Del. Kannan Srinivasan (D-Loudoun) issued his resignation Monday, after winning the Democratic nomination in a special election for the state Senate.
His resignation will require another special election in Virginia, in addition to two other special contests to fill Senate seats. Just over 20% of Virginia’s state legislators will have first taken office through special elections.
Srinivasan is running to fill the 32nd District seat vacated by Suhas Subramanyam, who was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives earlier this month.
On Saturday, both Democrats and Republicans chose their nominees in firehouse primaries. Srinivasan will face off against Republican Tumay Harding, a former teacher and self-described education activist who became involved in local education politics after alleged misconduct by one of her daughters’ teachers.
Harding unsuccessfully sought a Loudoun Board of Supervisors seat in 2023. Her campaign website describes various conservative stances on education, including bathroom restrictions based on sex assigned at birth and advocating for school choice.
Subramanyam, a Democrat, won the seat in 2023 with 60% of the vote, but 56% of voters in Loudoun County cast ballots for Vice President Kamala Harris, down from 61% for President Joe Biden in the 2020 election.
“You think about the enthusiasm that Republicans had on election night and with the wins they had,” said Benjamin Melusky, a political science professor at Old Dominion University. “This would be a place that Republicans are going to want to focus a lot of attention.”
If Republicans were to capture the seat, it would bring the Virginia Senate to a 20–20 split, effectively flipping control of the chamber to the GOP, since Lt. Gov Winsome Earle-Sears would be able to cast tie-breaking votes.
“If we lose here, we risk losing the Senate majority and all of the progress that we’ve worked so hard to make and to preserve and protect,” said House Speaker Don Scott in a statement last week.
Democrats have been warning that low voter turnout could endanger their majority. Chapman Rackaway, the chair of Radford University’s political science department, said turnout can be hard to predict.
“Special elections are really kind of a wild-west type of situation,” Rackaway said. “You may see very, very low turnout involved, and you can also see incredibly high turnout.”
Almost one-third of the district identifies as Asian, according to the Virginia Public Access Project. Melusky said that could be a competitive constituency, pointing to a survey from the Carnegie Endowment that showed declining party affiliation with Democrats among Indian Americans.
“[If] Republicans can kind of drive out potentially this demographic, they might be able to close that gap, and try to flip this seat,” he said.
Srinivasan’s resignation is effective Jan. 7, the day of the Senate election and the day before the General Assembly session begins. The timing could allow a clear winner to be seated for the beginning of the session.
A special election for the 10th Senate District, currently represented by Congressman-elect John McGuire (R-Goochland), has yet to be called because McGuire has not yet resigned. A spokesperson for McGuire did not answer why the senator had not yet set a date for his resignation.
Former State Sen. Amanda Chase, former Powhatan County Republican Committee chair Jean Gannon and Shayne Snavley, a veteran and former aide to Chase, have already announced they are running for the seat, according to VPAP.
“Special elections tend to be some of the most unpredictable of any elections,” Rackaway said, ”because they're so bound to the individual circumstances of their moment.”
In this case, following the re-election of former President Donald Trump, he said turnout and the difference in vote share for Republicans and Democrats will be things to watch in 2025.
“Those two figures are going to tell us everything about this race,” he said.
