Dan Helmer: Leading the Charge Against Trump and the MAGA Narrative

Since his initial candidacy in 2018, Helmer has made it his mission to push back on a corrupt MAGA agenda that ignores the interests of the majority. And he has been unafraid to take bold swings that draw national attention.

Running in a crowded Democratic primary to unseat US Representative Barbara Comstock (R) in the state’s 10th District, he first released an ad in which he attacked Comstock for moving too far to the right in a Trump-dominated Republican Party — while bravely attempting to sing in a spoof of a scene from the movie, “Top Gun”. National media outlets mocked it as the worst campaign ad of the season and late-night host Stephen Colbert said of Helmer and the ad, “This race is one he can actually win unless anyone sees his new campaign ad.”

Then, just weeks before the primary vote, he released another ad that included him making this controversial statement: “After 9/11, the greatest threat to our democracy lived in a cave. Today, he lives in the White House.”

When the White House called the comparison abhorrent and demanded that congressional Democrats condemn it, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s spokesman suggested instead, “If the president wants to join in raising the level of civility in politics, he should begin with himself.”

Helmer’s campaign manager responded more stridently, “What is abhorrent is the way this President has failed to uphold his oath of office, to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Helmer, the newcomer, lost the primary to State Senator Jennifer Wexton but established himself as a fighter who can draw attention and funding. He ran for state delegate in 2019, defeating 16-year Republican incumbent Tim Hugo, and has since been re-elected three times. He also has served as campaign chair for Virginia’s House Democratic Caucus through two election cycles, sending “17 MAGA Republicans packing after defeating one myself”. He helped flip the House of Delegates in 2023 and then expanded the Democratic majority by 13 seats in 2025.

As campaign chair, he has this warning for Virginia Republicans: “It is a bad day when you see me in your district.”

As a legislator, though, he is clear about his responsibility: “I know it is my job to deliver results, and I will work with Democrat, Republican, independent, or anybody to make sure we deliver for Virginians.”

Helmer has successfully supported passage of universal background checks for gun sales (though later ruled unconstitutional by the state supreme court), expansion of food assistance for low-income families, and ballot initiatives to amend the state constitution in favor of the right to abortion, same sex marriage, and automatic restoration of voting rights to released felons. But he thrives on identifying himself as a staunch and effective opponent of Trump and MAGA Republicans.

“This is where we are as a country,” he says, “and we need proven fighters who are going to stand up and not just throw a punch on Donald Trump, but land that punch.”

This year, Helmer has been particularly effective countering Trump policies and the false narratives that fuel the MAGA movement, sponsoring bills that:

• Eliminated tax-exempt status for several organizations that commemorated the South’s Confederate heritage.
• Repealed authorization for Virginia license plates that commemorated Robert E. Lee or the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
• Prohibited soliciting or accepting any money or valuable item, directly or indirectly, in exchange for a person’s decision to register or not register to vote.
• Amended existing law to more explicitly prohibit the Virginia National Guard from being used to intimidate or coerce voters, and limited the ability of armed militia from lawfully entering the state on active military duty.

In addition, despite supporting the 2020 constitutional amendment requiring independent redistricting, Helmer was an architect of the effort to allow partisan redistricting in response to Republican gerrymanders in Texas and elsewhere. Though a majority of Virginians voted for the amendment, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled against the voters, declaring the maps could not be redrawn as proposed.

HB 333, Helmer’s bill to ensure that Virginia public schools cannot perpetuate a false narrative of the January 6th insurrection, may yield the most enduring legacy.

This past January, on the fifth anniversary of the attack on the Capitol, the White House posted a page on its official site titled, “January 6: A Date Which Will Live in Infamy”. The page seeks to justify Trump’s pardoning of almost 1600 protesters who pushed their way through security barriers, assaulted Capitol Police, and broke through doors and windows to gain entry to the Capitol, where some chanted “Hang Mike Pence”, the vice president who heroically refused to be pressured by his boss into overturning the 2020 election results. The page goes on to claim, “it was the Democrats who staged the real insurrection”.

That was enough for Helmer: “Knowing that MAGA members of school boards and others would demand the whitewashing of our history to present Trump’s version of it in an effort to further his authoritarian purposes was something we couldn’t stand by and watch idly.”

Within five days, he had drafted and submitted for consideration HB 333, offering very specific guidance regarding the teaching of the “January 6, 2021 insurrection”. When the General Assembly passed the bill in March along party lines, the Washington Post declared Virginia to be “the first Democratic state to try to shape how such events are taught.”

Without any sense of irony or their own hypocrisy, Republicans have claimed Helmer’s bill pushes “a left-wing narrative” and is “explicit indoctrination”. Such allegations reflect a classic psychological strategy in which one party falsely accuses the opposition of doing the very things the accusing party is already guilty of. (Generations of children have gained an awareness of this strategy when they learn this response to their accuser: “He who smelt it dealt it.”) Republican accusers and their MAGA supporters conveniently ignore that party members have pressured school boards in Virginia and elsewhere to ban teaching of such topics as critical race theory and climate change, and have steadily ramped up efforts to ban books from school and public libraries that have characters or themes they believe to be out of step with their White Christian faith.

For Helmer, the bill honors the bravery and service of the men and women who defended the Capitol that day from a violent mob incited by the president. He argues that the bill is needed to make sure the real truth of what happened that day is taught, not the provable lies.

Virginia’s governor, Abigail Spanberger, agreed, in general if not with the specifics. Her substitute language, passed by the General Assembly and signed into law, directs the State Board of Education to assess “the necessity of including” in the standard curriculum “additional instructional emphasis on recent, twenty-first century history and current events, including the events on or related to the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the United States Capitol.”

Spanberger’s language neutralized the bill’s impact, at least until the Board of Education completes its assessment. While her decision may seem a safe political choice — she ignored cries of indoctrination from the Right and fears of infringing on the freedom of expression from the Left — Helmer believes the new law gives the Board a mandate to conduct “a more expansive review of all of the things that MAGA is trying to rewrite in our history” and put the movement into a broader context defined by democratic principles.

If the Board follows through as he expects, the bill will do more than correct a single lie. It will provide a model for instructing future generations on the preciousness and fragility of our democracy.