- Virginia state senator Ben Chafin died on Friday of complications related to COVID-19, according to his state legislature.
- Chafin, a Republican who represented a rural district in southwest Virginia, was 60 years old.
- “Southwest Virginia has lost a strong defender – and we have all lost a good man,” said Governor Ralph Northam in a written statement.
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Virginia Sen. Ben Chafin died on Friday of complications related to COVID-19, according to his state legislature.
Chafin, a Republican who represented a rural district in southwest Virginia, was 60 years old.
Democratic Governor Ralph Northam and the Virginia Senate Republican Party, which confirmed Chafin’s death, immediately uttered words of praise to the senator, who was elected to the state’s House of Delegates in 2013 before joining the Senate in 2014.
Chafin, a lawyer, was hospitalized with the coronavirus for about two weeks before his death. Although several lawmakers in the state of Virginia have contracted the highly infectious disease, he is the first lawmaker in Virginia to die of coronavirus-related complications, according to The Richmond Times-Dispatch.
“Southwest Virginia has lost a strong defender – and we have all lost a good man,” Northam said in a written statement. “I met Ben as a legislator, lawyer, banker and farmer who raises beef cattle in the Moccasin Valley, working on the land just as generations of his family had done before him.
Chafin’s Republican and Democratic colleagues hailed his life and service to the community.
“Ben was deeply and wholeheartedly committed to the community, and especially to the people of southwest Virginia,” said Republican Senate leader Thomas K. Norment Jr. in a statement. “He put the interests of those he was entrusted to serve first, valuing the people of the region that he proudly called ‘home’.”
“We regret the loss of our colleague and friend, Senator Ben Chafin,” the Senate Democratic bench said in a statement. “He was a passionate leader who represented his constituents in the 38th district in southwest Virginia with such compassion, strength and consideration.”
Chafin leaves his wife, Lora and their three children, along with his sister and grandchildren.
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been about 355,000 confirmed infections and more than 5,000 deaths in Virginia, according to the latest data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.