The party establishments won. And it wasn’t even close. That’s the lesson from Tuesday’s primaries in Virginia.
Both the Democratic and Republican congressional primaries were low-turnout affairs that produced no surprises, except perhaps for the wide margins of victory for candidates who were considered frontrunners anyway.
To find a surprise, you’d have to look at some of the local primaries, such as Roanoke’s Democratic primary for the city council, where incumbent Peter Volosin finished fourth in a field of five candidates seeking three seats — although even his defeat wasn’t that much of a surprise given the recent controversy where he told the council’s only Black member that he was “owned” by another council member. Volosin later apologized but the election results suggest the damage was done.
Here’s an overview of what we should know:
Virginia Democrats aren’t taking part in the party’s leftward drift
Nationally, “progressives” — as more left-leaning elements of the party style themselves — have seized the initiative. See Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of New York. Or Abdul El-Sayed, who is currently leading the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate in Michigan, or Francesca Hong, who appears headed to victory in next week’s Democratic primary for governor in Wisconsin.
Virginia Democrats had opportunities Tuesday to nominate candidates who tried to run as progressive populists and did not. The clearest case was in the 8th District in Northern Virginia, where incumbent Don Beyer seemed the classic foil for an upstart challenger. He’s been on the Virginia political scene since the 1980s and faced what seemed a potentially strong challenge from Alexandria City Council member Mo Seifeldein. Beyer dispatched him easily, taking just under 67% of the vote. There had been some question about how Beyer might have fared in a two-way race rather than a five-way contest, but Beyer’s decisive majority seems to have answered that.
Elsewhere, front-runners in both parties won clear-cut victories: Democrats Shannon Taylor in the 1st, Elaine Luria in the 2nd and Tom Perriello in the 5th, as well as Republican John McGuire in the 5th. Some had wondered whether Taylor would be able to win a majority in a seven-candidate field; she did, and then some (coming in just under 53% of the vote, with the next strongest candidate taking 20%).
Other congressional primaries didn’t have established front-runners the way those districts did, but where there was an establishment candidate, he or she won easily. Virginia Democrats, in particular, were in no mood to go with more provocative candidates.
McGuire showed why it’s so hard for a Democrat to win in the 5th District
One Republican House incumbent in Virginia faced a primary challenge: John McGuire in the 5th District. McGuire won easily (with 85% of the vote). That wasn’t surprising; his opponent had been nearly invisible and refused to talk to most news media, a strikingly odd choice for a challenger who is trying to get attention. That wasn’t the most impressive part of McGuire’s victory, though. It was his vote totals.
McGuire won more votes than any other House candidate in Virginia on Tuesday, in either party. In all, the Republican primary in the 5th District produced 59,813 voters; the Democratic primary produced 45,663. More ballots appear to have been cast in McGuire’s landslide 5th District win than in any other House primary in the state.
That comparison was one I’d been looking for: Are Republicans lethargic this year? Are Democrats so energized that they might be able to pull off an upset in the 5th? They still might be, but these numbers don’t make that case.
I can’t say that McGuire ran a more vigorous primary campaign than Perriello did, but McGuire certainly ran a more visible primary campaign — bringing in a series of Trump Cabinet members, culminating with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday. His campaign was an impressive muscle flex for a first-termer. McGuire appeared to be running up the primary score on purpose (nothing wrong with that in politics, where there’s no “mercy rule”), while Perriello seemed more focused on the general election (nothing wrong with that, either). They may have been running two different types of campaigns, but the bottom line is that we can’t point to these numbers and say that Democrats had more votes than Republicans did. If they had, alarm bells might have started going off in Washington. Now they’re not. We begin the general election race in familiar territory: The 5th District is a Republican district until voters prove otherwise. They might in November but they didn’t in August.
McGuire signals a sharp campaign against Perriello
McGuire’s victory statement signaled the hard-edged campaign to come. “Tom Perriello is a communist,” McGuire declared.
Come on, man. If this were a football game, we’d have to call an unsportsmanlike penalty for that. Perriello may be wrong on the issues — that’s a matter of political taste. But calling a pretty mainstream Democrat a “communist” devalues the true meaning of what a communist is. Please don’t make me write a column explaining what communism really is. I’ve met communists. I’ve met someone who I’m pretty sure was a KGB handler for a group of visiting Soviet journalists back in the day. I also had to study the dreadful stuff in political science classes long ago. Let’s not diminish what a terrible economic and political system communism has been by applying the phrase willy-nilly to some random opponent. (The same thing, by the way, applies to those on the left who try to brand every Republican in sight a “fascist.” Get a grip, people.)
