Dr. Stephen Farnsworth: Jen Kiggans, Abigail Spanberger, and Virginia's Midterm Results
On this episode, Thomas and Michael are joined by Dr. Stephen Farnsworth of the University of Mary Washington to discuss the Virginia races in the 2022 midterms--including takeaways for Republicans and Democrats, as well as the landscape moving forward.
Episode Transcript
Michael Pope
This episode of Pod Virginia.
Thomas Bowman
Luria is out. Spanberger stays in.
Michael Pope
So what are we learning from the voters?
Thomas Bowman
We're joined by Stephen Farnsworth at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg.
Stephen Farnsworth
There's nothing like losing over and over again, to convince a party to think about things differently.
Michael Pope
You are listening to Pod Virginia stick around. I'm Michael Pope.
Thomas Bowman
I'm Thomas Bowman.
Michael Pope
And this is Pod Virginia, your favorite podcast about Virginia politics. And we've got a great show for you today.
Thomas Bowman
We're joined by a friend of the podcast who's returning to the show. He's the Director of the Center for Leadership and Media at the University of Mary Washington. That's in Fredericksburg, Virginia, now smack in the middle of the Virginia seventh district. Steven Farnsworth. Thank you so much for joining us.
Stephen Farnsworth
Glad to be here.
Michael Pope
All right, so we've got to start with Republican Jen Kiggans unseating incumbent Congresswoman Elaine Luria, down in Virginia Beach. During her victory speech, she made a point of saying something nice about her opponent.
Sen. Jen Kiggans
I'd like to especially thank my opponent, Elaine Luria, who fought a hard-fought battle in this race. And although we may differ in our political ideologies, we certainly share a love for our Navy and a love for our country.
Michael Pope
So the chants you heard, that's the crowd chanting USA, USA in reference to the Navy service of Democratic Congresswoman Elaine Luria. So that was a nice touch; you don't actually often see that sort of thing. And there's nothing that says candidates have to say something nice about their opponents in the environment that we're in, and you actually might expect them not to do something like that. Dr. Farnsworth, what did we make of this upset here with Republican Jen Kiggans unseating the two-term Democratic incumbent?
Stephen Farnsworth
Well, it really is extraordinary to hear of one party being gracious about the other. So it's certainly a good sign, at least for Virginia this district was redrawn after the census of 2020 to create a more Republican-friendly district than the old district two, and so what here was the possibility of what could have been, I think, for Republicans around the country if they had found more Republican nominees who were like Congresswoman-elect Kiggans not entirely pro-Trump, not an election denier. There would have been a much more successful night for Republicans. I mean, imagine if there had been a Pennsylvania version and a GA version of Congresswoman-elect Kiggans as the Republican nominees in those states. It might be a very different national conversation right now.
Thomas Bowman
Yeah, you know, Michael, frankly, this result doesn't tell me very much because this Luria's new district was supposed to be something around to the tune of like our plus six, but Kiggans won 52 to Elaine Luria's 48. And what that really tells me is that veterans there and it's a veteran-heavy district veterans there, we're still pissed about Afghanistan. It doesn't really tell me anything else about the rest of the election or anything macro. And certainly, Glenn Youngkin can didn't have a great night this. Was this was the bare minimum pickup that RPV was expected to get this is the gimme district. So they got that. And even then, it was very close.
Michael Pope
I'm curious about the influence of the January 6 committee. So Luria, of course, is a member of the January 6 committee, and she leaned into it during the campaign in a way that you did not see a lot of Democrats leaning into the January 6 issue threats to democracy issue. Quite the way that Luria did. She was taking a gamble. And she was pretty explicit on the campaign trail. She knew she was taking a gamble. And she wanted to take the gamble. She felt like it was the most important work of her career. And if she'd lost, so be it. This is something that she wanted to do. Dr. Farnsworth, do you think that we can read her loss as a reflection of what voters think about the January 6 committee? Or is it just a matter of this district becoming an R plus six district, and it didn't matter? What Luria said about January 6 committee?
