During last year’s campaign, Deshundra Jefferson was characterized by some as a “newcomer” to politics. But she rejects that tag.
While the new Democratic chair of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors had never held public office, Jefferson ran in political circles at all levels of government for years before launching a campaign of her own.
She prefers to instead be called an “outsider” after unexpectedly unseating an incumbent chair and going on to win a contentious general election to become the new leader of Virginia’s second largest county.
“I have been involved with politics. I have been involved in activism. I’ve been involved in accounting. People in political circles knew who I am,” Jefferson told InsideNoVa at a local cafe near her home neighborhood of Montclair. She chose to meet at Cuppi Coffee instead of the Panera Bread down the road, a venue she said Prince William County politicos frequently meet at.
Jefferson positioned herself from the get-go as a stark alternative to Democrats on land use issues like data center development that sit at the forefront of local politics. That contrast helped her win the support of moderates who might otherwise be skeptical of Democrats.
Now after spending much of her career on the campaign trail, Jefferson is taking her own office.
A ‘life-changing conversation’
Jefferson grew up in Texas but has lived all over the country because of her dad’s job as an airline mechanic for United Airlines. She wound up in Illinois, then went to college in New York at Columbia University to study political science.
After school, Jefferson aspired to become a business reporter covering the entertainment industry. She moved to Mississippi to begin her career as a TV journalist at a local network in Jackson with hopes of eventually landing a gig in a larger media market.
There she looked up to the late Bill Minor, a mentor and renowned Mississippi journalist and newspaper publisher who covered the civil rights movement.
They met only once at Minor’s home, but Jefferson said he explained to her the history of voting rights in the state where Black people had been restricted from accessing the ballot box for decades during the Jim Crow era.
“It was a really life-changing conversation,” Jefferson said.
“That really showed me how valuable politics is, but also how dirty politics is and how it’s used for people for their own agenda and not necessarily for the public good,” she added. “You have to have a core set of values and convictions and know who you are, or else it will eat you alive.”
Jefferson said her experience seeing Mississippi Democrats “writing off entire groups of voters” on the issue of voting rights in the state inspired her to enter politics.
Jefferson moved back to Illinois when her dad became ill, and she was torn on what direction to take her career. She considered law school, but gravity pulled her toward politics after she saw an advertisement for volunteers needed in an ultimately unsuccessful 2012 recall campaign against former Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. The recall was in response to Walker’s helping pass a law that stripped unions of power.
Soon after, Jefferson started working on the campaign of Sen. Tammy Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat, when she ran for the U.S. House of Representatives. She also worked on Capitol Hill doing communications work for former Rep. Elliott Engle, a Democrat from New York, and Rep Terri Sewell, an Alabama Democrat, before landing a job as spokesperson for the DNC in 2016.
A mentor on Capitol Hill
One of Jefferson’s former Capitol Hill colleagues, Aneesa McMillian, said the incoming chair immediately became a mentor, describing Jefferson as a selfless leader who wants to help people.
“She didn’t have to mentor me,” McMillian said. “She didn’t have to take the time to get to know me. She didn’t have to take the time to encourage me, which was huge. I’d been, from a career perspective, really just been mistreated … She kind of really took the time to see that, anticipate my needs as an employee and then encouraged me to see in myself my own professional capabilities.”
Jefferson grew tired after the contentious election cycle in 2016, when Democrats lost the presidency and both chambers of Congress, so she took up various political communication consulting jobs.
She remained a consultant until 2022, when she resigned to run for office in Prince William, with a brief two-week stint on Democrat Michael Bloomberg’s 2020 presidential campaign before he dropped out of the race.
While working on Capitol Hill, Jefferson lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Alexandria with her now 15-year-old son. A single mom trying to make ends meet, she was working to save up to eventually own a home. Jefferson looked south of Washington in search of affordability, landing in Prince William eight years ago in a townhome.
Her time living in the county seeded in her a feeling of discontent with local government, in particular land-use decisions made by the board.
She had wanted to run in 2019 but decided against it.
“I wasn’t in a place to,” she told InsideNoVa. “You know, single mom, my son was younger, and I had a great job making more money than I ever thought I would, and I thought [Democratic Chair Ann Wheeler] was a great candidate.”
Jefferson reached an inflection point in 2022 with the vote to amend the county Comprehensive Plan to make way for denser industrial development on the western end and ultimately the PW Digital Gateway data center corridor expected to be the largest of its kind in the world.
“I just felt at the very least Democrats need to understand the other side of” land use issues, she said. “I felt ignored and I felt marginalized.”
Setting the tone
Through her primary win in June over Wheeler, who outraised her by a 5-1 margin, and her general election defeat of Republican Brentsville Supervisor Jeanine Lawson, the most senior member of the board, Jefferson ousted two of the most powerful women in local politics.
“It’s rare that people pull off major upset victories, especially when they’re underfunded,” Jefferson said. “But I knew I was up against something, I love this county, didn’t like the direction it was going. I can either keep complaining, or I can actually step in and do something.”
Wheeler and Lawson rarely saw eye to eye, and their antagonistic exchanges were frequently the source of consternation in the board chambers.
“It is up to the chair to set the tone and tenor of those meetings,” Jefferson said.
She argued that Wheeler could have made better outreach to Republicans. At the advice of a colleague, Jefferson in recent weeks has visited Republicans in their districts to solicit input on their agendas.
“I truly believe that in order to have good government, we have to work together,” Jefferson said. “A good part of the county is red. I don’t think that Prince William is fully blue. We’re not Fairfax County. In order to move my agenda I’m going to have to work across the aisle. It looks better for us – for me – to work across the aisle.”
That level of engagement with Republicans compared to previous leadership has taken some members of the party by surprise, Jefferson said. In the weeks after their sometimes bitter election, Jefferson joined hands with Lawson to oppose the since-approved contentious Devlin Technology Park data center project that will back a residential neighborhood.
“I mean this from the bottom of my heart: I think you need to all send Deshundra Jefferson a thank you,” Lawson told a crowd of Devlin Technology Park opponents in November. “Thank her for showing bold leadership. She is the one Democrat who has come out against these data center projects. And it took a lot of guts for her to do it … she’s going to need to feel that bipartisan support.”
As for Jefferson’s relationship with Democrats on the board: “It’s cordial,” she said, despite their disagreements on land-use issues. “It’s just different values and priorities.”
They believe data centers, which have become a substantial portion of the county’s tax base, will be a boon for commercial revenue.
Jefferson and the board’s Republicans argue tech hubs harm the rural character of western Prince William and shouldn’t be built near residences.
Jefferson said there continues to be a great deal of dissatisfaction on Democrats’ land use policy, as evidenced by marathon public hearings in the fall that spanned more than 24 hours.
Her solution is to raise taxes on existing data centers to extract additional value for a county, a move Jefferson said she has the votes to see through. She also proposed halting all new data center approvals outside the area currently designated for their development to reassess the county’s relationship with the industry.
To offset potential lost data center revenue, Jefferson proposed courting more high-end retail in the county and identifying agritourism opportunities on the county’s western end. Developing the waterfront and furthering life sciences work at Innovation Park could also provide the needed revenue, she said.
Jefferson, who was officially sworn in as county chair Tuesday night, is ready to tackle all these challenges and more in the years ahead, and she knows implementing her vision for the county won’t come easy.
“Campaigning is fun,” she said. “Governing is hard.”