The Virgin Islands just did something it had never done. After 56 years of electing governors, voters chose a woman for the job, and her name is Stacey Plaskett.
On Tuesday night, Nov. 3, she and running mate Milton Potter took the governor’s race with roughly 62.8% of the vote. Plaskett reportedly carried all 20 voting precincts across St. Croix, St. Thomas, and St. John.
Plaskett, who will become the first Black woman to govern a U.S. territory, was also elected on the same night Keisha Lance Bottoms made history in Georgia as the first Black woman elected governor of a state.
Plaskett, 60, isn’t some fresh face off the street. She has been the territory’s delegate in Congress since 2015. That’s more than a decade of representing the islands in Washington, a job that comes with a seat in the room but no vote on the final call. Now she’s trading that for the top executive spot back home, where the buck actually stops with her.
Her pitch was simple: she had seen how the other side of the table works and wanted to run things where people live. In a statement over the summer, she said she was “ready to bring that same fight home,” pointing to her work after Hurricanes Irma and Maria and her push to widen healthcare access. She also leaned on her Washington résumé to make the case that the territory needs someone who can get results from federal partners.
The issues she ran on are kitchen-table business. Her campaign centered on the rising cost of living, healthcare, public safety, and fixing the territory’s water and power systems. Anybody who has dealt with spotty electricity or an unreliable utility bill knows why that last one hit home. When she launched her bid in Frederiksted, she promised “new energy, real urgency” from the ticket, and she made accountability the through line of the whole run.
Getting here took work.
In the August Democratic primary, the Plaskett-Potter ticket pulled 4,493 of the 9,561 votes cast, around 47%, and won every precinct on St. Croix and St. John. That win came over a field that included sitting Lt. Gov. Tregenza Roach. Then she carried that momentum into November.
Potter, who steps in as lieutenant governor-elect, is no bystander either. He’s the Senate President, and he pledged to go after longtime problems like the Water and Power Authority, healthcare, and education. Pairing a Congress veteran with a sitting legislative leader gives the new administration a built-in understanding of both ends of the process.
The outgoing governor, Albert Bryan Jr., kept it classy. His office said he congratulated both winners, thanked voters, and stressed that the work of government continues past any one election or term. A smooth handoff matters, because the to-do list isn’t getting shorter.
Starting in January, they’ll be watching to see whether the fight she promised to bring home actually shows up in their daily lives.