Political newcomer Luther Cifers, a Republican, beat his Democratic competitor in the special election to represent Virginia’s 10th Senate District, a conservative stronghold, on Tuesday.
Cifers was winning with 57.57% of the vote over Democrat Jack Trammell, with most of the precincts reporting, according to the Virginia Department of Elections.
The 10th Senate District race was one of three happening across the commonwealth.
The other two took place in Northern Virginia, in the 32nd Senate District and the 26th House of Delegates District.
Del. Kannan Srinivasan, a Democrat, beat Republican Tumay Harding to succeed former state Sen. Suhas Subramanyam in the 32nd Senate District after Subramanyam was elected to Congress in November. Srinivasan took 61.25% of the vote to 38.62% for Harding.
Democrat JJ Singh beat Republican Ram Venkatachalam to represent Virginia’s 26th House of Delegates District after Del. Srinivasan vacated his seat to run for the state Senate. Singh took 61.49% of the vote to 38.33% for Venkatachalam.
The three special elections did not change the makeup of the General Assembly, as the 2025 session is slated to open with Democrats holding a slim majority in each chamber.
A crowded primary gave way to an easy Republican win
Cifers’ win was no surprise in the solidly Republican district, regardless, he spent nearly $200,000 of his own money in the race. About $150,000 of that money was spent in a crowded nominating contest where seven Republican candidates sought the seat. Cifers ultimately prevailed over the slate of candidates and won out over Duane Adams, chair of the Louisa County Board of Supervisors, in a mass meeting that ran until the early hours of Saturday morning at the Goochland County Sports Complex in December.
Mass meeting attendees, who are credentialed when they register at the door of the event, vote in rounds for one candidate each round until a candidate receives the majority of the votes. A little more than 1,000 voters were credentialed during the Dec. 13 mass meeting.
Cifers beat Adams, who has been a name in politics for years, in the third round of votes. Adams had run for the 10th District seat in 2023 but lost the Republican nomination to former state Sen. John McGuire. Former Chesterfield County state Sen. Amanda Chase, who moved to Appomattox County to make a comeback bid, was eliminated after the second round of voting.
The sprawling 10th Senate District encompasses 11 localities, and it can take longer than two hours to drive from top to bottom.
Who is Luther Cifers?
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 during an interview in November.
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 in October 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 will enter into a chamber that is controlled by a Democratic majority. He has 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.