Stephen Farnsworth
Well, I think really that when you look at elections like this, you really have to recognize that there are these significant headwinds for any Democrat when there's a Democrat in the White House in a midterm election, with Biden's approval numbers in the mid-40s. That's a difficult environment for a Democrat to win in a district that is more Republican than democratic. I don't see this as particularly impacting the January 6 committee that is impacting this election all that much. I think it's much more of a case of an unfavorable district and an unfavorable political climate. And that's just more than a very competent and public-spirited Democrat can sustain.
Thomas Bowman
Yeah, Michael, if anything, I think that the district appreciated her work on the January 6 committee. She was able to narrow down an R plus six districts and a first-year presidential midterm, which is never good for the incumbent's party. She was able to narrow that from R plus six to R plus three. So she cut it in half. That's not expected. That's not something we would expect to see. At the very first presidential midterm. In history. This is the best showing for a president's party in a midterm since 2002. That was George Bush after 9/11. So what this really, like, says to me, though, is that for the next ten years, Virginia two could flip back and forth. It's an unsustainable prospect for both the Republican Party of Virginia and the Democratic Party of Virginia. They're gonna have to spend a lot of money trying to flip this seat back and forth cycle after cycle, and Elaine Luria, if she wants to run in the next presidential year, she can probably win. And that is what she knows whether or not she wants to as a different question, but like that's what I'm looking at here is that there is going to be a lot of instability for the voters in the Second District of Virginia now that Elaine Luria has gone.
Michael Pope
Yeah, I hear what you're saying. This congressional district has more volatility than any of the Virginia congressional districts in terms of, you know, being a swing district, throwing out the incumbent, putting somebody new in, and also having former people run for to make a comeback. You know, Scott Taylor tried to make a comeback here. Dr. Farnsworth, do you think that Luria might try to make a comeback?
Stephen Farnsworth
I think that's an interesting question. I think that politicians get burned by defeats, and sometimes they decide they don't want to do that, again. They just say there's something else that they can do in public life. Certainly, the Biden administration would be wise to bring Luria on in some fashion. Somebody very experienced somebody very competent, could be of great use to the Biden administration. Come January.
Thomas Bowman
Yeah, it's all set. The stage is now set for Ralph Northam to come back if he ever wants to run for Virginia two.
Michael Pope
You heard it here. First, folks, Ralph Northam, making a comeback in Virginia second. Moving our attention to the seventh congressional district up in Northern Virginia. This is the other big race that everyone was watching on election night, where we saw incumbent Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger beat back a challenge from Republican Yesli Vega. In her victory speech, Spanberger said this.
Abigail Spanberger
Tonight it is my belief in our great republic, the nation formed on the idea of liberty and freedom not bound by historical boundaries or the stories of kings and queens. But the idea of a nation is founded on a common belief in principles. A great nation, Benjamin Franklin celebrated it as a republic, if you can keep it.
Michael Pope
A republic if you can keep it, you know, when Spanberger said that, I kind of thought she was implicit implicitly talking about threats to democracy, right? So she's not explicitly talking about the January 6 committee, but that was the undercurrent of what I was hearing her say there. Dr. Farnsworth, what did you make of Spanberger being able to beat back this challenge from Yesli Vega?
Stephen Farnsworth
Well, I think that one of the things that really was notable about the Spanberger campaign and it did it in Fredericksburg. The University of Mary Washington is in the seventh. It's an interstate 95 strip that includes Prince William Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania, Stafford, and so on. She worked this district very, very hard. She didn't just go into the blue area. She went into every read part of the seventh, doing public events, doing community meetings, and really listening to a lot of voters who might never vote for her. So you really do see with the Spanberger campaign, and this is part I think of her MO as a politician. She consistently is one of the hardest workers I've seen in public life in terms of these public events in these campaigns. It's really striking just how often she is out there. The Yes Vega campaign, I think got off on the wrong foot from day one with the conversation about abortion. And then, of course, the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v Wade gave Spanberger two different ways to bring abortion into this conversation. And if there's one thing Democrats needed to do in 2022, in Virginia, and nationally, was changed the conversation, if the conversation was simply about bad economic times and economic insecurity that's tailor-made for a Republican tidal wave. But the Supreme Court decision created an opportunity for Democrats to do the one thing they needed, above all, and that changed the subject.
