Updated Nov. 25 to add an additional candidate who has announced.
Though a date for the special election has yet to be set, six Republicans and one Democrat have announced their plan to run for Virginia’s 10th Senate District, the seat state Sen. John McGuire will need to vacate to serve in Congress next year.
McGuire has yet to resign from the state Senate, after winning the 5th Congressional District election on Nov. 5, and Virginia’s Senate leaders are unable to set a date for the special election until he steps down. Virginia’s Nov. 5 election results will be certified by the State Board of Elections on Dec. 2.
The inability to schedule the special election hasn’t stopped the candidates from campaigning. It also hasn’t stopped a forum for the Republicans in the race to be scheduled.
That forum is slated to take place in Cumberland County at 7 p.m. Friday at Spruceberry Farm. Five of the six Republican candidates plan to attend that forum, including Duane Adams, Luther Cifers, Jean Gannon, Bryan Hamlet and Shane Snavely. Amanda Chase declined to attend the event. The Democrat, Jack Trammell, was not invited.
The lack of a set date for the special election hasn’t deterred Republicans from deciding when and how their nominee will be selected, either. On Tuesday, the Republican Legislative District Committee determined that their nominating process will take place through a mass meeting, currently slated for Dec. 12. Check-in for voters to take part in the meeting will take place between 5:30 and 6:30 p.m. that evening, though the location has yet to be determined.
So who are the candidates? Here’s what Cardinal News has learned, through in-person and phone interviews with each of the six Republicans and one Democrat vying to represent Virginia’s 10th Senate District. The six Republican candidates are listed in alphabetical order.
Duane Adams, Republican
Duane Adams, 62, currently serves as the chair of the Louisa County Board of Supervisors. He has sat on the board for seven years: three years as chair and two years as vice chair. He ran in the Republican primary for the 10th Senate District in 2023 and came in second in a four-person convention to McGuire.
Adams said his motivation to run for state Senate has remained unchanged in the year between that race and his announcement to again seek the seat.
“I look at this as an opportunity to serve my community on a larger basis, and frankly, I’m not pleased with a lot of things that we see coming out of Richmond,” he said. “I’m the guy that believes in less government, smaller government, more efficient government and returning as much power and authority as we can to local government,” he said.
Adams said he would work with Democrats in the General Assembly to pass legislation that would support his constituents. He supported Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s record number of vetoes that were handed down during the 2024 session.
“I do believe, at the end of the day, that most people want the same things for their families and their communities, and that’s to provide a better opportunity in the future than we had in the past. How we get there is where we diverge,” he said.
Adams is a husband, father and grandfather. He and his wife are small business owners of a small independent insurance agency and a boat and jet ski rental service on Lake Anna. Adams is also part-owner of a waterfowl and spring-turkey guiding service. He retired as an executive from an insurance company after 41 years.
He’s lived in Louisa County for nearly 25 years. Before that, he lived in Hanover County.
“I’m a solid conservative, Christian, family man, my family is very very important to me, I’m focused on trying to leave this place a little bit better than I found it,” he said.
His platform in the race for the 10th District includes support for the Second Amendment, decreased taxes and regulation, support for law enforcement, a stance against abortion, support for parental rights in education and voter integrity.
Amanda Chase, Republican
Amanda Chase, 54, is a former state senator who represented Virginia’s 11th District, which included Amelia County, Chesterfield County and Colonial Heights. She defeated a 20-year incumbent in 2015 and served that district for two terms. She was defeated by state Sen. Glenn Sturtevant in the 2023 primary after the legislative maps were redrawn. She moved to Appomattox recently, prior to launching her campaign for the 10th District, she said.
She graduated from Virginia Tech and worked for banks before she decided to become a stay-at-home parent of four children, who are now grown. Her background is in finance, management and business, she said.
“I’m very proud of my kids, they’re the ‘why’ behind everything that I do,” she said. “I’m a mom who fights for everyone.”
Chase was removed from the Chesterfield County Republican Committee in 2019 and was censured in the state Senate in 2021, at the start of her second term in office. The censure vote came after she spread baseless claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent. She advocated for “limited martial law” after that election which, she said in a recent interview, would have only pertained to election data and records.
“People know me in Virginia politics, I’ve been a household name and someone who’s been a fighter for the people, and the political class don’t really like me,” she said.
She disagreed with the premise of the censure vote, which stripped her of her seniority and committee assignments, and her removal from the Chesterfield County Republican Party. She claimed both were driven by people with vendettas who didn’t like that she “stood up to the political machines in Richmond.”
