Representative Gerald E. Connolly of Virginia, a feisty Democrat who prided himself on getting things done, and who defeated Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York to become his party’s top member of the powerful House Oversight Committee, died on Wednesday at his home in Fairfax County, Va. He was 75.
His family announced the death. Mr. Connolly said late last year that he had esophageal cancer and would fight the disease. But in April, he told his constituents that the treatments had been unsuccessful and that he would not seek re-election in 2026.
A nine-term congressman from the affluent suburbs of Northern Virginia, Mr. Connolly vigorously defended the interests of the legions of government workers who live in his district, whether by extending the Washington Metro to their communities or by battling President Trump’s efforts to weaken civil service job protections for the federal work force.
Mr. Connolly fought an executive order issued by Mr. Trump in 2020, near the end of the president’s first term, to strip job protections from tens of thousands of career civil servants by reclassifying them as so-called Schedule F political appointees who could be fired at will. The order was reversed by President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
This year, as Mr. Trump launched his second term in office with shock-and-awe orders aimed at purging what he viewed as “deep state” resistance to his policies, Mr. Connolly spoke out.
“Trump is on a wrecking cruise to de-professionalize the civil service and threaten basic services to Americans,” he told The New York Times in January. “It’s unlawful firings and impoundments that threaten to unravel 142 years” of the tradition of a “civil service immune from partisan politics.”
Mr. Connolly was first elected to the House in 2008. His victory, in an open race to replace a retiring Republican, was part of a blue wave that year that heralded Virginia’s political realignment from a reliably red state to one that leans blue in federal elections.
An influx of immigrants and of high-tech jobs to Mr. Connolly’s district changed its demographics and its politics. He moved with those changes, evolving from a nuts-and-bolts proponent of infrastructure to a fiery critic of what he saw as ideological overreach by both Trump administrations.
As an increasingly visible member of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, which lawmakers of both parties use to stymie presidents of the opposing party, Mr. Connolly led an ultimately successful effort to block the Trump White House from adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census.
The Oversight Committee in 2019 sued Attorney General William P. Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross for refusing to turn over documents about a citizenship question, which critics said was politically motivated to intimidate immigrants from census participation and to shrink the number of Democratic seats.
In December, Mr. Connolly vied with Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, a rising star of the left, in a generational contest for the top Democratic position on the Oversight Committee. Mr. Connolly’s bid was boosted by the endorsement and the active lobbying of Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House. House Democrats chose him in a secret ballot.
The often pugnacious Mr. Connolly criticized a Republican bill in 2024 to rename Dulles International Airport, some of whose employees live in his district, after Mr. Trump.
“If Republicans want to name something after him,” he told The Guardian, “I’d suggest they find a federal prison.”
Gerald Edward Connolly, who was known as Gerry, was born on March 30, 1950, in Boston. He was one three children of Edward Connolly, an insurance salesman, and Mary Therese (O’Kane) Connolly, a registered nurse.
He received a B.A. in literature from Maryknoll College in Glen Ellyn, Ill., and an M.A. in public administration from Harvard University in 1979.
His survivors include his wife, Cathy Smith, and their daughter, Caitlin.
For a decade, from 1979 to 1989, Mr. Connolly worked as a staff member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Years later, as a member of Congress, he held a seat on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
Before serving in Congress for 16 years, Mr. Connolly was on the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors for 14 years, beginning in 1995. He was elected chairman in 2003. He promoted the transformation of the county hub at Tysons Corner from a sprawl of shopping malls into a major office center.
As a supervisor, he dreamed of extending the Washington Metro deep into the Virginia suburbs. When he reached Congress, he helped procure funding for the Silver Line, which was built out to Tysons Corner in 2014.
“I know this is going to sound corny,” he told The Washington Post that year, “but I look out at that now, and my heart soars.”
Christine Hauser contributed reporting.
Trip Gabriel is a Times reporter on the Obituaries desk.
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