Virginia Mega Thread: The Youngkin Administration

[Aurelius2]

Came back just to post about these and make some predictions. Side note: can someone remind me how to set my avatar?

I'll be covering all the races here in Arlington County, as well as the high-profile Commonwealth's Attorney races in Fairfax and Loudoun and Chap Petersen's primary challenge.


Arlington County/Falls Church City: Commonwealth's Attorney
Progressive-left incumbent Parisa Dehghani-Tafti faces a challenge from former assistant CA Josh Katcher. Katcher is pro-reform, but less stridently so than Dehghani-Tafti. His campaign focuses less on traditional "law and order" and more on chronic understaffing issues in the CA's department, a deteriorating relationship between the police department and the CA's office, poor treatment of victims of some locally notable crimes, and lack of transparency. Dehghani-Tafti claims (ambiguously at best) that crime is falling under her tenure (Arlington has very safe for forever, BTW - we are no New Orleans or Baltimore), and has been sending out mailers alleging Katcher of being a secret Republican. Parisa has made a number of reforms since taking over from Theo Stamos. The one that most notably comes to mind is allowing defense attorneys access to electronic discovery instead of having to copy by hand. Katcher says he will keep most of her reforms.

Dehghani-Tafti is doing better at the endorsement game than Katcher; she has endorsements from the Washington Post, from State Senator Barbara Favola and Rep. Don Beyer, as well as the teachers union (going off the "educator approved" stickers on her signs). Local activists and county Democratic Party officials seem pretty evenly split, and the party itself hasn't endorsed anyone. Katcher has endorsements from the police and firefighter unions (though the police endorsement is less a positive endorsement of Katcher than an anti-endorsement of Dehghani-Tafti) and a smattering of non-big-name local officials. Note that Arlington's police department has a pretty sterling reputation even among liberals around here from what I gather, so their endorsement isn't necessarily toxic in the way that, say, a Chicago FOP endorsement would be. Dehghani-Tafti has gotten some flak though not for the Katcher campaign for her $695,000 in Soros funding, which she has tried to reframe as a positive; she is also going after Katcher for ~25% of his itemized donations being from Republicans.

This one will be competitive. Virginia has open primaries, there is no Republican primary taking place, and primary voters aren't asked to sign a loyalty oath (or at least I wasn't when I voted early in person). The ~20% of Arlington voters who are Republicans could have an impact here, even though the (pretty toothless) county Republican board released a public statement advising its  ~100 committeemembers not to vote in the primary. Whatever happens, they're far smarter than Darren Bailey was when he endorsed Paul Vallas.

On the ground, both candidates have a strong sign game in medians and public spaces. I have seen dozens of Katcher signs on yards and only one for Dehghani-Tafti, but I live in (richer, whiter, higher homeownership) North Arlington so that is to be expected for any serious challenger whether they win or lose. I won't be surprised by a Katcher win, but I feel like I have to give an edge to the incumbent here.

My prediction:
Parisa Dehghani-Tafti (D-inc): 53% vote share, 55-60% chance of winning
Josh Katcher (D): 47% vote share, 40-45% chance of winning

[Aurelius2]

Fairfax County Commonwealth's Attorney

Another progressive prosecutor, incumbent Steve Descano, faces moderate Dem challenger Ed Nuttall. Nuttall is a longtime defense attorney in Fairfax who has represented over 1,000 cases in the county court system. This includes around 20 trials for police misconduct, and these cases have become a major issue leveraged by the Descano campaign. The general contours of this race have been pretty standard for a progressive-vs-moderate prosecutor race. Additionally, Nuttall has been hitting Descano for mishandling of key evidence leading to suspects being let off on technicalities in two cases involving the forcible rape of children. This one is hard for me to judge, but gun to my head I'd give the edge narrowly to Nuttall, with the WaPo endorsement surely helping. I expect the final margin to be within 10 points.

Loudoun County Commonwealth's Attorney

Incumbent Buta Biberaj, the most controversial of the three CAs facing primary challenges, faces a very strong challenge from Elizabeth Lancaster, a former Deputy Public Defender for the county. Biberaj is much more controversial than the other two incumbents from what I can tell. Due to severe staffing issues, since nobody wants to work for her, her office has had to entirely stop prosecuting  a wide range of offenses including hit-and-run, trespassing, and reckless driving under 90mph, among others. Overall I'm refraining from editorializing in these race analyses, but Biberaj's tenure has quite frankly been a total embarrassment for her county as she's lurched from one scandal to another.

