Spanberger's win signals Democratic inroads in Virginia
Republican Barbara Comstock lost her congressional seat in the Northern Virginia suburbs Tuesday night, but the more surprising and telling result was in the Richmond suburbs, where Republican Dave Brat was knocked out of his seat by former CIA officer Abigail Spanberger.
In Virginia Beach, Republican Scott Taylor also lost his seat to Democrat Elaine Luria.
Comstock was widely expected to lose because her 10th Congressional District has shifted heavily toward Democrats in recent years. Her only potential path to a surprise win was considered to be her political savvy, extensive grassroots network and her relentless work ethic.
But Comstock couldn’t survive the anti-Trump fervor that drove huge numbers of suburban voters to the polls, and lost to state Sen. Jennifer Wexton. It is a victory that Democrats will savor in part because of Comstock’s long history as a no-holds-barred political fighter, going back to her days as a congressional staffer who was involved in the GOP’s investigations into President Bill Clinton.
Comstock lost by 13 percentage points.
Brat, meanwhile, was Comstock’s political opposite: an ideologue who feuded with members of his own party, in his district and in the House leadership. His identity was forged in his 2014 election to the House, when he pulled off one of the biggest political upsets in recent memory, defeating then House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in the Republican primary.
The 2014 election was interpreted as a message to establishment Republicans to stop talking about centrist immigration reform, and Brat aligned himself with the renegade House Freedom Caucus, which clashed often with House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., who tired so much of his job that he retired this year.
But Brat’s Seventh Congressional District, which one Virginia Republican said was “designed to be won by a Republican,” also contained fewer hardcore Republicans than it did in the 2012 election, after a federal judge threw out the state’s previously drawn maps.
And the Seventh District also had enough college-educated, upper-income Republican-leaning women for whom Trump is toxic. Brat lost by less than 2 points, in a race where turnout was up dramatically from four years ago. Brat got almost 20,000 more votes than 2014, but Spanberger more than doubled what the Democratic candidate got in that race, garnering 170,000 votes compared with 89,000 for the Democrat in 2014.
The last crucial ingredient was that Democrats ran one of their strongest congressional candidates in the country against Brat. Spanberger didn’t get as much national attention as some other first-time female candidates, but she was recognized this cycle as a rising star.
In Virginia Beach’s Second Congressional District, Taylor looked like he might weather a controversy over fraudulent voter registration forms that were submitted by his campaign to the state on behalf of an independent candidate in an effort to siphon votes away from his Democratic opponent, Luria. Taylor said he did not know about the effort and fired his campaign manager and consultant.
Taylor was also widely recognized as a relentless and talented campaigner who has taken positions on the environment at odds with the Trump administration, and his past service as a Navy SEAL is hugely helpful in the area, which is home to the largest naval base in the country and is the operational headquarters of the SEALs.
But Taylor, like Brat, lost narrowly, by 4,000 ballots out of 254,000 cast.
Finally, Republican candidates in Virginia got no help from their top of the ticket candidate, Corey Stewart, in the U.S. Senate race. Stewart, who nearly became the party’s nominee for governor last year while running a campaign based on defending the Confederacy and attacking undocumented immigrants, was an embarrassment who raised very little money against Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine.
Stewart’s lack of a challenge to Kaine allowed the former vice presidential candidate to raise more than $20 million and to spend much of that helping Democratic congressional candidates with money for advertising and get-out-the-vote efforts. And in districts with large numbers of moderate, business-minded Republicans — like Brat’s — Stewart likely persuaded some voters who in the past have been reliable GOP supporters to stay home.
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