Virginia Primary Preview Part II
Everything else
For the first half of our primary preview, covering the Virginia Senate, click here.
HD-07 (Reston)
Mary Barthelson vs. Paul Berry vs. Shyamali Hauth vs. Karen Keys-Gamarra
Ken Plum, first elected to the House of Delegates in 1977, is retiring after over four decades in the body, leaving behind an open seat. Mary Barthelson is a community advocate who ran against Plum in 2021, more from a "new blood" angle than an ideological one, garnering 23% of the vote. This time around she'd be entirely doomed by her practically non-existent fundraising and lack of endorsements if she hadn't been functionally campaigning for twice as long as everyone else. Paul Berry is a public school teacher who has served on various government boards, including Fairfax County's redistricting commission and the Virginia Latino Advisory Board. He tends towards the moderate side, and is one of the two establishment-backed choices in the race. Shyamali Hauth is a yoga instructor and former county board staffer. No one would confuse her for a leftist, but she's probably the most progressive candidate running—she supported Elizabeth Warren for president and ran for County Supervisor in 2019 on a universal pre-K platform. Finally, county school board Member Karen Keys-Gamarra is the choice of Ken Plum, as well as the outgoing older leadership class of Fairfax County in general. Keys-Gamerra seems to be, simply put, an asshole. Her main cause on the school board appears to be that she should be allowed to call anyone she disagrees with "retarded", including a man with a cleft palate who annoyed her by asking questions about when he was going to be able to see his daughter after the mother was arrested. She was going to be censured for that until Gerry Connolly stepped in. Charming.
HD-15 (Southern Fairfax County)
Laura Jane Cohen vs. Eric Schmidt vs. Henri' Thompson
Teacher Henri' Thompson has raised no money, so this is probably a race between Board of Education Member Laura Jane Cohen and software executive Eric Schmidt (not the ex-Google CEO). Schmidt, who refers to himself as a "job creator" on his website, is running an almost entirely self-funded campaign, and is the more centrist of the two, which is probably why he's backed by Chap Petersen. That endorsement is actually a sign Petersen may be out of the county’s consensus, since most of the Fairfax establishment is behind Cohen, who is a progressive by the standards of the most temperamentally centrist part of Fairfax County, where McMansions are the primary mode of dwelling.
HD-19 (Woodbridge, Lorton, Mason Neck)
Rozia Henson vs. Makya Little vs. Natalie Shorter
There aren't many contests today where three candidates have a serious shot at winning, but HD-19 is on that short list. Rozia Henson ran for a special election in a partially overlapping house district in 2021. He was the progressive choice then, and probably now, but the progressive strategy in Northern VA is generally Clean VA supplying the money and labor supplying the manpower, and he only has the former part down. Instead, labor likes former FBI/CIA employee and DEI instructor Makya Little, who leads the field in fundraising. Real estate agent Natalie Shorter has two things going for her: her grandmother, state Sen. Louise Lucas, and Dominion Energy, which has financed nearly her entire campaign. The order of our candidate preference is the same as the ballot order: Henson, Little, then Shorter.
HD-26 (Southeast Loudoun County)
Sirisha Kompalli vs. Kannan Srinivasan
This race is unlikely to be competitive. Virginia Medicaid Board chair and 2019 candidate for Loudoun County Treasurer Kannan Srinivasan is supported by the entire Virginia Democratic establishment, from the US Senate to state house, and has out-raised community activist Sirisha Kompalli by well over an order of magnitude. Both candidates are running well within the party's mainstream and haven't differentiated themselves much, if any, in the issues.
HD-54 (Charlottesville and immediate surroundings)
Bellamy Brown vs. Katrina Callsen vs. Dave Norris
This district includes the city of Charlottesville and the parts of Albemarle County which are functionally part of the city in all but name. Katrina Callsen is the chair of the Albemarle County School Board and the deputy city attorney for the city of Charlottesville, which helps explain why she’s so strongly favored—she already works with everyone in government and politics on both sides of the city line. Former Charlottesville Mayor Dave Norris appears to be Callsen’s closest competitor, but she has a massive, 5-to-1 financial advantage, and Norris isn’t the only Charlottesville candidate on the ballot. Bellamy Brown ran unsuccessfully as an independent for Charlottesville City Council in 2019 and had a rocky 11-month tenure as chair of the city’s civilian police oversight board, resigning to run for state House amid criticism of his closeness to the city’s police union.
