A lot of it is also trust. Spanberger earned that trust from independents and moderate Republicans, getting a ton of crossover votes. Not by pandering, but by doing the work and creating a record of how she would govern. Almost every county in the Commonwealth trended blue. You don’t get that when rural voters are afraid of what you might do.
From her victory speech,
“I also know that her supporters are disappointed today — and to those Virginians who did not vote for me — I want you to know that my goal and intent is to serve all Virginians and that means I will listen to you. I will work for and with you. That is the approach I’ve taken throughout my whole career. I have worked with anyone and everyone — regardless of political party — to deliver results for the people that I serve.
That’s because I believe in this idea: that there is so much more that unites us as Virginians and as Americans than divides us. I know in my heart that we can unite for Virginia’s future and we can set an example for the rest of the nation.
Our founders understood this from the very beginning. They didn’t choose to call Virginia a “Commonwealth” by accident. They chose it to signify that our government would be based on the power of the people united for a common good. Not for a political party. Not for a President. Not for a monarch. But for a common good. Together.”
Thanks for calling a spade a spade Kelsey. Character does matter. We have to do better on all sides. If Trump is the threat I believe him to be we have to be better.
Yes the right talking a lot about trans issues is a flop. As was the even bigger flop of the left trying to institutionalize their views. Most voters want both sides to shut up about it.
I do wonder if trans issues were a flop precisely because there has been so much ground ceded on that issue by pro-trans groups in the past few years that they don't feel like a pressing issue to a lot of voters anymore.
The Jay Jones commentary is dumb. He didn't say anything about shooting any kids. The text messages are bad, but there's no reason to lie about it.
And what needs to be worked out intellectually is the culture of political violence America already has to solve problems. There is an old classically liberal problem about the state's monopoly on violence, tyrannical state violence, and violent rhetoric. The distinction here you're drawing is rather arbitrary compared to the violence we see on TV every day. Jones' win says that it doesn't bother people anymore because the social contract is being shredded.
Per Coyne, Jones did say that he wished his opponents kids would die to change his mind about issues, presumably gun control. The published texts are compatible with that claim. Best of my knowledge, he has not denied it.
Jones trailed Spanberger by over 8 points. That’s a lot of gettable voters he didn’t get. If we were in a Hailey administration without Doge and a shutdown, he would have lost.
That's simply not true, it was not true, and you don't have to defend it. You're asking to prove a negative based on multiple hypotheticals you made up in your head.
Again, the issue is liberals relationship to violence, and how horrible rhetoric can be said as long as it has the *astericks that the state has done it is fine. This sort of hypocrisy about language policing while endorsing many of our existing violent systems like actual policing is why a lot of potential voters have come to the conclusion both parties are the same.
He repeatedly and emphatically apologized. Maybe that shouldn’t matter given the nature of the texts, and he got caught going 114 mph, which seems bad for a state’s top cop.
Look, what Jay Jones said was definitely bad, but when you have elected officials like Sen Mike Lee making fun of the attack on Paul Pelosi and Rep Andy Ogles tweeting gifs of the 9/11 attacks to make fun of Zohran, can you blame voters for not really caring?
Turnout in NYC was about 2 million in this election, but it was 2.8 million in November 2024. Harris won 1.9 million votes to Mamdani's 1 million. Trump topped 800k votes citywide.
Dems also flipped 13 seats in the Virginia House of Delegates. Without gerrymandering. That would translate to a 57 seat flip in the US House of Representatives. Will US House Republicans continue to walk the plank because of Trump's now blunted sword?
The assumption seems to be that Democrats did so well last night purely because of higher enthusiasm and turnout, but how sure are we of this? How do we know how much of the swing from 2024 was due to turnout vs. persuasion?
