Democrat Lily Franklin says some donors didn’t give her money because they ‘don’t understand or care about Southwest Virginia’

As a result of November’s elections, there is now just one Democrat in the General Assembly from west of Charlottesville: Del. Sam Rasoul, D-Roanoke.

That’s a phrase likely to find its way into many news stories over the next two years, at least, because a) it’s true and b) it concisely sums up the decline of the Democratic Party in the western part of the state, and rural areas in general.

I remember a time when you could travel from Staunton to the Cumberland Gap and never leave a Democratic district. I remember a time when the coal-producing counties in Southwest Virginia were a reliable part of the Democratic coalition. That was where Douglas Wilder made a point of starting his campaign for lieutenant governor in 1985 (and was rewarded for it with thundering margins in some of those Southwest counties). All those times are gone. 

Even before November’s elections, there were just two Democratic legislators west of Charlottesville — or maybe three, depending on how you were doing the counting. State Sen. John Edwards, D-Roanoke, retired, and his district was redrawn into a Republican-leaning one. And state Sen. Creigh Deeds, once D-Bath County, moved to Charlottesville to follow the bulk of his constituents after the new maps made that his only realistic political option.

Now there’s just Rasoul, safely ensconced in a strongly Democratic district in the city of Roanoke, but the proverbial blue island surrounded by a vast red sea.

There could have been a different story that Democrats could be telling right now. Instead of getting tagged as being a party confined mostly to the urban crescent, Democrats could be crowing about how they have expanded their foothold in Southwest Virginia (at least in the House). They could also have had a bigger majority than the one they’ll gavel into session in January. 

Democrats came close to making this happen: Lily Franklin, the party’s candidate in House District 41 in parts of Montgomery and Roanoke counties, came within 183 votes of winning her race against Republican Chris Obenshain.

She came closer to winning than many Democrats in higher-profile contests did. By “many,” I mean that among the House Democrats who lost closely contested races, only one ran better. 

Now let’s look at this list a different way: the amount of money raised. Because Senate districts are bigger and therefore require more money, I’ll drop out the three close Senate races and just focus on the House contests. These figures reflect the post-election campaign finance reports that were filed last week.

What should we take away from these numbers?

First, Democrats got an absolute bargain out of Anderson’s campaign. Hers was not one I heard much chatter about, but she came darned close to winning against Del. Amanda Batten — and with relatively little money, in campaign terms. Perhaps if Democratic donors had put more money into Anderson’s campaign, they’d have picked up an extra seat.

Second, the same thing applies to Franklin’s campaign. She ran a surprisingly well-funded campaign for a first-time candidate — especially a Democrat in the western part of the state. And, as the great political analyst William Shakespeare had Hamlet say: “Ay, there’s the rub.”

Franklin recently wrote a post-election commentary on the Democratic website Blue Virginia about how she “took a district that voted for Youngkin and Trump and made it the second-most competitive race in Virginia’s 2023 election cycle.” Franklin praised House Democratic Caucus Executive Director Amy Friedman for making the district a targeted district. (For those not familiar with campaign strategy, neither party wages campaigns in each district equally. Party leaders on each side are coldly practical — they put their money where they think they have the best chance of success.) 

However, here’s the part that caught my eye: “While my campaign was targeted by the House Democratic Caucus and we continually heard positive feedback from party insiders and elected officials, we received about one-fourth of the cash investment of other battleground races (exact totals won’t get reported until next month’s filing deadline),” Franklin wrote. “Frankly, an additional $100,000 strategically timed for our race would have won this district.”

That seems realistic. This may not be the best math but it is math. With $948,762, Franklin generated 12,346 votes — that’s about $76.50 per vote. (I’m thinking of this in a business-like way: How much marketing money is necessary to generate how many customers?) At that rate, another $100,000 should have generated 1,307 votes. Again, this isn’t perfectly logical math. There’s a rate of diminishing returns. The first votes — from hard-core partisans — are easy to come by. Those last ones — from voters who obviously weren’t otherwise inclined to vote — aren’t. Still, the point is, maybe with $100,000, Franklin could have squeezed out the 184 votes she needed. 

You’ll also notice in the chart above that Adams and Gibson received almost twice as much money as Franklin did, and while Adams came closer (that race is headed for a recount), Franklin polled better than Gibson did. Gibson also had the benefit of being on the ballot in Henrico County with a Democratic state Senate candidate who went on to win — Schuyler Van Valkenburg. Franklin shared the ballot with a Democratic state Senate candidate who lost. (And no, the news about Gibson’s sex videos didn’t seem to make a difference. I looked at the math in that district earlier and concluded they didn’t cost her election.) In context, Franklin turned out to be a surprisingly formidable candidate but didn’t get nearly as much money as some of the other Democratic candidates who ultimately came close.