After she was censured, Chase ran for governor in 2021 and came in third in the Republican nominating convention.
Her platform in the race for the 10th District includes support for parental rights in education, school choice, election integrity, an anti-abortion stance, and support for business, veterans and law enforcement.
“I’ve done debates before in the governor’s race, I’ve done them in the Senate races prior to that, people know what they’re getting — I’ve got an eight-year voting record,” she said when asked why she declined to attend Friday’s forum. “I never agreed to that debate, at all.”
Alex Cheatham, Republican
Alex Cheatham, 23, recently graduated from college and recently announced his candidacy for the 10th Senate District.
“I am running because I want to make a change in the world and show that not all of the youth are left-leaning,” he said via email.
He pointed out that more young men voted for Republican candidates in the 2024 presidential election and said that the party needs “strong youth leaders” to continue to make inroads with that demographic.
“I would like to carry that torch,” he said.
Luther Cifers, Republican
Luther Cifers, 50, was homeschooled as a child and started working in tobacco fields in Amelia County at age 10. He said that his experience being homeschooled, at a time when it wasn’t as socially accepted as it is today, created a disadvantage for him.
“A lot of people considered that to be the equivalent of uneducated at the time,” he said.
He worked in construction and manufacturing jobs and eventually moved into engineering. He started YakAttack, a kayak and fishing product company, in 2009 with $2,000, he said, and grew it into a business that employs 70 people. He sold a large portion of that business in 2021 in pursuit of problems to solve, he said.
He decided to enter the race for the 10th District about a month ago, after he began to look into ways to build affordable housing for first-time homebuyers and ran into a litany of regulations that halted his efforts.
“I’ve reached this chapter in my life where serving the people and trying to make sure that my children and future generations have the same opportunities that we had is much more important than just building the next business,” he said. “In the town that I live in, you can’t paint a storefront without asking the town’s permission, and I think we went from a place where the government was accountable to the people, and one piece of legislation at a time and one small cultural shift at a time, and we’ve landed in a place where the people are very much accountable to the government.”
Cifers said he is willing to work across the aisle with his Democratic counterparts to pass legislation to support the people in his district, though he said he would not be willing to compromise his values.
A husband and father of five, he has lived in Prince Edward County since 2019. He’s lived in the area since he was 2 years old, he said.
His campaign platforms include government deregulation, accessible homeownership for first-time buyers, resources for teachers and support for families who homeschool their children and preservation of culture in rural communities.
Jean Gannon, Republican
Jean Gannon, 66, a former chair of the Powhatan County Republican Party, has worked to support other candidates for office in Virginia politics for years before making the decision to enter into the race for the 10th District.
Her first foray into politics came after she met former governor, then Attorney General Bob McDonnell, who was the keynote speaker at her daughter’s high school graduation in 2008. She was impressed with his speech and heard, later that summer, that he planned to run for governor. She started volunteering for his campaign, knocking on doors and driving young Republicans around.
“It was great fun, I loved it and that was it, I was all in,” she said.
She worked as a region director for the Trump 2024 campaign’s “Protect the Vote” initiative.
Gannon was born and raised in New Jersey and has lived in Powhatan County for 24 years. A wife and mother, she has two grown daughters and grandchildren. She has been a real estate appraiser for over 40 years and runs her own office. She was appointed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin in 2022 to serve on the Virginia Real Estate Appraisal Board.
She noted that politics in Virginia is polarized at the moment. She said she believes what is needed in the 10th District senate seat is someone who won’t agitate or further that polarization.
“You have to be able to work with people in order to get your job done, and sometimes we have people who just like to throw bombs all of the time and that’s not productive,” she said. But, she said, she plans to hold fast to her principles.
“I’m a nice lady, but I’m not a pushover,” she said. “I’m going to work hard to make sure that we get what we want to achieve.”
Her campaign platform includes support for policies that promote safer communities, an anti-abortion stance, support for economic and fiscal responsibility and support for the Second Amendment.
Bryan Hamlet, Republican
Bryan Hamlet, 47, currently serves on the Cumberland County Board of Supervisors after winning election to the seat in 2023. He is a husband and father of four children and has lived in Cumberland County for five years. He owned land in the county for about 17 years, he said. He lived in Glen Allen prior to that and grew up in the Hopewell area. He works in sales in the building material industry.
“I’m not a politician, I’m an average guy that decided two years ago that I wanted to use my skills and abilities to make a difference in my community,” he said. “I want to be a voice for rural Virginia.”
