Stacey Plaskett was elected governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands on Tuesday, becoming the first woman to lead the territory and, on the same night Keisha Lance Bottoms won Georgia, one of two Black women elected governor in America on a single evening. Reuters counts her as the first Black woman elected governor of a U.S. jurisdiction.
Plaskett, the territory’s delegate to Congress since 2015, took 62.8 percent of the vote, 11,865 ballots in a five-ticket race against four independent tickets. Her running mate, Senate President Milton Potter, becomes lieutenant governor. She succeeds Gov. Albert Bryan Jr., a fellow Democrat barred from a third term, who congratulated her publicly on election night. “We look forward to seeing Governor-elect Plaskett, Lieutenant Governor-elect Potter and our next elected leaders carry the torch forward,” Bryan said, “build on the progress we have achieved and create new opportunities for the people of the Virgin Islands.” The results are unofficial pending certification by the Election System of the Virgin Islands.
From delegate to Government House
Plaskett announced her campaign in April, launching it in Frederiksted on St. Croix, her family’s home island. In the August 1 Democratic primary she drew 47 percent against the sitting lieutenant governor, Tregenza Roach, and former Senate President Donna Frett-Gregory, carrying St. Croix with 57 percent. Former Vice President Kamala Harris endorsed her in the primary; House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and the Democratic Governors Association backed her in the general election.
Her rise to the nomination closed a circle in the territory’s politics. The delegate’s seat she has held for six terms was first held by a woman a generation ago: she succeeded Donna Christensen in 2015, and Christensen herself ran for governor in 2014 and lost. Plaskett is the second woman to carry the Democratic nomination for governor. She is the first to win the office.
The record she ran on
Born in Brooklyn to parents from St. Croix, Plaskett, 60, trained as a lawyer at Georgetown and American University, worked as an assistant district attorney in the Bronx and as a senior counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice, then returned to the Virgin Islands and worked in economic development before voters sent her to Congress in 2014. In Washington she became a national figure in January 2021, when she served as a House impeachment manager in the second trial of President Donald Trump and presented the case built around the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
Her run followed a bruising stretch in that same chamber. House Republicans pressed a resolution to censure her over text messages with Jeffrey Epstein during a 2019 committee hearing. The resolution failed, and months later territory voters gave her the Democratic nomination by a wide plurality over the sitting lieutenant governor.
What waits at Government House
The problems on her desk in January are the territory’s standing ones: electricity costs among the highest in the nation, a Water and Power Authority that has strained household budgets for years, a recovery from the 2017 hurricanes, Irma and Maria, that is still unfinished on all three islands, and a cost of living that pushes young Virgin Islanders to the mainland. Her successor in the delegate’s seat, former Senator Janelle Sarauw, won that race on Tuesday with about 77 percent of the vote, which gives the new governor a governing partner from her own party in Washington.
Virgin Islanders have elected their own governors since 1970. In January, for the first time in those 56 years, the oath will be taken by a woman.
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