HD-55 (rural outskirts of Charlottesville)
Amy Laufer vs. Kellen Squire
The previous House map had packed as many Democrats as possible into an urban Charlottesville district, then sliced and diced Charlottesville’s Democratic-leaning surroundings into five Republican-leaning strips. Nonpartisan redistricting rectified that, creating a new, safely Democratic district in the suburbs and rural areas encircling Charlottesville. It’s home to one of the nastiest primaries in the state—a contest to see which candidate can make a bigger ass of themselves.
Amy Laufer, a former Charlottesville school board member and former Albemarle County Democratic Party chair, is the establishment choice here, but ER nurse and activist Kellen Squire, who has more grassroots energy on his side and is preferred by Virginia progressives, is not without his own influential supporters. The race had been cordial and sleepy—after all, the policy differences between Laufer and Squire are slight, and Laufer had enough of a financial advantage that she was a clear, if not overwhelming, favorite. Then Laufer decided to go for the jugular, dredging up old blog posts Squire had written as a 2017 candidate for a conservative, rural state House district in which he tried to epically own Republicans by arguing that ackshually Democrats are the pro-life party and he’s a pro-life candidate; Laufer used those posts as the basis for mailers telling voters that Squire opposed abortion rights.
There were some minor problems with that message—for instance, the fact that Squire was quite clear even during his 2017 campaign that the “pro-life” thing was an annoying debate team reclaim-the-term gimmick, and that he was firmly opposed to restrictions on abortion and cuts to Planned Parenthood funding. An even more glaring problem? Squire isn’t just a nurse—he’s a nurse who has literally helped perform abortions, something that Laufer actually attacked him for by highlighting Squire’s statement that abortions give him nightmares. That statement was a staple of Squire’s stump speeches—as part of a story about a woman who came into Squire’s ER with an ectopic pregnancy (a condition for which the only treatment is an abortion) and nearly died of blood loss. In context, he’s saying he has nightmares about a time he watched a patient nearly die in front of him. The wording is less than ideal, and has echoes of that same edgelord instinct to use Republican framing to argue against Republican policy, but it’s beyond slimy to use someone’s words about the time they nearly watched another person bleed out to blatantly misrepresent their position on a hot-button issue. Still, were it not for the frankly insufferable urge to argue like a liberal version of Ben Shapiro, Squire wouldn’t be here; as Laufer-supporting state Sen. Scott Surovell put it to the Washington Post: “If you treat an election for the state legislature like you’re running for high school president,” he said via text message, “that kind of thing comes back to haunt you.”
HD-79 (Eastern Richmond)
Rae Cousins vs. Ann Lambert vs. Richard Walker
It's not often the Working Families Party and Ralph Northam find themselves on the same side of an intra-party contest, but that's exactly what's happening in Richmond, where progressives and establishment Democrats alike are excited about lawyer Rae Cousins. What prompted this? It could be that Cousins really is that good, but also a factor is everyone being tired of her main competition, Ann-Frances Lambert. Lambert is a nepotism case who barely won a 3-way election to the city council, whereupon she proceeded to go out of her way to piss people off: calling a resident a Karen for posting online about pedestrian safety, faking endorsements, raising money illegally, claiming that the homeless don’t need "a hand out", and most galling of all: her vaccine "skepticism". Despite it all, she still has allies in Richmond politics, as well as one important group who's been having a harder and harder time finding friends in Democratic circles: Dominion Energy.
HD-80 (Northern Richmond suburbs)
Destiny LeVere Bolling vs. John Dantzler
Destiny LeVere Bolling is an overwhelming favorite against John Dantzler, which is a good thing, because Dantzler is basically a Republican. Anti-abortion, anti-gun control, pro-Trump, pro-Youngkin—he’s a real piece of work. He’s a bit more dangerous than your average Republican running in the wrong party’s primary, because he has money—almost all of it from family members and his own construction company. Thankfully, LeVere Bolling has more of it (and it’s not just her own personal checkbook); she also has organized labor, the entire Democratic establishment, and even some business groups behind her.
