Brittany Gibson
Democratic candidate Sheila Bynum-Coleman speaks to canvassing volunteers in Chesterfield County, Virginia.
With the prospect of swinging the Virginia legislature to the Democrats next week, more than 100 volunteers and advocates came together at a Chesterfield home just outside Richmond on Saturday to canvass for Democratic candidates. Virginia is a state in political transition: Democrats have won all statewide elections for the past decade, but Republicans have retained, through the miracle of gerrymandering, what is now the slimmest of majorities in the legislature, enabling them to block gun control legislation, a Medicaid expansion, and countless other bills.
This year, however, a number of those Republicans have been forced to run in new, court-ordered, un-gerrymandered districts. And as Virginia is one of just five states conducting off-year elections next week, supporters from Florida to Vermont had come to Chesterfield to join with the locals on precinct walks. All 140 legislative seats are on the ballot November 5, which has not only brought out volunteers but also brought in millions in campaign donations from national organizations.
Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger (D-VA, 7th District) headlined the canvassing kickoff and emphasized the importance of shifting the legislature from red to blue, not just for Virginians but for the country, too. A former CIA operations officer, Spanberger flipped a seat last cycle running on health care issues (she decided to run when the House of Representatives voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act).
“We saw a lot of [Democratic organizing] in 2017, we continue to see it in 2018 and it’s great to see that it hasn’t shifted in 2019,” Spanberger said in an interview with the Prospect. “We see people who recognize that their voice matters, that when they knock on a door, that when they care about an issue, they have the power to talk to their friends and neighbors.”
Spanberger was flanked by two candidates for the Virginia House of Delegates, Larry Barnett and Sheila Bynum-Coleman, as well as Ghazala Hashmi, who is running for the state Senate. Volunteers—ranging from retirees to college students—clustered around them, sporting “Vote for Integrity” or Pod Save America T-shirts and Swing Left buttons.
“I’m under a lot of pressure. I can’t sleep at night. My husband can tell you,” Bynum-Coleman told the Prospect after addressing the crowd. “This is about millions of people in Virginia. This is about people’s lives. There’s a lot of pressure. There’s a lot at stake … So those days when I’m tired, [when I feel] I can’t do it, I’m constantly reminded of what’s at stake, who’s involved, who’s impacted. There’s a lot of pressure on me.”
Democrats in Virginia need to flip just two seats in the House and two seats in the Senate to flip the legislature blue—and one incumbent Republican didn’t file on time, forcing him to run as a write-in and decreasing his re-election prospects. Last year, the Supreme Court ruled 11 delegate districts were racially gerrymandered, and required them to be redrawn. Several of those districts went from ruby red to purple or leaning blue, and Democrats hope to make gains there.
Gun violence prevention, as Virginia reform activists have dubbed it, is the most important issue to Virginians this cycle, according to an October Washington Post-Schar School poll. From Virginia Tech to Virginia Beach, the state has experienced several mass shootings, but activists are also motivated by everyday gun violence.
Sporting a scarlet red Moms Demand Action shirt, Karen Taylor Soiles explained why she became involved in the gun violence prevention movement. Getting active in Moms, she said, helped her become vocal about what she cared about. “We need to do the right thing for the right reason at the right time. And the right time is now.”
Bynum-Coleman, a mother of five, was personally affected by gun violence when her daughter was shot. “For me, she survived, we’re ok, we’ve moved on, but the problem is that the issue is still there,” Bynum-Coleman told us. She is running against Republican House Speaker Kirk Cox, who shut down a special session called by Democratic Governor Ralph Northam to deal with gun violence in the aftermath of the Virginia Beach shooting that killed 12 people in May. Cox declared the much anticipated session to be over just 90 minutes after it had been convened.
Bynum-Coleman ran against Cox in 2017 before the district was redrawn, and garnered 48.2 percent of the vote. Cox has held his seat for 30 years, and unseating him would not only be a symbolic win for Democrats, but it would also give them an edge to advance a progressive agenda. National groups have spent thousands on Bynum-Coleman’s campaign. Emily’s List and Everytown for Gun Safety gave $125,000 each to her in just September, The Washington Post reported.
Bynum-Coleman has almost half a million dollars on hand to spend in the final days before the election, while Cox has more than $350,000, according to the Virginia Public Access Project. They’ve both raised millions of dollars during this cycle, in part because their race has garnered national attention.
Brittany Gibson
Democratic candidates Ghazala Hashmi and Larry Barnett
The winners of Virginia’s election will represent the Commonwealth for at least the next two years, which gives them the responsibility of drawing the next decade’s district maps. Republicans in the House of Delegates and Democrats in the state Senate racially and politically gerrymandered the state in 2011, protecting incumbents by stacking and packing districts.
Sadly, many Virginians have become resigned to one of gerrymandering’s leading consequences: the futility of political action, even of voting. “We were knocking on doors so frequently and people would say, ‘It doesn’t matter. My vote doesn’t matter,’” Spanberger told us. “Quite a few people expressed a general distrust that their elected officials actually cared about them. It’s so vital people recognize having officials who are committed to fair nonpartisan redistricting is how we ensure our communities make sense.”
The scandals that plagued the state’s highest elected officials—all of them Democrats—don’t seem to be bothering Democrats this cycle, although the blackface incidents of Governor Ralph Northam and Attorney General Mark Herring made national headlines at the time. Two women accused Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax of sexually assaulting them in the early 2000s, though Fairfax denies the allegations. While polls show that Virginians don’t want these Democrats to run again, their approval ratings have largely recovered and the scandals seem unlikely to affect the elections to the legislature.
Instead, the national implications of Democratic control of the legislature have taken center stage and drawn volunteers from all over. Several members of the George Mason College Democrats carpooled to this Richmond-area event from the Washington, D.C., suburbs. “We all really wanted to help Democrats outside Fairfax,” said Kara Kline, the group’s president.
“There’s so many people that are dependent on me. Not just in Virginia, but across the country. I get calls and emails all the time saying ‘You have to win,’” said Bynum-Coleman. “Every time someone tells me they need me to win, that lives with me, that I carry with me every day.”