Thomas Bowman
Yeah, I'd point out, Michael, that everywhere abortion was on the ballot, abortion rights won. And so because Spanberger was able to make the selection for her sufficiently about defending abortion rights, that goes in part to how the story of how she wins on election night. Also, shout out to all the hard-working volunteers on that campaign, who pushed and chased down absentee ballots because it was the early vote and Prince William County that finally put Spanberger over the edge at the end of the night.
Michael Pope
Yeah, you know, one thing I thought was interesting about the Spanberger campaign is that she really leaned into abortion rights, and that energized Democrats, I think a lot of Democrats were wary about leaning into abortion rights. Or maybe they thought it wasn't a salient issue, or maybe they thought it wasn't going to land with voters, or whatever they were thinking. But Spanberger, her campaign, I think, really showed that that is a winning issue, and it wins with voters is Dr. Farnsworth, is that what we can read from the election returns here?
Stephen Farnsworth
I think that's absolutely true. I think a cautious candidate in this environment on the Democratic side would not have done as well, you. But in the case of Spanberger, would have been political malpractice not to regularly run attack ads, quoting Yesli Vega when she said about abortion.
Michael Pope
Yeah, and you know, one other thing that strikes me about this race. Thomas, I don't know about you. But I really would have loved to have seen a televised debate between Abigail Spanberger and Yesli Vega moderated by the Steven Farnsworth University of Mary Washington.
Thomas Bowman
Well, I appreciate the fan service that you're doing there, Michael. But the reality is if you're Abigail Spanberger, and you're in this position, you don't want to do a debate, not because you're afraid of your opponent, but because you're not interested in elevating the conspiracy theories, and the outright lies that this person is going to say, Yes Vega has lost. And that's prima fascia evidence that Spanberger took the right approach there.
Michael Pope
I would disagree with that. I totally hear what you're saying. I understand the logic of what you're saying. I disagree with that. I think that,
Thomas Bowman
But you disagree as a reporter like the rest of the world aren't reporters.
Michael Pope
I disagree as a reporter, but that's the lens. I look at the world. But I mean, also, just as a citizen who has an interest in the stake of the health of our democracy, I think I would have been better if they had a debate with each other.
Thomas Bowman
Okay. Well, as a political adviser, I would not. I would have advised her to not do that debate.
Stephen Farnsworth
Let the record reflect that Spanberger said yes to the Mary Washington debate, and Vega did not.
Michael Pope
Duly noted, Dr. F.
Stephen Farnsworth
But there's one other point to make on this question. One of the things that I find most discouraging about the political environment right now is that it is so focused on character assassination because so much of the campaign discourse focuses on attack ads and nasty flyers and saying the worst possible thing you can think of about the other side. One of the things that's wonderful about debates is the opportunity for the candidates to spend at least that period of time, an hour or 90 minutes, in an issue-focused conversation. That's a significant improvement in terms of giving people a sense of what these candidates would do. If they were elected. And I'm not convinced that this necessarily helps or hurts any candidate. I think the people who spend the most time paying attention to what's in the debate beyond journalists, like yourself, are the voters who have already made up their minds for one party or the other. But any chance, in my view, to have a conversation about issues and what these people would do if elected is a net plus in our civic society, particularly given the volume of attack ads and nastiness that we see in all the other venues of campaign communication?
Thomas Bowman
Oh, sure. I agree as a citizen of the United States, but at the same time, that's not the game. The political system we're in is 50-plus one, right? 50% plus one is the game. So like, the goal, then is to do what it takes to get yourself to 50 plus one. And sometimes that means not debating.
