Quentin Kidd: Which seven unlucky Democrats lost reelection?
Virginia Democrats lost seven seats in the House of Delegates and Republicans gained control of the Chamber. Where did Democrats lose and what were some contributing factors? We analyze the election results with Dr. Quentin Kidd, a Professor of Political Science at Christopher Newport University.
Michael Pope
I'm Michael Pope.
Thomas Bowman
And I'm Thomas Bowman.
Michael Pope
And this is Transition Virginia, the podcast that's been examining the transition of power in Virginia politics since February of 2020. That was a different kind of transition. Now we're in a transition to Republican power. And part of the reason for that is because Democrats lost seven seats in the House of Delegates. And that's what we are going to talk about today on the podcast, is those seven incumbents who lost, and the districts they lost in. We've got a great guest to talk about these issues. We're joined by Quentin Kidd at Christopher Newport University. Thanks for joining us.
Quentin Kidd
Good to be with you, as always.
Michael Pope
All right, so, because you're in Hampton Roads, let's start there. There were three Hampton Roads area incumbents who lost, Nancy Guy, Alex Askew, Martha Mugler. Let's start with the largest margin of victory, which is Tim Anderson, the Republican, Tim Anderson, besting Nancy Guy with a 2.44% margin of victory. Quentin Kidd, what happened in this race between incumbent Nancy Guy, and her challenger, Tim Anderson?
Quentin Kidd
So I think what happened is is, you know, it snapped back to normal. This district is, geographically, right up against the Chesapeake Bay, it sort of goes from Bayview and the Norfolk City line, all the way to Lynnhaven Inlet. So if you, you know, in the middle of it as the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel, where you drive across to the Eastern Shore, and it's been, traditionally, a Republican district. Chris Stolle held this seat for a long time. And if you remember, in the legislative elections of two years ago, Nancy Guy was able to knock off Chris Stolle by 24 votes, if I remember right, and so she was basically won this seat in a great year for Democratic candidates, and a really tough year for Republicans. She was able to win the seat by 24 votes. And I think what happened this year is basically things went back to normal, in the context of this district, and Tim Anderson was able to take the seat back pretty handily. I think what surprised a lot of people about the race is that, Tim Anderson is Trumpian Trumper, and everybody thought, maybe, that was a liability this year. And at the end of the day, it turned out not to be a liability, because Virginia Beach itself, was sort of riding a Republican wave. Every statewide candidate that won, Glenn Youngkin, Winsome Sears, and Jason Miyares, all have some roots in Virginia Beach. Winsome Sears, when she was in the House of Delegates, part of her district was in Virginia Beach. And so literally, there was this sort of Republican wave. And it really resounded to the benefit of Tim Anderson in this race.
Thomas Bowman
I'm wondering about the fundraising. Tim Anderson, the Republican, raised just under $650,000. That's about a quarter of what the Democrats raised. And that was a story that's going to be repeated throughout all of these elections. Is there anything that we can learn or take away from the fundraising? Did that help the Democrats? Did it hurt the Democrats, as in it didn't matter, or what, if any, are the takeaways on fundraising?
Quentin Kidd
So it certainly didn't hurt the Democrats. It didn't hurt Nancy Guy to have all that money to spend. And anybody listening to us, right now, who is in the Hampton Roads media market, the Norfolk media market, will know where that money was spent. Nancy Guy was on TV, six weeks before the election, and she had to be, that's part of the challenge of a 45 day unrestricted early vote. And she knew that she was in the fight of her life, because she knew that she had only won that seat by 24 votes two years earlier, and all the winds were blowing against her. And so she needed to raise all that money and spend all that money, probably to end up where she ended up. And so it all went on TV, basically.
Michael Pope
So $2 million, is a whole lot of money to raise for an election that you lost. And it's actually the largest amount of money of all of the seven incumbents we'll be talking about today who lost, that's actually the largest amount of money that was raised by any of these incumbents who lost. The second highest dollar amount is also in Virginia Beach. Alex Askew raised $1.8 million and lost to Republican challenger, Karen Greenhalgh, that was a 0.52% margin of victory for the Republican. So that's two Virginia Beach seats. Quentin Kidd, what's going on in Virginia Beach?
