Dems Keep Control Of Both Chambers Of State Legislature
The snow— the biggest storm in almost in 3 years— had stopped yesterday in Virginia and it was sunny, although really cold. There were 3 special legislative elections there that are being looked at as a political weathervane after the national Trump victory in November. Two districts in northern Virginia (SD-32 and HD-26 in Loudon County)— one for state senate and one for the House of Delegates— are safely blue and one west of Richmond (SD-10) is safely red. In the north, Democratic state Sen. Suhas Subramanyam was elected to Congress to fill Jennifer Wexton’s seat and when Delegate Kannan Srinivasan decided to run for his Senate seat, he announced his early retirement from his House seat to save Virginia taxpayers several hundred thousand dollars for another election; Democrat JJ Singh and Republican Ram Venkatachalam ran for his seat yesterday. Both seats had clocked in at Harris +22 in November.
Further south, Trump had led a vicious jihad against Freedom Caucus chair Bob Goode, who was then defeated for reelection to Congress by another far right Republican, state Sen John McGuire. Republican Luther Cifers and Democrat Jack Trammell, a former congressional candidate, were yesterday’s candidates for that McGuire seat, in a district which was a Trump +27 win in November.
There were no surprises as far as who won any of the races. But they were closely-watched contests because the Democrats hold narrow margins in both chambers (1 seat in each) and losses would have thrown control of the state Senate to Republicans and forced a power-sharing agreement in the House of Delegates. But it was the relative margins in the three races that everyone was looking at, not who won, so as to measure voter enthusiasm. All three Democrats out-performed Harris, which is exactly what national and Virginia Democrats had been hoping to see. The slide everyone was freaking out over in Loudon County was turned around last night.
Democrats spent big to run up the margins in the two Loudon County districts— and to forestall any unwelcome surprises. Srinivasan, an old friend who has been endorsed by Blue America, spent around half a million dollars in his race, 4 times more than what Republican Tumay Harding spent. And Singh outspent Venkatachalam $319,724 to $13,262. Both of their victories were in landslide territory.
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