Michael Pope
What you know what's interesting about the Vega campaign, is that we really saw a different side of the Republican Party. In fact, that's something we've really seen this election cycle is a different kind of Republican candidates, not your father's Republican Party. Certainly not your grandfather's Republican party. Yesli Vega had Salvadoran ancestry, Hung Cao, of course, was Vietnamese, of where I live, and Karina Lipsman has Ukrainian ancestry. And so we really saw a different kind of Republican candidate this year. So on election night, I ran into delegate Alfonso Lopez, who is a Democrat from Arlington, and a dedicated listener of Pod Virginia. And he told me this year's crop of Republican candidates really presented a challenge to Democrats.
Alfonso Lopez
What they're able to do by finally recruiting diverse candidates in the Republican Party is, you know, open up that community for the Republican Party at the same time, the vast majority of Latinos are still voting for Democrats. And the fact somehow that there's been this huge sea change in the nation or in Virginia, I think, is false.
Michael Pope
Steven Farnsworth has the Republican Party kind of moved on from being the party of a bunch of old white males.
Stephen Farnsworth
Well, absolutely, there's nothing like a series of losses to convince you that you need to do something different. Remember, the Republicans were shut out of statewide elections during the last several election cycles, and their sweep of the statewide offices in 2021 was a direct result of a designation that you wanted to have a party that was inclusive, that it was not just simply series of white males at the top of the ticket, but a much more out racially and ethnically diverse collection of elected officials that we were offering up. What's also true is that the party was so tired of losing that they really designed the nomination system for governor in such a way as to make sure that the most Trumpian choice that the Republicans could have nominated mate was not going to be that nominee. There's nothing like losing over and over again to convince a party to think about things differently.
Thomas Bowman
That's 100%, right? Or different, right. And, Michael, you bring up a really interesting observation because Asian men and Hispanic men are trending Republican. That's a really big problem for Democratic coalitions around the country; I would point to Florida, where Miami Dade County was a like D plus 20 D plus 30. The seat was just a couple of years ago. And it voted for Republicans by, like, almost 10 points. Rubio won solidly DeSantis won by 20 points. That is not supposed to happen as far as what Democrats believe the narrative is, and it goes to show that, like many Democrats are not necessarily actually on the same page with immigrant community voters here, and they are going to have to figure out they're gonna have to reckon with that and figure out what that's all about. I would point out that the same demographics, many Asian men and many Hispanic men are also evangelical voters. And that nexus there would be just kind of the next step in religious voters leaving the Democratic Party. So for whatever that's worth, there's going to be a lot of opportunity to parse through that data and come to conclusions that we're not able to come to yet, but many of the same demographics are evangelical voters.
Michael Pope
Yeah, I thought Yesli Vegas was a candidate. He actually had a lot going for it. I mean, clearly at last, so I mean, not a referendum necessarily on the success of these things. But she has Salvadoran ancestry, and she's a woman. And when she's on the campaign trail, and she's talking about immigration issues, she was able to speak to it with a bunch with a lot of nuances that you would never get from an old white guy, like; she had a relative who was a victim of MS 13 crime, she had a relative who was deported by the Obama administration. And when she's on the campaign trail, talking about border security of republican issue, she's able to bring a level of nuance to it, that really worked and you know, a package that also, with someone who is a talented speaker who has charisma, Steven Farnsworth, I think, are we going to be seeing a lot more of Yesli Vega in the future?
Stephen Farnsworth
Well, you know, I think that's true for her. And I think it's also true for Hung Cao. In the 10th. District. I'm not ready to debate between Wexton and Cao in Manassas last month. And once again, we were looking at candidates who were really sort of victimized by the boundaries of the districts that they're running in. Both of these candidates had had a compelling life story, had a biography of public service, that would make them compelling candidates, they just simply might not have been in the right places to run in the end. That's why I think we may very well see more of them in the years to come. It may very well be that the Glenn Youngkin. Having gotten to know these two candidates a bit on the campaign trail might think about administration opportunities.
