John Matthews
WMAL.com
RICHMOND — (WMAL) Republicans maintained their slim-margin control of the Virginia Senate in Tuesday night’s election, as all incumbents won their individual races, and the two open-seat races were split by Republican and Democrat winners. As a result, 21 Republicans and 19 Democrats will fill the 40-member chamber when lawmakers return to Richmond in November.
The results are crushing news for Governor Terry McAuliffe, who was banking on enjoying the leverage of a Democrat-controlled Senate in order to advance key parts of his legislative agenda, in particular an expansion of Medicaid, and to build support for his longtime ally Hillary Clinton before 2016.
Both parties has poured money into two districts with open seats being vacated by retiring lawmakers. In Prince William County, Democrat Jeremy McPike was successful in retaining the seat given up by moderate stalwart Charles Colgan, beating Manassas Mayor Hal Parrish, a Republican. But the GOP retained its seat in suburban Richmond’s 10th District, where Republican Glen Sturdevant spent millions of dollars to defeat Democrat Dan Gecker. in a race to replace longtime Republican lawmaker John Watkins.
“It’s not all that surprising [Republicans maintained control of the Senate], because Democrats had to hold on to everything they had, AND win the 10th,” said Virginia Center for Politics analyst Geoffrey Skelley, “and it just required a lot of things going right for them,” he added.
Skelley also believes the GOP has an advantage in off-year elections because they’re typically more successful at generating voter turnout.
“The Republican party is typically made up of older, whiter voters. Those groups are more likely to show up in off-year elections like this. For Democrats, that’s a real challenge.”
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