Pollsters knew about the fact that Democrats are more likely to turnout and presumably controlled for that, and yet the polls still really underestimated Democrats. Is it possible that pollsters, in reaction to previous misses that underestimated Republicans, are now overestimating Trump’s approval and Republicans’ generic ballot numbers with the general public? I haven’t crunched the numbers, but the swings in Virginia and New Jersey seem much larger than you’d have expected based purely on turnout differentials.
Sure, I’m not denying turnout partially explains it, but I’m skeptical it’s most or all of the story given how large these swings were. Democrats were also more likely to turnout in 2021 and performed far worse in these states.
We saw big swings for Democrats in SE Virginia and New Jersey as well, which aren’t as affected by DOGE and the shutdown, so I don’t think that explains much of the swing on its own (maybe a couple points statewide in Virginia).
Hampton Roads, aka southeastern Virginia, is home to an enormous number of military bases and government contractors that were directly affected by Doge and the shutdown. Norfolk Naval Station is just one example of MANY.
Virginia has the second highest percentage of government employees, the second highest percentage of active military, the second highest percentage of veterans at 9%, the largest share of government contract dollars, etc.
That’s good for a whole lot more than a couple of points.
And again, we also saw big swings in New Jersey, that’s my broader point. You can’t explain away last night as just local factors plus turnout (at least, I’d want to see rigorous number crunching show that is the case before believing it). I do think this shows Trump and Republicans really are broadly unpopular, and *possibly* more unpopular than polls currently suggest.
Lakshya was attributing everything to turnout, and I think that’s at least not obviously true. We should be open to the idea that there really is persuasion going on.
Also, Democrats traditionally do well in NoVa and Hampton Roads (and cities), and Republicans do well in RoVa (rest of Virginia.) Disproportionately low turnout in RoVa has a big impact, and it appears to have been disproportionately low this year.
Word to the wise, premising your position on "I'm skeptical" doesn't help unless you clarify what would convince you. Imagine trying to decide on going to a restaurant and the other person just keeps saying "I'm skeptical" they'll have what I want. It's a personal problem you're making everyone else.
I would want some analysis of high quality exit polling or deep dives into the precinct level to show it’s all/mostly turnout. That is, the electorate was so heavily Harris voters that their turnout just explains most of the difference.
I’m *not* saying it wasn’t mostly turnout, I’m simply saying we don’t know and I’m a bit annoyed that many analysts are just assuming it was mostly turnout without a more rigorous look at the numbers. These kind of post-election takes influence narratives so they matter.
I’ve seen many cases over the years of snap takes after elections being wrong after closer analysis. For example, many thought 2016 was low turnout the day after, but it turned out getter all California ballots were counted it wasn’t so low turnout after all.
I am not being condescending. I am pointing out that you appear to misunderstand Virginia politics. You are looking at a state that has been deeply, seriously affected by Trump’s federal actions, to the point I could describe many Virginians as traumatized, and glossing over the impact of those actions.
Axios
“Why it matters: Virginia has one of the highest percentages of federal employees in the country — more than 5% of the state's workforce by some estimates — and Republicans' internal polls are starting to show the damage from tens of thousands of federal layoffs.”
…
"Northern Virginia is filled with people who suffered the consequences of the DOGE cuts, and it's hard to see them being sympathetic to a Republican candidate who supports the DOGE cuts," said Whit Ayers, a veteran Republican pollster.
"I suspect this will be an albatross around the neck of every Republican candidate this year," said Virginia Republican Bill Bolling, a former lieutenant governor.
By the numbers: A private poll done for the campaign of a statewide Republican candidate suggested that just 39% of voters had a favorable view of DOGE.
Nearly half of voters surveyed said they knew of someone impacted by the DOGE cuts, according to results shared with Axios.”
NoVa magazine (Virginia DC suburbs)
“Months after the Trump administration and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) began mass layoffs of federal employees, the housing market is seeing the impacts.
In January, the administration offered 2.3 million federal employees a buyout option that provided eight months of salary and benefits. About 75,000 federal workers accepted.
