The political conventions are over, the campaign war chests are jingling with cash, and the weather is on the verge of bearable. In Virginia, that can only mean one thing: Early voting is right around the corner.
The state’s lengthy no-excuses absentee and in-person voting period starts September 20, the punctuation mark at the end of a whirlwind summer of political news. How might the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, the departure of President Joe Biden from the presidential race, and the political pageantry of both party conventions land with Virginia voters?
“I’m a pilot, so I’ll just say this: we’re flying uncharted airspace for sure,” said Virginia GOP Chair Rich Anderson. “We’ll feel our way through this, the country and the commonwealth as well.”
In Northern Virginia, voters will be choosing new congressional representatives in the 7th District — which covers the I-95 corridor from Prince William County down to Fredericksburg and across the Piedmont — and the 10th, centered in Loudoun County. They’ll also weigh in on Sen. Tim Kaine’s re-election bid against Republican challenger Hung Cao, a former Navy officer.
And of course, voters will have their say in the presidential contest in what appears to be a close race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.
‘The energy is off the chain’
Both parties are eager to tout their political momentum among Virginians heading into the fall.
Anderson said he felt the Republican party’s efforts to energize its grassroots were paying off.
“The Republican culture has changed to where grassroots local Republican volunteers understand the importance of being directly engaged in the electoral process,” he said.
“I feel pretty good,” he said. “Polling has been very good for us. We’re neck and neck.”
Multiple polls prior to Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the presidential race showed a very tight contest in Virginia — an unexpected finding in a state that has not voted Republican in a presidential race since 2004 and where Trump remains unpopular.
In a press call following Biden’s exit from the race, Kaine said he had shared his own concerns about the Virginia polling with Biden campaign officials.
Just one nonpartisan statewide poll, from Roanoke College, has come out since Harris’ elevation to the top of the Democratic ticket. It still shows a tight race, though one that has shifted slightly in Harris’ favor.
Meanwhile, local Democrats — many fresh off of the spectacle of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last week — say they’re seeing a big boost in engagement with Harris newly atop the presidential ticket.
Sam Chisolm Jr., the chair of the Prince William County Democrats, said “the energy is off the chain,” adding that his phone had been ringing constantly with calls from people looking for ways to volunteer, put up a yard sign, or otherwise get involved in the Harris campaign.
Another measure of momentum is fundraising — an area where Virginia Democrats enjoy a significant advantage in most down-ballot races.
In the 7th District, often one of the most expensive congressional races in the country, Democrats have a $6 million lead in overall fundraising and have nearly five times the cash on hand of Republicans in the district. Kaine enjoys a similar advantage in fundraising over his Republican opponent for the U.S. Senate seat, Hung Cao.
But money does not necessarily translate to votes, so the major question for Anderson and Chisolm both is whether they can sustain the current energy among supporters and volunteers through election day.
“Does that energy maintain?" Chisolm wondered. "Do we continue to get people that want to volunteer and help as we move into the 20th of September and thereafter?”
Two open House seats in Northern Virginia
The answer to Chisolm’s question about voter enthusiasm will likely determine the fates of several key down-ballot races in Northern Virginia, including two open congressional seats currently occupied by Democrats.
In an extremely tight race for the House, Democrats would need to hold both seats if they hope to regain control of the chamber; Republicans hope that a victory could help defend their existing majority.
In the 7th District, Republicans nominated Derrick Anderson, a former Green Beret and Trump administration staffer who ran in the primary with the backing of Republican U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson.
Anderson’s pitch to voters centers on concerns about fentanyl and border security, economic hardship and the Biden administration’s handling of foreign conflicts; he cites the U.S. military’s messy withdrawal from Afghanistan as the reason he decided to get into politics.
Anderson’s Democratic opponent is Eugene Vindman, an Army veteran and a former legal advisor on the National Security Council. Vindman rose to national prominence in 2019 and early 2020 for helping blow the whistle on then-president Donald Trump for suggesting the Ukrainian government open an investigation into political rival Joe Biden.
On the campaign trail, Vindman focuses on defending democracy from extremism, abortion rights and concerns about the local impact of Trump’s plans to relocate federal workers.
Vindman is seeking to hold onto the 7th District for Democrats, a competitive seat that leans ever so slightly blue. Current Rep. Abigail Spanberger, who is stepping down to run for Virginia governor next year, won reelection in 2022 by four points in an early indication that the election night would be less damaging for Democrats than many pundits had predicted. Spanberger calls the district “a bellwether seat.”
“It’s one that every election, at least since 2018, people watch closely as some sort of determination of where things might go that election evening,” she told WAMU.
The neighboring 10th District — which, along with the 7th, Democrats flipped in 2018 and have held since — is generally considered a longer shot for Republicans; nonpartisan political site The Cook Political Report considers it safely Democratic.
But that doesn’t mean the race to replace current Rep. Jennifer Wexton, who is retiring for health reasons, isn’t one to watch.
After an especially crowded primary, Democrats picked State Sen. Suhas Subramanyam (D–Loudoun), who currently represents eastern Loudoun County, as their nominee. Subramanyam, who worked in tech policy in the Obama White House, is a volunteer firefighter and father of young children.
If elected, Subramanyam — who is running on gun violence prevention, abortion rights and keeping extremism at bay — would be the first Indian-American to represent Virginia in Congress.
He’s facing lawyer and tech executive Mike Clancy, whose message focuses on the economy and inflation, fiscal responsibility, and national and border security.
Statewide, Sen. Tim Kaine is running for reelection against Republican Hung Cao, a former Navy captain who came to the U.S. as a refugee from Vietnam in 1975.
Cao emphasizes his family’s experience fleeing communism to suggest Democrats would bring communism to the United States, a theme he emphasized in a brief speech to the Republican National Convention last month.
Kaine, meanwhile, has focused on his record helping pass the bipartisan infrastructure law, abortion rights, healthcare costs, and border security.
Most political analysts believe Kaine is likely to win; the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics rates the seat as safely Democratic.