The point is, calling Perriello a communist is not a serious statement and makes McGuire look less serious if he really believes this jibber-jabber. It might be good red meat to motivate the Republican base, but it’s just factually wrong — when there are plenty of factual things that McGuire could say about Perriello’s record and positions that would make for a worthy debate. Apparently we’re not going to have that debate, though.
Here are a few things the candidates could debate that have the singular advantage of being real things: Appalachian Power says it’s facing “explosive growth” because of data centers; do the candidates support or oppose a national moratorium on data centers? What are the national security implications if we do such a thing? Meanwhile, Appalachian Power wants to build a small nuclear reactor in Campbell County to handle increased demand. Support or oppose? Both candidates oppose the proposed Valley Link transmission line from Campbell County to Culpeper County to wheel power from the Midwest to Northern Virginia. How do they propose to get more power to Northern Virginia? What if that proposed nuclear plant requires more power lines — how do they feel about that? The candidates may have legitimate differences over the type of power they prefer on the grid, but either way, we still need to move that power around; how can we do that without building more power lines?
I’m pretty sure the communist solution would be to nationalize Appalachian and then build power lines and data centers without regard for what residents think about them because landowners would be regarded as suspect, anyway. That’s what the Chinese are doing. By the way, we’ll soon be sending some of these questions off to the candidates. Neither McGuire nor Perriello responded to our Voter Guide for the primary, though, so this campaign is not off to an enlightening start.
9th District Democrats make demographic history
Joy Powers won the Democratic nomination in the state’s most Republican district, the one we used to call the Fightin’ Ninth — although there’s not much partisan fight in it these days. The historic part of her victory is that she’s from Bedford County, which makes her the first 9th District candidate from east of the Blue Ridge. That’s a reflection of how the district has had to expand geographically over the years to take into account declining population in Southwest Virginia. She now takes on Republican incumbent Morgan Griffith, who lives in Salem — another sign of the changing demographics in that district.
Mizusawa won a sweeping victory for the Republican Senate nomination
Bert Mizusawa, a retired Army general from Fairfax County, won almost everywhere. David Williams took some counties in Southside, along with lightly populated Highland County and Bland County, while Kim Farington won only Campbell County. Mizusawa now faces the tall order of taking on Democratic incumbent Mark Warner, but appears to have the party united behind him.
In Roanoke, Moore rolls to an impressively broad victory; Volosin support collapses
The biggest drama of the night was in Roanoke. Newcomer Raekwon Moore led the Democratic balloting in decisive fashion: He won every precinct except one — East Gate, where he came in second by just one vote. Some late-arriving ballots could well change that. He won the early in-person voting, too, and finished second in the early mail-in voting. It’s hard to win so broadly in a city of Roanoke’s size, especially when you’re a first-time candidate, but Moore did. If he can duplicate this in the general election, he’ll be in line to be vice mayor.
Another first-time candidate, Danny Clawson, finished a strong second and also won one of the three nominations. Clawson’s vote tally was also demographically broad — second or third in every precinct except East Gate (first) and Eureka Park (fourth).
Incumbent Vivian Sanchez-Jones took the third spot. That squeezed out both Volosin and Harvey Brookins.
Brookins was the best-funded candidate, but he clearly did not get his money’s worth in this campaign. He was likely hurt by the revelation that he’d once been charged with domestic assault (a charge later dismissed). Brookins was one of two Black candidates in the contest (Moore was the other). What’s particularly notable is how poorly Brookins fared in predominantly Black precincts. He finished last in Eureka Park, a distant fourth in Forest Park, Grandview and Lincoln Terrace. He simply performed poorly everywhere.
So did Volosin. He finished fifth in 13 of 20 precincts, finishing fourth in all the others except one. He finished fifth in the early in-person voting, although he did manage a third in the early mail-in voting.
Roanoke doesn’t have much of a history with Democratic primaries for the council, so it’s hard to put Volosin’s defeat in a historical context — although even in a general election, it’s unusual for an incumbent to lose.
The question now is how strong the Moore/Clawson/Sanchez-Jones ticket will be in the fall. Roanoke trends Democratic, which would normally make the primary tantamount to election. The city is roiled, though, by some high-profile issues, such as a proposed casino. Could that open the way for one of the well-known independents (former mayor David Bowers, former council member Stephanie Moon Reynolds, community activist Kathy Cohen) or even Republican Amanda Marko? We don’t know yet — but will in November.
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