A new study from Bright MLS, the region’s listing service, shows that nearly 40 percent of real estate agents in the DC metro area say they have worked with a client “whose decision to buy or sell was due to federal workforce layoffs and cutoffs.”
NPR
“The challenges facing Virginia's 320,000 federal workers and hundreds of thousands of federal contractors came long before the Oct. 1 government shutdown. Earlier this year, during Elon Musk's DOGE efforts, thousands of Virginians were laid off.
Democrats in the commonwealth hope that voter anger over the firings and furloughs will carry them to victory on Tuesday night. On the campaign trail, Spanberger talks about sticking up for federal workers in the face of the "chaos from Washington." At a campaign event Thursday, Spanberger put it this way: "The stakes of this election are serious."
This is disqualifying for a legitimate moderate left publication. This makes me want to stop reading. What the person does in office is always more important than meaningless personal behavior. If the point is that the R in this race is not very different, ok, make that point. Otherwise, please stop.
In the face of 2025 Donald Trump, it doesn't matter. American democracy is currently at the "masked gestapo hauling minorities off the street at their discretion" stage. The choice between 'Guy who would be friendly to Trump's legal abuses' and 'literally any other type of guy' is the second, ALWAYS the second.
I think we have the best chance against Donald Trump by having some standards that include "do not tell a Republican legislator that you wish death on your opponents' children" and also "do not drive 116 MPH and then cheat on the community service you were sentenced to". Jones should've been replaced with a Dem who hadn't said and done that stuff.
I don't mean to be aggressive but why shift the conversation from a debate about values to electoralism? You said it yourself here:
> But his comments about his opponents were genuinely horrendous, and I think they did a lot of damage to Americans’ ability to trust that almost no one literally wants to kill each other over our political differences — a shared value on which a functional democracy must rest. **That cause is a lot more important to me than the Virginia AG**
I don't disagree that Jones should have been replaced, but that's not what you said. You said you wished he had lost. That is the sentiment I think is unserious.
I think that 1) ideally Jones would have been replaced with a Democratic candidate who didn't have multiple incidents of extremely poor judgment and character (by the way, I absolutely expect the poor judgment and character to continue in office; someone who conducts themselves like we see in the text message and the 116MPH incident has poor judgment and impulse control and I'd be shocked if this is the last scandal we see from him) and 2) given that didn't happen, I would have been with the many VA Dems who didn't vote for him. There is both a values argument here and an electoral argument here.
I know how bad Donald Trump is. I spend most of my time thinking about how to not just beat Donald Trump but make sure something like this never happens again. I don't believe that it's never worth compromising on character/values. But this was a huge compromise for a very small win on the ground, and put in office someone whose flaws in character and judgment I expect to keep affecting VA dems going forward. And I have already seen Republicans (who did criticize other Republicans for Nazi groupchat comments a few weeks ago!) going "okay, the Democrats are fine with candidates saying they'll kill our kids, everyone has to shut up about Nazi groupchat comments now", and I think that is a seriously bad thing!
Kelsey wishing Jay Jones lost is extraordinarily goofy. Do you remember how obnoxious twitter communists were when they were swearing up and down about not voting for Biden? This is infinitely pettier than that.
When she says that he is less likely to 'entertain Trumpy abuses of federal power', the conversation should stop there. Donald Trump is a fascist insurrectionist; opposing him matters infinitely more than one dem being foul-mouthed.
I don't say this as a hater, btw: Kelsey's a good writer! Her take just struck me as PROFOUNDLY un-serious, especially for a liberal.
I’m saying if a random text is more important than the likely policy differences between a typical D and R as a state Attorney General, I’d say that makes a disturbing statement.
One under-the-radar mayoral race to be excited about: Miami, Florida.
It’s headed to a runoff, but the frontrunner, Eileen Higgins, is someone this publication should be genuinely excited about.
Higgins first won office in 2018 in a major upset, taking a runoff in a district that includes Little Havana against a well-connected GOP establishment figure.
