Woman who was fired for flipping off Trump wins election in Virginia

She lost her job for flipping off President Trump. Now she's been elected to a new one.

A former government contractor in Virginia who famously gave the president's motorcade a one-finger salute won the race Tuesday for a seat on the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors. Juli Briskman ran as a Democrat and defeated the eight-year Republican incumbent, Suzanne Volpe. This will be Briskman's first time in elected office.

Briskman wrote on Twitter that she was looking forward to "representing my friends & neighbors" in the Algonkian District. Briskman, 52, shot to fame in 2017 after a White House photographer captured her giving the finger to Mr. Trump's motorcade as she rode by on her bicycle in Northern Virginia. The photo went viral, and Briskman posted it on her Facebook and Twitter pages.

But it also cost Briskman her job as a marketing analyst for the federal contractor Akima LLC, which said she had violated the company's social media policy on obscenity. Briskman later sued her former employer and won severance pay that was initially withheld, according to the Washington Post.

Nearly a year after getting fired, Briskman announced she would run for local office in 2019. She said she didn't consider running until she had lost her job over the photo.

Briskman's victory came on a night that also saw Democrats prevailing in Virginia's statehouse. Democrats won control of Virginia's House and Senate, erasing the thin majorities held by Republicans. Democrats will hold all three branches in Virginia's government for the first time in a generation.

In:
• Donald Trump
• Virginia