HD-81 (Eastern Richmond suburbs)
Delores McQuinn (i) vs. Terrence Lavell
The election is a rare example of Clean VA trying to knock out one of the Democrats still taking Dominion money. It's also a pretty clear story of a generational clash within the party. Delores McQuinn is 68 years old and has been in elected politics for two decades, while Henrico County Democratic Party Vice Chair Terrence Lavell is running for office for the first time. This is tough turf both for progressives and for ousting incumbents—some of it is straightforwardly rural, and it’s entirely within the 13th Senate district, where Joe Morrissey is trying to entice Republicans to take Democratic ballots to save him.
HD-84 (Suffolk)
Nadarius Clark (i) vs. Michele Joyce
Nadarius Clark is one of the most progressive members of the legislature after the disappointing 2021 cycle, even belonging to DSA during that campaign. He immediately got fucked over in redistricting—the court decided that Hampton Roads apparently had too many Black districts—and now Clark is being forced to run for the district next door. It's a prime opportunity for centrist business interests to attempt to take him out, but the only candidate who actually ran was a white woman in a district whose primary electorate will be majority Black, and who struggled to raise anything beyond the $25,000 check Dominion sent her.
HD-92 (Norfolk and Chesapeake)
Bonita Anthony vs. Kim Sudderth
This might be the quietest primary in the state. Kim Sudderth and Bonita Anthony are running local, non-online races, and seem to have similar policy outlooks. Sudderth has some environmental groups backing her because she was involved in activism to block a proposed pipeline.
HD-95 (Western Virginia Beach)
Alex Askew vs. Rick James
A majority of the district former one-term Del. Alex Askew is running in is new territory to him, which is always a dangerous position to be in (especially for someone who’s been out of office for two years after losing to a Republican in an overlapping swing district.) Ex-cop Rick James is on the borderline of being a threat to Askew's prospects of returning to the legislature. James has run for Delegate four times before, and while he's never won, his worst result was still 32%. Like in those other campaigns, James hasn't been raising much money, but does have name recognition and political connections.
HD-96 (Central Virginia Beach)
Kelly Fowler (i) vs. Susan Hippen vs. Brandon Hutchins vs. Sean Monteiro
Kelly Convirs-Fowler is a battle-tested swing district representative who not only won against serious Republican candidates in 2017, 2019, and 2021, but did so in the generally moderate Hampton Roads region. She could have easily been another flaky centrist making all her votes with reelection in mind, but instead she’s a consistent progressive. Her district wasn’t changed too much by total population in redistricting, but the changes that did occur made it much bluer, and now she’s being swarmed by other candidates who want a swing at a safe seat. She hurt her own chances in a big way by waffling on whether to run until March of this year, which gave three other candidates time to get their campaigns off the ground.
Though healthcare administrator Brandon Hutchins and Air Force veteran Sean Monteiro originally made this election a legitimate 4-way contest, that all changed when Dominion Energy started cutting checks to recurring candidate Susan Hippen. Hippen had originally signed the no-Dominion money pledge from Clean VA (and was certainly willing to take some of their money), but she dropped any pretense at opposing Dominion’s influence in politics and has enthusiastically explained that “Dominion PAC has representatives in every major area of Virginia. They know the pulse of their communities”. That kind of loyalty will get you rewarded in politics: Dominion has now invested $110,000 in getting their advocate to the House, more than any other candidate in the race has raised. In fact, no other Democratic House candidate in the whole state has received as much Dominion money for their election as Hippen has (a couple incumbents without opposition on the ballot have received more). Dominion wants Hippen to win this one, and badly.