She’s a real housing + transportation wonk. Because of her service on the county Commission, Dade County has seen tens of thousands of new housing units built on publicly owned land. She’s pushed to clear underutilized land around rail stations to allow Hudson Yards-scaled developments, secured federal funding for new rail lines, and generally pushes a "maximum YIMBY" vision, with high-rises around rail lines modeled after cities like Vancouver, Singapore, and Hong Kong.
She's a technocrat, an engineer by training, and a moderate who isn't an establishmentarian.
If she wins, she could become a real rising star: Florida’s answer to Matt Mahan or Daniel Lurie. She could run statewide or be a highly successful HUD or DOT Secretary in the next Democratic administration. If you want to throw a few dollars at a candidate, she's my pick.
FWIW, Kansas Republicans just didn't have the votes. There were a handful of moderates that weren't on board with redistricting and have been holding out for weeks (and the statement about abandoning the effort came out before election results). I don't know if Sharice Davids threatening to run for Senate was a factor at all (she should still give it a go!)
"Because Virginia Democrats held the House of Delegates,"
Um, they picked up THIRTEEN seats! Don't undersell it!
A Dem winning AG instead of his opponent will make many people safer, especially the most vulnerable. None of his like Jones's texts but to say you wish he'd lost reeks of privilege.
A lot of it is also trust. Spanberger earned that trust from independents and moderate Republicans, getting a ton of crossover votes. Not by pandering, but by doing the work and creating a record of how she would govern. Almost every county in the Commonwealth trended blue. You don’t get that when rural voters are afraid of what you might do.
From her victory speech,
“I also know that her supporters are disappointed today — and to those Virginians who did not vote for me — I want you to know that my goal and intent is to serve all Virginians and that means I will listen to you. I will work for and with you. That is the approach I’ve taken throughout my whole career. I have worked with anyone and everyone — regardless of political party — to deliver results for the people that I serve.
That’s because I believe in this idea: that there is so much more that unites us as Virginians and as Americans than divides us. I know in my heart that we can unite for Virginia’s future and we can set an example for the rest of the nation.
Our founders understood this from the very beginning. They didn’t choose to call Virginia a “Commonwealth” by accident. They chose it to signify that our government would be based on the power of the people united for a common good. Not for a political party. Not for a President. Not for a monarch. But for a common good. Together.”
She has a bright political future.
Thanks for calling a spade a spade Kelsey. Character does matter. We have to do better on all sides. If Trump is the threat I believe him to be we have to be better.
Mamdani defeated Cuomo because of Cuomo's character.
Yes the right talking a lot about trans issues is a flop. As was the even bigger flop of the left trying to institutionalize their views. Most voters want both sides to shut up about it.
I do wonder if trans issues were a flop precisely because there has been so much ground ceded on that issue by pro-trans groups in the past few years that they don't feel like a pressing issue to a lot of voters anymore.
The Jay Jones commentary is dumb. He didn't say anything about shooting any kids. The text messages are bad, but there's no reason to lie about it.
And what needs to be worked out intellectually is the culture of political violence America already has to solve problems. There is an old classically liberal problem about the state's monopoly on violence, tyrannical state violence, and violent rhetoric. The distinction here you're drawing is rather arbitrary compared to the violence we see on TV every day. Jones' win says that it doesn't bother people anymore because the social contract is being shredded.
Per Coyne, Jones did say that he wished his opponents kids would die to change his mind about issues, presumably gun control. The published texts are compatible with that claim. Best of my knowledge, he has not denied it.
Jones trailed Spanberger by over 8 points. That’s a lot of gettable voters he didn’t get. If we were in a Hailey administration without Doge and a shutdown, he would have lost.
That's simply not true, it was not true, and you don't have to defend it. You're asking to prove a negative based on multiple hypotheticals you made up in your head.
