Sholten Singer/The Herald-Dispatch via AP
Voters arrive to cast their ballots on Election Day, November 7, 2023, at Crabbe Elementary School in Ashland, Kentucky.
The last off-year election before a presidential campaign can often be perceived as a sleepy affair. But the Prospect has been writing about these races for months, and their major impacts on health care, energy, reproductive rights, and numerous other aspects of public policy, right up to democracy itself.
Throughout the night and into tomorrow, our staff will keep you informed on the key races, the winners and losers, and why it matters to you. Check back for updates.
Other Races
11/8 1:15 AM: Just to pile on, Democrats won back the Loudoun County, Virginia, school board, ground zero for the parents’ rights movement in 2021. Democrats not only won the Bucks County Commission majority, but also won every seat up for grabs in the Central Bucks School District, which had been roiled by book bans. And progressives picked up the Allegheny County executive seat when Sara Innamorato won. In fairness, Republicans held the governorship in Mississippi, by a slimmer percentage than the Democratic governor won Kentucky. The solid Deep South notwithstanding, this was an embarrassing night for the GOP. That says little about the higher-turnout affair next year, however. —David Dayen
Virginia
11/7 11:20 PM: And with the call on Michael Feggans in District 97, Democrats have now won the Virginia House of Delegates outright. It wasn’t but a couple weeks ago that Republican big-money men were pining for Glenn Youngkin to enter the presidential race, because of his winning track record. He put his reputation on the line and got completely rolled. —David Dayen
Pennsylvania
11/7 10:50 PM: The most important race in Pennsylvania this year is for the state Supreme Court, where Democrat Daniel McCaffery is challenging Republican Carolyn Carluccio to fill the seat of Justice Max Baer, who died last year. Both parties spent heavily on the race, with the total surpassing $17 million well before Election Day. As I have previously written, this was a critical race for democracy in Pennsylvania, given the Republican track record of leveraging control of the courts to institute extreme gerrymandering, voter suppression, and abortion bans. McCaffrey has won, with a margin of over five points at 90 percent of the votes counted. In a race for a different court seat in 2021, Republican Kevin Brobson defeated Democrat Maria McLaughlin by 3.5 points. It seems the Dobbs effect is alive and well in Pennsylvania. —Ryan Cooper
Virginia
11/7 10:45 PM: On top of Democrats holding down the state Senate, Republicans have lost their majority in the state House of Delegates. Republicans captured the chamber from Democrats amid the state’s rightward shift in the 2021 elections, which also swept Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin to victory. It’s now up for grabs, with neither party yet securing a majority. Four frontline seats determined control of the House of Delegates, and Democrats are positioned to win three of them. Democratic candidate Joshua Cole, a young pastor running in a Fredericksburg district, will take back his seat in District 65, defeating incumbent Lee Peters. In the hotly contested District 21, Marine veteran Josh Thomas will edge out the Youngkin-backed candidate John Stirrup, who was caught on a hot mic calling for a “total ban” on abortion. —Luke Goldstein
Pennsylvania
11/7 10:40 PM: I grew up in Bucks County and I couldn’t tell you the name of a single county commissioner in all the years I’ve been on this Earth. But the county commissioner race this year is important for a couple of reasons. First, it’s an early test in a bellwether county in Pennsylvania of the direction of partisan support. More importantly, the party in control of the three-member commission will determine many election rules in the county in 2024, including the number of drop boxes, ballot-curing policies, and that little matter of whether the election will be properly certified. Everyone goes on the ballot, and the top three win the seats. Right now, with about 30 percent of the vote in, the two Democrats, Diane Ellis-Marseglia and Robert Harvie, are leading comfortably, with about a ten-point gap with the Republicans. Even if you take nothing from the outcome of an obscure down-ballot race in an off year, control of the election rules in the most critical area in Pennsylvania matters. —David Dayen
Virginia
11/7 9:57 PM: In the Virginia state elections, Democrats will maintain control of the state Senate by a slim margin, blocking a Republican trifecta. Out of nine frontline Senate races, Democrats needed to preserve four of them and have managed to pull that off. In two particularly consequential contests, Democratic state delegate Danica Roem has won the seat for Senate District 30, defeating former Fairfax County police detective Bill Woolf; and in another frontline district, Senate District 16, Democratic candidate Schuyler VanValkenburg will unseat incumbent state Sen. Siobhan Dunnavant after the seat was redistricted favoring Democrats.
The election results deliver a significant blow to Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s hopes of building upon his 2021 victory and implementing further conservative reforms through the legislature. Democrats will preserve a Senate majority to block rollbacks of reproductive rights, voting rights, and climate legislation.
With all 140 General Assembly seats up for the election, the state races were seen as a national bellwether in large because of how prominently the issue of abortion was featured in the campaigns. Senate Democrats blocked a 15-week abortion ban led by state Republicans from passing the state legislature and ran primarily on this issue. Virginia voters, especially women, consistently listed the issue as one of their top concerns in the week leading up to Election Day.
Republicans also tried to push for both voting restrictions, such as ending Election Day voter registration, and rollbacks of clean-energy programs, but Democrats also killed those in the Senate.
