A Democratic candidate for Virginia’s House of Delegates announced over the weekend that she and her husband are swingers.
Yvonne Rorrer explained Saturday that she wanted to reveal something that could be used against her—that she and her husband of 22 years “are deeply committed, in love, and we are ethically non-monogamous.”
“Our lifestyle choice mostly includes consensually dating other couples together and being part of a vast and growing community of like-minded people,” she wrote.
Rorrer later told HuffPost that the couple have been non-monogamous for about two and a half years, and that most people close to her already knew.
“This is not something that we have hidden from our adult children, our closest friends, the majority of our family members,” she said. “This has been our way of life for several years, and so it it would have come out. And if it was going to come out, I would rather it be for me and in my own words.”
One exception was her husband’s parents who, she said, were more upset to learn that she was running on the Democratic ticket.
A North Carolina native, Rorrer founded a nonprofit aimed at helping the homeless and also worked in property management until the COVID-19 pandemic, at which point she started volunteering to represent victims of child abuse in legal matters. Her website states she is a Court-Appointed Special Advocate with the Virginia-based group Focus on Youth.
As for what motivated her to run, Rorrer pointed to one event—her opponent, Republican Wren Williams, voting in March to oppose a bill preventing a rapist from having parental rights over a child produced from rape. (The measure, which only Republicans opposed, did ultimately pass.)
“That’s what did it for me,” Rorrer told the outlet. “I have no political background, but I have a mouth and I have an opinion, and that did it. That pretty much did it for me.”
District 47, which borders North Carolina, is nearly 90 percent white and reliably Republican. In last year’s presidential election, residents supported Donald Trump with over 76 percent of the vote.
Acknowledging the inherent difficulties in getting elected, Rorrer joked: “I will have to now probably rely on all the swingers in the country to fund my campaign.”
