Stacey Plaskett won the governorship of the U.S. Virgin Islands on Tuesday with 62.8% of the vote, according to unofficial territorial results. She is the first woman elected to lead the territory, 56 years into the era of elected governors. She received 11,865 votes, and she and her running mate, Milton Potter, are expected to take office Jan. 4, 2027, once the canvass and certification are finished.
The Virgin Islands are an overwhelmingly Black Caribbean territory, and until now no woman had been trusted with its top job. Plaskett, 60, has spent nearly 12 years as its delegate in Congress, a seat that gives her a voice in the House but, as a delegate’s does, no vote on final passage of a bill. Now she moves to the one office where she decides rather than asks.
She has stood in front of the country before. In 2021 she became the first delegate from a U.S. territory to serve as a House impeachment manager, arguing the case against Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial.
Her campaign was local and specific: the cost of living, access to health care, public safety, and the water and power systems that residents have complained about for years. Those are the things that decide whether a family can afford to stay on the islands. She won by a wide margin, and local reporting says voters ousted incumbents elsewhere on the ballot too.
Outgoing Gov. Albert Bryan acknowledged her victory. “Earning the confidence of the people is an honor that carries an obligation to lead with integrity,” he said, according to reports of his statement.
She won on the same night that Keisha Lance Bottoms was reported to have won Georgia’s governorship, so two Black women are headed to governors’ offices from one election.
A first is worth celebrating, and the islands have waited long enough for it. But grids and water lines are not repaired by a first. They are repaired by budgets, and by whether a governor with a decade of Washington relationships can bring federal money home. The test begins Jan. 4, when she is sworn in and her House seat falls vacant.
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