Arlington
County Board [Top 2]
Natalie Roy vs. Maureen Coffey vs. Jonathan Dromgoole vs. Julius "JD" Spain vs. G. O. "Tony" Weaver vs. Susan Cunningham
Okay, Arlington is a city by any reasonable definition, but legally it’s a county, so it has a county board instead of a mayor and council. Two of the five seats on the board are up this year, and both incumbents are retiring from office. To add to the chaos, Arlington is debuting its own ranked-choice voting system, and man oh man did they ever manage to fuck that up—instead of traditional RCV, like what’s used in New York, San Francisco, and plenty of other jurisdictions, Arlington will use a bizarre system even we struggle to understand. Voters can rank up to three candidates (why not all six? Because fuck you, that’s why.) Only their first-choice vote gets counted, unless their first-choice candidate places last, in which case their second-choice vote gets counted and so on. If a candidate receives more votes than necessary to win (in this case, one-third of the overall vote mathematically guarantees victory), then a fraction of each vote for that candidate is reallocated to the next-ranked candidate. It’s an absolute mess and whoever designed this should be ashamed of themselves. Anyway!
One candidate, Jonathan Dromgoole, is a clear underdog. Dromgoole is a Latino and LGBTQ activist who served as president of the Democratic Latino Organization of Virginia, the state party’s official Latino caucus; he has connections throughout the state as a result, and has the endorsement of several other Latino Democratic politicians from Northern Virginia. Unfortunately for him, he also badly trails in fundraising, and generally seems like the third choice of progressives and liberals in a race where only two candidates can win. That may work to the advantage of the first and second choices, however. Maureen Coffey was formerly the president of the Virginia Young Democrats; her day job is as a policy analyst at the Center for American Progress. She has organized labor, progressive groups, and much of the Arlington Democratic establishment on her side. The same is true of JD Spain, the immediate past president of the Arlington NAACP; Spain also challenged Del. Alfonso Lopez from the left in 2019, and we like that energy. Why are the establishment, labor, and progressives all on the same page? Housing—specifically, Arlington’s new “Missing Middle” policy.
The Arlington County Board did away with single-family zoning in March, which sounds a lot more far-reaching than it actually is—it’s only middle-density housing (two to six units) that is now legal across Arlington, and the county board put the new upzoning on a tight leash for the first five years of its implementation, capping the number of new structures allowable at a minuscule 58 per year. More than anything, it’s just an acknowledgement that it’s a little absurd for a community across the river from DC with multiple Metro lines running through it to have endless expanses of McMansions required by law. That has not stopped the owners of said McMansions from losing their McShit, which is where Susan Cunningham and Natalie Roy come in. Cunningham, a former McKinsey consultant, and Roy, a realtor, are staking their campaigns on their opposition to the Missing Middle policy. They can’t credibly argue that such an incremental policy change is going to destroy Arlington’s ineffable character or whatever, so they’re largely forced to resort to process arguments about improper input and insufficient studying—which are also fairly absurd arguments given that the policy was approved by a unanimous vote after contentious public meetings and won’t go into full effect for five years, giving Arlingtonians five years of study and five years to vote in a new county board if they have second thoughts. There’s also a wild card in the race: Tony Weaver, the president of the Arlington Rotary Club. Weaver is running as a sort of compromise candidate for moderate voters who don’t hate the Missing Middle policy but might not want liberal-to-progressive loyal partisans like Spain and Coffey. He’s about even with Coffey in fundraising, but has spent the least of anyone, even less than Dromgoole. (Spain, Roy, and Cunningham are the big spenders in this race; each of them has spent between $66,000 and $76,000.) Weaver’s real strength is that the kinds of people who know the local rotary club president never miss an election.
Commonwealth Attorney
Parisa Dehghani-Tafti (i) vs. Josh Katcher
Northern Virginia is hosting a trio of primary challenges to progressive reformers who won prosecutorial elections four years ago. By some measures, Parisa Dehghani-Tafti seems the most endangered of the three—her cash advantage is the smallest, and since her first campaign she’s positioned herself even more aggressively on the side of reform and decarceration than her colleagues in Fairfax and Loudoun counties. However, she’s the one reform-oriented incumbent who the Washington Post’s widely-read editorial board endorsed in spite of the board’s strong conservative streak in local races, and Josh Katcher has never been able to expand his campaign beyond the police union and the right flank of Arlington Democrats. (The small independent city of Falls Church is also in Dehghani-Tafti’s jurisdiction; Falls Church otherwise elects its own local government separate from Arlington.)
