Here’s why I hope you trust me, and him, and give him your vote as your nominee for US Congress.

The Candidate the Moment Actually Demands: Salaam Bhatti

Salaam Bhatti is a poverty lawyer. He is not a political careerist, not an establishment favorite, not a corporate-funded candidate managed from Washington. Salaam is the people’s candidate—as his actions demonstrate. Salaam has spent a decade in direct legal service to the poor, the hungry, and the marginalized. He has built his campaign on 100% people power—no corporate PAC money, no AIPAC money, no Dominion money. His donors are the people he intends to represent.

And his platform reflects exactly what this moment demands:

• Unlike Taylor, Salaam supports Medicare for All—because healthcare is a human right, not a commodity.

• He supports universal school lunch—because no child in the wealthiest nation on Earth should go hungry at school.

• He supports a moratorium on Data Centers—not giving them additional tax breaks as the corporate wing of the party insists.

• Salaam will protect voting rights, codify Roe v. Wade, vote to end the genocide in Gaza and the war on Iran, tax billionaires (and trillionaires), invest in meaningful climate justice, vote against unlimited war budgets, and raising the minimum wage to an actual living wage.

This is not a radical platform. It is a platform that can flip VA-1 blue this November.

This platform has cross party appeal. It is what the American people have demanded for decades while the donor class has blocked it at every turn. Salaam Bhatti is not blocked by that donor class. He does not owe them anything. He owes everything to the people he’s served for nearly a decade in Virginia. It is no accident that his campaign has more than 350 volunteers to knock on doors, make phone calls, write postcards, and win on the values we care about, because they believe—as I do—that people-powered politics can still win.

Conclusion: You, Not the DCCC, Get to Vote

Let me close with this. Right now the Democratic Party’s approval rating (36%) is lower than Donald Trump’s approval rating (39%). And a big reason why people have lost trust in the Democratic Party establishment is because rather than listening to voters, they tell their voters what to think. It’s why they’ve already anointed Shannon Taylor as their pick—despite all her indefensible positions, and all before a single Democratic voter cast their ballot.

If you marched in No Kings because you believe we need democracy, not being dictated to, then cast your ballot for Salaam Bhatti. Because only you get a vote, not the DCCC. Vote for the values that working people care about, not for the priorities of Dominion Energy, data centers, and a party that has an approval rating worse than Trump.

Shannon Taylor has taken nearly $1 million from Dominion Energy. She has serious unanswered questions about her handling of the NICU nurse abuse case at a time when we need fighters who will actually hold Trump accountable. She refuses to show up to community forums or answer voter questionnaires. She opposes universal healthcare. She is the establishment corporate candidate—which means she is not your candidate.

Salaam Bhatti has taken zero corporate money. He has shown up to every forum, every community, every conversation. He supports Medicare for All, school lunch for every child, voting rights, reproductive freedom, and economic justice. He is funded by the people he intends to serve, and he will hold Donald Trump accountable for his corruption.

The election is August 4th. Early voting starts now. Virginia voters, the choice is yours—let’s elect a fighter and change the status quo.

Learn more about Salaam Bhatti and support his campaign here.

As a public interest lawyer, Salaam says, “I’m not here to make dollars — I’m here to make change.”

---

Qasim Rashid was the 2020 Democratic Nominee for US Congress in Virginia’s First District. He is a human rights attorney, author, and host of Let’s Address This — a platform dedicated to human rights, accountability, and the people-powered politics that corporate media ignores. Subscribe, share, and let’s remain relentless in our mission for a more perfect Union.