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The Virginia House of Delegates, Part Three: Delegating Harder

So in this, the third installment of Blue The Nation's analysis of the Virginia House of Delegates elections in 2013, I want to conclude by doing something a little different. Aside from the seats we've already looked at, which I think are very winnable, there are a couple other seats out there in this election that I think are worth looking at.

Other Seats to Consider

While they don't immediately leap off the page as vulnerable when we look at 2011 results—which are, to date, the only elections that have been held with this district map—they do appear gettable to me. It's not that the incumbent Republicans didn't win handily here last time, it's that by rights they shouldn't have. If the Democrats field better candidates in 2013, I think these can be reclaimed. I'm going to say the price tag on all of these is the familiar $1M figure.

District 10

Background: The incumbent in the Tenth is Randall Minchew. This district is the one that our aforementioned Ward Armstrong got gerrymandered out of. Immediately following that, in a new district without a reorganized Democratic political machine and running in a GOP wave cycle, Minchew handily defeated Democrat David Butler about 58-42.

'Bout to get Minchewed up.

The Tenth District, however, isn't a red one, even after Republican redistricting. It consists of parts of Loudoun County, which you'll recall is fairly progressive from our discussion of D87 above, and Clarke County, which is not at all progressive. Here's the thing, though: the populous urban centers of the district are in Loudoun, and they include liberal Leesburg. More of D10 is blue than is red, and that should work in favor of a Democratic nominee here.

Proposed Challenger: Leesburg Mayor Kristen C. Umstattd. Umstattd, like several other candidates I'm going to propose in this section, combines the utilitarianism of picking a mayor from within the district like PC3 with the demographic angle of picking someone that isn't a white male. She's well-liked, she's a woman, she's a mayor from within the district so she'll bring out the big Leesburg electorate, and she comes from a blue stronghold within the territory.

District 16

Background: This one might be the toughest out of all these. I'm basing my view that it could be gettable on the urban-mayor strategy, but Martinsville, the blue urban center of the district, isn't really that big. It's blue, but it isn't big. And it's surrounded by red. Parts of Henry and Pittsylvania Counties make up the remainder of the district, which means the Sixteenth is purple at best, and probably leans red. To help give you an idea, Republican incumbent Donald Merricks drew over 14,000 voters in 2011...and the race was uncontested. So this one's an uphill climb.

Don Merricks. Sounds like John Merrick, like from The Elephant Man...
but that isn't funny, so here's a picture of goofy Batman instead. Ha! Ha!

Proposed Challenger: But I think Martinsville mayor Kim Adkins can do it! Pretty much the same idea as above with Umstattd, Adkins brings an urban constituency, bona fide Democratic and policymaking credentials, and the ability to be the local face of an emergent Democratic coalition.

District 26

Background: The incumbent here is Tony Wilt. Tony's another guy who was inexplicably not challenged by the Democrats in 2011, but his territory can't have been the reason. It's not an easy district for a Democrat, but it's not so difficult as to render a challenge pointless. While surrounding Rockingham County is red, the major urban center of Harrisonburg is blue. You know what I'm about to say and what I'm about to propose here, so let's just go for it.

Wilt has made love to a thousand different tax cuts.
Put another way, he's fucked a thousand welfare programs.

Proposed Challenger: Richard Baugh, the mayor of Harrisonburg. Yes, his name does sound like a rich guy barfing. We all have our little crosses to bear.

District 62

Background: Oh now this one, this one we really have a shot at. Aside from the (of course) blue urban center of Hopewell, which is half-in, half-out of this district, the rest of the district is made up of part of a red county (Chesterfield, which isn't that red) and part of a blue county (Henrico, which isn't all that blue.) It's a purple district, with a blue urban center to push it over the top. So who's my candidate of choice?

Proposed Challenger: Christina J. Luman-Bailey, the mayor of Hopewell! Because duh.

District 76

Background: Suffolk, the largest city (by geographic area) in Virginia, is so big on paper that it pretty much looks like a county. And that's because it used to be one, and then all the cities in that county decided to become one big mega-city instead. I don't know, it's weird. But this new franken-city is part of four different state House districts. One of them, the Sixty-Fourth, we've already discussed. The Seventy-Seventh has been sending its current incumbent Democrat to the House since 1994. The Eightieth is also blue. But this one has been occupied by incumbent Republican Chris Jones since 1998, and I think it's time for a change.

"With our powers combined, we become...consolidated into one political and economic
entity, saving taxpayers thousands of dollars on shared police, fire, and emergency services."

Here's the thing. District 76 is made up entirely of blue territory. Suffolk and neighboring Chesapeake (another enormous city) are both reliably, if not that strongly, Democratic. I don't know why Chris Jones wasn't challenged in 2011, but he wasn't. Let's not make that mistake again, Virginia Democrats.

Proposed Challenger: Nope, no mayor this time. This time it's the city council member for the Sleepy Hole (yeah, I know) district of Suffolk, Robert C. Barclay IV. RCB4 is about as white-bread Virginia as they come, but he's the best candidate I can find in the Seventy-Sixth. (Maybe this is why the Democrats haven't been trying that hard to knock off the Republican incumbent. They just don't have much of a bench down this part of the state.)

Incredibly, "The Legends of Sleepy Hole" is not an Ichabod Crane-themed porno.