Again, the issue is liberals relationship to violence, and how horrible rhetoric can be said as long as it has the *astericks that the state has done it is fine. This sort of hypocrisy about language policing while endorsing many of our existing violent systems like actual policing is why a lot of potential voters have come to the conclusion both parties are the same.
He repeatedly and emphatically apologized. Maybe that shouldn’t matter given the nature of the texts, and he got caught going 114 mph, which seems bad for a state’s top cop.
Look, what Jay Jones said was definitely bad, but when you have elected officials like Sen Mike Lee making fun of the attack on Paul Pelosi and Rep Andy Ogles tweeting gifs of the 9/11 attacks to make fun of Zohran, can you blame voters for not really caring?
Or trump in 2016 saying we might need "2nd amendment solutions" if clinton won.
Jones's texts suck, but his private shitty texts are less inflammatory than what a lot of republican politicians have said through official channels.
Baiting headline ignores historic turnout in NYC and NJ.
Historic odd year turnout
Turnout in NYC was about 2 million in this election, but it was 2.8 million in November 2024. Harris won 1.9 million votes to Mamdani's 1 million. Trump topped 800k votes citywide.
Dems also flipped 13 seats in the Virginia House of Delegates. Without gerrymandering. That would translate to a 57 seat flip in the US House of Representatives. Will US House Republicans continue to walk the plank because of Trump's now blunted sword?
The assumption seems to be that Democrats did so well last night purely because of higher enthusiasm and turnout, but how sure are we of this? How do we know how much of the swing from 2024 was due to turnout vs. persuasion?
Pollsters knew about the fact that Democrats are more likely to turnout and presumably controlled for that, and yet the polls still really underestimated Democrats. Is it possible that pollsters, in reaction to previous misses that underestimated Republicans, are now overestimating Trump’s approval and Republicans’ generic ballot numbers with the general public? I haven’t crunched the numbers, but the swings in Virginia and New Jersey seem much larger than you’d have expected based purely on turnout differentials.
Turnout was down in at least some red areas.
Doge and the shutdown had an acute direct effect on a whole lot of Virginians. They were really motivated. Losing your career has that effect.
Sure, I’m not denying turnout partially explains it, but I’m skeptical it’s most or all of the story given how large these swings were. Democrats were also more likely to turnout in 2021 and performed far worse in these states.
We saw big swings for Democrats in SE Virginia and New Jersey as well, which aren’t as affected by DOGE and the shutdown, so I don’t think that explains much of the swing on its own (maybe a couple points statewide in Virginia).
Hampton Roads, aka southeastern Virginia, is home to an enormous number of military bases and government contractors that were directly affected by Doge and the shutdown. Norfolk Naval Station is just one example of MANY.
Virginia has the second highest percentage of government employees, the second highest percentage of active military, the second highest percentage of veterans at 9%, the largest share of government contract dollars, etc.
That’s good for a whole lot more than a couple of points.
You aren’t from Virginia, I’m guessing.
You can chill out with the condescension.
And again, we also saw big swings in New Jersey, that’s my broader point. You can’t explain away last night as just local factors plus turnout (at least, I’d want to see rigorous number crunching show that is the case before believing it). I do think this shows Trump and Republicans really are broadly unpopular, and *possibly* more unpopular than polls currently suggest.
Lakshya was attributing everything to turnout, and I think that’s at least not obviously true. We should be open to the idea that there really is persuasion going on.
Also, Democrats traditionally do well in NoVa and Hampton Roads (and cities), and Republicans do well in RoVa (rest of Virginia.) Disproportionately low turnout in RoVa has a big impact, and it appears to have been disproportionately low this year.
Word to the wise, premising your position on "I'm skeptical" doesn't help unless you clarify what would convince you. Imagine trying to decide on going to a restaurant and the other person just keeps saying "I'm skeptical" they'll have what I want. It's a personal problem you're making everyone else.
I would want some analysis of high quality exit polling or deep dives into the precinct level to show it’s all/mostly turnout. That is, the electorate was so heavily Harris voters that their turnout just explains most of the difference.