Quentin Kidd
These two districts, and there's a third district right below at the 21st district, that Kelley Fowler won reelection, and has been able to hold that seat for quite a while. There are three districts, if you sort of go down the Norfolk, Virginia Beach line, all the way to where the Chesapeake and Virginia Beach line connects, all along the western side of Virginia Beach there, that has become real battleground territory between the two parties. And these are the three districts that Democrats were able to take over the last several election cycles, and now Republicans have taken back two of them. What's going on here is this part of Virginia Beach, is becoming, a sort of, reached an urbanized tipping point. And you know, in urbanized areas, Democrats do better. And this is sort of at an urbanized tipping point where this area of Virginia Beach is really competitive. You can go into South Virginia Beach, southern part of Virginia Beach, and it's less competitive. You can go up North toward Fort Story, it's less competitive, but this part of Virginia Beach, right up against Norfolk line, is really competitive. And so these two districts are stacked on top of each other, and Karen Greenhalgh was able to squeak out a narrow victory over Alex Askew. This district is more friendly to Democrats than the Nancy Guy, Tim Anderson race. And that's why you see the margins as close as they were. Both parties knew that these were going to be competitive races, Democrats knew they were going to have to raise and spend a lot of money if they had a chance to hold on. Of course, in both cases, they didn't hold on. But in both cases, they spent a lot of money trying.
Thomas Bowman
This is one of those races, this, and the next one we'll talk about, are some of the races where I see Glenn Youngkin's coattails really having an effect. Terry McAuliffe's campaign event schedule was pretty light in the Hampton Roads area. And this is a direct result, in my opinion, of that weakness in the state. Alex Askew, and we'll get to her in a minute, Martha Mugler, did not necessarily have to lose. But because of Glenn Youngkin's coattails, and as you said, everybody being on the campaign, every one of the Republican statewides being from her tied to the Hampton Roads area, that these people were just on the bubble, and lost, and broke, especially the Mugler race, broke against the Democrats in a way that I don't think that they really expected to see on election night.
Quentin Kidd
I think you're right, and it's coattails, but it's really long coattails in the sense that, you know, I think what nobody expected is for Republicans to turn out the number of voters that they turned out. I think everyone kind of thought it would be a good night for Democratic turnout, and it was. Democrats turned out, you know, 170,000 more votes than they did four years ago. But I don't think people anticipated that the Republican turnout, and it was those coattails of all those extra Republican voters, who I think we're excited about Glenn Youngkin, and tipped, probably two, or three, or four of these races that we're going to be talking about today, that if turnout had been equal to, or slightly better than it was in 2017, might not have tipped.
Michael Pope
So turning our attention to Virginia House District 91, this is the Martha Mugler seat. It's a really a swing district, if you think about it, because in 2019 is when Mugler won the seat from Gordon Helsel. So here we see it swinging back in the other direction with the victory of A.C. Cordoza there in the Hampton Roads area. This, of all of the races that we're talking about today, this is the smallest margin of victory 1/3 of a percent here. Quentin Kidd, what do we make of A.C. Cordoza winning against Martha Mugler?
Quentin Kidd
I think there are a couple of things to think about in this district. Number one, if you had told me when Gordon Helsel was representing this district, if you had told me that it would ever be a Democratic district, I probably would have sort of laughed at you a little bit, in part because it was always sort of Poquoson York County, sort of further up the eastern side of the peninsula. It didn't take in as much of Hampton as it does now. And it does that, in part, because of that redistricting lawsuit that caused a lot of the House delegates lines in the Hampton Roads area to change. And the lines in this district changed and benefited Democrats. And so Martha Mugler was the beneficiary of that, she was well known in Hampton when she decided to run for House delegates. She was on the school board and it ended up being a, still a competitive district, but but one that marginally benefited Democrats, it looked like, over the last several years, until we get a Black, conservative Republican running, who is able to peel off just enough Black votes, really excited the conservative base, ride the coattails of Glenn Youngkin, and the excitement that Glenn Youngkin generated among rural voters. And you see this district perform, like it has in the past, very blue in the Hampton area, very blue in parts of the area that get close to Newport News, but then very red in the Poquoson and more rural areas. But that very red, those very red areas, turned out lots of votes. And those very blue areas turned out fewer votes than they probably needed to. And you get, as a result, a very marginal, very small win on the part of Republicans. Look, Democrats are going to contest this seat, assuming that redistricting doesn't change the lines drastically, they're going to contest this seat going on. I can't imagine.