Franklin went on to write: “In addition to caucus contributions, targeted campaigns normally receive investment from outside 501(c)4 organizations and PACs. That investment can be direct cash donations, or in-kind donations of staff time, digital ads, etc.” However, in her case, she wrote, “the hardest part of this campaign was continually being turned down by organizations that endorsed me because they simply don’t understand or care about Southwest Virginia.”

This seems something that ought to be getting more scrutiny from Democratic higher-ups — and perhaps some soul-searching from Democratic donors. If this is true, then a cultural bias against rural Virginia cost Democrats an extra seat in the House. So is it true?

Let’s see what the campaign finance reports say.

I went looking through the reports to find what donors Franklin had in common with other candidates. I must caution that we can’t compare campaigns dollar-to-dollar. A dollar west of the Blue Ridge goes a lot further than a dollar in Northern Virginia, where media buys cost a lot more. The most expensive race in the state was Senate District 30 in Fauquier and Loudoun counties, where Democrat Russet Perry defeated Republican Juan Pablo Segura. It was expensive partly because it was a closely contested race, but also expensive simply because it was in Northern Virginia. Therefore, we shouldn’t automatically assume that a smaller donation to Franklin represents smaller interest in her race. Still, let’s see what the numbers say.

The House Democratic Caucus spent $13.1 million promoting its candidates this cycle. Its biggest donation was to the state Democratic Party, but in terms of money given directly to candidates, the biggest beneficiaries were:

Franklin ranked 11th with a donation of $132,000.

Clean Virginia, a Charlottesville-based fund started by hedge fund billionaire Michael Bills to push his views on energy policy, gave $8,496,893 this year, mostly (but not exclusively) to Democrats.

Its biggest recipient was Perry, who received $586,499. You have to scroll to the second page on the list of donors to find Franklin — at $35,000. Del. Joe McNamara, R-Roanoke County, and one of the few Republicans backed by Clean Virginia, received more than twice as much — $75,000. Granted, McNamara was pretty well assured of getting returned to Richmond and interest groups of all kinds like to make nice with sitting legislators they agree with, but it’s curious that Franklin received so little money when she was in such a competitive race.

Planned Parenthood Advocates of Virginia gave $879,321 to its preferred candidates. Some 38% of that — $334,296 — went to Susanna Gibson, an unsuccessful Democratic House candidate in the Richmond suburbs. In all, four candidates received six-figure donations: Michael Feggans received $177,930 for his successful House race in Virginia Beach, state Sen. Aaron Rouse received $165,540 for his reelection campaign in Virginia Beach, and Joshua Thomas received $101,540 for his successful House campaign in Prince William County. The group gave Franklin $5,000.

I could go on — there were other donors I found with similar patterns, these are just the ones with the most recognizable names. I said earlier we shouldn’t jump to conclusions about a single donor because there may be many factors we don’t know about, but when we see the same pattern repeated across a half-dozen or more donors, then I think we can: It seems many in the Democratic donor class misjudged how serious a campaign Franklin was waging — even as she was out-raising her Republican opponent, one with a famous name. Obenshain wound up raising $593,316, far less than Franklin’s $948,762. If Democratic donors had given a little less to some of those Democratic candidates elsewhere in the state, they’d have still lost (although they obviously didn’t know that at the time), but if they’d given a little more to Franklin, she might have won. The question becomes: Why didn’t Democratic donors pay more attention to Franklin? It doesn’t seem to be gender, because lots of other female candidates were given more money, lots more. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that part of this might simply have been geographic — the assumption that a Democrat in that part of Virginia couldn’t win. 

Franklin’s piece has stirred up quite a bit of chatter on Twitter/X. It’s always hard to know how seriously to take anything on that platform — talk is cheap and tweets are cheaper — but I’m struck by a thread posted by Sheri Shannon, who runs Shannon Strategies in Richmond: “Rural organizers and candidates are consistently telling us what they need, yet the party, as well as c4 orgs, aren’t meeting those needs. Make the investment.” (C4 refers to the tax code that governs certain interest groups.)

Franklin was blunter in her Blue Virginia piece: “It’s going to take organizational transparency and probing from high-dollar donors to hold these groups accountable. Campaign contributions should reflect candidate commitment, district results, and our Democratic values rather than backroom deals or intra-organizational politics.”

It’s easy for political observers like me to write that Democrats don’t take the western part of Virginia seriously anymore. Here’s one Democrat who did and came close to winning, even if she didn’t get the financial support other candidates did. I wonder how many Democratic donors are now having second thoughts?

Speaking of money, allow me to point out that many of the sums we’re talking about here are larger than Cardinal’s annual budget. If you’d like to support us, you can do so by signing up to become one of our donors. From now until the end of the year, your tax-deductible gift will be doubled – up to $1,000 – by NewsMatch.