Ghazala Hashmi, who won election in Virginia's 10th Senate District against Republican incumbent Glen Sturtevant, was greeted with cheers at Richmond-area Democrats' Election Night party at the Hilton Richmond Downtown. She thanked her campaign volunteers, staff and supporters, and said the win proves that “Ghazala is truly an American name.” (Photo by Rodrigo Arriaza)
In a major victory for Democrats, candidate Ghazala Hashmi defeated incumbent Sen. Glen Sturtevant by nearly 10 points in Virginia’s 10th District Senate race.
The victory is part of a Democratic sweep of both state legislative chambers, giving the party trifecta control for the first time since 1992-1993. Passage of the Equal Rights Amendment and gun control bills likely will be top priorities for the party in 2020.
In another competitive Richmond-area Senate race, incumbent Republican Sen. Siobhan Dunnavant was leading against Democratic challenger Debra Rodman in the 12th District, though absentee ballots were still being counted Tuesday night. According to the Virginia Public Access Project, Rodman would need to win about 76% of the 3,750 absentee ballots to take the seat. In the 73rd House District, which Rodman won two years ago as her party picked up 15 seats in the chamber, Democrat Rodney Willett defeated Republican Mary Margaret Kastelberg by 1,377 votes, according to the Virginia Department of Elections' unofficial results.
Republican Sen. Amanda Chase easily won reelection against Democratic challenger Amanda Pohl in the 11th Senate District. Republican Del. Kirk Cox held onto his redrawn 66th District seat, but will lose his position as House Speaker.
Addressing the crowd at the Hilton Richmond Downtown, Hashmi said,“This has been the longest and most important interview process in my life. ... I’m so very pleased and so very humbled to accept this tremendous honor and this tremendous, remarkable responsibility of serving as your state senator.”
Other Democratic leaders in attendance for the event included Gov. Ralph Northam, Senate Minority Leader Dick Saslaw, and House Democratic Caucus Leader Eileen FIller-Corn.
“Tomorrow, the work begins and I look forward to working with our Democratic leadership and any other people in our commonwealth that want to make sure Virginia moves forward,” Northam told the crowd.
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Jan Smith gets a hug from Kathy Taylor at Bon Air Elementary School precinct in Chesterfield County. (Photo by Jay Paul)
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Mariel Gecker votes for the first time. (Photo by Jay Paul)
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Howie Siebel drove to vote with his dog, Guss. (Photo by Jay Paul)
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Robert Luke votes at Bon Air Elementary School. (Photo by Jay Paul)
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Election officials work on a computer problem: Rounchey Edmundson (left sitting) Leslie Knachel (right sitting) Lynette Clements and Paul Clements. (Photo by Jay Paul)
At lunch time, Hashmi was in Precinct 206, talking to voters in front of Chalkley Elementary School in North Chesterfield County. “It’s a strong turnout,” she said, optimistic about her chances. “The tide has turned against the Trump playbook … Voters are sick of it.”
She predicted she’d win thanks to a focus on local issues. “Glen tried to link me to Rashida [Tlaib] and [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez], just because we’re all women of color,” she said of the Michigan and New York congresswomen. On policy, Hashmi and Ocasio-Cortez, a Democratic Socialist, have little in common; Hashmi is a more moderate figure, focusing on nationally popular policies such as universal background checks for firearm purchases, increasing education funding, and expanding health care access.
Ghazala Hashmi
While gun control and health care are national issues, too, she said her focus was still local. “Virginia Beach, Virginia Tech, these tragedies are happening here. Medicaid expansion finally happened here, because Democrats won,” she said, adding, “We’ve tried to run a campaign on families and children. What type of Virginia do we want to leave to our children?”
It was a campaign that resonated with many voters in Chesterfield, a battleground district in the 2015 election that Sturtevant won versus Democrat Dan Gecker. In that race, Sturtevant was helped by a special election for sheriff in Powhatan County, and some analysts have said the gun control push by national advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety, which poured money into the race, may have motivated Republicans to vote against Gecker.
Efforts to reach Sturtevant's campaign for comment this week were unsuccessful.
This year, gun control was a clear winner, said Courtney Champion, a Glen Allen resident and volunteer with Moms Demand Action. Although Sturtevant ran as a moderate, expressing support for “red flag” laws that limit firearm access, Champion said his voting record told a different story. She added, “If he won, nothing would have happened. The special session sent a message that nothing was going to be done on gun safety, and if we wanted to do something, we needed to change legislators.”