Thomas Bowman
Yeah, this is one that the Democratic Party could win back, conceivably, as soon as 2022, if they're on the ballot that year. I was just talking to a friend of mine in Labor, and he mentioned that losing the Mugler race, and the Nancy Guy race, is actually, from their perspective, a strategic victory, because they were not necessarily friendly to some of Labour's more marquee causes. And as a result, Labour did not come out for them. Labor did not knock doors, Labor did not give them money. And so from their perspective, Labor is the make or break quality, if you don't have their support, it's going to be hard to win in these seats.
Quentin Kidd
Yeah, and Labor plays a role in these areas. I mean, I would imagine the highest concentration of organized labor in Virginia is in Hampton Roads, I mean, the shipyard, and all of the shipping industry related labor activities that are, you know, there must be hundreds, if not 1000s of unionized workers that live in the 91st and live in the 83rd. So in very close races, if Labor sits out, then that really can have an impact on what voters learn about you, what they're encouraged to do, or what they're not encouraged to do.
Michael Pope
All right, let's take a break. When we come back, we'll talk about incumbent Democrats in the House who lost seats in Northern Virginia, South Side, and Southwest. But first, this feature from our regular contributor Steve Artley.
And we're back on Transition Virginia, we're talking about the seven House Democrats who lost reelection. Now there was only one incumbent Democrat in Northern Virginia who lost, Delegate Joshua Cole of Fredericksburg. And this was the seat that was held for many years by former Speaker, Bill Howell. Republican Bob Thomas held it for a term, then Joshua Cole held it for a term. Now it's swung back in the other direction, with the victory of Republican Tara Durant. Quentin Kidd, what do we make of incumbent Delegate Joshua Cole losing to Republican challenger Tara Durant?
Quentin Kidd
This is another one of those cases where I think Josh Cole was, essentially, in a borrowed district. This is one of those districts, if you go back to 2017 and 2019, Democrats picked up all of those seats in 2017, because of the backlash against Donald Trump, and then they sort of picked up a few more in 2019, again, a part of the backlash. I call this, what's been going on in Virginia over the last four years, sort of Trump inflation, there was a Trump bubble, Democrats were doing far better than they would naturally do, because Virginia is not a 6, 8, 10 point Democratic state. And what was happening is, some of these districts that were probably slightly Republican districts, or even a little bit more than slightly Republican districts, were going Democratic, because Republican voters were chagrined Democratic voters and moderates were really angry at Trump. And so they were voting in any Democrat they could find a send a message. Josh Cole was one of those. As soon as that Trump inflation bubble bursts, this district, along with several others, suddenly snapped back to their, what I think is their steady state, their normal state, and that is a Republican district. And you see that, I think that sort of big picture, explains what happened here.
Thomas Bowman
Fredericksburg is a city where you can really affect the outcome of the partisan leans of the General Assembly, by how you draw the districts in that town. So Josh Cole's, now Tara Durant's district, will look, potentially, a little different after the new maps from the Supreme Court. And depending on how those look, there's no reason, in my opinion, that Dems couldn't win that area back, or at least AC and Stafford. And the reason I say that, is because you've got so much housing growth in Stafford and those populations are new Americans. And when you have new Americans, they tend to vote Democratic. Josh Cole, as in the current district, was probably, as I said on a previous episode, he was the one I was most concerned about, in Northern Virginia, keeping their seat. And he's the only one in Northern Virginia that lost. Josh Cole was also very progressive compared to the rest of his district. And I think if Dems are able to run a candidate that more matches the tone of the local community there, there's no reason they can't win it back. It's not gone forever. In my opinion, there's no evidence that the momentum is gone. It's had a road bump, and it's gonna be very hard for the Republicans to keep so many of these seats after redistricting, because Northern Virginia is getting two more seats, no matter what they look like.
Quentin Kidd
Just to your point about the Stafford, that Stafford point you made, about all the new housing, that area of the district voted for Cole in an environment where that area grows, or those voters are agitated, angry, mobilized in any greater numbers, then you're right, that could be worth 2% of the vote pretty easily, and the lines drawn just a little bit differently. And to your point, it could look different, just a few short 12 months from now.
Thomas Bowman
You might say it's an area in transition.