District 78

Background: Same again. D78 is just a little chunk of Chesapeake. No other counties or cities. Just Chesapeake. And Chesapeake is blue. Let's go get it.

Proposed Challenger: We'll do that successfully with Ella Ward, a popular, long-serving city council member in Chesapeake who has survived more than her share of GOP wave elections, and who provides the “emergent Democratic coalition” narrative with yet another facet: a black woman. Now Dr. Ward did just lose a Congressional race by about 15 points, but that was a Congressional race. This is smaller, more manageable, and very doable (blue-able?).

District 81

Background: Winning in Virginia Beach districts will be an important indicator of how the Democrats will do statewide in some of these tight races. The politics of Virginia Beach are exemplary of a new sort of urban politic. We are, at this point, moving inexorably toward a situation in which nearly all American cities vote Democratic. Most American cities already do. Of those that don't, most are in an odd, uncomfortable middle place, a purple place, in which they can't be relied upon to go either way, and are sort of dragging their feet reluctantly into a new left-of-center era. Virginia Beach, as evidenced by how it's tended to vote in national elections the last few cycles, is turning blue. But as evidenced by how it usually votes in local and state races, it really doesn't want to.

Can we convince Virginia Beach Dude to vote Democrat?
(By the way, when I did a Google Image search for "beach bum," the first like eighty pages
were girls' asses in bikinis, plus a couple pictures of Hugh Jackman for some reason.)

The Eighty-First will be a good test of the Democrats' ability to finally break through that. The district has a chunk of Virginia Beach, which is a sort of blue-wishing-it-was-red city, and a chunk of Chesapeake, which is just a blue city. Any way you slice it, it's going to be a hard-fought race if the Dems contest it. Again, the Dems didn't contest this one last year, so we have no actual electoral history of this particular district map to draw from, but how do you put the party over the top?

Proposed Challenger: By giving those undecided Virginia Beach voters a reason to come our way. Their heads tell them to vote Democrat. Their hearts want to stay Republican. All they need is a push, and that push comes in the form of Democratic Virginia Beach city council member Barbara Henley. She's not a big scary progressive. She's white, which unfortunately still matters pretty nakedly and obviously to her constituency (she was one of the few Democrats to be elected to the council this time around, and a lot of people think that was because her Republican opponent was black.) She's a woman, and a woman who's well-liked in her constituency. I think she's the key to success here.

I honestly didn't think we had any Democratic
candidates that looked like this anymore.

District 83

Background: This is another Virginia Beach district. It's half Virginia Beach, half Norfolk. But while Norfolk is dark-blue Democratic, the part of Virginia Beach we're dealing with here, Bayside, is much more conservative. This will be a purple race, and what's more, there is some regional aggravation.

Conservative elements in Virginia Beach, particularly Bayside conservatives, have long used Norfolk as a pariah. Every time there's a serious attempt to bring light-rail to the city, for example, or any other regional project key to the Hampton Roads area, Virginia Beach Republicans will paint it as another example of their city being asked to bail out Norfolk. That's faulty reasoning, of course. What's actually happening is that Norfolk is building vital regional infrastructure in the hope that it will inspire its neighbors to join in. And many of them do. But without Virginia Beach, it's hard to make it work. It would be like—for you Bay Area readers—trying to have BART without any cooperation from San Francisco. And that would be a crime.

It certainly does not, Batman With Purple Gloves And A Colt M1911. It certainly does not.

So those are the regional tensions at work here. Virginia Beach thinks Norfolk is constantly spending beyond its means and then asking for help from its neighbors. Norfolk thinks Virginia Beach is refusing to play ball and help make the region stronger and more effective economically. Obviously, as a progressive, I agree with Norfolk, but that's beside the point. The point is that the candidate is going to have to come from one of these two places. A Bayside Democrat would all but seal the win, because he or she would neuter the anti-Norfolk GOP attacks, but are there any strong Bayside Democrats?

Proposed Challenger: Nope. There aren't. At least none that I could dig up. If you find one, let me know, Bayside Dems. In the meantime, I vote for Paul D. Fraim, the mayor of Norfolk. He'll need to move to the East Side of the city, but there's just nobody else to get. Once again, perhaps this is why the Dems haven't been contesting any of these races.

"I was fraimed, I tell ya! I was friggin' fraimed! Probably by a dirty rat!"
Okay, I'm sorry for that joke. That isn't funny at all.

District 88

Background: Another district with a vital blue urban center, another race uncontested in 2011 by the Democrats. I get it, guys, some of these dudes are longer-term incumbents who haven't lost in awhile, but these were new district maps! Didn't you even think to try? Sure, Fredericksburg isn't a huge city. And sure, it's surrounded by red in this district. Fellas, you gotta get aggressive if you want the damn statehouse back!

Proposed Challenger: Mary Katherine Greenlaw. She's the mayor of Fredericksburg. Make it happen, Goddammit.

Greenlaw. That's what Green Lantern enforces.
These puns are getting completely unacceptable.