Sheriff
Jose Quiroz, Jr. (i) vs. Wanda Younger vs. James Herring
Jose Quiroz took over as the acting sheriff upon the retirement of Sheriff Beth Arthur, who is supporting him as her successor. Arthur’s support is a double-edged sword—she was able to get her colleagues in Arlington Democratic politics to get behind Quiroz, but it makes it even harder for Quiroz to distance himself from jail conditions under Arthur. Those conditions are deadly: seven inmates, six of them Black, have died at the jail in the past seven years. Wanda Younger charges Quiroz with something more personal than his oversight of the jail: she says Quiroz, as a sheriff’s deputy, lied in a misconduct investigation over a decade ago, which Quiroz doesn’t exactly deny, admitting he was disciplined and characterizing it as “a learning experience.” Mmhmm. DC cop and National Guard veteran James Herring is the conservative choice; unlike a lot of conservatives running for law enforcement offices in liberal constituencies, Herring is smart enough to camouflage, but the endorsement of former Arlington County Board member John Vihstadt—the board’s last independent and de facto Republican, swept out of office in 2018—gives away the game.
Fairfax County
Commonwealth Attorney
Steve Descano (i) vs. Ed Nuttall
It was only a matter of time before one of these police union-backed anti-criminal justice reform DA challenges was led by a candidate who’s the police union’s go-to misconduct lawyer. Ed Nuttall has made a name for himself as the lawyer for cops who shoot people in Northern Virginia, representing cops in more than 20 police shooting cases so far. He also put his foot squarely in his own mouth by admitting he’d consider prosecuting women for getting abortions if Republicans gained control of state government and outlawed abortion, something that incumbent Steve Descano has repeatedly pledged he’d never do. That admission only reinforces Descano’s contention that Nuttall is essentially a Republican looking for Republican votes and Republican money; it doesn’t help Nuttall’s case that he’s running on an unofficial ticket with Chap Petersen, Fairfax’s most conservative legislator, alongside Sheriff Stacey Ann Kincaid. As the Washington Post notes in its endorsement (...of Nuttall), Descano has ended cash bail and poured resources into diversion programs to keep people convicted of low-level crimes out of prison; the stakes are high, and Nuttall’s rhetorical feints at reform are especially unconvincing given his work representing police officers in police brutality cases. And again, Nuttall has admitted that if the worst comes to pass, he won’t be a last line of defense against criminalizing abortion—he’ll be enforcing it. (The small independent city of Fairfax is also in Descano’s jurisdiction; Fairfax City otherwise elects its own local government separate from Fairfax County.)
Sheriff
Stacey Ann Kincaid (i) vs. Kelvin Garcia
Especially in light of her decision to slate up with Chap Petersen and Ed Nuttall, it’s a shame that the challenge to Sheriff Stacey Ann Kincaid never got off the ground. Former cop and current law clerk Kelvin Garcia has been plugging along with little money and little recognition while Kincaid’s unofficial slatemates fight for their political lives; he’s got gripes with Kincaid’s management of the county jail, including the cost of phone calls between inmates and family members and Kincaid’s policy of housing transgender inmates with the sex assigned to them at birth, a policy which landed the county in federal appeals court with a novel but successful inmate lawsuit under the Americans with Disabilities Act. He would be a better sheriff, and it’s a shame an upset doesn’t seem to be in the cards.
County Board
Chairman
Jeffrey McKay (i) vs. Lisa Downing
Jeff McKay had to fight his way through a brutal primary with a self-funding conservative and a progressive underdog in 2019, but now he’s set to coast. Opponent Lisa Downing is a retired CIA employee who decided to run when she heard McKay was unopposed in his primary; she is raising little and spending even less. Whether or not her criticisms of McKay’s vote to increase the board’s pay and his use of a county-provided car are politically potent, few voters are hearing them.