Michael Pope
You might say that, you might say that. Okay, turning our attention to Southside. There were two incumbent Democrats out there who lost reelection, Roslyn Tyler and Lashrecse Aird. Let's start with that Roslyn Tyler seat. Now of all the Democratic incumbents who lost, this one is an outlier because Delegate Tyler was first elected in 2005. And it was a Democratic seat before she was there. So, Quentin Kidd, what the heck happened out in Roz Tyler's district where she lost to Otto Wachsmann?
Quentin Kidd
This was the one I was most surprised at. And I think this is the result of the dramatic increase in the number of Republican votes that the Youngkin campaign was able to generate relative to previous gubernatorial elections. And a lot of those, you know, of the 354,000 more Republican votes that were cast this year, as opposed to 2017, the vast majority of them came out of very rural areas and there was all this talk about how white evangelical voters really liked Donald Trump. But Glenn Youngkin, was able to actually increase the evangelical vote for him, relative to the evangelical white, evangelical vote from 2017. And a lot of those just came out a really rural areas, and they were likely voters that had not been voting, they had been sort of hiding in the shadows, for whatever reason, got really excited about Glenn Youngkin, and again, his coattails were able to pull some close races over the line for Republicans, and in this case, knock off a Democrat in a district that had nothing to do with the last four and a half years of Donald Trump, and how that has sort of changed the character of General Assembly races in odd ways that aren't normal. This was literally a good old fashioned one party knocking off another party in a district where it shouldn't have had any chance.
Thomas Bowman
Yeah, this is another race that Democrats conceivably could win back, depending on what the new districts look like. Roz Tyler, elected since 2005, had had a very safe Democratic district, and it got more Republican after the redistricting lawsuit. She was not used to having to run a competitive race. And so enough of the precincts were new to her, that Otto Wachsmann having just ran before, was able to have enough name ID to be competitive. And Tyler had not frankly put in the work in most of that new district. So if you have a candidate that puts in the work, runs hard, there's no reason you can't win it back. But it is always going to be more competitive than it was.
Michael Pope
So also in Southside was, what I would consider this surprise of the evening, which was the defeat of Lashrecse Aird. Now, if you think about all of the lists that everybody put together about House races to watch, or House races that Republicans are targeting, Lashrecse Aird was not on any of those lists, and yet she lost to Republican Kim Taylor, the margin of victory was only 1.55%. So this is a very tight election here. Quentin Kidd, what happened with Delegate Aird losing to Republican Kim Taylor?
Quentin Kidd
I think this is another situation where the rural Republican vote really showed up. If you look at the district on a map, the Petersburg area of the district, deeply blue, and then every other part of the district, which is very rural, deeply red, and that extra 350/40,000 votes that the Youngkin campaign was able to get, over it's 2017, over Republican 2017 numbers, came from these rural areas. And they're just tons and tons of Republican voters that came out of the woodworks to vote in this gubernatorial race. And they overwhelmed for the highly concentrated blue vote out of the urbanized part of the district, which is Petersburg.
Thomas Bowman
Yeah, this was a very surprising result on election night for me too. And Lashrecse, apparently had been telling people she was in trouble, as far back as October, and people did not believe her because, "I'm in trouble in a relatively blue district," is a common fundraising pitch that, at this point, is kind of like crying wolf. And then finally, when the wolf was here, nobody believed her. And I was, like I said, very surprised at that outcome. She had a budding career, and might have run, well she could still run for DP VA chair. She had thought about running for Speaker against Eileen Filler-Corn, there was some kind of maneuvering there. And of course, now, Sam Rasoul just lost his best advocate in his bid to challenge anybody of the Democratic leadership in the House. So this has a lot of impact within the Democratic Caucus itself. And I think Eileen, if she wants to come back as Minority Leader, next session, is kind of probably breathing a sigh of relief.
Michael Pope
Well Delegate Aird was on Transition Virginia, and she was on one of our most popular episodes ever. So if you're listening to this Lashrecse, come back on the podcast and talk about your campaign. We'd love to have you. And speaking of Transition Virginia guests, the next race that we're going to talk about is Chris Hurst who also appeared on Transition Virginia, who lost his race out in the Virginia Tech area to Republican Jason Ballard. Now, this was the largest margin of victory of all the races that we're talking about here. The Republican in this race actually won with the largest margin of victory. It was almost 11%, which is, well, Quentin Kidd, let me ask you. For someone like Chris Hurst, who had all that name recognition, and all that star power going in when he was first elected in 2017, what happened for all of that to fade away, and for him to lose by more than 10 points to Republican Jason Ballard?
