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Op-Ed: The Blue Wave Is Still Cresting (Probably)

Rich Meagher | October 24, 2019

Topics: absentee ballots, Amanda Chase, Blue Wave, Commissioner of Revenue, Democratic Party of Virginia, General Assembly, Glen Sturtevant, kirk cox, Mark J. Matney, Sheila Bynum-Coleman, Siobhan Dunnavant, virginia election

As Virginia’s next election approaches, statewide trends are showing favor to Democratic candidates. Will they be able to gain control of the General Assembly?

There’s a pivotal election in Virginia next month (as usual). At stake: control of the state legislature, with Democrats trying to regain control of both houses for the first time in two decades.

This week, two seemingly unrelated news stories were published, both of which signal something important about this election.

First, the Virginia Mercury’s Mason Adams reported on a local race for an obscure county office in Christiansburg, a rural southwest part of the state. The GOP candidate for Washington County’s Commissioner of Revenue is proudly calling himself a “Trump Republican” — but what Trump has to do with collecting revenue in Southwest Virginia is hard to tell. 

Second, VCU’s Capital News Service reported on a significant increase in student absentee ballots compared to the last full General Assembly election in 2015.

What’s the takeaway? I think the Blue Wave is still real.

Democrats in Virginia have enjoyed strong wins in the last two elections, both in sweeping victories for statewide races and the House of Delegates in 2017, and strong showings in Congressional elections in 2018. This Blue Wave is part of a national trend that favors Democratic Party candidates all across the nation.

Predictions in politics are difficult, even foolhardy, to make. But after a tumultuous few months in Virginia politics, the same trends that made the Blue Wave possible seem to be reasserting dominance in VA.

Republicans were hopeful that the Governor’s blackface scandal would damage his party’s momentum. But the continued nationalization of local politics — again, a county Commissioner of Revenue candidate is calling himself a Trump guy — may be overwhelming any static from the Governor’s troubles.

Photo via Dr. Mark J. Matney for Commissioner of Revenue/Facebook

The race for the 10th Virginia Senate district is a good example. In a debate last week, Republican incumbent Glen Sturtevant made a big deal out of his opponent criticizing Northam before later taking campaign money from Northam’s PAC. I suspect that nobody cares; Northam’s approval rating is again approaching 50%.

On the other hand, Sturtevant earlier this year waded into a local school board zoning issue (so much for Republican focus on local control of schools). He distributed flyers titled “Save Our Neighborhood Schools” in a transparent attempt to stir up white resentment, earning a “segregationist” label to boot. This kind of desperate move does not indicate a comfortable front-runner.

Republicans are also hopeful that Virginia’s off-year elections, with no national or statewide races on the ballot, would help GOP candidates this fall; lower turnout tends to favor the demographics of Republican voters, even in a now-solidly-blue state like Virginia. But early trends, like the student absentees noted above, suggest that larger forces may counter the typical Democratic voter falloff. Anti-Trump enthusiasm remains a potent force, and it again could make the difference in 2019.

There are other trends that favor Democrats as well. First, the notoriously-disorganized Virginia Democrats seem more methodical than in previous years. For example, a few candidates in Henrico are sharing offices and resources for their campaigns, a sign that the infrastructure the party has constructed over the last two election cycles is functioning and able to help turnout. The off-cycle elections are again the only game in town, drawing the attention of the national parties and national news media. Maybe most importantly, money is flowing in again from national sources, especially to Democrats.

Of course, these trends may still not help individual Democratic candidates in tough races. Sheila Bynum-Coleman still has a long way to go to knock off the powerful Republican Speaker, Kirk Cox, in HD66. The race between Debra Rodman and Siobhan Dunnavant in SD12 seems like it will go down to the wire. Incumbent Senator Amanda Chase would probably have to start regularly kicking dogs to lose in her red district. (But who knows — based on her track record, anything is possible!) Democrats could end up with a strong majority of statewide votes, and still lose the numbers game for control of the legislature.

Still, the overall feel of this race is familiar. Unless something dramatic happens between now and November — and in Virginia, we can never count that out — the state should be thinking blue.

