Every year is an election year, and as this fall’s key contests in Virginia loom ever closer, Daily Kos is excited to announce our second set of endorsements for the elections taking place this November. It may be an odd-numbered year, but these are races progressives cannot afford to overlook.
These endorsements are for five great Democrats running for the Virginia state House and state Senate, where Republicans are just a hair’s breadth away in each chamber from losing majority control—as well as power over the state’s redistricting process in 2021.
Daily Kos is pleased to support this diverse slate of Democratic candidates for the Virginia General Assembly this fall:
This November, Virginia Democrats have a landmark opportunity to win complete control of government in the commonwealth for the first time in a quarter-century, needing to flip just two seats each in the House and Senate. But Republicans, who’ve enjoyed control of at least one legislative chamber here for over 20 years, will not go quietly into the minority.
Please donate $1 to each of these five amazing Democrats to turn Virginia blue this year!
Our second slate of endorsements features candidates running to oust some of the most-entrenched, best-funded Republicans in Virginia politics. With no statewide race on the ballot to help drive turnout, the fight to win these seats will be difficult and expensive in these off-off-year elections. But with so much at stake—gun safety, LGBTQ equality, redistricting, and more—Democrats nationwide cannot sit these elections out.
Clint Jenkins is running in House District 76 to take on Del. Chris Jones, whose position as chair of the powerful Appropriations Committee has helped him amass the biggest war chest in the entire House of Delegates. While less moneyed than Jones, Jenkins is a longtime community leader and local party activist, an Army veteran, and a small-business owner whose ties to the district are helping him outwork the incumbent. Jones is going all-in on trying to dupe voters into thinking he was a proponent of the state’s recent Medicaid expansion; he only voted in favor of it after opposing it for years, and rather than him being the “deciding vote,” as he’s claimed in at least one ad, the bill expanding the program passed the House with a comfortable margin.
Karen Mallard is running to oust Del. Glenn Davis in House District 84. Mallard is a lifelong educator and the child of a coal-mining family in Southwest Virginia. While she was in college, she taught her father to read. This 32-year teacher is fiercely protective of students and an ardent proponent of gun safety measures. After the massacre in Parkland, Florida, Mallard sought to demonstrate her solidarity with student activists by publicly destroying the AR-15 rifle she and her husband owned. Davis, who’s occupied this seat since 2014, ardently opposed Medicaid expansion and continues to oppose reproductive rights and gun safety.
Alex Askew is running to replace previous Daily Kos endorsee and current state Senate candidate Cheryl Turpin in House District 85. As a state House staffer, he helped craft legislation to expand Medicaid and increase the availability of affordable housing. He was born and raised in Virginia Beach, and, as a lifelong resident of this coastal community, he is an ardent proponent of improving environmental protections and combating climate change. His opponent, Rocky Holcomb, is trying to retake this seat (he lost it to Turpin in 2017), and even in his short tenure in the legislature, he managed to accrue a staunchly conservative record, including opposing Medicaid expansion and trying to strip Virginians of coverage for pre-existing conditions. Oh, and Holcombe has also been known to consort with at least one hate group leader.
Ghazala Hashmi is running to send Sen. Glen Sturtevant packing in one of the Virginia GOP’s most desperate races of the cycle. Since Sturtevant’s narrow win in 2015, Senate District 10 has trended increasingly Democratic, but Sturtevant hasn’t been behaving like a legislator representing ever-bluer turf. Rather, he’s been a steadfast opponent of reproductive rights and gun safety measures, and he voted against expanding Medicaid just last year. Hashmi, on the other hand, is a strong proponent of women’s reproductive health care and a supporter of commonsense gun safety reforms. Even better, electing this longtime educator to the legislature would mark a historic and overdue first: Hashmi would be the first Muslim woman in the state Legislature.
Debra Rodman earned Daily Kos’ endorsement two years ago when she ran for—and won—a seat in the House, and we’re pleased to support her in her run for Senate District 12 as well. Not only is Rodman a great progressive who fights for reproductive rights, paid family and medical leave, and corporate accountability (she was among the first candidates to pledge to refuse donations from Virginia’s powerful utility companies), but her opponent is a special kind of odious. Sen. Siobhan Dunnavant opposes the right of women to access reproductive healthcare and is an obstetrician-gynecologist. Not only has this person, licensed to practice medicine, tried to defund programs providing underinsured women access to IUDs, but she also, inaccurately, resorted to describing them as “abortifacients.”
Virginia Democrats need your help. There’s no race at the top of the ticket to drive turnout, so each of these candidates has to get out the vote on their own. Can you send them $1 apiece?
Maintaining Virginia’s progressive trajectory depends on electing candidates such as Jenkins, Mallard, Askew, Hashmi, and Rodman to the Legislature and establishing Democratic majorities in both chambers this fall. Flipping just two seats in each chamber may seem simple on paper, but Republicans will go to every extreme to ensure their party keeps these seats as they struggle to maintain their grip on power and control over the next round of redistricting.
The victories of these Democrats will ensure progressive majorities in the Legislature after this fall—and a blue Virginia for years to come.
We can stop Republican attacks on voting rights, reproductive rights, and LGBTQ rights. Give $1 to each of these five Democrats to turn Virginia blue and usher in a new progressive era!