In less than a month, citizens will decide the fate of gubernatorial and legislative elections in five states: Louisiana, Mississippi, Kentucky, New Jersey, and Virginia. These states have off-year elections, and the deadline to register to vote ranges from immediately to next week. All are critical elections, but in none of these states are the stakes higher than in Virginia.
Virginia has a Democratic governor who will serve until 2021, but the GOP holds the slimmest majority in the both the House of Delegates and the state Senate. When I say slim, I mean the Dems are just one person shy of winning the majority in each chamber. The candidates REALLY need everyone’s support—not just because the focus has largely been on the top-tier races, but because the GOP is once again turning to Russia for help.
A Senate report released last week based on private interviews and new emails showed that the NRA acted as a "foreign asset" for Russia. The 18-month probe by the Senate Finance Committee revealed that the NRA underwrote political access for Russian nationals Maria Butina and Alexander Torshin, despite their ties to the Kremlin. The Republicans on the FEC blocked all investigations on the NRA’s financial ties to Russia.
Coincidentally, the NRA ”just made their largest contribution ever” to a political fund, which happens to be Virginia House Majority Leader Todd Gilbert’s cleverly-named Majority Leader PAC. The Republican Party happily took the $200,000, which will be distributed among Republican candidates—in no small part because they are terrified of Virginia having fair districts drawn next cycle.
I’ve focused before on several House of Delegates races, like this one starring a GOP candidate who forgot to turn his paperwork in on time. But to avoid an extremely long piece, I’ve decided to focus on the Virginia state Senate. Virginia has a bipartisan resource called the Virginia Public Access Project, which offers a rundown of all races in the state, if you want to learn about the other chamber. Click here for the House of Delegate races.
Back to the state Senate: There are eight competitive races in that chamber, and I’ll focus on each in order of likelihood to flip.
Click on a candidate’s name to learn more about them, and please volunteer or donate. We can totally win this!
John Bell, Senate District 13: Open seat/leans blue. This retired United States Air Force officer has raised a lot of money, and his Northern Virginia district is likeliest to flip. Bell has endorsements from every major Democrat in Virginia. Additionally, Bell’s challenger, Geary Higgins, is a raging racist.
The only thing that bothers me about this race is that it is emblematic of the Democratic machine. People love to throw money and endorsements at a sure winner instead of the people who need more attention, such as the other candidates on this list.
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Ghazali Hashmi, Senate District 10: Challenger/competitive. Dr. Ghazali Hashmi is an unapologetic progressive in a district that has trended Democratic in recent years. Her big issues are health care, education, and stopping gun violence. Gov. Ralph Northam and Hillary Clinton won this district by 10 points in 2016, and Hashmi’s Republican incumbent opponent, Glen Sturtevant, barely beat out the Democratic challenger four years ago. Sturtevant’s big issue is—no joke here—to keep Richmond’s whitest schools white. He fiercely campaigns to “save our schools” from integration.
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Cheryl Turpin, Senate District 7: Open seat/competitive. Turpin was a high school science teacher for three decades before flipping a Republican seat in the House of Delegates. Her opponent, Jen Kiggans, was a frothing-at-the-mouth Trumpite—rather odd for a district trending blue. On her website, the “Issues” section equated abortion to “infanticide,” and she screamed about “socialism” on Fox News. Kiggans immediately changed her tune (and her website) once she won the primary—then she ranted against the ERA and health care, claiming that she’s always been about “affordable and quality women’s healthcare.”
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Debra Rodman, Senate District 12: Challenger/competitive. Debra Rodman is another educator turned legislator. This is a district that Republicans desperately want to hold on to. Unfortunately, her opponent, Dr. Siobhan Dunnavant, was already in hot water for voting against Medicaid expansion—and then she made things even worse. Dunnavant is currently under investigation by federal authorities for using her patients’ confidential information to solicit contributions and volunteers for her campaign.
