Virginia Foxx has served as a Republican representative from North Carolina for nearly two decades, but her profile rose last year after she campaigned against anti-Semitism on college campuses as chair of the House Education and Labor Committee.
In her recent book, Ms. Fox said she was guided by her aversion to discrimination of any kind and by the teachings of her Baptist church. Education has been a central theme of her life.
Ms. Fox, 80, grew up in the rural part of her district, and she often talks about her childhood in a home without running water or electricity.
She worked hard to graduate from college and earned a doctorate in education. She is president of Mayland Community College, and some say her experience there may be the cause of her antipathy toward elite schools.
“She's sharp,” said Peter Lake, director of the Center for Higher Education Law and Policy at Stetson University School of Law. “She has no doubt that she has political knowledge.”
Foxx represents a heavily Republican district in a heavily Republican state and is known for his outspoken conservative politics, including on education issues.
She supports school choice, including vouchers, and for-profit institutions. She has said she has “very little tolerance” for students graduating from college with large amounts of student loan debt. She opposes diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, calling them anti-meritocratic, and opposes allowing transgender women to compete on women's teams in college sports.
She defended a “Parents' Bill of Rights,” which Democrats said would ban books, but which she said exposed progressive politics in the classroom.
And she said it was a “hoax” that University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard was killed because he was gay. After her protest, she apologized to her mother.
She attributes her politics to a life that pulled her up by her own shoelaces. “Because we've done it under the most difficult circumstances, and I mean very difficult circumstances,” she said of herself and her husband. “We didn’t need any help from the government to be successful.”