Sean Perryman, the president of the Fairfax County NAACP, announced his run for Virginia lieutenant governor on Tuesday, adding his name to a large and diverse pool of candidates vying for the second-highest office in the commonwealth more than a year ahead of the statewide vote.

The 34-year old father and tech lawyer said he’d bring his outsider status to sharpen how the government responds to the needs of its constituents.

“During this pandemic I saw that everyday people were not being served the best they could, not only by the federal government but by the state government as well,” he said. “Because we have Democratically controlled everything here in Virginia, there is often unwillingness to speak out when something that’s happening isn’t right.”

So far, nine candidates have announced their candidacies ahead of the 2021 primary, with the contenders skewing heavily from Northern Virginia. A handful of them, including Perryman, have never held elected office before.

While the role of lieutenant governor is largely ceremonial — they preside over the state Senate, and are first in the governor’s line of succession — Perryman said the role had a history of elevating political newcomers, including Virginia’s current Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax (D), who is now running in the Democratic primary for governor.

With his goals of tightening oversight of police and enacting the Green New Deal, Perryman’s positions are to the left of most Virginia Democrats. In an interview with WAMU/DCist, Perryman said he worked behind the scenes this summer in a failed effort to convince Democratic state lawmakers to approve a bill to end qualified immunity, which provides some legal protections for law enforcement officers accused of misconduct on the job.

“We had all these Black Lives Matter [protests] and many of those state senators and delegates held those signs,” Perryman recalled. “They came there and killed the bills that would put those words into policy.”

On the Republican side, McLean consultant Puneet Ahluwalia, 54, announced his candidacy in September. He said he built a businesses after immigrating from New Delhi, India, and he believed Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam was making the state less hospitable for enterprise.

“I’m a person who worked hard, from delivering pizzas… to delivering boxes, and I’ve created a successful company, recreated myself after the financial meltdown,” he said. “When I saw the direction this governor was taking our state, the prescriptive doctrines which were coming down, it was going to be very hard for small businesses to survive.”

Ahluwalia spoke to WAMU/DCist at a rally earlier this week of Vietnamese Americans for Trump, and he said he firmly believed in the Republican Party platform. In particular, he said he backed police because many of the men in his Sikh family had served in Indian law enforcement.

“I am against defunding police, that’s what the Democrats want,” he said. “I don’t want somebody calling 911 and they’ll say, ‘Please call your emotional counselor.'”

Ahluwalia’s comments echo the campaign promises of Tim Hugo, who served nearly two decades as a Republican delegate from Fairfax County before he was ousted in last year’s election. Hugo announced he was running for lieutenant governor last week, and pledged to counter the influence of Virginia Democrats, who he said “have radically transformed our commonwealth” with policies “once considered too liberal for states like New York and California are becoming law.”

Also running on the Republican side are Air Force veteran and security expert Lance Allen of Fauquier County and Del. Glenn Davis of Virginia Beach.

Across the aisle, last week Del. Elizabeth Guzman (D-Prince William) announced her candidacy, citing her advocacy for workers’ rights and her involvement with the Biden campaign and her role as co-chair of the Bernie Sanders primary campaign in Virginia. Also vying for the job is Del. Hala Ayala (D-Prince William), a cybersecurity expert who, like Guzman, entered the House of Delegates as part of a Blue Wave in 2017.

Also running on the Democratic side are Xavier Warren, a lobbyist for non-profits and an NFL sports agent based in Arlington, and Paul Goldman, a former Virginia Democratic Party chair in Richmond. Andria McClellan, a city council member in Norfolk, Va., has also formed a political action committee ahead of a possible run.

David Ramadan, a former Republican delegate representing Loudoun County and now an adjunct professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, said Republicans might quickly coalesce around Hugo, who was a well-liked delegate and House Republican Caucus Chair.

“He will be a front runner on the Republican side and he will have the capability of raising more money than most candidates,” Ramadan said of Hugo.

He said the Democratic primary was broader and no clear top candidate had emerged yet.

Whoever wins the primaries, Ramadan anticipates Democrats would win race for governor and carry along the lieutenant governor seat. In previous years, Ramadan said Virginians tended to choose a governor from the opposite party as the president. Now, Democratic momentum in the commonwealth was so forceful that Republicans could find it impossible to break through, even if Joe Biden is elected president.

“In the past, Virginia has been the bellwether to the mood of the nation post a presidential election,” Ramadan said. “However, I venture to say that is no longer the case. The Democratic party has solidified their electorate in Virginia. Even if there are is Democrats in the White House… November 2021 will not be a reaction or a rebound to the presidential election in Virginia.”

So far, fewer candidates are contending in primaries for governor.

On the Democratic side, former Gov. Terry McAuliffe has filed paperwork to run again, and he will face state Sen. Jennifer McClellan of Richmond, Del. Jennifer Carroll Foy of Prince William, former Democratic party chair Paul Goldman, and Fairfax.

Del. Kirk Cox, the former Republican House Speaker from Colonial Heights, and firebrand state Sen. Amanda Chase of Chesterfield, are the only two candidates who have so far announced on the Republican side.