Unless you live in Virginia’s Prince William County, you have no idea who Rich Anderson is. Anderson is a fine fellow who was a capable, moderate local politician whose career was cut short last night. And his story ought to set off warning bells to elected Republicans, at all levels, across the country.
Anderson retired from the Air Force in 2009 at the age of 53 and promptly ran for Virginia’s House of Delegates from the 51st District. It was a good prospect: The seat had been held by Republicans from 1999 until 2007, and the current occupant was a freshman Democrat, Paul Nichols. Anderson won with 50.8 percent of the vote, his margin of victory a whopping 269 votes. He was pulled across the finish line by the top of the ticket, where Republican Bob McDonnell rode a wave of Obama backlash to a 17-point win on the gubernatorial line.
Anderson ran unopposed in 2011 (in general, it’s not worth trying to unseat incumbent delegates in non-gubernatorial years). But Anderson built a reputation as a pragmatic official who wasn’t looking to climb the ladder. In 2013, Anderson won re-election again. This time, impressively. At the top of the ticket, Republican social conservative Ken Cuccinelli polarized voters and lost, capturing 45 percent of the vote—a 13-point drop from McDonnell’s performance four years earlier. Yet Anderson didn’t just outperform Cuccinelli—he even raised his vote-share from the 2009 election, when McDonnell carried him. Anderson beat his Democratic challenger 54 percent to 46 percent.
The 2015 race saw Anderson run unopposed again. And this year, he was challenged by a political neophyte: first-time candidate Hala Ayala.
Ayala was not an especially good fit for the district ideologically: She’s reliably progressive in a middle-class suburb that leans Republican and was redrawn in 2011 to make it even more so. Ayala’s entrée to politics came from founding the local chapter of the National Organization for Women, and she touted her participation in the anti-Trump Women’s March last January. Her profile was closer to liberal-activist than pragmatic-pol.
Yet Ayala—a single mother working a government job—raised twice as much money as Anderson, the four-term incumbent.
And when the votes were counted last night, she won the 51st district, 53 percent to 47 percent. Anderson outperformed the top of the ticket again, beating Ed Gillespie’s vote share by 2 points. But it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t even close to enough.
Anderson’s defeat was just one part of the blue wave that swept across Virginia last night. And you don’t want to read too much into a single local race.
But on the other hand, Anderson had no scandal, no unpopular votes, and no ties to Donald Trump. He ran in a district that’s supposed to be reasonably safe—it’s been held by Republicans for 16 of the last 18 years. And he got beat like a drum.
Maybe it’s a fluke. Maybe Democratic efforts to weaponize Big Data are finally paying off.
Or maybe something bigger is building beneath the surface.
