In the latest example of the ineptness of the Democratic Party and their supporters, the Democrats lost a chance to win control of the Virginia Senate because their voters failed to show up at the same rates as Republicans. John S. Edwards, D-Roanoke, prevailed in a three-way race against Republican Nancy Dye and Democrat-turned-independent Don Caldwell. Overy had 43 percent of the vote. Andis is chief of police at Virginia Highlands Community College.
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District 93 includes Williamsburg and parts of Newport News, James City and York Counties. The district has leaned Democratic in recent elections.
One more worry for McAuliffe is the 2016 presidential race. He mistook his victory over a weak Republican candidate as a sign that gun control was a winning argument. In the other, Democrat Jeremy McPike outspent GOP candidate Hal Parrish $888,000 to $437,000.
McAuliffe was not up for re-election, but he spent a lot of time and political capital trying to flip the legislature, with no success. In the aftermath, McAuliffe acknowledged that even with the leverage of a Democratic Senate, the overwhelmingly Republican House stood ready to kill his priorities.
Woodbridge resident Edwin Williams-Greer and his husband, Mark Williams-Greer, voted for McPike.
“His legislative agenda is at the sufferance of the Republicans”, Holsworth said.
This should have Democrats rethinking their commitment to making gun control a centerpiece for their 2016 campaign.
“Gun laws really have to be changed”, Rebecca Neiss said after casting her vote for McPike with two daughters in tow. In a state as evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans as any in the nation, there are vanishingly few state legislative districts drawn in such a way as to enable genuine electoral competition.
Voters in most House districts didn’t get a choice in their representative in Richmond. Wagner withstood a challenge from Democrat Gary McCollum.
The memo said the 2015 election “has always been an uphill battle for Democrats” and said it’s a “huge gain” for the party just to be competitive. His campaign said it wanted to review the results from Powhatan County, where turnout was unusually high in an off-year election.
A newly created coalition of labor unions and minority groups hit the streets in an unprecedented effort to shape the election, but their efforts came up short in several places.
Republicans were shocked at the amount the billionaire’s group was putting into Virginia, but the spending did not appear to have made any difference, said Stephen J. Farnsworth, a political science professor at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg.
Ron Davis, a retiree, cast his ballot at Clover Hill Elementary School for Democrat Dan Gecker.
Passing those measures now looks unlikely as the Associated Press has called every race in the Virginia Senate.
Republicans have been helped largely by the Republican State Leadership Committee, a national GOP group largely funded by corporate interests.
Over to the lower house, the House of Delegates is safely in Republican hands.
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There’s just one problem with Clinton’s tactic: Gun control isn’t yet a proven vote-mover in her party. Americans For Responsible Solutions (ARS) spent an additional $720,000 on pro-gun control advertising, opposing Sturtevant and supporting his opponent.
