Partisan control of Virginia’s state legislature is up for grabs next week, and Democrats claim that if they take the majority of both chambers, it only bodes well for the party on a national level.
Virginia is one of four states to hold off-year elections on Nov. 5 and the only one this year where the majority party of both chambers is held by a narrow margin.
In 2017, Democrats flipped 15 seats in the House of Delegates, leaving Republicans holding 51 seats to the Democrats’ 49 seats. In the Senate, Republicans have a 21-19 seat majority.
“I think Virginia historically has been a pretty good bellwether about what’s going to happen. So, for example, definitely the election of ’09, where Republicans, one year after Obama taking the state for the first time in 44 years,” Virginia Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly told the Washington Examiner. “That was portentous. One year later, the Republicans sweep everything — complete Republican sweep and alarm bells should have been ringing up here.”
Connolly added, “And no question, the ’09 election portended what was going to happen in ’10 and similarly in reverse, the 2017 election told you what was going to happen in the midterms with really a Democratic sweep across the board.”
Democrats have far outraised Republicans’ efforts in the Commonwealth this election cycle, raising $31.8 million so far compared to the GOP’s $21 million, the Washington Post reported.
One of the most contentious and the most expensive races outside of Richmond is between Republican incumbent Sen. Siobhan Dunnavant and her Democratic challenger Debra Rodman.
Rodman has raised over $1 million in cash and in-kind contributions and has $399,000 cash on hand, while Dunnavant raised just $421,000 and has $220,000.
In TV ads that recently aired, Rodman attacked Dunnavant’s ‘A’ rating with the National Rifle Association and vote against a state bump stock ban, and Dunnavant went after Rodman for supporting the controversial third-trimester abortion bill.
Gun control is a leading issue in this year’s election, and Democrats believe that if they control both chambers of the state legislature, they will be able to pass legislation that includes an “assault weapons” ban, universal background checks, restricting handgun purchases to one per month, and a ban on “high capacity” magazines.
“They have been considering gun safety for many years and haven’t been able to get anything out of subcommittee because the subcommittee is pretty hostile to gun safety legislation,” Virginia Democratic Rep. Bobby Scott told the Washington Examiner.
“And so, if there had been a Democratic majority, there’d be a number of bills that you could predict will get to the floor just as what happened on the federal level, because it wasn’t until the Democrats took over that we’ve had hearings on gun safety,” he said, noting Republican repealed Virginia’s previous one-gun-a-month limit when they previously took the majority in the legislature.
The gun issue has led to outside advocacy groups spending money as well. Everytown Action Fund, the gun control group founded by former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, announced last month it was spending $438,000 in addition to its $135,000 in digital ad buys to help the Democrats take the majority.
Bloomberg pledged to spend $2.5 million on Virginia’s races this year.
