Graham Moomaw, Virginia Mercury

Stewart, who had served as Nottoway’s registrar for 28 years before being removed from her position in the fall of 2021, argued the move by the Nottoway Electoral Board violated her constitutional rights by being based on false allegations of malfeasance. She also claimed the board didn’t give her an adequate chance to defend her actions in office to try to keep her job.

Though the Nottoway case is largely a local dispute, the court ruling is an indicator that federal courts may not be a strong option for other ousted registrars looking to file legal challenges against the boards that oversee them. Those three-member boards are supposed to be nonpartisan, but decisions to fire registrars are often hotly disputed and frequently involve allegations of political motives. A similar federal lawsuit was filed last month by a recently dismissed registrar in Lynchburg.

In a ruling issued last week, Richmond-based U.S. District Court Judge Henry Hudson dismissed the case on jurisdictional grounds, pointing to 11th Amendment immunity restricting the ability of private individuals to sue states in federal courts.

“Here, it is clear that local electoral boards are more like an arm of the state than they are like municipalities,” Hudson wrote in the July 28 opinion. “Local electoral boards derive all their power and responsibilities from Virginia statutory law. They are subject to the State Board’s supervision and authority, which includes the power to initiate removal proceedings against local electoral board members. Electoral board members are appointed by state circuit court judges. The party affiliation of board members depends upon the party affiliation of the governor, not the party in power locally.”

Even though electoral board members are initially paid with local funds, Hudson noted, their compensation is set by the state and “reimbursed annually from the state treasury.”

Hudson dismissed all the claims Stewart brought under federal law on the basis of the immunity provision and said he had no jurisdiction over the remaining claims under state law, leaving nothing left to argue in the case. He reached the same conclusion in an accompanying case brought by Sharon Caldwell, a former assistant registrar and officer of election in Nottoway who was removed around the same time as Stewart.

Among several other complaints, Stewart alleged she was unfairly retaliated against after publicly telling electoral board members “that they did not understand their roles and were not carrying out their duties,” according to court records.

Attorneys representing the various Nottoway officials Stewart had sued denied her claims and argued the board had clear legal authority to remove her.

“Notably, the Code of Virginia provides members of the local electoral board with broad discretion to remove a general registrar from office for failing to discharge his or her duties according to law,” the legal team for the defendants wrote.

A lawyer for Stewart and Caldwell said the two former election officials plan to keep pursuing their case through the state courts. The two have been “silent” for almost two years, said attorney Melvin Williams, “because it is their goal to seek redress through the courts, and not in the media.”

“These matters are far from concluded, and both ladies look forward to the truth coming out in the proper venue, i.e., a courtroom,” Williams said in an emailed statement.

Williams called Stewart and Caldwell “good and valuable servants of Nottoway County and its citizenry” and noted that Stewart was partially cleared by the conclusion of a Virginia State Police investigation into the Nottoway election feud that resulted in “no finding of criminal culpability” on Stewart’s part.

Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sarah Vogelsong for questions: info@virginiamercury.com. Follow Virginia Mercury on Facebook and Twitter.

The Virginia Court of Appeals overruled a man’s misdemeanor conviction for fleeing from police after ruling the Lynchburg police officer who attempted to make the arrest didn’t get close enough to the suspect to have a realistic chance of grabbing him.

In an opinion revealing what the court described as a legal quirk unique to Virginia, the court found that an officer telling someone to stop from 20 yards away doesn’t satisfy a rule requiring officers to have the “immediate physical ability to place the person under arrest.”

The opinion applies mainly to foot chases, not a separate eluding law that criminalizes fleeing police in a motor vehicle.

The ruling arose from a 2022 case in which Lynchburg police officer M.D. Iazzi attempted to arrest Jessi Ryan Hackett during a snowstorm. After arriving at a home in uniform to try to make the arrest, Iazzi found Hackett standing outside. When Hackett spotted the officer, court records say, he “took off running” into the woods. The officer then told Hackett to stop and said he was under arrest, to which Hackett, still running, replied: “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

The same officer found Hackett nearby about an hour later and, from about 50 yards away, again told him to stop. Hackett ran off a second time but was later arrested and charged with fleeing from law enforcement. He was subsequently convicted of the charge and sentenced to 90 days behind bars, with 60 days suspended.

In the opinion overruling the conviction, Judge Stuart A. Raphael wrote that a distance of 20 yards was simply too great to meet the criteria for fleeing the General Assembly specified when writing the law.

“There was too much time and space separating them to conclude that Iazzi had the immediate physical ability to arrest Hackett,” Raphael wrote. “Put another way, Hackett was not within Iazzi’s ‘immediate span of control’ when he fled.”

The appellate court noted that the immediate proximity rule appeared to originate from the General Assembly’s attempts to broaden earlier versions of the law to allow authorities to charge someone with the offense of fleeing law enforcement even if they weren’t physically in the “custody” of police.

The court’s opinion noted that many other states don’t criminalize fleeing from an impending arrest and those that do “typically focus on the defendant’s act of fleeing.” Virginia, the court said, “appears to be the only state in the country” that requires close physical proximity to an officer as an element of the crime.