I’m *not* saying it wasn’t mostly turnout, I’m simply saying we don’t know and I’m a bit annoyed that many analysts are just assuming it was mostly turnout without a more rigorous look at the numbers. These kind of post-election takes influence narratives so they matter.
I’ve seen many cases over the years of snap takes after elections being wrong after closer analysis. For example, many thought 2016 was low turnout the day after, but it turned out getter all California ballots were counted it wasn’t so low turnout after all.
I am not being condescending. I am pointing out that you appear to misunderstand Virginia politics. You are looking at a state that has been deeply, seriously affected by Trump’s federal actions, to the point I could describe many Virginians as traumatized, and glossing over the impact of those actions.
Axios
“Why it matters: Virginia has one of the highest percentages of federal employees in the country — more than 5% of the state's workforce by some estimates — and Republicans' internal polls are starting to show the damage from tens of thousands of federal layoffs.”
…
"Northern Virginia is filled with people who suffered the consequences of the DOGE cuts, and it's hard to see them being sympathetic to a Republican candidate who supports the DOGE cuts," said Whit Ayers, a veteran Republican pollster.
"I suspect this will be an albatross around the neck of every Republican candidate this year," said Virginia Republican Bill Bolling, a former lieutenant governor.
By the numbers: A private poll done for the campaign of a statewide Republican candidate suggested that just 39% of voters had a favorable view of DOGE.
Nearly half of voters surveyed said they knew of someone impacted by the DOGE cuts, according to results shared with Axios.”
NoVa magazine (Virginia DC suburbs)
“Months after the Trump administration and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) began mass layoffs of federal employees, the housing market is seeing the impacts.
In January, the administration offered 2.3 million federal employees a buyout option that provided eight months of salary and benefits. About 75,000 federal workers accepted.
A new study from Bright MLS, the region’s listing service, shows that nearly 40 percent of real estate agents in the DC metro area say they have worked with a client “whose decision to buy or sell was due to federal workforce layoffs and cutoffs.”
NPR
“The challenges facing Virginia's 320,000 federal workers and hundreds of thousands of federal contractors came long before the Oct. 1 government shutdown. Earlier this year, during Elon Musk's DOGE efforts, thousands of Virginians were laid off.
Democrats in the commonwealth hope that voter anger over the firings and furloughs will carry them to victory on Tuesday night. On the campaign trail, Spanberger talks about sticking up for federal workers in the face of the "chaos from Washington." At a campaign event Thursday, Spanberger put it this way: "The stakes of this election are serious."
This is disqualifying for a legitimate moderate left publication. This makes me want to stop reading. What the person does in office is always more important than meaningless personal behavior. If the point is that the R in this race is not very different, ok, make that point. Otherwise, please stop.
“I wish Jay Jones had lost.”
A candidate wishing death on his opponents kids, in a discussion with a Republican legislator, is really, really bad.
I had no idea that was a controversial opinion.
Voters didn’t like it either. He won, but he won despite himself, and by a much narrower margin than he should have.
Agree. Crosses a line for me. I would not have voted for him.
In the face of 2025 Donald Trump, it doesn't matter. American democracy is currently at the "masked gestapo hauling minorities off the street at their discretion" stage. The choice between 'Guy who would be friendly to Trump's legal abuses' and 'literally any other type of guy' is the second, ALWAYS the second.
I think we have the best chance against Donald Trump by having some standards that include "do not tell a Republican legislator that you wish death on your opponents' children" and also "do not drive 116 MPH and then cheat on the community service you were sentenced to". Jones should've been replaced with a Dem who hadn't said and done that stuff.
I don't mean to be aggressive but why shift the conversation from a debate about values to electoralism? You said it yourself here:
> But his comments about his opponents were genuinely horrendous, and I think they did a lot of damage to Americans’ ability to trust that almost no one literally wants to kill each other over our political differences — a shared value on which a functional democracy must rest. **That cause is a lot more important to me than the Virginia AG**
I don't disagree that Jones should have been replaced, but that's not what you said. You said you wished he had lost. That is the sentiment I think is unserious.