District 91

Background: This one right here? This shit's unforgivable. The Ninety-First District is a fuckin' gimme for the Dems. It consists of about half of the city of Hampton, and all of the city of Poquoson. Oh, and a tiny slice of York County. York County is red, but there's barely any of it in this district, so ignore it. Now Poquoson, this is a red city. Went for Romney 5,312 to 1,679. Hampton, on the other hand, went for Obama. 51,733 to 19,193. Now I know this ain't scientific or anything, but the population density of Hampton is pretty well split down the middle. So cut Hampton's numbers in half and add them to Poquoson.

Even if you round down for Obama and up for Romney, you still get a 27,545-14,909 edge for Obama. Hell, you can do the same thing for the 2012 Senate race if you want, you'll come up with Kaine, the Democrat, leading Allen, the Republican, by a margin of 27,379-14,860. Any way you look at it, to win this state House district, Romney would have needed to make up between 12,519 and 12,636 votes from D91's slice of York County. Let's meet in the middle and call it 12,578.

Here's the problem with that. In 2012, Romney only won the whole of York County by about 6,000 votes. And in the little chunk of the county that's in D91, there are only about 5,000 voters. You begin to see my point about the blueness of this district, I think.

Proposed Challenger: Hampton mayor Molly Joseph Ward. And if they don't like it in Poquoson and York County, fuck 'em. Let 'em riot. We're Sonic fuckin' Death Monkey.

District 94

Background: Incumbent Republican David Yancey grabbed this seat pretty handily, winning 60-40 in 2011. Leaving aside that it was still part of a Republican wave cycle, you also have to look at the circumstances. The seat was Republican-held, so Yancey had a little of that aroma of incumbency. Further, his challenger was just some dude who did little to distinguish himself as someone worthy of voters' handing over a district to a different party.

Proposed Challenger: McKinley Price! You might recall that I mentioned the Mayor of Newport News as a possible candidate for the Ninety-Third District seat, but I shied away because I wasn't sure he lived there. I guess I'm still not sure if he does, which means I'm also not sure if he lives in the Ninety-Fourth. Or even the Ninety-Fifth, while you're at it.

But there's a pretty good chance that he does live in the D94, and if he doesn't, he should move there and run for this seat. Yancey's a one-term nobody, and Price is a popular black mayor of 100% of Yancey's constituents. He's an independent, but he'll caucus with the Dems. And keep in mind that Newport News voted for Obama 65-35 in 2012. Same for Tim Kaine. There's just no damn way it should be sending Republicans to the statehouse.

Why the Virginia House of Delegates Matters:

Put simply, because Virginia is light blue and getting bluer, but its representation in next session's House is almost totally Republican. That's unacceptable. The state has voted for Obama twice now. Both of its Senators are Democrats. And really, with the exception of the last 15 years or so, it's been a more Democratic state. The pieces of a Democratic majority in Virginia are still there if we're willing to pick them up. But we have to take over the legislature, and we have to take it strongly enough that we don't lose it.

Now sure, we want to be careful how we do this. We don't want to make big, unsustainable gains now and then turn the chamber right back over in time for the 2020 redistricting. But if we can make strong gains over the next couple of elections—remember, both houses are up in 2015—and also make those gains solid and sustainable, we can keep that majority intact long enough to make it to the gerrymander year. About $30M should function to pick up these profiled seats and to protect what we already have. And if we were completely successful in that mission? Well, we'd find ourselves saying hello to the slimmest little 51-49 majority in the Virginia House of Delegates.

The Party of One Man vs. The Party of One Mission

Here's the thing, though. There's got to be an explanation for why the Democrats have become so uncompetitive in these elections, and I think I might have it. It's not very comforting. I think it's that they're off-year elections. It's hard enough to get Democratic voters to come out for midterms. I think it's a byproduct of the different styles of messaging. Republicans sell their voters on a message of HOLY SHIT ALL THE GAY BLACK JEWISH MUSLIMS ARE COMING TO KILL YOUR GRANDMOTHER WITH SOCIALISM. As a result, the GOP faithful are really much more about a party than a particular candidate.

Think about it. For them, it's a movement, a way of life. This is how they're saving their families and their nation. They'll come out for any election. They didn't care about George W. Bush. Most of them didn't actually even like him. They didn't really like McCain or Romney either. They liked Bob Dole well enough, I guess, but he wasn't some messianic figure. Other than Reagan, they've really never had anybody like that, and even their affection for him was as much about the movement he spawned as it was about the man himself.

Democrats, on the other hand, sell their voters on a message of transcendence and hope, and those messages are centered around one person. It's not just the Obama thing. It's how we packaged Kerry, too. It wasn't how we packaged Gore, but on the other hand, we didn't really package Gore as anything. We had no coherent message around Gore (but hey, he still won the election.) It's very much how Clinton sold himself, although in those days you couldn't be quite so touchy-feely-new-agey. It's how we sold Carter. It's how we tried to sell McGovern. It's how we sold Kennedy. It's how we sold Roosevelt. This is what we do.

But when we do that, we're selling one candidate. You get a huge movement centered around a candidate, it's pretty hard to get that same level of excitement out there for, “Oh, by the way, what about Barack Obama's super-good buddies? Can you come vote for them too?” It shouldn't be harder, but it just is. And if it's tough to get Democratic voters out for a midterm, with the media entertainment complex in full swing, you can imagine that it's even harder to get them to care about some random November Tuesday in the middle of a year that, for once in their Goddamn lives, wasn't supposed to have any elections.

