Del. Nick Freitas, R-Culpeper, is putting his military service and family values at the forefront of his first television ads in his campaign for Virginia’s 7th District seat in Congress, a crucial race in Republicans’ effort to regain control of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Freitas, who will turn 41 on Aug. 29, began airing two television ads on Tuesday in his campaign to reclaim the 7th District seat for Republicans from U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat who defeated Rep. David Brat two years ago as part of a Democratic takeover of the House.
The two 60-second ads begin with photographs of his parents — his father a police officer and his mother a nurse — and focus on his call to military service as a member of the U.S. Army Special Forces. They also feature his wife, Tina, who lost to state Sen. Emmett Hanger, R-Augusta, in the Republican primary for the state Senate seat last year.
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“When I went off to war, that wasn’t just my service, it was my family’s service,” Freitas says in one ad, called “Service,” over photographs and video of his children that his wife sent him while he was deployed in the Iraq War.
The second ad, “Responsibility,” takes a similar theme, focused on his decision to enlist in the Army out of high school and, three months after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, to join the Green Beret special forces.
“I felt like I needed to serve in the military in order to demonstrate that I was taking personal responsibility for the safety of my country,” Freitas says in the ad, which will run on both broadcast and cable television, with shorter versions airing digitally.
Born in California, Freitas moved to Culpeper County in 2010. He was first elected to the House of Delegates in 2015, representing Madison and Orange counties and part of Culpeper in the 30th District. He won re-election twice but unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination in 2018 to challenge Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va.
Spanberger, a Henrico County resident, launched her television campaign with a 30-second ad in late July that emphasizes her service in the Central Intelligence Agency and her work in Congress.
Spanberger beat Brat by about 2 percentage points in 2018, as her suburban margins of 20,000 votes in Henrico and 10,600 votes in Chesterfield County overcame Brat’s margins in the district’s eight rural counties.