Note: Op-Eds are contributions from guest writers and do not reflect RVA Magazine editorial policy.

Top Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

Dave Brat’s Former Communications Manager Endorses Spanberger, Rejects Brat’s “Divisiveness”

David Streever | August 10, 2018

Topics: abigail spanberger, Dave Brat, election 2018, exclusive, Midterms, virginia election

At the time, it was Cory Hebert’s dream job. The rising Republican operative, a former field director for Florida Congressman Allen West, had landed a position as then-candidate Dave Brat’s communications director, and he was excited to move to Richmond to work against the powerful House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

“I was fairly conservative,” Hebert admits. He liked Brat’s economic policies, and said his message about Cantor being out of touch resonated with him. Now, he’s a staunch supporter of another insurgent challenger: Democratic-candidate Abigail Spanberger.

“She’s spent so much of her life serving our country,” he says. “That’s what we need, someone who is going to be a public servant.”

His shift, from the right-wing of the Tea Party to support for democratic socialists like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, came in response to the Trump-era and what he calls a hard tilt to the right for his former party.

I was appalled … with what I was being tasked to do

He saw the new policies develop first-hand, as then-candidate Brat increasingly hardened on immigration. After the economics professor began appearing on the “Laura Ingraham Show,” where the two described immigration as a threat to America, it emerged as a wedge issue to use against Cantor. But Hebert says the crucial moment came when he had to write a strong anti-immigration statement with Julia Hahn, a new press secretary and former producer for Ingraham.

“I was appalled, for lack of a better word, with what I was being tasked to do,” Hebert says.

The press secretary, Hahn, was an immigration hardliner who would go on to Breitbart. There she’d write scare stories about “white genocide,” or a future where white Americans are a minority, before following her mentor Steve Bannon into the White House. Looking back, it was a key moment in the fusing of xenophobia and white nationalism with the modern Republican party, according to Rolling Stone political writer Reid Cherlin on an episode of Ira Glass’s “This American Life.”

This American Life producer Zoe Chace zeroed in on one speech in the episode; the same speech that Hebert was appalled to co-write. “Specifically, it was the speech [Brat] gave in Richmond, at the Capitol building, on a day when Congressman Luis Gutiérrez was there for a rally [for immigration reform],” Hebert tells me. Bannon and Breitbart would later point to that as the turning point for Brat, who won the primary by double-digits despite trailing in polls and raising a mere $200,000 to Cantor’s $5.5 million.

Hebert says he supported border security, and still does. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting secure borders,” he says. But, even then, he thought that, “Immigration makes our country stronger. Diversity makes our country stronger. He wasn’t taking a position on national security, but on identity.”

While it was enough to make him quit, it wasn’t enough to make him speak out. Part of that might have been out of professional embarrassment. Hebert says, “It wasn’t ideal to quit ten days before the primary, but I didn’t feel comfortable continuing any longer. It was a moral position.”

Personal experiences, and the national political shift, drove him to the left. “The Republican party itself has moved far to the right, but I’ve also moved to the left,” he says. “That came about after spending time with people from different backgrounds, travelling, and looking deeper at the issues.”

Brat says my blue collar father is going to have to wait for his social security, but we lower taxes on millionaires?

His fiscal views have changed in tandem with his social views. He says, “As a congressman, Dave Brat supported Trump’s tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. Then he turns around and says, “We can’t afford social security, we need to raise the retirement age.””

That hits close to home for Hebert, who says, “I just think about my father, who has worked a blue collar job his whole life. Dave Brat says my father is going to have to wait for his social security checks, but we had money to lower taxes on millionaires?”

He lives in Florida now, but Hebert wants to help Spanberger however he can, even if it means talking about a part of his history he regrets. “It’s just so important for people to come out and support Abigail. I see the division in our country right now, and I see Dave Brat as part of that division. He doesn’t want to work with people.”

“It’s important to me that our country tackles these problems together. I want to see someone go to Congress and tackle these problems, and I think that person is Abigail Spanberger.”

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