Hashmi, who will be the first Muslim woman in Virginia's Senate, won big in Richmond and took about half of Chesterfield’s votes, while Sturtevant picked up about 77% of the votes in Powhatan County. Despite her strong lead, some Democratic volunteers in Chesterfield were nervous, remembering how conservative their precincts have been in prior elections.
“This precinct has only ever gone blue for Tim Kaine,” said Ron Alpern, a Democratic volunteer in Precinct 504 at the Robious Elementary School polling location. His fellow volunteer, Grace Olsen, was more optimistic. Olsen is part of the Liberal Women of Chesterfield County, consisting of some 4,000 women who have flipped elections throughout the region. She said outrage at government inaction on gun safety and health care, and disgust with President Trump, are driving voters to the polls. “People are mad. There are a lot of angry women, and we’re really fired up. We haven’t lost any of our enthusiasm since 2016. If anything, we’re more fired up.”
A voter, Leah Smith, said she was out for the School Board and the Senate race. “I’m a parent with kids, so education and health care” are top priorities, she said. She favored Hashmi. “I’m a Democrat, liberal,” she added. She thought her candidate was probably going to win. “The county has gone a little more liberal. I have neighbors who are conservatives, and if I can speak for them, they aren’t very happy with where their party has gone.”
Around the corner at Robious Middle School, where Precinct 508 votes, both the Republican and Democratic volunteers were convinced their candidate would prevail. Phyllis Karatsu, a Trump supporter in head-to-toe red and American flag garb, said she saw more of Sturtevant’s supporters than Hashmi’s. “They wear red if they’re with us,” she said. “In 20 years of Chesterfield elections, that’s what we do.”
She said her husband, who she stressed was “a legal immigrant,” loved voting, and said they both supported Sturtevant because, “He’s right on point. I just don’t understand Hashmi’s key points, the things she says she’ll do.” She theorized that the threat of impeachment was driving Republicans to the polls, even in local races that won’t have any bearing on the proceedings.
When Abigail Spanberger arrived at the polling site, she approached the Republicans and exchanged warm greetings with the two women, who had been describing Spanberger and other women Democrats as “dangerous socialists” just before she arrived. “Thank you for volunteering,” Spanberger said, as they shook hands, before heading to the Democratic table to take selfies and talk strategy.
About Hashmi, Spanberger said, “She’s talking about the things that matter most to voters in this district.” She said gun control came up in her race, and had only become a bigger issue since the special session that Republicans voted to adjourn without comment over the summer. She added, “Ninety-three minutes on guns without doing anything.”
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Eileen Lofpin is greeted by Ivane Hanscom, handing out election information at Tuckahoe Middle School. (Photo by Jay Paul)
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Janet and John Cather talk before voting. (Photo by Jay Paul)
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Mark and Kathi Harris leaving after voting.(Photo by Jay Paul)
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Sarah Graves votes, while her son Hudson,7, waits. He said this was his second election. (Photo by Jay Paul)
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Bill Anderson, an election official, watches the voting. (Photo by Jay Paul)
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Jennie Yambot enters voters' information. She has worked as an officer of elections for five years. (Photo by Jay Paul)
At the Hilton Hotel in downtown Richmond, where Democrats watched the results and celebrated, the Virginia state director of Care in Action, Alexsis Rodgers, said they couldn’t be happier with the results. The nonprofit does policy and advocacy work for domestic and care workers across the country, and Hashmi was picked as a key candidate to improve the lives of care workers, who are primarily women of color. “We invested in a ground game and voter outreach,” she said, talking strategy. “Turnout is critical. When we get people to vote, we get candidates who reflect our communities and our values.”
As a woman of color, she identified with the challenges Hashmi faced when she sought the nomination. “She was told that Virginia wasn’t ready for a [Muslim American] woman, but she showed that it was,” she said, adding that her experience as an educator and her hard work on the campaign trail set her apart. Hashmi is founding director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Reynolds Community College.
Richard Meagher, a political science professor at Randolph-Macon College, said the results should make pundits rethink their biases. “We always hear about electability concerns, but women of color are not just electable, they’re the next generation of leaders for the Democratic Party of Virginia,” he said. He credited Hashmi’s success to a good campaign and a changing district, adding, “Chesterfield is the leading edge of the urbanization of the suburbs. We’re used to suburbs voting with rural districts, but they’re becoming more like the cities.”
Richmond magazine news writer Rodrigo Arriaza contributed to this report.
