Big advances for Democrats in Virginia

One of the states where the Democratic Party did best on November 6 was Virginia, which, each year, is turning from being a “purple” state to a “blue” one.

Virginia, population 8 million, entered the election season with two Democratic senators, four Democratic House members, and seven Republican House members. There were no state legislative elections this year except one special one in the area of Roanoke, but there were a number of local ones.

When the dust settled and all the votes were counted and the results announced, Virginia still had two Democratic senators but now seven Democratic House members, reversing the previous ratio. Progressives won several of the local elections.

Sen. Tim Kaine, a Democrat and former Virginia governor first elected to the Senate in 2012, was challenged by Republican Corey Stewart, chair of the County Board of Supervisors in Prince William County in the northern part of the state. Stewart has claimed he was “Trump before Trump” and in the 2017 state gubernatorial elections when he was the Republican candidate, ran an irresponsible campaign which hit on many of the same themes as Trump did in the 2016 presidential elections. He slandered and threatened Latino immigrants nonstop, and associated himself promiscuously with the symbols of the Confederate States of America, the lost cause and, without quite saying so, nostalgia for the slavery days.

Polls showed Kaine well ahead throughout the campaign. But the Kaine campaign put out a final burst of media messages highlighting Stewart as a dangerous bigot, and there was hope that Stewart would not just be defeated, but crushingly so, so as to dampen any further excursions into electoral politics and maybe oust him from his power base on the Prince William County Board of Supervisors in the 2019 elections.

As it happened, Kaine did defeat Stewart by a large margin, 59.6 percent to 41.2 percent with the balance going to a minor candidate from the Libertarian Party. But even so, it is troubling that someone as extreme and irresponsible as Stewart, who left even some elements of the Republican Party establishment aghast at his antics, could eventually win 1,368,451 votes.

Stewart got big vote margins in mostly white rural areas, especially in Virginia’s economically depressed Appalachian spine and in the far southwestern part of the state.

In the Second Virginia Congressional District, Democrat Elaine Luria, a former Navy officer, squeaked by with the tiniest of margins against the Republican incumbent, Scott Taylor, with 51.1 percent versus Taylor’s 48.9 percent. The district encompasses the Virginia part of the Delmarva Peninsula plus part of the Tidewater region, with its large minority population, across Chesapeake Bay.

Another squeaker was the Seventh Congressional District, in the central part of the state and some suburbs of Richmond, the state capital, where the Democratic candidate, former CIA agent Abigail Spanberger, inched past the far right wing Republican incumbent, David Brat, by 50.3 percent to 48.5 percent with the rest going to a minor candidate.

A disappointment was the 5th Congressional District, where some polls had shown the progressive Democratic candidate, Leslie Cockburn, in position to possibly win against a far-right Republican newcomer, liquor distiller Denver Riggleman. Cockburn ran a bold and innovative campaign and got support in places like Danville, an economically struggling, half African-American city on the North Carolina border, and Charlottesville at the north end of the district. But Riggleman won by 53.3 to 46.7 percent.

In parts of Virginia, the rising force within the Democratic Party has been its left wing, including in some areas the Bernie Sanders inspired “Our Revolution” organization. However, these new Democratic members of Congress come from more centrist traditions.

(Full disclosure: Dr. Lateef is this writer’s eye doctor).

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