Dranesville District (McLean, Great Falls, Herndon)
James "Jimmy" Bierman vs. David Fiske
Physicist David Fiske promises to be “a moderate voice in a dialog that is often dominated by the extremes” and says he “decided to move from academia to industry in order to make more direct contributions to the public good” by taking a job designing missile software. He may be a walking stereotype of his home of McLean, Virginia, but thankfully he hasn’t raised much money, or gotten any endorsements, so DHS attorney Jimmy Bierman is a shoo-in. He doesn’t seem terribly progressive either, but he’s not as outwardly terrible as Fiske.
Mason District (Annandale, Bailey’s Crossroads, Seven Corners)
Jeremy Allen vs. Andres Jimenez vs. Reid Voss vs. Steve Lee
This district is wedged in between Arlington, Alexandria, and Falls Church, and contains the most urban and diverse parts of Fairfax County. Don Beyer staffer Jeremy Allen has been left behind by the competition, and we almost want to say the same of Annandale civic activist Steve Lee, but Lee’s involvement in the area’s large Korean community and non-trivial fundraising make us unable to write him off. The real fight appears to be between environmentalist and planning commissioner Andres Jimenez and small business owner Reid Voss.
Way back in 2019, Andres Jimenez challenged moderate Del. Kaye Kory from the left, and supported Bernie Sanders in 2020. In this election he’s backed by an interesting coalition of building trades unions and environmental groups, who generally do not get along, as well as CASA in Action, which has been running an extensive field program for him. He’s also McKay’s pick in this race, which is either a sign his progressiveness has its limits, or that Voss is really that bad. He’s backed by Kory and funded in part by a Republican who used to represent a neighboring district on the county board. It makes sense: Voss was a Republican political operative until he left the party in 2008, which is coincidentally around the time the GOP brand became totally toxic in the county.
Mount Vernon District (Mount Vernon, Lorton, Fort Belvoir)
Daniel "Dan" Storck (i) vs. Maritza Zermeño
Dan Storck has been in county government for 20 years with little controversy and Maritza Zermeño has implicitly criticized his “business as usual” approach, without offering much explanation of what she wants to do differently. The stakes here are low, and Storck is a strong favorite.
Loudoun County
Commonwealth Attorney
Buta Biberaj (i) vs. Elizabeth Lancaster
Buta Biberaj has the weakest challenger of the three Northern Virginia reform prosecutors. Former public defender Elizabeth Lancaster is dangerously low on cash and habitually incapable of complying with campaign finance reporting deadlines, which really mucks up her pitch—Lancaster focuses more on perceived competency issues than she does on locking up the masses. However, the Washington Post didn’t let Lancaster’s routine failure to file campaign finance reports dissuade them in their belief that she’s more competent than the incumbent—and in affluent, moderate, outer-suburban Loudoun County, we’re especially worried about the power of the Post endorsement.
Prince William County
County Board Chair
Ann Wheeler (i) vs. Deshundra Jefferson
Deshundra Jefferson kicked off her campaign against Prince William County Board Chair Ann Wheeler with an unusual pitch, making passing mention of crime, suburban sprawl, and affordability before honing in on one issue: data center sprawl. Northern Virginia is, for a variety of reasons, the global capital of data centers. The centers, usually large, boxy black and gray warehouses often look foreboding and bring traffic, noise, and electrical grid strain; as the number in Northern Virginia has gone from a few to dozens to hundreds, their presence and expansion has become a divisive and unusual issue. It can sound like other land use debates to a casual observer—but the data centers don’t house people, and they pose rather different infrastructure challenges compared to other kinds of development. Prince William County recently voted to rezone a large parcel of land wedged between a state forest and Manassas National Battlefield Park for a data center megaproject branded the Digital Gateway, over the opposition of the Republican minority on the county board; Jefferson opposes the Digital Gateway project, echoing concerns about potential disturbance of the historic battlefield, the loss of rural land, and strain on the area’s infrastructure. Proponents, including Wheeler, point to the increased tax revenue and new jobs from data centers as justification, and disagree with the casting of the site as rural land given its close proximity to the cities of Manassas and Gainesville. There was potential for this race to be about something else; Jefferson calls herself the more progressive candidate and seems pretty solid. But this race is about data centers, so…meh?