Richmond’s two top mayoral candidates are in a holding pattern Wednesday after an Election Night that stretched into the wee hours of the morning but did not render an official outcome.
Little went as expected Tuesday night. Widely circulated polls conducted between August and September cast Joe Morrissey as the front-runner in the crowded field, with solid leads in four of the necessary five council districts a candidate needs to win to claim outright victory. Trailing him was former Venture Richmond executive Jack Berry, with solid leads in three voter districts. Behind Berry was former Secretary of the Commonwealth Levar Stoney, the endorsed Democrat and political protégé of Gov. Terry McAuliffe. The election would come down to the 3rd and 5th battleground districts, the pre-Election Day narrative went.
After the polls closed at 7 p.m., returns were slow to come in. Misinformation about district-level returns proliferated on social media as the city website displaying returns showed nearly all precincts reporting when in fact few were. By 10 p.m., one thing was clear: Morrissey would not win five, or even four, districts. His popular vote tally lagged behind that of Berry and Stoney with most of the South Richmond ballots in. Dispatches from reporters hunkered down in his North Side campaign headquarters grew increasingly bleak. Finally, he conceded.
“I was pleased to run with some really, really exceptional candidates,” Morrissey told the gaggle of reporters. “I want to congratulate Levar Stoney. I want to congratulate Jack Berry.”
Across town, at the Robinson Theater Community Arts Center, the Berry watch party roared as the deejay announced Morrissey had given up.
Word came down from upstairs, where Berry and his family were monitoring the returns, that the candidate would take the stage at 10:30 p.m. to mark the occasion: Six more weeks of campaigning and a Dec. 20 showdown with Stoney seemed a lock. But declarations of a runoff were premature, and 10:30 came and went.
Meanwhile, returns from the final precincts in the Fan-anchored 2nd District were tallied, and Stoney had surged ahead of Berry. He had stolen a district that was seen pre-Election Day as firmly I’m-with-Jack country. How did it happen?
Jon Baliles.
The West End councilman’s late exit put the district in play, a source in the Stoney campaign said Tuesday night. Baliles’ endorsement of Stoney paired with a late push to turn out the vote, particularly at Virginia Commonwealth University, left Stoney’s camp confident it could take the 2nd. He won it by 10 points.
The 2nd wasn’t the only district in which Stoney outperformed pre-election expectations. Earlier in the night, he surged past Morrissey in the East End 7th District, winning what was originally seen as a pro-Joe district by 13 points. When the final returns trickled in from the so-called battleground districts, Stoney won them both comfortably, by 6 and 10 points, respectively. Four districts were firmly in his column, and he held a slight lead over Morrissey in another: the 6th.
Stoney’s campaign announced he would address the capacity crowd gathered at his downtown watch party, held at Wong Gonzalez, at around 11:30. The candidate entered through the kitchen door and emerged to a party chanting his name. He hugged several supporters before addressing the crowd.
When Stoney announced his bid back in April, he promised supporters that his campaign would change Richmond. That change seemed unlikely to come when an August poll showed him running fifth in the field of eight candidates with only 7 percent of the vote citywide, he said. On Tuesday night, he had tallied 36 percent – tops in the field.
“In the beginning of this race, people told me that I should wait my turn. People told me that I was way too impatient,” he shouted over the cheers. “Tonight, I will tell you that impatience is a virtue. … Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t apologize for being impatient. And I feel like we – the city of Richmond – we’ve been patient for far too long.”
Answering questions afterwards, he told reporters the 6th District was still in play. “From what I know, if we can win the 6th District, we can win this thing tonight,” he said.
Just before midnight, his staffers swarmed the candidate. The last two precincts were in, and they showed him winning the 6th by 266 votes. If the lead held, he had won the election outright by carrying districts 2, 3, 5, 6 and 7, a scenario few outside of his campaign could have foreseen.
The ensuing celebration was only stymied by the crowd's growing realization that Donald Trump would be the next president of the United States.
“I’m taking tomorrow off; I don’t give a damn what anyone says,” said Councilman Baliles, drink in hand.
Stoney called Baliles’ endorsement the biggest of the election prior to receiving it. Baliles says he didn’t know whether dropping out and backing Stoney would put the candidate in a position to win outright. But if the returns were an indication, he added, his decision changed the complexion of the race.
“One thing people have to remember is that campaigns, especially in the late stages, change every day titanically, and one thing can happen from one day to the next, and you just never know,” Baliles said.
As of Wednesday morning, Stoney’s campaign had not declared victory, and Berry had not conceded. The registrar must count some 9,000 absentee ballots before the outcome is made official. A result is expected this afternoon.