The “Secure Your Vote” program pushed by Youngkin’s Spirit of Virginia PAC and the Republican Party of Virginia encourages voters to sign up for the state’s permanent absentee voting list, which allows ballots to be automatically mailed to participants every election cycle. That list and absentee voting itself have come under sharp criticism from some GOP lawmakers who argue ballots going out via mail are more susceptible to fraud.

“Republicans gotta stop sitting on the sidelines and allowing the Democrats to do a better job of voting early,” Youngkin said in an appearance Tuesday morning on Fox News, where he said his party puts itself at a disadvantage by ceding Virginia’s 45-day early voting window to its opponents.

Republican legislators have recently tried to roll back or repeal the lengthy early voting period, but those efforts have been blocked by the Democratic-controlled state Senate.

The party’s new focus on mail and early voting comes in the runup to Virginia General Assembly elections this fall that will have major ramifications for the state’s political future. Republicans are hoping to defend their majority in the House of Delegates and flip the Senate, which would give Youngkin complete policymaking control for the second half of his term. Democrats are hoping to keep the Senate and make inroads in the House, empowering them to continue to thwart the most controversial aspects of Youngkin’s agenda. As Youngkin toys with the idea of running for president, another winning storyline for him in November could also boost his chances of making a late entry into the 2024 GOP primary as a more competent alternative to former President Donald Trump.

Republicans called the early voting effort a “coordinated program” involving the governor’s PAC, the state party, the statehouse-focused Republican State Leadership Committee, and both GOP caucuses in the Virginia General Assembly. In a news release, Youngkin’s PAC described the program as a “seven-figure,” “data-driven effort” to target Republican-friendly voters with sophisticated outreach techniques and encourage them to vote early via mail or in person. The website Youngkin’s team rolled out Tuesday includes online forms to assist Republicans with requesting absentee ballots and getting information on how to vote early.

In response to Youngkin’s announcement, the Democratic Party of Virginia mocked the GOP’s “surprising new support for basic democratic institutions” and suggested Republicans are trying to clean up a mess caused by their own tolerance for false election claims.

“Virginia Republicans should not be surprised if Virginians aren’t buying their supposed newfound support for democracy,” said Aaron Mukerjee, DPVA’s voter protection director. “Under Governor Youngkin’s leadership, Virginia has caved to the conspiracy theorists by pulling out of ERIC, advancing unnecessary voter suppression bills and standing by while election deniers take over electoral boards and registrars’ offices across the commonwealth.”

As they have in the past, Youngkin aides characterized the push as a reflection of their determination to win under the system they’ve been given and not necessarily an endorsement of more open voting laws.

“The rules are the rules are the rules,” said Matt Moran, a longtime GOP operative now acting as executive director of Youngkin’s PAC.

In a joint news release, Democratic lawmakers called the move hypocritical.

“If they are serious about this initiative, the GOP should apologize for their previous attacks to invalidate voting systems,” said Del. Cia Price, D-Newport News, who sponsored new state-level voting rights protections when Democrats had power. “Until then, this is nothing more than political games from people only focused on using any means available to grab power.”

Democrats overhauled Virginia’s formerly restrictive voting laws in 2020, eliminating the state’s photo identification requirement and passing a variety of measures designed to make it more convenient to vote. The state’s former law required voters requesting an absentee ballot to have a valid excuse, such as travel or work duties that would prevent casting a ballot through the regular Election Day process. Under the current system, any voters can cast a ballot through the mail or by visiting a local election office in the 45-day period leading up to an election.

Those changes, combined with safety precautions instituted during the COVID-19 pandemic, have led to major shifts in Virginia voting patterns, with a significant portion of ballots now cast early.

In the 2021 gubernatorial election Youngkin won, more than 36% of overall ballots cast were absentee or early votes. That trend continued in the 2022 congressional midterms, when about a third of Virginia votes weren’t cast on Election Day.

Those batches of early votes typically favor Democrats, because Democratic candidates have been more eager to hype voting reforms their party delivered and Republican voters have been inundated with right-wing messages portraying mail voting as nefarious.

There have been no documented cases of widespread mail voting fraud in Virginia’s recent elections, but the system continues to be a target for conspiracy theories among the GOP base.

The entire election office in Buckingham County quit earlier this year as local conservatives spread unfounded claims that more than 20% of absentee votes cast in the county’s 2022 election came from non-Buckingham residents. In a sign of that theory’s prominence in the county, the Buckingham County Republican Committee promoted the claim about improper absentee voting on its Facebook page. A local Republican briefly hired to run the county election office before being fired a month later also expressed support for former President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was tainted by widespread fraud.

The Buckingham situation may be the most dramatic example of local Republican activists having more fervent views on election integrity than their party’s elected leaders, but concerns about absentee ballot fraud remain widespread among the conservative grassroots. A Republican-allied group called Virginia Fair Elections, which offers training to activists interested in overseeing election processes, lists “limit absentee ballots” as one of its policy priorities.

