Lee Jin Carter (born June 2, 1987) is an American former politician who represented the 50th district in the Virginia House of Delegates from 2018 to 2022.

A member of the Democratic Party, he defeated Jackson Miller, the Republican House Majority Whip, to win the seat.

Jackson Miller, the incumbent Republican, distributed a mailer campaign that compared Carter to Communist rulers Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong,[11][13][14] an act the Democratic Party of Virginia condemned as fearmongering.

[15] During the campaign, Carter claimed he had little support from the state's Democratic Party, saying their resources were "stretched thin" but that the DSA had "managed to knock on thousands of doors" on his behalf.

[18] Carter ran for reelection in the 2019 election, defeating his primary opponent, Manassas city councilman Mark Wolfe, by 57.7% to 42.3% of the vote.

[23][24] During Carter's remarks on a tax bill during the 2018 legislative session, fellow Democratic Delegate Mark Keam briefly displayed the hammer and sickle on a laptop behind Carter, an action for which he later apologized;[25][26][27] Keam also apologized for violating Rule 57 in regard to the legislative body's decorum ("No member shall in debate use any language or gesture calculated to wound, offend, or insult another member").

[28] Carter dismissed the affair as "clearly ... a joke, but ... in very poor taste and rooted in a lack of knowledge about the history of the political left.

[29] Carter introduced legislation in the 2020 session that would prohibit Virginia prisons and jails from strip-searching minors before visitation.

[30] Carter supports the right to keep and bear arms, and has opposed proposed assault weapons bans in Virginia as a "terrible idea".

[31][32] He opposes red flag laws, since he believes they result in right-wing extremists abusing the process to disarm their opposition, and has voted against prohibiting guns on the property of the Virginia State Capitol, the only Democrat to do so.

[36] Carter is autistic, and opposes public funding for applied behavior analysis in the treatment of autism, a controversial therapy when used to attempt to treat the condition.

[39] Carter was the only Democrat to vote against a bipartisan bill in 2021 to require schools to provide at least three specialized student support positions.

"[41][42] In late 2019, after Carter introduced or supported bills overturning restrictions on the ability of Virginia state employees to strike, he received a wave of death threats on social media, as critics mistook the exception of police officers from the bills for a case of their right to strike being removed.

[46] In October 2018, to get ahead of any potential attempts at "personal smears",[46] Carter admitted making "homophobic, transphobic, sometimes sexist or racially insensitive" comments online as a teenager.