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The More Things Change…

written by Paul A. Prados November 4, 2015

Thanks to the diseased carcass of the Byrd Machine, Virginia conducts state and local elections in an asynchronous cycle with federal elections.  (Some particularly dense Democrats might call this an off-off-off year election).  This leads to low turnout, low voter interest, personality driven, and party identification based elections.  Add on top of this significantly gerrymandered Senate and House districts and what do we get?

A Senate divided 21R-19D where, despite retirements, is still 21R-19D in THE EXACT SAME DISTRICTS.

In a testament to some small measure of democracy, 23 of these districts had a challenger.

A House divided 67R-33D which changed a wopping three seats for a new split of 66R-34D.

In a testament to the laziness of both parties, 62 of the House seats had no challenger.  If you take out all of the independents/third party candidates, 71 of the House seats had no major party challenger.

In 140 races for state office I can identify 0 surprises.  No one can claim some amazing victory at the State level.

What did we learn:

  1. Outside money can not buy Senate seats.

No amount of Bloomberg anti-gun dollars could help Gecker beat Sturtevant.  McPike defeated Parrish in a heavy D district.  Neither outcome was likely shifted by the New York interloper’s dollars.

  1. Democrat statewide office holders are still as preferred as they were in 2013

The 2013 statewide elections were close.  Democrats did not receive a mandate.  McAuliffe, Herring, and Northam “barnstormed” the state to try to gain a Senate majority.  The results of their campaign:

Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

Edwards D – hold

Wagner R – hold

Sturtevant R – hold

McPike D – hold

Lewis D – hold

Black R – hold

It does not seem the ball was moved very much.  Perhaps voters do not have any more love for our statewide Democratic officeholders than they did on November 5, 2013.

  1. The drawing of district lines via a partisan process creates farcical elections.

Dear friends, nothing says our system is rigged to protect a two party duopoly for the benefit of incumbents at the expense of the voters like the statistics from these statewide races.  All incumbents without a challenger received over 90% of the vote.  Without competitive districts we run the risk of legislators or parties feeling invulnerable, and therefore unresponsive to voter concerns.

Local concerns

There is just too much to say about local races in NoVa, so I found a tidbit from Campbell County.  It appears John “Slater” Ferguson, the former Republican, lost his bid to be on the Campbell County Board of Supervisors (sigh of relief).

The More Things Change… was last modified: November 4th, 2015 by Paul A. Prados

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Dan GeckerDick BlackFrank WagnerGary McCollumGlen SturtevantHal ParrishJeremy McPikeJill McCabeMark HerringRalph NorthamTerry McAuliffe
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Paul A. Prados

Having fallen prey to the allure of DC politics in college, Paul escaped only to make the similar judgment error of going to law school. Trained at the side of a sitting state Senator, Paul is now the owner of a law firm in Reston, Virginia. In previous years Paul built a base of support on Twitter @ppradoslaw and founded and wrote for a blog on Virginia politics and legal procedure northernvirginialawyer.blogspot.com. As a pro-life libertarian, Paul finds himself at home within the broader conservative movement, and believes in a big tent Republican Party. In May 2016 Paul was elected as Chairman of the 11th Congressional District Republican Committee. Paul resides in western Fairfax County with his wife and children.

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