Michael Pope
Hmm. Well, so we have talked about the influence of abortion rights on voters, and we have talked about the influence of threats to democracy on voters. There's one other issue I want to touch on before we end the podcast, and it's a crime. So Republicans really spotlighted the issue of crime as a major issue of concern this campaign cycle. But Democrats say the debate was missing some key points on election night. I ran into Arlington Commonwealth's attorney, Parisa Tafti. And she said something really interesting, which is that red cities and red states they're leading in the increase in crime, while places like Arlington actually have declining crime rates. In fact, she pointed out there was a recent period of 18 months where there was no murder in Arlington for the entire 18-month period. At the same time, homicide, homicide rates are rising nationwide. This is what you told me.
Parisa Tafti
So it's clearly not the result of not seeking cash bail because we've never once in Arlington since January 1, 2020, asked for cash bail. It's not because we're trying to get treatment for mental health situations. It's not because we're trying to get drug treatment for people who have substance abuse issues. So it's a misleading narrative designed to try to undo the progress that we've made.
Michael Pope
Steven Farnsworth was the debate over crime, the Republican framing of the debate over crime. Was that a misleading narrative?
Stephen Farnsworth
Well, I think that one of the things that you want to do in campaigns is to find something that really gets people emotionally engaged and connected. And the facts in some ways may be beside the point. The data definitely shows what the prosecutor was mentioning here. Violent crime is much more of an issue in red states and blue states much more an issue in those more Republican areas of the country. But the reality is that there is a great deal of fear over crime. And even if the numbers are much, much better than they were 20 years ago, if people are worried about it, you know, you can capitalize on it as a politician. And so I think that you know, this is one of the things that, that I, as a former journalist, always sort of feel badly about in terms of journalism today because there's so few reporters to basically follow up and fact check and correct the lies that campaigns and politicians might have to say, I think that we are in an environment where there's great impunity that can come with deceit because it does pay political dividends. And it is a shame, but the fewer journalists that are out there, the greater the opportunity for politicians to get away with things.
Thomas Bowman
Yeah, Michael, this is an area where Democrats need a better response. It's okay to be afraid of being a victim of a crime. Like I don't want to be a victim of a crime. I don't think you do, either. And there's nothing wrong with Democrats acknowledging that none of us want to be a victim of a crime. Once we do that, then the pivot goes toward, like, why is a crime happening? And in my experience, most of the crime that we're afraid of tends to be crimes of poverty. And so Democrats are trying to advance policies that would reduce crime because they make people give people more money. So when I was a labor union lobbyist, we had an event, a public event once, and we had a, one of our members there gave a speech and in that, in the public comments that they gave this up, I don't need to crawl through your window, because I have this good job. Right. And if it hadn't clicked before, it clicked for me right there. Because right there, I realized, hey, violent crime goes down, when other people make more money, right? And so that's the situation we're in right now is that people are hungry, there's, they need money, they need to pay their bills. And crime goes up because of that because it's a measure of desperation.
Michael Pope
One final question for Steven Farnsworth. We heard a lot of talk about the red wave leading up to the election that clearly we did not see a red wave, what would what kind of phrase or framing would you say, encapsulates the totality of everything that we've learned from these election returns?
Stephen Farnsworth
This was an incumbent-friendly election; above all, very few elected officials ran for re-election last. And most of the ones who did ended up running against another incumbent because of the redistricting. This was an extraordinarily status-quo election. The movement when all the ballots are counted, and all the remaining issues to be resolved, will really put us in a position that's not a lot different from where we were before the election. You're talking about maybe, you know, the outside 10 Republican seats in the house and maybe a net of zero in the Senate. Again, these are preliminary estimates, but they are not going to dramatically change the fundamental nature of American politics where gridlock is the norm, particularly for years three and four of any president. And that dynamic will only add to the anger. That is what is out there. People do want the government to do something. They just can't agree on what the government should be doing.
Thomas Bowman
Alright, well, that's a wonderfully optimistic note to leave it on. Dr. Farnsworth, thank you again for joining us on Pod Virginia.
