Sen. Tammy Mulchi stood before her colleagues on the Virginia Senate floor in February 2024 and told them that she used to be suicidal.
The bill being discussed was SB 280, which would have allowed an adult with a terminal illness to die by assisted suicide.
“We all know that I’m not a very eloquent speaker but I’m someone that speaks from the heart and from experience. When I was a very depressed person, a suicidal person, I thought this kind of measure would have been the greatest idea,” she said. “Boy, am I glad that I didn’t take my life, because the number of people I’ve been able to help and the number of lives that through God I’ve been able to change, is miraculous.”
The bill passed the Senate on a party-line vote but stalled in the House of Delegates last year.
Those suicidal feelings that she endured were directly tied to her experience as a survivor of domestic violence, Mulchi said.
There aren’t many bills on which Mulchi, a staunch conservative, will break from her Republican colleagues. But last week, she voted with her Democratic colleagues in the Senate in favor of a bill that would close the “boyfriend loophole” — a gap in Virginia gun law that allows people convicted of domestic assault against an intimate partner to access firearms.
Mulchi said she is “100% a strong supporter of Second Amendment rights,” when asked about her vote, but said that she believes people convicted of assaulting intimate partners should be punished the same as those convicted of assault and battery charges against family or household members. Currently, people who are convicted of assault or battery against someone in their family or household lose their right to access firearms.
“Because I have lived that and know what that is like, I believe access to firearms should be somewhat restricted,” she said. “Any small move in the direction of keeping more victims of domestic violence safe is what I desire to see happen.”
Jessica Ruff, widow of the late Sen. Frank Ruff, R-Mecklenburg County, whose district Mulchi now represents, has known Mulchi for about 30 years, dating back to when Mulchi, now 58, worked for Ruff as a legislative aide in the 1990s.
“She’s been through some hard times but she’s come out stronger and smarter and more aware — very wise for a woman of her age,” Jessica Ruff said during a phone interview Monday.
When a former legislative aide takes on their former boss’s seat
Mulchi, R-Mecklenberg County, sat behind her office desk on a Monday at the end of January, surrounded by pictures of her family. A wooden cross whittled out of cedar wood by a constituent sat on her desk, and she had a Bible within arm’s reach, open to a page that she said helped her to put on the “armor of God” before fighting for her bills in committee or on the Senate floor.
Mulchi wore an arm brace to support a torn ligament in her wrist and she fingered a packet of cold medicine as she listened to a pitch from a candidate seeking to fill a judicial vacancy. She, and most of the fifth floor where her Senate office was located, appeared to be getting over a cold as the General Assembly barreled into the third week of the 2025 legislative session. Surgery for the torn ligament in her wrist would have to wait until after the session concluded.
She said she never planned to run for elected office, until Ruff asked her to seek the office. She had worked for the former senator for over a decade, starting in the 1990s. Ruff was first elected to the General Assembly in 1993 and left office in 2023 due to health concerns. He died in October after he was diagnosed with cancer the previous year.
Jessica Ruff said the decision to ask Mulchi to enter the race was emotional for her husband, as well as for his family.
“That was his passion, being a senator and helping others,” she said. “When we first had the diagnosis, his first question was, ‘Can I return in January 100%?’ That shows you he was devoted to his constituents, and his family, too.”
The decision to retire was a hard one for the late senator, Jessica Ruff said, but when he floated the idea of tapping Mulchi to seek the seat to his wife, she approved wholeheartedly.
Mulchi beat five other candidates in a Republican firehouse primary December 2023 and won the special election in January 2024, right before the start of session, to represent the 9th Senate District. Mulchi beat her Democratic opponent with a 25% margin in the Republican stronghold.
“I wish he could have been up there now to see her now because he’d be so proud,” Jessica Ruff said of her late husband.
This year is the first that Mulchi has come forward with her own bills. Last year she carried legislation drafted by Ruff’s office because the timing of the special election did not allow time for her to prepare her own.
Bringing life experience into the General Assembly
Mulchi, who said she left her abuser in April 2014, launched The Windsong Foundation, an organization that supports people who experience domestic abuse and survivors, in 2022. It was established as a nonprofit organization in 2024.
“I went through some really hard times and I had to start over,” Mulchi said. But, she said, her grounding in her faith helped her to remain steady. “I’m just trusting God, whatever happens.”
Mulchi is a grandmother of six. She also takes care of her 90-year-old mother, owns a real estate business and construction company, and runs The Windsong Foundation. She said it took her some time after Ruff asked her to put her hat in the ring for her to make the decision to add more to her already full life. She prayed over it, she said, and decided to move forward.
“God must have a plan,” she said. “I feel like it is another extension of my work with domestic violence; I feel like I can make a difference here.”
Mulchi said she plans to come back during the 2026 session with a slate of bills to tackle the issue.
“I’ve seen so many problems with domestic violence in the courts — it’s not fair to victims. There’s problems with the judicial system, with law enforcement, from the top to the bottom, there are problems everywhere. And so I want to address those, but I’m still working out how that looks,” she said.
Getting into the swing of things during a packed session
On a Monday at the end of January, Mulchi started her day around 7 a.m. She was slated to present two bills in two different committee meetings shortly after she got to the office. One bill, SB 1298, which would have made repeated profane or threatening phone calls a felony, was rejected by the Senate Courts of Justice Committee. The other, SB 1207, in Senate Appropriations, would establish a grant to support the construction of a lithium ion battery plant at the Berry Hill Megasite. That bill made it out of committee, giving Mulchi a 50/50 success rate for the day.
After her two presentations, she met with a judicial candidate who is seeking a position in her Senate district, and then had back-to-back visits with constituents and advocacy groups before the Senate Republican Caucus meeting. Her office had about 10 different things on her schedule before noon that day.
Tuesdays are her busy days, though. She sits on three committees: Agriculture, Conservation and Natural Resources; Privileges and Elections; and Transportation. Two of those typically meet at the same time. Her staff helps to keep her straight on where she needs to be and when. In the Senate, unlike in the House, lawmakers are allowed to have proxies who can vote in place of the senators if they’re tied up in other engagements or meetings. Mulchi’s proxies know how she plans to vote on specific pieces of legislation; if she isn’t able to be present, they vote in her stead.
With the 2025 session nearly half of the way through, Mulchi said this year was already far more challenging than her first year in office.
This year, with her own slate of bills, she has researched the materials, talked to constituents and stakeholders, and whipped up support for the legislation either within her caucus or across the aisle. It has been difficult to see some of those bills die in committee, she said, but she remains hopeful, regardless. Each killed bill has given her insight into how to get a bill through and to the floor.
Correction 12:01 p.m. Feb. 4: A previous version of this story noted another Republican Senator who voted to close the “boyfriend loophole.” That Senator had voted in error.