Most of us only have to wade through a major election every two years. In Virginia, there's a major election every single year. Presidential in 2012. House of Delegates and Gubernatorial in 2013. Midterm in 2014. General Assembly in 2015. Presidential in 2016. Shit never ends. If we want these folks to come out, if we want them to care, we have to make them come out and care. We can't sell them the apocalypse culture. That's not what we have to sell, and when we do, wouldn't you know it, it always surrounds one particular human being. One enemy. Just as we sell our voters on one Presidential candidate, if we're going to rally them against an apocalyptic threat, it's going to be one oppositional figure, like George W. Bush.

Our troops go to war FOR a person or AGAINST a person. They don't do ideological battle over a way of life. And if we're going to expect them to come out in midterms, let alone random off-year elections, we're going to have to deliver compelling candidates. We're going to have to have Barack Obamas in every House district, with Obama-level ground games spending a lot of money turning out the voters on election day. We have the numbers in Virginia, just like we have the numbers all over the nation. We have to find a way to bring them out. Barack Obama found a way in 2008, and he found it again in 2012. It's our job in Virginia in 2013.

Bustin' out a little Bat-campaign strategy right here.

Up next: An update on 2013's elections!

The Virginia House of Delegates, Part Two

Aaaaaaaaand we're back, with the second round of races for Virginia's 2013 election for the House of Delegates. Strap on and strap in for some more Blue the Nation.

District 14

Incumbent: Danny Marshall III.

This isn't Danny Marshall III. But it is Kevin Kline in a publicity shot
for Wild Wild West, in which he portrayed a U.S. Marshal. And let me
just say that while the Republican Party is awful, Wild Wild West
was--and is--even worse for America.

Why he's weak: This is a weird one, because nobody ran against Danny last time out. But I'm honestly not quite sure why. There are a good solid dependable 12,000 Democratic votes in Danville. That's about how many Danville voters pulled the lever for Barack Obama and Mark Warner in 2008, and they came out again in similar numbers for Obama and Tim Kaine in 2012. To put that in perspective, that number is higher than the number of people who voted for Danny Marshall III in 2009, when he won by about a 2-1 margin.

Why he's strong: He doesn't really seem to be, except that the Democrats haven't had anybody legitimate to run against him. He's basically never been tested in serious electoral combat.

Who can beat him: Danville Mayor Sherman Saunders. I'm frankly shocked that Saunders hasn't run for this seat before now. He's quite popular in his city, which, as noted, is very blue. He's probably the best way the Democrats could be sure to bring out those 12,000 Obama/Warner/Kaine voters instead of the tiny trickle who turn out for the off-year legislative elections. Get Saunders to run, and I'd almost be willing to say it's a can't-lose proposition. I'd say his presence in the race pretty much guarantees at least 10,000 Democratic votes and 5,000 Republican votes.

Additionally, he was for years a fixture in Pittsylvania County, part of which is in this district, through Pittsylvania Community Action. And while Pittsylvania and Henry Counties are both conservative, their most populous centers aren't in the district. Out of those two partial rural counties, does Danny Marshall III draw 5,000 more voters than Sherman Saunders does in an off-year election? I don't think he does. I don't think he can.

Hold up hold up hold up. You're going to name a place Pittsylvania...
borrowing the name of a major city in Pennsylvania...and also borrowing
the name of the actual Pennsylvania...and we're in Virginia
somehow? Me and George are both confused by this.

Price Tag: This shouldn't even be that expensive. I'll actually give Saunders a pass on heavy fundraising here. Thanks to Danville, he can get by with $150,000, which shouldn't be difficult to get at all.

District 21

Incumbent: Ronald Villanueva

Pictured: Something way cooler than Ronald Villanueva.

Why he's weak: Look at his two elections to the House. Yes, he won both, and yes, the first was against a Democratic incumbent. Acknowledged. You know how many votes he defeated incumbent Robert Mathieson by? 14. Yeah. Fourteen votes. And oh man, I hope there are fifteen Democrats in the Twenty-First who feel like dogshit for forgetting to go out and vote in 2009. And then, in 2011, against a no-name Democratic challenger who raised basically no money to his $350K, he won by about 1600 votes. That's better than 14, but still pretty weak sauce given the conditions. And keep in mind, both of these elections were very much during the Republican wave cycle of 2009-2011.

"He lost by how many? Oh man. I think I'm going to just neglect to tell anybody that me and my 14
friends skipped the whole voting thing and went straight to the Victory Barbecue in my backyard."

Why he's strong: Redistricting broadened his district. I haven't seen the data his colleagues looked at when they did that, but I assume they feel it makes his seat safer. I have my doubts.

Who can beat him: Bobby Mathieson. Bobby lost by fourteen votes in 2009. Bobby's currently a U.S. Marshal for Virginia's Eastern District. Come back to politics, Bobby. Leave the Marshaling to someone who gives a damn about stuff like that. (I'm not sure what a Marshal even is. It sounds like an old-timey law enforcement officer, but this ain't the Wild Wild West.)

And we're back.

Price Tag: Seriously, though, Mathieson is a better campaigner, a better fundraiser, and a better politician than Villanueva. And the district is not red. It went slightly blue in the national elections in 2012, in fact. Oh, also in 2008. He lost in 2009 because of the GOP wave. He won't lose in 2013. Give the boy a million bucks and watch the fireworks.

