On July 2, the Virginia State Board of Elections posted the candidate list for the 2019 legislative elections.
Here is the list of State Senate candidates. There are six independents and one Libertarian.
Here is the list of House candidates. There are eight independents and five Libertarians.
Actually, there are five Libertarians running for the House. To help give them visibility, I’ll list them
VA-16: Dustin Evans (Two-way race against a Republican incumbent)
VA-41: Rachel Mace (Three-way race against a Democrat incumbent and an independent. No Republican)
VA-71: Peter Wells (Two-way race against a Democrat incumbent)
VA-94: Michael Bartley (Three-way race against a Republican incumbent and a Democrat challenger)
VA-96: James Jobe (Three-way race against a Republican and a Democrat. The incumbent is not running for re-election)
The Senate race is VA-9, Mark Lewis running against a Democrat incumbent in a two-way race.
A couple of interesting notes:
– The race in VA-94 is a complete reprise of a 2017 race that famously ended in a tie vote, which was settled by a coin flip. The 2017 race was also a three-way race, and all the same candidates are running again. If Virginia would enact Ranked Choice voting, a coin-flip wouldn’t have been necessary.
– The Senate race in VA-9 involves a Democrat who won in a special election in early 2017. She had been in the House of Delegates. She abandoned her House constituents to run for the open Senate Seat just as the Virginia General Assembly session was about to begin, thereby leaving those people unrepresented in the House of Delegates for a bit over 1/2 of the session. The VA General Assembly only meets for approximately 2-3 months, unless called into special session. If there were a member of the assembly I’d most like to see lose, it would be her.
Far too many delegates and Senators are running unopposed (including my delegate and state senator)
First gerrymander in Brit-Am colony –
1618
gerrymander plantation districts along James River.
mere 401 years of gerrymanders in VA
— inherited from gerrymanders in English House of Commons in late 1200s
— mere 700 plus years of gerrymanders.
It shows every way in every day in the accumulated ROT
— legislative, executive and judicial.
—
PR and AppV
Thank you, Tom P. I have just now corrected the post.
Excited that I have qualified for the ballot.
On your point of RCV–That is essentially the entire point of my campaign. My main platform points are those to address electoral corruption. Calling for RCV, ending gerrymandering, term limits, campaign finance reform, audited elections, and easier ballot access. Right now Virginia has the 2nd highest threshold for qualifying for ballot access (10% in a statewide race). Democrats and Republicans can slide anyone into their slots after the primaries. I had to qualify via a petition of 125 sigs. Matt Waters, the 2018 LP Senate candidate got on with 10,000 signatures.
@James,
Yes, I am excited that you qualified for the ballot as well. As a VA resident, I wanted to give all LP candidates some visibility, so I was glad to mention your name (and others).
Far too many candidates for the VA House of Delegates run unopposed, so it’s nice when a non-ballot qualified candidate steps up. Unfortunately, both my Delegate (David Bulova) and my Senator (Chap Petersen) are running unopposed.
I remember Matt Waters’ petition. I signed that one as well. I was a bit nervous about his prospects, as, I recall, he turned in about 14K raw signatures, which concerned me based on validity rates. Glad he qualified. Since 2016, I’ve signed four LP petitions in Virginia: Gary Johnson for President, Cliff Hyra for Governor, Waters, and Stevan Porter for Congress in VA 11. It would be nice if LP candidates could run on the same terms as Republicans and Democrats