Some of you may recall the issues in Loudoun County schools that helped propel Youngkin two the governorship two years ago, most notably the non-binary male student who sexually assaulted two separate female students in the bathrooms at two separate schools, being shuffled around between schools rather than expelled. Well, the father of the second student made a big scene at a school board meeting. Biberaj then filed charges against him. Elizabeth Lancaster was the attorney who represented him through all this. More recently, Biberaj has gotten in trouble with the county for using public funds to file FOIA requests against Lancaster and various other critics; the county has demanded she pay them back.

I expect Lancaster to trounce Biberaj here. I predict she'll win with at least ~60% of the vote.

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Notably, the Washington Post endorsed Dehghani-Tafti, but also endorsed both Nuttall and Lancaster.

[Aurelius2]

Arlington County Board (2 seats up for election)

The county is using a new RCV system for this election. Due to the fact there are 2 seats up, this is causing some confusion, with about 6% of mail votes and 2.5% of early in-person votes being invalid so far.

There are six candidates running for the two open seats. They will face local gadfly and perennial candidate Audrey Clement (I) in the fall. Clement has never won more than 30% in a countywide election.

Natalie Roy is the candidate who is most vocally against the county's new Missing Middle zoning, in which all single-family zoning was replaced with zoning allowing six units per parcel, for up to 50 parcels a year for the first few years before that cap will be eliminated. She's made bicycle imagery a big part of her campaign signage, so presumably she supports expanded bike infrastructure. She is also notable for leading a group that unsuccessfully tried to stop a gun store from opening in the county in 2016.

Susan Cunningham is the other candidate to oppose Missing Middle, though less vociferously than Roy. She is focused on "common sense leadership" and seems to have pretty broad appeal rather than having a particular niche. In the past 3 months she's raised the most money of any candidate, though she's still narrowly behind Natalie Roy for overall fundraising.

JD Spain is a 26-year Marine veteran who has worked with a litany of activist and volunteer organizations in Arlington, including 4 years as the president of the county NAACP. He made some vaguely anti-police noises in the summer of 2020 but never explicitly called for defunding as far as I can tell. He led the recent push to change Arlington's logo from a depiction of Arlington House, the villa in Arlington National Cemetery once owned by Robert E. Lee, to a somewhat abstract depiction of the Potomac and Anacostia rivers.
He is third in fundraising, right behind Roy and Cunningham. He is a strong supporter of Missing Middle. He also supports rent control and wants new housing to be social housing rather than privately built.

Tony Weaver is a local business owner and member of the county's Fiscal Affairs Advisory Commission. He supports Missing Middle, but tepidly. He's the only white man in the race and thus not surprisingly his website has a whole big page about his support for DEI. Endorsed by the realtor association and by the apartment builders' association.

Maureen Coffey is running as a staunch progressive. She's an analyst for the Center for American Progress and former Arlington Young Dems chair. Her campaign is the whole bunch of usual progressive priorities, with a big focus on renters. She has endorsements from some unions, as well as YIMBY and pro-transit orgs. She's very young and lags considerably in fundraising. BRTD will be interested in knowing that she has pronouns in her Twitter bio.

Jonathan Dromgoole is the other young, progressive candidate and like Coffey also lags in fundraising. He works for the LGBTQ Victory Institute. Representation is a big focus of his campaign and his website emphasizes his intersectional credentials as a gay, Hispanic, young renter who immigrated from Mexico. He supports Missing Middle, and is endorsed by the YIMBY groups and various intersectional groups. BRTD will be interested in knowing that he uses the term "Latinx".

I am very confident the winners will be 2 of 3 of Roy, Cunningham, and Spain, but not sure which of those. As for precinct breakdowns, I expect Roy to stomp in north Arlington, Spain to stomp in south Arlington, Coffey and Dromgoole to mostly draw votes from the Ballston-Rosslyn corridor, and Cunningham and Weaver to do pretty evenly across the county with maybe a small overperformance in north Arlington.