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Missy Smasal, Senate District 8: Challenger/leans red. Speaking of underhanded tricks, how’s this for shady: The incumbent, investment realtor Bill DeSteph, is a former councilman in Virginia Beach, a city that is infamous for corrupt politicians who thought nothing of signing a $3 million lease to rent a building owned by DeSteph. City officials wanted to move the voter registrar’s office and set up an absentee voting location in this building, which is not accessible by public transportation. People protested when they found out. DeSteph’s challenger is business owner Missy Smasal, who is also a Navy veteran and community activist. Smasal is hitting DeSteph hard for announcing he was attending an NRA event right after the Virginia Beach shooting in May.
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Amanda Pohl, Senate District 11: Challenger/leans red. You’ve likely read about the incumbent, Amanda Chase. She’s so bad she got kicked out of her county’s Republican Party. She flipped out on a black cop at the Capitol for not letting her park illegally, and then accused the police of being infiltrated by “Democratic operatives.” She also threatened to “shoot down” gun reform groups. She wears a gun during legislative sessions. It’s not an exaggeration to say that her constituents are pondering whether she is mentally unfit to hold office.
Chase’s challenger, Amanda Pohl, has raised a significant amount of money and her support has rapidly risen in the polls due to constituents growing tired of Chase’s behavior. I’m quite irritated with the Virginia Democratic leadership for not stepping up more to support Pohl in this winnable race. It will fall on us.
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Amy Laufer, Senate District 17: Challenger/leans red. Laufer is a dream candidate. She has a great backstory: She grew up a rural dairy farmer, and was the first in her family to go to college. She was a middle school teacher who later served on the school board, she founded a successful organization to support women candidates, and she even served in the Peace Corps.
Her opponent, Bryce Reeves, is not a dream: He has championed bills that allow insurance companies to price gouge. He is quite the jerk, too. He made national news for negatively invoking a Democratic state senator’s sexual orientation as proof that he was trying to “radically change Virginia.”
Reeves is running scared, and has recently taken to making appearances on hate radio, where he delivers unhinged rants against Laufer. Although this a GOP-leaning district, Democrat Tim Kaine crushed his competition by more than 7 points in 2018. We can win this.
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Qasim Rashid, Senate District 28: Challenger/leans red. Although this is a GOP-leaning district, if you look at the trajectory over time, it’s becoming bluer every day! Tim Kaine only lost this district by 1%. If anyone can take it, activist Qasim Rashid can. Yes, that Qasim Rashid. His passionate writing has led to him being well-known outside of Virginia. He currently has amassed 285,000 Twitter followers. His opponent is a racist ass, as you can see by this video.
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Herb Jones, Senate District 3: Challenger/strong red. If the GOP was sane, then incumbent Tommy Norment wouldn’t stand a chance. Some of his friends and clients were convicted pedophiles, so Norment introduced a bill to curb punishment for pedophiles. Worse, he refuses to consider bills on the environment, health care, or stopping gun violence, yet he found time to make things easier for pedophiles. There’s seemingly no end to his corruption. His challenger, Herb Jones, meanwhile, served three terms as county treasurer for New Kent, all while still serving in the U.S. Army Reserves. He served in the federal government as an operations officer in Afghanistan, and currently runs a successful cloud-computing company.
Herb Jones got most of his money from small donations. Tommy Norment gets most of his money from two of the most evil companies in Virginia: Dominion Power and Altria (formerly Phillip Morris). They donate almost exclusively to Republicans, and you will see their names on the top donor list for all of the Republican candidates mentioned here.
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Again, these candidates really need your help. Flipping Virginia to the trifecta would be huge, and Republicans and the NRA are well aware of this fact. The deadline to register to vote is next Tuesday, Oct. 15. We are also rapidly approaching the deadline for donations. Please, pick one of these folks and throw a few dollars their way.
Nothing will send Trump over the edge more than losing Virginia, and nothing will make the GOP freak out more than realizing they threw everything away in support of this unstable tyrant.
Speaking of which, the Virginia state seal reads “Sic Semper Tyrannis.” Virginia really has an opportunity to practice its motto in less than four weeks, and deliver a resounding message to the tyrant in neighboring Washington, D.C.