I think that 1) ideally Jones would have been replaced with a Democratic candidate who didn't have multiple incidents of extremely poor judgment and character (by the way, I absolutely expect the poor judgment and character to continue in office; someone who conducts themselves like we see in the text message and the 116MPH incident has poor judgment and impulse control and I'd be shocked if this is the last scandal we see from him) and 2) given that didn't happen, I would have been with the many VA Dems who didn't vote for him. There is both a values argument here and an electoral argument here.
I know how bad Donald Trump is. I spend most of my time thinking about how to not just beat Donald Trump but make sure something like this never happens again. I don't believe that it's never worth compromising on character/values. But this was a huge compromise for a very small win on the ground, and put in office someone whose flaws in character and judgment I expect to keep affecting VA dems going forward. And I have already seen Republicans (who did criticize other Republicans for Nazi groupchat comments a few weeks ago!) going "okay, the Democrats are fine with candidates saying they'll kill our kids, everyone has to shut up about Nazi groupchat comments now", and I think that is a seriously bad thing!
Kelsey wishing Jay Jones lost is extraordinarily goofy. Do you remember how obnoxious twitter communists were when they were swearing up and down about not voting for Biden? This is infinitely pettier than that.
When she says that he is less likely to 'entertain Trumpy abuses of federal power', the conversation should stop there. Donald Trump is a fascist insurrectionist; opposing him matters infinitely more than one dem being foul-mouthed.
I don't say this as a hater, btw: Kelsey's a good writer! Her take just struck me as PROFOUNDLY un-serious, especially for a liberal.
I’m saying if a random text is more important than the likely policy differences between a typical D and R as a state Attorney General, I’d say that makes a disturbing statement.
One under-the-radar mayoral race to be excited about: Miami, Florida.
It’s headed to a runoff, but the frontrunner, Eileen Higgins, is someone this publication should be genuinely excited about.
Higgins first won office in 2018 in a major upset, taking a runoff in a district that includes Little Havana against a well-connected GOP establishment figure.
She’s a real housing + transportation wonk. Because of her service on the county Commission, Dade County has seen tens of thousands of new housing units built on publicly owned land. She’s pushed to clear underutilized land around rail stations to allow Hudson Yards-scaled developments, secured federal funding for new rail lines, and generally pushes a "maximum YIMBY" vision, with high-rises around rail lines modeled after cities like Vancouver, Singapore, and Hong Kong.
She's a technocrat, an engineer by training, and a moderate who isn't an establishmentarian.
If she wins, she could become a real rising star: Florida’s answer to Matt Mahan or Daniel Lurie. She could run statewide or be a highly successful HUD or DOT Secretary in the next Democratic administration. If you want to throw a few dollars at a candidate, she's my pick.
FWIW, Kansas Republicans just didn't have the votes. There were a handful of moderates that weren't on board with redistricting and have been holding out for weeks (and the statement about abandoning the effort came out before election results). I don't know if Sharice Davids threatening to run for Senate was a factor at all (she should still give it a go!)
"Because Virginia Democrats held the House of Delegates,"
Um, they picked up THIRTEEN seats! Don't undersell it!
Point 8: maybe it was Hank Green? Nerdfighteria are a very coordinated group
https://youtu.be/UgvE_gPi7Kc?si=JGsLvW3bUwDKKRqm
A Dem winning AG instead of his opponent will make many people safer, especially the most vulnerable. None of his like Jones's texts but to say you wish he'd lost reeks of privilege.
Someone else said that Trump is so out of bounds, he forces others into weird, unresolvable ethical dilemmas.
It simply isn’t acceptable with Trump’s abuses of power to have a GOP AG in Virginia. It’s too dangerous.