This Week in Statehouse Action: Don't BOO, Vote edition

EEEEYAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH

— me, haunted by the ghosts of Virginia elections past

Campaign Action

As an erudite consumer of this missive, I know you know that Virginia’s elections are just a few short days away.

And yeah, sure, there are many many reasons to be optimistic about Democrats winning majorities in both the state House and the state Senate.

I’ll even list a few.

1. Democrats need to flip just two seats to win a majority in the House of Delegates, and they need to flip just one seat to win an effective majority in the state Senate (the Democratic lieutenant governor can break ties on everything but the state budget).

2. Despite the fact that they’re in the minority in both chambers, fundraising has been going increasingly well for Democrats over the course of the cycle.

But you don’t have to take my word for it …

And yes, of course GOP and conservative groups are pumping super fat last-minute stacks into seats they hope to flip or save. But Democratic and progressive groups want these wins super badly, too, and they’re putting their late money where their mouths are, so to speak, in both House and Senate contests.

And these seats are getting expensive.

I’ve been doing this long enough to remember when a million-dollar Virginia legislative race was literally unheard of.

And then, when it finally came to pass, it was a rarity.

In 2003, a year with no statewide elections and with all 140 House and Senate seats on the ballot, only two candidates passed that $1 million threshold. Four years later, that number skyrocketed to 18—nine Democrats, nine Republicans—as Democrats fought to win back what they’d lost and the GOP clung to power in the face of a national climate that favored the opposition between 2006 and 2008. It paid off for Team Blue—Democrats flipped the state Senate back that year for the first time in a over a decade (Democrats and Republicans split the chamber 20-20 in the 1995 election, but Dems should have had control through 1997 because Democrat Don Beyer was the tie-breaking lieutenant governor at the time. However, then-state Sen. Virgil Goode was still cosplaying as a Democrat, and he forced the Dems to enter a power-sharing agreement with the GOP under threat of switching parties and giving Republicans outright control. Also, House Democrats emerged from their years-long slog to retake the majority to win a decade high of 44 seats (no mean feat, considering they climbed from a 2001 nadir of 31 seats and were running on maps drawn by Republicans to protect their majority). In 2011, the million dollar campaign club membership dipped to 15, with eight Democrats and seven Republicans. The investment didn’t pay off for Dems, as Republicans flipped the Senate back and Democratic House numbers took a fresh beating from the latest round of GOP gerrymandering. In 2015, 16 candidates spent over $1 million, nine of them Republicans. And with more than a week left until Election Day, 21 candidates have already spent over $1 million—11 Democrats, 10 Republicans. That number will jump when all the post-Nov. 5 math is done, since another 16 candidates had spent north of $750,000 as of Oct. 24.

Red Right Hand: So the good news is that the final round of Virginia pre-election finance reports looks even better than the previous one did.

While I already reported feeling pretty solid about Democrats’ chances of flipping the Virginia Senate, I’m feeling increasingly optimistic about ending the GOP’s majority in the House of Delegates, too.

And Old Dominion Republicans are clearly feeling the fear.

Republican incumbents have been running away from their party label pretty much all year. Traditional GOP red has been hard to spot in Republicans’ candidate logos and campaign signs. Even the GOP speaker of the House has been running ads that neglect to mention that he’s a Republican. And he’s far from alone. Republican Del. Glenn Davis, who’s fighting for his political life in a Virginia Beach (once a GOP stronghold) district, is handing out campaign literature featuring pictures of him with Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam. This seat, HD-84, went for Trump 49-45, but it went for Northam 52-47. In the Richmond suburbs, Republican Sen. Glen Sturtevant has described himself as “independent minded” and has been running ads setting himself forth as some kind of healthcare crusader—despite the fact that he opposed Medicaid expansion when it finally passed in Virginia last year. His seat, SD-10, went for Clinton 53-40 and for Northam 52-42. A northern Virginia Republican who’s trying to retake the seat he lost to Democratic Del. Wendy Gooditis last year is claiming he supports “stronger stronger laws to keep guns out of the hands of those who would do us harm”—yet he’s historically received A ratings from the NRA. House District 10 went for Clinton 50-44 and for Northam 54-45.

But after nearly an entire campaign season running away from their own party and its ample baggage, some GOPers are leaning hard to the right in the closing days of these races.

One Republican challenger in Henrico has resorted in recent days to accusing incumbent Del. (and high school government teacher) Schuyler T. VanValkenburg of being a “socialist” who wants to abort babies at the moment of birth and “chooses illegal immigrants over his own constituents.” House District 72 went for Clinton 50-43 and for Northam 54-45. The above-mentioned Sturtevant has begun running ads seeking to tie his challenger, Democrat Ghazala Hashmi, to “radical” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and is accusing her of wanting to “bring Washington’s socialist agenda to Virginia.”

But most gallingly, some Republican candidates are using misleading quotes to exploit the women who say LG Justin Fairfax sexually assaulted them—just so they can run ghoulish campaign ads accusing their Democratic opponents of being “silent” on these victims.

One of the Democrats targeted by these ads is Del. Kelly Convirs Fowler, who is a survivor of sexual abuse. And this ad comes on the heels of a racist mail piece tying Convirs Fowler, who is of Filipino and Mexican descent, to the MS-13 gang. Convirs Fowler’s HD-21 went for Clinton 49-45 and for Northam 56-43.

So, on one hand, these hard negative attacks in the closing days of these races could hurt Democrats.

… or they could provide voters with acute reminders of why they’ve been increasingly disinclined to vote for Republicans over the past several elections.

(Don’t Fear) The Mailer: Okay, on the heels of all that badness, I think it’s time to drop in a mail piece from a Republican challenging Democratic Del. Elizabeth Guzman (whose HD-31 went for Clinton 53-42 and Northam 57-43).

I love it when they say the quiet part loud.

from Daily Kos https://ift.tt/34hJqRH