District 64

Incumbent: Rick Morris.

Why he's weak: This is basically the same situation as the Twenty-First. A GOP challenger picked this seat off in the 2009-2011 Republican wave cycle, but it's not a red district. It's true that it's been redistricted to make it purple rather than the solid blue it once was, but Democrat Bill Barlow can get this one back if he wants it back.

Pictured: Bill Barlow, in my imagination.

Why he's strong: Morris won his first election a lot more handily than Villanueva did. Like 10.6% handily. The district's been redrawn to be a lot more of a toss-up than it used to be.

Who can beat him: I'd say, again, go with the guy who got robbed in the first place. Barlow's more than able to take this seat back. It'll take money and effort and work, but I say go for it. However, the old fella's getting on in age, and it's possible he's not out for revenge. It's just as possible his party wants someone else to get involved. If either of these is the case, I vote for James P. Councill III, the current mayor of Franklin, an independent city that votes reliably, strongly Democratic.

My reasoning is similar to the Sherman Saunders situation. If you're looking for a way to make sure a few extra blue votes head to the polls in these off-year elections, it sure can't hurt to have your candidate be the mayor of a bunch of them. Now, granted, Franklin isn't going to be the largest voting bloc in the district, but you also figure a few more of them come out to vote (in 2012, half of them did) if it's their popular mayor—from a popular local political family—running for office. I'm not as bullish on JC3 locking up this race simply by being in it, not the way I'm bullish on Saunders, but I think he's the best man for the job.

Price Tag: A million bucks.

District 87

Incumbent: David Ramadan

Can't come up with any inoffensive Ramadan jokes, so here's this instead.

Why he's weak: So remember how Bobby Mathieson lost to Ronald Villanueva by 14 votes? This isn't quite that bad, but David Ramadan (great name, by the way) defeated Mike Kondratick (credit where it's due, also a pretty good name) by a grand whopping total of 51 votes. You think your vote doesn't count? Let this be a lesson: Between D87 and D21, 65 votes were all that stood between the Virginia Democratic Party and a chance to avoid its worst electoral performance in history.

There's a reason for the weak performance: the Eighty-Seventh is a blue district! Both of the counties from which it draws territory are Obama/Warner/Kaine counties. And not by a little. Loudoun County in particular is home to some very active and boisterous progressives. I recommend Loudoun Progress.

Also, and I want to put this as delicately as I can...David Ramadan was born in Beirut. His last name is Ramadan, as in the Muslim holiday. The state under discussion is Virginia. The counties in question are overwhelmingly white. I'm just going to say I think he might be vulnerable to a primary challenge from within his own party.

Why he's strong: Nope. They didn't even give him any cool committees.

Who can beat him: Anybody. Run Kondratick again and he'll win, but you can probably run anybody here.

Pictured: One of several viable Democratic candidates mulling a run. And you know
he's serious because he's not making any puns about graveyards or corpses or anything.

Price Tag: Million bucks.

District 93

Incumbent: Michael Watson

Why he's weak: This was one of several Democratic seats that the GOP snatched in 2011. Some of them, they got because redistricting made them redder seats, but some of them, the ones I've been highlighting here, they just got because it was a wave year. This is another one of those. Watson defeated incumbent Democrat Robin Abbott by 3.6%, just 573 votes. Abbott was a first-term Delegate and Watson outraised her by a good $200K. The GOP wave did the rest. Watson now finds himself in basically the same position as Abbott was in last time: first-term incumbent, running against what is likely to be an oppositional wave election.

It sucks when you crash in the middle of a wave.

Why he's strong: Not really seeing it, to be honest. This is another bluer district that the Republicans just kind of snagged in 2011. I don't think they'll hold it in 2013. When you look at the Ninety-Third, you see that it has clear population centers in Williamsburg and a slice of Newport News. Those are both cities, and very blue ones at that. In a district that saw about 16,000 votes cast for its Delegate seat last time around, you're going to see a clear Democratic voting bloc coming from those places.

Who can beat him: Here I'd go, again, with a mayor. Either McKinley Price, of Newport News—technically an independent but quite clearly progressive—or Clyde Haulman, of Williamsburg. My preference would be Price, as he's younger and more dynamic, but I'm not sure he actually lives in the Ninety-Third, so I'll go with Haulman. Haulman's no slouch, and his presence on the ballot could be sure to bring out the fullest possible force of the Williamsburg electorate.

Price Tag: All together now...one million dollars.

Up next: ...more of this!

The Virginia House of Delegates

It's 71 Virginians, you asshole!

What's Going On?

Oh, those wacky Virginians. Like the New Jerseyans, they decided to get all jazzy and do off-year elections. Their Senate only holds elections every four years, so they won't be up until 2015, but the lower house, the Delegates, go every two. All 100 seats in the House of Delegates will be up in 2013. This will be an interesting early indicator of where things are at with the public view of Obama's second term, and the Democrats in general. Virginia is—and this is still weird to me—a swing state of sorts. In fact, it's gone blue the last couple Presidential elections, even as its statewide politics tend to lag behind that leftward movement.