The election saw a record amount of campaign spending within the state for candidates of both parties, though Democrats outspent Republicans. Notably, a record number of Democrats this campaign season pledged not to take money from the state’s dominant utility Dominion, a longtime political heavyweight and adversary of many clean-energy initiatives. —Luke Goldstein
Maine
11/7 9:55 PM: Mainers appear to have overwhelmingly voted down a ballot initiative to create a nonprofit power authority and take over the state’s two largest electric utilities, which are investor-owned. The ballot initiative, which is currently failing by 42 points with one-third of the vote in, would have created the Pine Tree Power Company, an electric transmission and distribution utility, and authorized it to acquire and operate the assets of Central Maine Power (CMP) and Versant Power, Maine’s legendarily unpopular private utilities. Utility workers at CMP and Versant, represented by IBEW 1837, part of the Maine AFL-CIO, opposed the ballot measure. The failure is a setback for public power, a political movement that caught fire in New York with the passage of the Build Public Renewables Act, championed by the Democratic Socialists of America. That law requires an existing public authority to build wind and solar energy projects when the private sector falls short of statewide goals. Maine’s nonprofit utility, by contrast, would have been a new entity, with a mostly elected board. Supporters argued that without corporate shareholders taking a slice of profits, utility bills would fall, and Pine Tree Power would be free to make greater investments in the grid and improve performance. It will now be up to Maine’s investor-owned utilities to improve their relationships with ratepayers themselves—or not. Victory is empowering. —Lee Harris
Virginia
11/7 9:26 PM: With 95 percent of the vote tallied, Richmond appears poised to overwhelmingly reject a casino in Virginia’s capital city, 60.2 percent to 39.8 percent. Casino proponents went into Election Day having committed a series of breathtakingly serious, self-inflicted blunders. —Gabrielle Gurley
Ohio
11/7, 9:10 PM: With a little over one-third of the vote in, Ohio’s Issue 1, which would enshrine the right to an abortion in the state constitution, is leading with 58.7 percent of the vote. Some election watchers have called it for the yes side. Earlier this year, Ohioans beat back a ballot measure that would have raised the threshold for amending the constitution to 60 percent. It is likely that Issue 1 will land in the sweet spot between 50 and 60 percent tonight. But Ohio voters opted for majority rule, meaning the right to choose will be restored in the state. The continuing strength of pro-abortion politics after Dobbs, and the continued demise of conservative social issues (one PAC dropped millions to try and define the victorious Democrat Andy Beshear in Kentucky as a transgender activist), remains a major political story. Broadly speaking, the issues Democrats have focused on are winners with the public, and the issues that Republicans have focused on aren’t. That’s been true since the midterms. Incidentally, Issue 2, which would legalize recreational marijuana in Ohio, is also winning with about 55 percent of the vote. —David Dayen
Rhode Island
11/7 8:50 PM: Gabe Amo won the special election in Rhode Island’s First Congressional District, defeating Republican Gerry Leonard by a wide margin, as expected. Once sworn in, Amo will become the first person of color to hold the seat in the state’s history and bring Democrats back to their full strength in the House, with 213 seats, after the departure of Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) in June. Amo outperformed expectations in the Democratic primary held in September, pulling off an upset victory against the front-runner, former state Rep. Aaron Regunberg, as well as Lt. Gov. Sabina Matos. A former aide in the Biden administration and staffer under Obama, Amo ran a conventional Democratic campaign on bread-and-butter issues, mainly protecting Social Security and Medicaid. During the primaries, his campaign ran a signature television ad spot featuring Amo superimposed upon images and soundtrack notes from the hit political drama television series The West Wing. —Luke Goldstein
Kentucky
11/7 7:45 PM: Andy Beshear was declared the winner in his gubernatorial re-election in Kentucky very early over sitting attorney general and Mitch McConnell protégé Daniel Cameron. Only 21 of the state’s 120 counties have reported yet. There was an outlier poll calling this race a tie last week, but clearly Beshear won a resounding victory. Morning Consult ran a poll asking about approval of the nation’s governors back in July, and every single governor in America had at least a plurality of positive approval, with only three (including Mississippi’s Tate Reeves, who is up for re-election tonight) under 50 percent. Beshear was among the highest in that poll, with a 64 percent approval rating. With national politics so toxified and hopeless, state politics looks good by comparison, no matter where you live. There are levels of positivity, and Beshear is clearly at the high end. His strategy of calling out Cameron for his lack of support for exceptions to an abortion ban in cases of rape or incest was smart, and he likely benefited from job creation being seen as more of a local than a national issue. (Inflation’s on the feds; the ribbon-cutting in Louisville, that’s my gov.) Add all that up, and it’s a good night for Beshear, and another data point defying the old wisdom that Democrats don’t turn out in off-year elections. With more highly educated voters switching to the Democratic Party, they almost have a built-in advantage in elections at unusual times. —David Dayen
Links to our prior coverage:
Kentucky governor’s race: Andy Beshear (inc-D) vs. Daniel Cameron (R) LINK
Mississippi governor’s race: Tate Reeves (inc-R) vs. Brandon Presley (D) LINK
Virginia state legislature: Both chambers are up for grabs, as Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) seeks a governing majority. LINK LINK
Rhode Island’s First Congressional District: Former Biden administration official Gabe Amo (D) is expected to prevail here, replacing anti-monopoly progressive David Cicilline. LINK
Ohio Issue 1: This will decide whether the Buckeye State will maintain protections for a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion. LINK
Pennsylvania Supreme Court: Democracy is on the line as Republicans seek to get closer to flipping the partisan balance on the state supreme court. LINK
Maine Question 3: Voters will determine whether to create the Pine Tree Power Company, a public utility. LINK
Houston mayor’s race: Longtime congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee (D) is seeking to make a runoff, after a scandal about her treatment of staffers. LINK
Also on our radar:
New Jersey state legislature: It’s expected to remain in Democratic hands, but there’s an outside shot Republicans could gain advantage.
Ohio Issue 2: This would legalize recreational marijuana.
County commissioners, Bucks County, Pennsylvania: The victorious party will essentially run election administration next year in the most important swing county in an important swing state.
County executive, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania: Progressives are trying to power Sara Innamorato to victory here.