[Aurelius2]

Arlington County Sheriff

Because Arlington is a city pretending to be a county, it has a separate police department. The sheriff's department is mainly responsible for running the county jail and providing security at trials. There are three candidates. Jose Quiroz is the acting incumbent sheriff ever since the previous longtime Sheriff resigned. James Herring (no relation to the former state AG, as far as I can tell) is a career police officer with the Arlington County Police Department, which as mentioned above has a much better local reputation than do most police departments in deep-blue jurisdictions. Wanda Younger is a career sheriff's deputy with 31 years of experience in the sheriff's office. She rose up through the ranks and has led the Training Office and more recently served as the Director of Pretrial Services. There has been a series of deaths in the jail over the past decade, and all three candidates have pretty similar platforms mostly focused on addressing this. No idea who will win, to be honest.

[Aurelius2]

37th State Senate District
Everyone's favorite Virginia DINO, Chap Petersen, faces a primary challenge from young progressive Saddam Salim. Petersen, despite bucking his party on gun rights, Confederate monuments, and most recently COVID policy, managed to snag the Washington Post's endorsement. He also has the endorsement of key powerbroker Dick Saslaw. Salim is the Vice President of Fairfax Young Democrats and is running a pretty standard progressive campaign, hitting Petersen hard for his various deviations from the the party. Petersen is a known quantity in the area, and if yard signs mean anything I've seen dozens for him and none for Salim. I expect Petersen will win comfortably, I'd guess with around 60-65% of the vote.

40th State Senate District
Incumbent Barbara Favola, a progressive, has endorsements from basically every local elected official and news organ. James DeVita, also a progressive, is a longtime local trial lawyer. He is running hard against Donald Trump and Jan 6th for some reason, and has lots of ALL CAPS on his website, especially about guns and abortion. No endorsements listed on his website. Favola will stomp.

That concludes the pre-election analysis. More to come after the results are in.

[Aurelius2]

Notably, the Washington Post endorsed Dehghani-Tafti, but also endorsed both Nuttall and Descano.

Did you mean Nutall and Lancaster? Or did they pull a "we endorse Warren and Klobuchar" type thing?

You're right, Nuttall and Lancaster. I'll fix that.

[Aurelius2]

Biberaj is much more of a hardcore progressive than the other two incumbents from what I can tell, and has effectively decriminalized a wide range of offenses by refusing to bring charges against them, including hit-and-run, trespassing, and reckless driving under 90mph, among others.

I'm a criminal defense attorney in Northern Virginia and this is not true at all. It's almost precisely backwards. Parisa has transformed Arlington CA's Office from being radically punitive to the most progressive in the state. They offer significant social services in lieu of incarceration for all but serious offenses. This is in line with her constituents - I have found Arlington juries only give jail time for violent crimes now - property offenses are typically punished only by fines. Parisa's office is also well-ran and staffed by very good lawyers. I would be willing to accept a CA job there, whereas I do not think I could ethically prosecute in any other jurisdiction, except maybe Fairfax.

Descano's tenure has been a mixed-bag at best and a disaster at worse. His office is poorly run and regularly has ACA's in roles outside their experience. Their is also an enormous amount of turnover. However, he has been successful in reforming the jurisdiction, and defendants are treated much more fairly than they were under Morrow. Still, I could not blame someone for voting Nuttal, because of how messy Steve's tenure has been.

Biberaj on the other hand..... I won't pretend to know what her inner feelings are, but Loudoun is nearly as difficult a place for a criminal defendant as it was under the hardcore conservative Plowman. Not only has her office not decriminalized minor offenses, they regularly fail to get involved in minor offenses, leaving Defendants at the mercy of the fairly conservative judges. Her office has all of the staffing and competency issues of Fairfax, with someone even more scandals, and very little reform to show for it. She deserves to lose re-election.

Predictions: Parisa by 15-20, Nuttal by 5-10, Lancaster by 10-15.

Gotcha on the Biberaj thing. Looks like the thing I saw covered it poorly, it implied that she was decriminalizing all that when it looks like actually because of understaffing (since absolutely nobody wants to work for her, and turnover is insane) they are simply kicking those to the courts to handle themselves. Not sure how that works for things that aren't just a fine (the one that comes to mind is that reckless driving carries jail time here), since I don't see how you can have a misdemeanor trial without a prosecutor, but I'm not a lawyer, I'm sure they have some way.

I suppose I was mixing up her extreme fight-pickingness and the PD and county board and everyone else hating her with her being particularly ideologically radical. Clearly I was wrong on that one, I'll fix that description there.

[Aurelius2]

So for those living in Arlington; how popular (or unpopular) are the Missing Middle policies?