As a purplish off-year-election state, Virginia can tell us a little bit (not a lot, but a little bit) about where Americans' heads are at with regard to Obama and the Dems. In 2007, for example, the GOP lead in the House of Delegates dropped from 60-40 to 56-44. More importantly, the Dems went into the election down 23-17 in the state Senate and came out the other side with a 21-19 majority. These weren't massive swings, but in a state that was still, at that time, pretty red, they were simultaneously reflections of 2006's national anti-GOP wave and harbingers of 2008's national hope-and-change-and-Democrats wave.

2009, on the other hand, was not so friendly to the Democrats. By late 2009, you'll recall, there was already a lot of intense anger directed at the President and his Congressional allies over health care reform and other barely-left-of-center initiatives like the toothless financial regulation bill. As they're wont to do, the conservative Republican entertainment complex had whipped the easily-swayed masses into a froth and frenzy over various fabrications and lies. Painting the least progressive President since Coolidge and Hoover (seriously, I'm saying that and I'm prepared to defend it) as a socialist, they scared the bejesus out of Americans too busy—or perhaps too lazy—to do their own research.

Pictured: About half of the American electorate.

Virginians got caught up in that too, of course. Heading into the election, the Dems were down 55-45 in the House of Delegates. They took a beating and came out of it down 61-39. They hadn't done that poorly since the first Bush Presidency. But things only got worse. 2009 was a warning of things to come in 2010, to be sure, but the Virginia electorate wasn't finished punishing local Democrats for centrist national policies they had nothing to do with. By 2011, the Democratic brand was still tarnished both in Virginia and nationwide. You'll recall that in late 2011, it was still considered plausible that Barack Obama could lose his bid for re-election, and it was all but certain that the Dems would lose the Senate, or at least fall into a 50-50 deadlock, with control decided by the Vice President.

"Ladies. Ladies. Ladies. I got it covered."

Virginia reflected that national mood quite well, even if it didn't predict what happened nationally the following year. How could it have? Virginia Republicans didn't make it their mission in life to show their asses in public at every opportunity. No Todd Akins, no Richard Mourdocks, no Michele Bachmanns in these races. And they racked up a 68-32 advantage. You can be forgiven for feeling like that looks insurmountable, because...yikes. 36 seats.

Literally, it has not been this bad for the Dems in the House of Delegates since...well, basically since the Civil War. Yeah. Since we were basically a completely different party. In the history of the modern, post-Dixie Democratic Party, it's never been this bad for us in Virginia. (Things didn't go quite so horribly in the state Senate, as we only dropped from a 22-20 advantage to a 20-20 tie, with control of the chamber going to the Republicans due to their possession of the Lt. Governor position.)

Give Me Back My Family!

I want this chamber back. It was ours not so very long ago, but, to be honest, that was a different Virginia Democratic Party. That was a party that had been coasting for decades on the last vestiges of Dixiecrat power, nostalgia, influence, and incumbency. It had not yet become what so many Southern Democratic parties are becoming, diverse coalitions that finally reflect what the national party decided to become years ago and spent years evolving into. And now that the real Democratic Party has come to Virginia...we're getting massacred there, just like everywhere else down South. But the Republicans can't win the way they've been winning forever.

Sooner or later, the new Democratic coalition will dethrone them almost everywhere. Virginia is probably going to be one of the first states where that happens. Let's start building it now. Hell, let's just take it this year. There are 19 seats we could get. Yeah, it's a long shot, but if we don't net 12 at least in 2013, I call that a failure.

A couple of notes on strategy...

There are a couple of stratagems I've been thinking about with regard to Virginia. One of them, and this will become quite apparent throughout this entry, is focusing on fresh faces—or, in the case of Mary Sue Terry, just a face that hasn't popped up in this particular arena before. The Dems probably could recapture some of these seats by just trotting out the same white guy who lost in 2011 or 2009, but would it be an enduring victory? We want seats that can survive. We build those kinds of victories by using new candidates where possible, and by using candidates that reflect the changing face of the Democratic coalition. And where do we find these candidates?

Going back to the baseball analogy I've used occasionally throughout the short life of this blog, we can often find these candidates by calling them up from the minor leagues. That's why, in this entry, I'll be recommending that the Virginia Democrats draft up 11 mayors and three city council members from some of the major urban areas in the state. Not only do they represent fresh ideas and fresh policy in the House, but they also represent the shifting demographics of the new Democratic coalition.

My suggested candidate for the Third District.

But as a strategy, that pretty much runs its course by the end of primary season. The second strategic point I've been thinking about is one that's more general election focused, and this is how we run against the Republican Party of Virginia. The GOP in this state has controlled the agenda and the narrative for what seems like an eternity now. Even before they officially took control of the legislature and so many of the statewide offices, the general thinking in the politicosphere was moving rightward. How do we take it back?

I think Medicaid can be the issue. Virginia hasn't ruled out the Obamacare Medicaid expansion yet, but it is considered to be leaning against it. That's a decision that is made not by Virginia's Congressional delegation, but by its governor and its state legislature. And that means it can and should be a campaign issue in 2013. Hundreds of thousands of Virginians will not be able to get Medicaid because of the Virginia Republican Party's politicization of the issue.