Quentin Kidd
I know I sound like a repeated, you know, a record on repeat here, but anything that happened 2017 forward was really an inflationary bubble. Giles County is heavily Republican county, Pulaski County as a heavy Republican county. So the idea that Chris Hurst was sort of in office, and all things being equal, could sort of do a good job, and voters would, you know, would reward him with reelection, just defied the reality of that district. And so once Donald Trump is out of the way, off the scene, where Republicans really don't have to carry the burden of him so much, even if Democrats tried to make them. You see the result. I mean, you see, several of these districts snap back to their, sort of the reality of their pre 17, you know, inflationary existence. And this is a case study in that, I think.
Thomas Bowman
The Hurst loss has been described to me as a self-own or an own goal. And Chris Hurst getting a DUI certainly did not help his chances. And from people who know, they say he did not take his reelection campaign seriously, until it was, clearly, too late. Another factor influencing that race, was external. Democrats lost Campus North for the first time that I can, I don't even know a time when they lost Virginia Tech's Campus North Precinct. That's not something that happens. And so one reason you might ascribe to that is, our gubernatorial nominee, never went there. Never went to Blacksburg, never went out West, and you cannot win an election solely relying on Northern Virginia turnout, I'm glad that theory is dead.
Michael Pope
Okay, so it's time for takeaways here, and putting all these seats together. One thing that occurs to me, looking at all seven of these seats, is that the Democrats, all of these Democrats that we're talking about, all seven of them, raised significantly more money than the Republicans, twice as much, in some cases, three times, four times, five times as much as the Republican. Any thoughts about that? Like, how is it these Republicans, who were running on, essentially, a shoestring budget, were able to beat these Democratic incumbents?
Quentin Kidd
So Democrats knew early, they understood, I guess, not knew, they understood early on, that 45 days unrestricted, early voting, was going to mean that they were gonna have to spend a lot more money. And if you're in a media market, that is sizable at all, it's going to cost a lot more, and you're gonna have to go on TV a lot more. I think Democrats understood that, inherently, a bit earlier than Republicans did. But you also see the expression of incumbency advantage here, and other factors like that. But I think at the end of the day, as the districts are drawn, right now, gerrymandered as they are, Virginia is probably close to a 50/50 House of Delegates state, and we see what we're going to see as a 52/48 House of Delegates, and that is, after a really, really bad year for Democrats, electorally. And so that's the takeaway, essentially. It's costing a lot of money to run in Virginia, and it continued to- it will continue to cost a lot of money to run in Virginia, if we're going to have 45 days unrestricted early voting, because it costs a lot of money to basically do 45 days of get out the vote operation. And that's what costs so much.
Thomas Bowman
Yeah, and by the way, to any candidates or prospective candidates listening, one important takeaway is that money isn't everything. Money certainly makes everything easier. But money alone does not vote, you need people on the doors, running a field operation, you need coordinated messaging, high quality messaging, too, and giving people an affirmative reason to come out and vote for you. A lot of that was not done in this past election cycle. And this is the result, is that people go down. But all is not lost for the Democratic Party in Virginia in the House. This was a map gerrymandered to give Republicans 65 House seats, they didn't come anywhere close. This is most likely been a high water mark for the Republican Party, with turnout being higher than it's been in the last 30 years. But again, two House seats are getting shipped up to Northern Virginia with a redraw of the map, depending on what those look like, there's four or five pickup opportunities right off the bat, that Speaker Gilbert now has to defend against. So this could very well be a one session deal for the Republicans.
Michael Pope
I was about to say, final question. Are we all ready to do this again next year? And the year after that? I mean, we're just heading into a state of perpetual campaigning.
Thomas Bowman
We always were.
Quentin Kidd
Yeah. I mean, in the in the political science world, we call Virginia the permanent employment for political scientist state because there's elections all the time here.
Thomas Bowman
So that's all for this episode, hit us up on social media, or get in touch at transitionvirginia.com. There you can check the transcript for this episode and find links to support the show on Patreon. Special thanks to Emily Cottrell, who transcribes every one of these so they're accessible to everyone.
Michael Pope
Thanks for listening to Transition Virginia. If you like what you heard, give us a five star review. It helps other people find the show. We'll be back next week, so subscribe to the show so you don't miss a single episode.