I was actually one of the 250+ people who spoke at Missing Middle public hearings, so here's my two cents:

Arlington has over 230,000 people and a lot of those have no idea that this policy exists. Homeowners in the (wealthier/whiter) North Arlington are very opposed to Missing Middle because they see their neighborhoods changing rapidly now that this is passed (which is probably an exaggeration).

Much of the population growth in Arlington has been among renters in the Metro corridors. The renters who are involved in local politics are almost uniformly in favor of Missing Middle. Indeed there were literally only one or two speakers under the age of 40 at the public hearing that spoke against Missing Middle--all other under-40s were in favor.

So to sum up, I would say if there was a majority referendum Missing Middle would win, but among the people who are engaged politically its very evenly divided.

Good analysis. Lots of "stop missing middle" signs on yards in SFH's in my neighborhood, but that doesn't mean much because those are the exact sort of people you'd expect to be against it. Even more of those signs in the far north part of the county that's basically McLean.

Somewhat related - I have a theory that there's just so much money sloshing around in NoVA that progressive politics has a lower ceiling here than in comparable jurisdictions in other metros, despite it being broadly liberal. I've only been here for six months so I know jack squat, but you can just feel the seemingly universal upper-middle-classness (or just flat out rich in places like Great Falls) especially north of 50. This is the land of two-income couples making $250k each consulting for Deloitte or McKinsey.

Possible counterpoint: Lee Carter - but Manassas is much less rich than most of NoVA, so idk.

[Aurelius2]

At 1:30pm, total turnout was at 12%. 7% vote by mail and early in person, 5% e-day voting up to that point.

twitter DOT com/ArlingtonVotes/status/1671211843648626688

(I can't post links yet)

[Aurelius2]

Turnout estimate reaches 15% (7% early, 8% today) as of the 5pm update. Polls close at 7pm.

[Aurelius2]

Love that Virginia's website makes it so easy to see precinct results.

However, do they still randomly allocate mail and early votes to precincts throughout the county?

[Aurelius2]

Biberaj winning so far?!? Loudoun County gonna Loudoun County, I guess.

[Aurelius2]

Looking at the map, I don't think Petersen is 100% done. I think it'll come down to Falls Church. If he wins, it will be close though. I estimate Salim has a 2/3 chance.

[Aurelius2]

The latest update is not good for Chap. Not ruling him out, but it'll be a steep uphill climb. Sad to see a legend go out like this.

[Aurelius2]

Looking at the map, I don't think Petersen is 100% done. I think it'll come down to Falls Church. If he wins, it will be close though. I estimate Salim has a 2/3 chance.

Falls Church definitely won’t save him. He’s done.

Yeah, the margins that just came in are brutal. RIP king.

[Aurelius2]

Looking at the map, I don't think Petersen is 100% done. I think it'll come down to Falls Church. If he wins, it will be close though. I estimate Salim has a 2/3 chance.

If it's down to Falls Church, he's probably done for.

Shows what I know about an area I moved to 6 months ago, lmao.

[Aurelius2]

With apparently all votes in McPike is the apparent winner and leads Guzman by 46 votes in SD29, though a recount is possible here.

Interesting.  I’m not exaggerating when I say that whether or not Guzman is on the GE ballot could be outcome determinative for the chamber.  Even if that district doesn’t flip, that bill she sponsored reads like an existential threat to Christian parents (even many who softly support SSM) and Virginia is more religious than the nationwide average.  Ads with CPS agents taking your kids away after you tell them that men can’t get pregnant or teach them that “everyone has a mommy and a daddy” would blanket the airwaves for 2 months straight

Even in NoVA I was surprised by the level of religiosity. Much more than comparable metros I've lived in in other parts of the country.

[Aurelius2]

Cunningham and Coffey won the nomination after RCV was tabulated.

Looks like I'll be voting for Cunningham and Audrey Clement this fall.

[Aurelius2]

Great news: Gov. Youngkin has given Scott Smith a full pardon.

[Aurelius2]

co/efficient (R) has D+1

https://twitter.com/IAPolls2022/status/1699087583613993354

What does a D+1 topline probably give us?

No clue. I'd like to see a poll of Dunnavant's district.

[Aurelius2]

Dem candidate in a competitive ... Rich District North of Richmond made and posted public sex tapes. In a closely divided district like this one, anything could matter.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/09/11/susanna-gibson-sex-website-virginia-candidate/

who cares what she does in the privacy of her own home?