And make no mistake, it's baldly political. The expansion comes almost entirely from federal money, and even though the federal share eventually tapers down to only 90%, that's still a massive increase in federal coverage. Virginia Democrats should absolutely make an issue of this, and it should be framed as Republicans cutting Medicaid. Because essentially, that's what they're doing.

Vulnerable Democrat Seats

Well...that's the “good” news. There basically aren't any. The Dems have been so thrashed (and their districts gerrymandered into oblivion) that the GOP is looking at a serious case of diminishing returns. I really can't see how any of the currently Democratic seats could go red short of retirements. So far none, on either side of the aisle, have been announced. So take that, Republicans! We're not gonna lose any seats, because we've already lost every seat possible! Yaaaaaaaay...

"Ha, ha, ha! Aaaaaalll part of the plan...*coughs blood*..."

Vulnerable Republican Seats

District 2

Incumbent: Mark Dudenhefer. (It's a pretty awesome name.)

New shit has come to light. Get ready to be privy to all the new shit.

Why he's weak: Well, for starters, he didn't win by that much last time around. 12.4% looks big, but not when you take some of the other numbers into account. For starters, that 12.4% only represents 1,260 votes. There were barely 10,000 ballots cast in the race. It's one of the effects of an off-year election, particularly in a small, less important district. Although the Second has a slice of solid blue Prince William County, it's mostly made up of light-red Stafford County. But Stafford only went for Romney by a few thousand votes. And it was even less red in the 2012 Senate race, although it did ultimately go for George Allen.

Furthermore, Dudenhefer has not been particularly noteworthy as a Delegate. He's in his first term, he doesn't have the sweet committee assignments, and he's a pretty run-of-the-mill Republican. His legislation has been unremarkable.

"And if even if he's a lazy Delegate--and the Dudenhefer was most certainly that. Quite possibly the laziest in the Virginia House of Delegates, which would place him high in the running for laziest worldwide. But sometimes there's a Delegate...sometimes there's a Delegate...Aw. Lost my train of thought here."

Why he's strong: Well, he's a veteran. I mean a veteran of the military. That plays well in this area (in most areas, really.) He'll be running in a district that, while not solid red, is definitely not purple or blue. And he seems to have a pretty good mind for localizing his politics. A hallmark of his first election campaign for the seat was his ability to talk about what his potential constituents wanted to hear him talk about. And even though he was wrong on a lot of it (his commitment to a stupid highway widening project, for example), that kind of thing plays well. He's probably a somewhat better campaigner than he is a policymaker.

Get used to this Big Lebowski bit, because I'm not letting it go.

Who can beat him: Dudenhefer's 2011 opponent, Esteban Garces, was probably too progressive and too brown for a district both centrist and 72.8% white. On the other hand, he performed pretty well. In a very tough cycle for Democrats, he made the race interesting and came within 1300 votes of victory. Sure, percentage-wise, that's a lot of votes, but what if he'd benefited from a stronger get-out-the-vote effort? Perhaps more important today, what if he'd been running on the heels of a major national vindication of the Democratic message and brand?

"You got a date with destiny Wednesday baby!"

The 2012 election narrative is that, against all odds and in what once seemed like impossible conditions, the Democrats prevailed across the board. The narrative also holds that they achieved this by assembling a strong coalition, demographically diverse and sociopolitically emergent. With stronger backing from Democrats and their allies, Garces can bring that narrative to the Second District next year.

"That's just, like, your opinion, man."

Price Tag: Guess how much money Garces spent on his campaign last year. Go ahead, guess. Got your guess ready? Okay, now here's the answer: about $45,000. Now of course that's fine if you're running for mayor of Topeka, KS, but this is grown-up politics. Dudenhefer (who, I'm sure, did not call his fundraisers Dudensessions for Dudenhefer's Dudes, but he should have) raised over $133,000. You're not gonna win a lot of campaigns like that. The Dudenmeister can be expected to raise 200K for his second go-round. We need to rustle up at least twice that amount for Esteban—or, indeed, for whoever challenges him.

"Far out, man."

District 9

Incumbent: Charles Poindexter.

Pictured: Charles Poindexter, probably.

Why he's weak: Other than 2011, he really hasn't had to run against a serious opponent in these Delegate races. 2011 pitted him against his first strong challenger, Ward Armstrong. Ward was also an incumbent, but redistricting had moved him from the Tenth to the Sixteenth, so he moved to the Ninth instead. 40% of the new Ninth District (Patrick and Henry Counties, specifically, and yes, it's funny that those two counties are next to each other) was formerly part of Armstrong's Tenth District, so he figured he had a decent shot.

Why he's strong: Ward was right that he had a decent shot. He only lost by 5.4% of the vote, which comes to 1,349 votes in raw numbers. Unfortunately, he was missing the key blue constituency of his old district, the city and county of Martinsville, which has been cleverly buried in the strongly red Sixteenth District. And that's going to continue to be the problem for any Democrat running in the Ninth. Those 1500 votes that will put a Democrat over the top in this district will have to be scraped and scrounged for, because they're not coming from any reliably blue place.

Troublingly, Armstrong actually outraised Poindexter in 2011, about $1.3M to $1M, and he still couldn't quite close the deal. But take a look at where the money came from. Poindexter got almost $600K from the Virginia GOP. How much did Armstrong get from the Virginia Democrats? About a quarter of that. What that illuminates is that the Republicans made this race a priority.

