- Virginia Senate Ben Chafin died Friday from 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 lawyer – and we have all lost a good man,” Governor Ralph Northam said in a written statement.
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Virginia Senate Ben Chafin died Friday from 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 Gov. Ralph Northam and the Republican Caucus of the Senate in Virginia, who confirmed Chafin’s death, immediately issued praise for the senator, who was elected to the House of Representatives in 2013 before joining the Senate in 2014.
Chafin, a lawyer, was hospitalized with the coronavirus about two weeks before his death. While several lawmakers in Virginia contracted the highly contagious disease, he is the first lawmaker in Virginia to die from coronavirus complications, according to The Richmond Times-Dispatch.
“Southwest Virginia has lost a strong lawyer – and we have all lost a good man,” Northam said in a written statement. ‘I knew Ben as a lawmaker, a lawyer, a banker, and a farmer raising beef cattle in Moccasin Valley and cultivating the land just as generations of his family had done before him.
Chafin’s Republican and Democratic colleagues greeted his life and service to the Commonwealth.
“Ben was deeply and wholeheartedly committed to the commonwealth, and especially to the people of Southwest Virginia,” State Senate GOP leader Thomas K. Norment Jr. said in a statement. “He put the interests of those he was entrusted to serve first and cherished the people of the region whom he proudly called ‘home’.”
“We regret the loss of our colleague and friend, Senator Ben Chafin,” the Democratic Senate caucus said in a statement. “He was a passionate leader who represented his voters from the 38th District of Southwest Virginia with so much compassion, strength and thoughtfulness.”
Chafin is survived by his wife, Lora, and their three children, along with his sister and grandchildren.
Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been approximately 355,000 confirmed infections and more than 5,000 deaths in Virginia, according to the latest data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.