Local attorney and conservative Jeff Leach recently wrote an important piece we think every Fairfax Republican should read. In the Fairfax Times on September 25, he held Congressman James Walkinshaw’s (VA-11) new talk about affordability up against the six years Walkinshaw spent as Braddock District supervisor voting to raise what Fairfax families pay.

His piece is reprinted here in full, with his permission.

Stand-up comedian Jimmy Walkinshaw’s best schtick yet
By Jeffrey A. Leach, reprinted from the Fairfax Times, September 25, 2026

Nothing quite cheers the heart at the end of a long, hard day of work like a good, long laugh, and, according to the book of Proverbs, “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.” I can testify to this. Can’t you?

Today I opened my emails to find one from local stand-up comic Jimmy Walkinshaw (“Dubya” to his friends), who hails from right here in Northern Virginia and has, in recent months, taken his show national. After the required greetings and quips about Donald Trump that are de rigeur, Walkinshaw had this to say to me: “Families across Fairfax feel the rising cost of living every week, at the grocery store, at the gas pump, when paying the rent or mortgage, and when the electric bill arrives . . . Affordability is the only issue demanding our attention,” yada yada yada.

Now, to see the humor here, you have to know a little bit of Jimmy’s history, which I do, so let me explain. Before his current gig over at Capitol Hill, Walkinshaw was a Fairfax County supervisor from 2020 through 2025. In 2020, he knowingly and deliberately voted to increase the real estate tax burden of Fairfax County residents in FY2021, thereby making things not more affordable but instead more unaffordable for them. He did the same in 2021. And in 2022. And in 2023. And in 2024. And in 2025—although you will note that this ginormous bill that is three times what it should be appears nowhere in his list of bills above (an act of misdirection that shows that Jimmy has promise as a magician if the comedy thing doesn’t work out).

See why this is funny? It’s like OJ Simpson offering marital counseling services. Or Hunter Biden giving advice on how to hide evidence of drugs and hookers on your laptop. Or Vladimir Putin authoring a book called “The Importance of World Peace”.

But is that all? “No!” as Mona Lisa Vito says in the unforgettable climactic court scene in that classic of comedy My Cousin Vinny. “There’s mowah!”  Because Jimmy also voted in favor of a meals tax on all restaurants in Fairfax County when the voters in Fairfax County directly and clearly voted in a public referendum against such a tax—not once but twice (in case the smart folks over at the Fairfax County Taj Mahal Government Center didn’t get it the first time). This, according to Jimmy, is called “democracy” (if by “democracy” you mean “doing the exact opposite of what the majority explicitly tells you to do”)—but remember that Jimmy is a comedian, not a linguist or a logician or, clearly, even a little “d” democrat.

Finally, the pièce de résistance in this bit is Jimmy’s reference to an “electric bill.” Now anyone who has electricity in Fairfax County can tell you that the cost of electricity has indeed gone up. What Jimmy won’t tell you, though–perhaps because he thinks you might find the irony about the electric bills too shocking (see what I did there?)–is that the astronomical rise in the cost of electricity is the direct result of his political faction’s unreasonable restrictions on Virginia power companies at precisely the time when Virginia is exploding with new data centers.

Get it? He makes the prices go up, then does his bit about how “affordability is the only issue demanding our attention.” It’s like a man who breaks your leg in a public place and then shouts, “Oh, my God! Call 911! And please note, everyone, that public safety is the only issue demanding our attention!”

It ain’t Comedy Central, folks, by any stretch, but as Congressional comics go, it ain’t half bad–though I promise you it’s way more expensive than any other comedy show you will ever pay to see. That’s why, when it comes time to vote this November, I won’t be voting for a man who cries crocodile tears for his suffering neighbors whose legs he broke. I’ll be voting instead for Arthur Purves (who had nothing to do with this article, by the way)—not a comic but a man with a rational, fact-based plan for lowering both taxes and costs in general. And that’s no laughing matter.

In the meantime, catch Jimmy W’s show at the biggest comedy club on Capitol Hill through the end of the year and drop him a line to let him know how much you appreciate his good humor: repwalkinshaw@mail.house.gov.

Jeffrey A. Leach, a graduate of Oxford and UVA, is a member of the Bars of VA and D.C., and may be reached at jeffreyleach50@gmail.com.

This op-ed originally appeared in the Fairfax Times on September 25, 2026, and is reprinted with the author’s permission. Read the original here: Stand-up comedian Jimmy Walkinshaw’s best schtick yet.