Even though they didn't give Poindexter enough money to give him a bigger war chest than his opponent had, they brought the fullness of their campaign efforts to bear in this district. Fun fact: while the Democrats spent some $4 million on 47 different candidates in the 2011 election, the GOP contributed to exactly three candidates. They didn't even spend a full million, and fully 76% of their spending went to Poindexter. They gave a damn about this race.

Who can beat him: You could go back to Ward, but I think a different direction is better. Personally I like Mary Sue Terry, and I like her for several reasons. First, she was a well-liked two-term Attorney General of the state. That was quite awhile ago by now, and right after that she lost her gubernatorial bid to George Allen (who just lost his Senate bid to Democrat Tim Kaine, so circle of life), but I actually think the time she's spent out of politics is a good thing.

Which leads to my second reason: the Hillary effect. People love women politicians, especially when they haven't heard from them in awhile. For some reason we tend to romanticize our women politicians, especially the ones we see as having blazed a trail. Hillary is often pointed to as the first (and, until Michelle Obama, pretty much only) modern First Lady to take a truly active role in her husband's politics; Mary Sue Terry, by the same token, was the first woman elected to statewide office in Virginia, the second woman to serve as a state Attorney General anywhere in the country, and the first elected official in Virginia to earn more than one million votes in a single non-federal election. Yeah. She basically invented women in politics in Virginia (and was pretty instrumental in creating a role for women in national politics, too.)

Third reason builds on from the second one: Mary Sue Terry has a hell of a lot of cachet with Virginian women. She's made her life's mission, post-politics, to get more women into politics. She started a super PAC called The Farm Team to help Democratic women get elected. Terry can bring 2012's pro-woman wave home to Virginia in 2013. There aren't enough women in Virginia politics. If Mary Sue really wants to see more, she oughtta jump back into the game herself. Fourth reason builds on from the third one: that super PAC. Mary Sue still knows how to fundraise, she has a statewide network already built up, and she's got connections even outside the state.

Pictured: The Farm Team's slate of 2012 candidates.

Fifth and finally, electing Mary Sue to this seat positions her perfectly to run for state Senate in 2015. In 2011, in Senate District 20, Republican Bill Stanley beat Democrat Roscoe Reynolds by 644 votes. Mary Sue could mount a very serious challenge to that in the Twentieth, for all the reasons she could mount a successful challenge in the Ninth House district.

She does have some weaknesses. She lost that gubernatorial election because she was a pretty true-blue Democrat. She didn't gussy herself up like a Southern belle; she ran as a strong woman. (Granted, that might actually play well today; see Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota.) She wasn't married and still isn't, and has been rumored to be gay (didn't stop Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin.) She was in favor of gun control. The religious right gave her a good beating as well. But ultimately, most observers said she lost the election because she didn't campaign that hard. She owned a 29-point lead early in the campaign cycle, and probably figured she could coast to victory on her Attorney General incumbency and her massive early advantage. She won't make that mistake if we draft her to run for this seat.

Price Tag: $2M minimum, preferably more like $2.5M or $3M.

District 12

Incumbent: Joseph Yost.

Why he's weak: Yost won in an open-seat race by 3.4%, just 522 total votes. That's pretty much all I need to say.

Why he's strong: The district, in terms of national elections, is pretty red, and other than going right back to Don Langrehr, the guy Yost beat in 2011, the Dems don't have much of a bench here (kind of a recurring theme with the Virginia Democrats.)

Who can beat him: I like Anthony Flaccavento here. The reason is that he just got his ass beaten in the race for Virginia's Ninth Congressional seat, by 22.4% and almost 70,000 votes. What's that? Sounds like a weird reason? Here's the thing: it got Flaccavento--an organic farmer new to politics--a bunch of name recognition. Furthermore, the broader Ninth Congressional District is a lot redder than the Twelfth State House District. Flaccavento built up a pretty enthusiastic base of support and some pretty impressive fundraising for a political newcomer.

His opponent, Morgan Griffith, outspent him about $550K to about $350K. While that's a significant gap, Flaccavento's ability to bring in that level of support without any prior experience or network speaks well of him, especially when Yost, the incumbent here in the Twelfth, raised about the same amount of money in 2011 as Flaccavento did in 2012. Also, Flaccavento still has about fifty grand in his war chest.

One big potential roadblock here is that Flaccavento seems to want to leapfrog straight to bigger and better things than the statehouse. He's already talking about running for the Ninth again in 2014, as obviously ill-advised as that seems. If the Dems can convince him to start with something smaller and more manageable, I think he can take Yost on. He's much more charming and charismatic than Yost, and he's got the same ability to fundraise.

"Oh hi. Didn't see you there. You know, politics is a lot like organic
onion farming. Sometimes it's red, and sometimes it's white, but it can
always be delicious if we just believe. And also if we don't use pesticides."

Another big potential roadblock: Flaccavento doesn't live in the Twelfth. But guys, the Dems have ZERO bench in Giles County, and as near as I can tell, you don't have to have lived in a district for any specific amount of time. So someone get Flaccavento to buy a second home in Giles County, put the organic farm in a buddy's name, and run in the Twelfth. Come on. Let's make it happen. This seat is gettable.

Price Tag: $1M

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