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!