He said he was approached by people who encouraged him to get involved in state-level politics. After some thinking and praying, he decided to enter the race.
“I want to take a common sense approach, a principled approach,” he said, to state lawmaking.
He said he would be willing to work with Democrats to get legislation passed for the senate district.
His platform includes hunting rights, as well as support for agriculture and forestry. He considers himself a “constitutional conservative,” a staunch supporter of the First and Second Amendments. He is also a supporter of first responders and wants to provide more resources to law enforcement. He supports school choice, economic growth, fiscal responsibility, and the reduction of regulations on small businesses.
Shayne Snavely, Republican
Shayne Snavely, 57, is an Army veteran who worked in the Virginia Senate as a legislative aide for Senators Amanda Chase and Bryce Reeves. He now works as a co-owner and head of security for a consulting firm, Rainmaker Strategic Partners.
Snavely made his first foray into politics when he was hired to run security for Chase’s governor’s race in 2021. He then worked as a legislative aide in her office. He left her office on bad terms in March 2022.
He helped to run an opposition campaign in support of Chase’s 2023 opponent, state Sen. Glen Sturtevant, who ultimately defeated Chase in the primary. Snavely did not work for Sturtevant’s campaign directly, he said.
Snavely has lived in Amelia County for almost four years, he said, and before that, he lived in Floyd County.
Snavely said he was motivated to enter the race because he became tired of politicians promising to work for the people and then not following through on that promise once in office.
“My overall outlook is that it’s the people’s seat, it’s not the senator’s seat,” he said. “If I talk to the majority of the people and they tell me they want something done — even if I don’t necessarily agree with it, they’re the ones that hired me, this is what they want done.”
He said he would like to hold regular town hall meetings with constituents across the district if elected.
He said he wants to be a uniter between the two parties and said he’s willing to work with Democrats to get bills passed for his district.
His platform includes support for parental rights in education and funding for homeschooling, as well as vocational, technical and trade education for K-12 students; support for small manufacturers to build businesses in the 10th District; and tax and regulation reductions for farmers and other agricultural producers.
Jack Trammell, Democrat
Jack Trammell, 60, ran for Congress to represent Virginia’s 7th District in 2014 against Republican Dave Brat, who had unseated the incumbent Rep. Eric Cantor in the Republican primary earlier that year. That year, the 7th District was considered solidly Republican by Cook Political Report. Trammell ultimately lost.
“After what happened a week or two ago, in the [2024] election, I started rethinking getting involved again,” he said.
When he heard the 10th Senate District didn’t have a Democratic candidate, he thought, “This isn’t tolerable,” even if the district is solidly Republican.
“There needs to be at least a voice in the process for people who are on the Democratic side, or Independent or who don’t like the Republican candidate and agenda,” he said. “I believe, in a two-party system, you should always have at least one person on each side, if not an independent thrown in there too to represent as many voices as possible.”
Trammell is a college professor and sociologist at Mount St. Mary’s in Maryland. He lives in central Virginia with his wife, who is a public school teacher. He’s a father and a grandfather of seven grandchildren with one on the way. He has a small farm in Louisa.
“We have been a part of the rural fabric in District 10 for a long time,” he said.
Trammell said living as a Democrat in a largely Republican and rural community can be frustrating at times, but he has been able to cultivate relationships with his neighbors and folks in the county.
“I try to let them know that I’m a centrist in many ways, and I’m really concerned about rural issues but also the same things they’re worried about, I’m worried about,” he said. “One of my goals, win or lose, is to get people who like the ideas I have more excited, and maybe that will help in the general election this coming fall.”
Trammell said, if elected, he’s ready to work with members of the General Assembly regardless of their party affiliation and that he’s worked with Republican local supervisors and local officials in the past.
“People who know me know that I am not necessarily always a compromiser, but I am a person who is reasonable in working with people who don’t think the same way that I do,” he said. “Going into the Virginia Senate, I would not be a rubber stamp for the Democrats.”
He named the clear-cutting of timber in the district and supporting agricultural entrepreneurs and education as his main areas of concern. His main legislative concerns also include improving transportation and safety within and between rural communities and tamping down inflation while supporting economic development and growth within the district. He said he would like to provide first responders with technology to help them to better serve sprawling rural communities.
__________________________
Correction 3:30 p.m. Nov. 26: This article has been updated to accurately describe the demographic of voters that voted Republican in the 2024 presidential election.