It's no longer merely the privacy of your home when you are purposely sharing it with thousands of followers on a public website, and for money at that.

Furthermore, this may surprise non-Virginians, but porn is actually a somewhat-hot issue in state politics right now. I expect it to have a bit more impact than usual due to that, as well as due to the resurgence of puritanical sexual ethics in the past year or two.

[Aurelius2]

I do not think Gibson's strategy on this will work.

Daniel P. Watkins, a lawyer for Gibson, said disseminating the videos constitutes a violation of the state’s revenge porn law, which makes it a Class 1 misdemeanor to “maliciously” distribute nude or sexual images of another person with “intent to coerce, harass, or intimidate.”

But unlike what we think of as revenge porn cases, she had widely distributed these images to the public:

The Post typically does not identify victims of alleged sex crimes to protect their privacy. In this case, Gibson originally live-streamed these sexual acts on a site that was not password-protected. The couple had more than 5,700 followers there. Many of the videos remained available to the public on other unrestricted sites as of Saturday. Watkins said Gibson was not aware of, and had not authorized, the posting of Chaturbate material on other sites.

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/09/11/susanna-gibson-sex-website-virginia-candidate/

[Aurelius2]

Dem candidate in a competitive ... Rich District North of Richmond made and posted public sex tapes. In a closely divided district like this one, anything could matter.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/09/11/susanna-gibson-sex-website-virginia-candidate/

who cares what she does in the privacy of her own home?

It's no longer merely the privacy of your home when you are purposely sharing it with thousands of followers on a public website, and for money at that.

Furthermore, this may surprise non-Virginians, but porn is actually a somewhat-hot issue in state politics right now. I expect it to have a bit more impact than usual due to that, as well as due to the resurgence of puritanical sexual ethics in the past year or two.

However, this easily ties into a statewide "R's are anti-woman" narrative and gender/sexuality issues in general.  I don't think VA R's benefit at all from having those issues front and center post-Dobbs.

This might make it more likely R's win that one seat.  IMO it also makes it more likely D's sweep all of the other swing seats because more R candidates end up saying stupid/misogynist stuff about this and related issues (one of them in a seat with a significant Biden margin already got recorded endorsing a total abortion ban).

Oh, I don't disagree at all. The socon right has massively overreached on this stuff in the past year and the electoral hits just keep coming. Dunnavant in particular is trying to run in a very tricky niche, in a pretty blue district, and her niche is much harder to win from than it was pre-Dobbs. I was speaking more for this particular race.

As for the state-level political fights over porn, I don't actually think they particularly benefit either party overall. But I do think its unusual salience combined with this scandal could together activate a certain type of voter in this district to turn out at much higher rates than usual.

[Aurelius2]

It's possible that SD-31 (Segura vs Perry) might actually finish strictly to the right of the tipping point seat.

Agreed. This makes it look like SD-24 will vote left of SD-31 and be decisive (if R's hold SD-16, they have almost surely already flipped the chamber).  That would fit with the dynamic of people who are neither white nor black shifting R while college towns shift left (SD-24 has one of the larger public colleges in it).  There are some Loudoun-specific issues that are probably hurting Dems right now, too.

Also looks like Dems have just given up on SD-17 despite the substantial Biden margin there.

It's crazy to me how the drama in Loudoun just never ends. When I moved to Virginia in January my impression was that the Loudoun stuff was just one particular set of incidents in fall of 2021... no, it just keeps building on itself, and now there's the Ghana crap too. Some day the sun will rise in the west and Loudoun will no longer be the laughingstock of northern Virginia.

There's some social scientist who wrote up a big paper or study about how politics focuses increasingly more on cultural nonsense and less on bread and butter issues as prosperity increases. I suppose it's no surprise that Loudoun, the richest county in America by a country mile (regardless of how strenuously they'll protest that they're "middle class") is sort of an epitome of that unfortunate tendency.

[Aurelius2]

OMG now we're really posting stuff from Daily Wire? Sigh...

IIRC it was either the Free Beacon or the Daily Wire that first broke the news of Northam's KKK yearbook photos. This stuff is easily verifiable. Just because an outlet on the other "side" was the first to report it doesn't mean it's false. And once it's been widely corroborated, complaining about the identity of the first to break the news is just pure cope.