In a briefing for reporters held in the Richmond offices of a Republican political firm, Youngkin aides pointed specifically to the GOP’s loss in a special election for a state Senate seat earlier this year as an example of how they’re having to play catchup on mail-in voting. In that contest, Republican Kevin Adams stayed competitive with now-Sen. Aaron Rouse, D-Virginia Beach, in Election Day voting and in-person early voting. But the party lagged far behind in mail voting, with Rouse winning 72% of the ballots cast via mail in Virginia Beach.

Youngkin’s political team said it’s planning a concerted media “blitz” in the coming days, with top surrogates set to make TV appearances promoting the pro-early voting message. The governor’s aides also expressed confidence they and their allies have enough credibility to overcome resistance from conservatives who have been led to see mail voting as negative.

“I think it’s having different voices that they respect,” said Dave Rexrode, chairman of Youngkin’s PAC, when asked how the effort will change Republican voters’ views on early voting.

Youngkin’s political team said it has identified a group of roughly 500,000 voters who supported Youngkin in 2021 but sat out the 2022 primaries. Encouraging that segment of the electorate to cast a ballot in 2023, the PAC’s operatives said, will be a key part of their strategy.

“We have to go get them early,” Moran said.

Though Youngkin hasn’t directly criticized those in his party who spread false claims about elections and emphasized election integrity in his 2021 campaign, he has recently portrayed the state’s election system as trustworthy.

“Elections in Virginia are secure and safe,” Youngkin said in an appearance this week on a right-leaning podcast, The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show. “There’s a paper ballot for every voter. We have counting machines, not voting machines. We have clear audits that demonstrate that our elections are safe.”

In-person early voting for the Nov. 7 election begins Sept. 22.

Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sarah Vogelsong for questions: info@virginiamercury.com. Follow Virginia Mercury on Facebook and Twitter.

One of the most prominent spreaders of election conspiracy theories in Virginia politics, Chase appeared to lose a close three-way GOP primary to former Republican senator Glen Sturtevant. She is not conceding defeat and says she’s talking to lawyers and raising money for a possible legal challenge.

The basis for a potential lawsuit, Chase said in an interview Thursday, is that her campaign wasn’t present when Chesterfield ballot scanning machines used for early voting were tested for accuracy and certified.

“We weren’t there to witness it,” Chase said. “So was there fraud? We don’t know. We don’t know because we weren’t there.”

In a statement released Thursday, Chesterfield Registrar Missy Vera said the machines were “properly certified” and her office fully complied with state law. The law says election officials must notify the leaders of local political parties about when and where it will test the accuracy of voting equipment, but it does not require registrars to notify individual candidates’ campaigns.

Candidates are only required to be notified about machine testing if they’re seeking a non-partisan seat on a town or city council and there are no other partisan races on the ballot. A partisan General Assembly primary does not meet that criteria.

Representatives from political parties only observe the process, Vera said, and “do not physically touch the machine.”

“It is the Registrar staff that conducts the Logic and Accuracy testing, all of whom take an oath to prevent fraud, deceit and abuse in the conduct of the election and act in compliance of the law,” Vera said.

In a press release last month, Chase complained that the Chesterfield GOP had designated a Sturtevant campaign staffer, Lauren Fulcher, as its representative to watch the machine certification instead of a “neutral observer.” The Chesterfield GOP didn’t respond to a request for comment Thursday.

In response to Chase’s complaint last month, Chesterfield County GOP Chair Leslie Haley said she had made a last minute decision to let Fulcher act as the party’s representative because no one else was available. Haley apologized “for any misunderstandings” but said the process creates “no opportunity for any bias or influence.” She added she’d work to involve all campaigns in the upcoming testing process for the machines used at regular polling places.

Asked whether she feels a legal challenge would be directed at the registrar’s office or the local political party, Chase said “I’m not an attorney.”

“This isn’t necessarily about overturning election results,” she said. “This is about holding people accountable who didn’t follow the law.”

Even if Chase were able to successfully challenge the validity of some Chesterfield votes, it’s not clear the math would be on her side.

Chase has stressed that she won more votes cast through the traditional voting process on Tuesday. That’s true, but thousands of other ballots were cast through the mail and in person before Tuesday. Sturtevant had enough of an edge in those categories to come out on top overall, with 8,515 votes to 8,169 for Chase. A third candidate, Tina Ramirez, got 4,892 votes.

If all votes cast in person during the 45-day early voting window were subtracted from the totals, Sturtevant would still be ahead, according to unofficial tallies as of Thursday afternoon. Chase would only take the lead if absentee votes cast by mail were also removed from the total count.

With Chase acknowledging her complaint is about the notification and testing observation process, not the technical accuracy of the machines or the validity of ballots fed into them, it’s unclear why any ballots would be thrown out. Because Virginia’s voting system relies entirely on paper ballots, if there’s any question about the accuracy of a scanning machine, the paper ballots can be counted by hand.

In a victory statement, Sturtevant thanked Chase and Ramirez for “their willingness to serve the community” and said he hopes to work with them in the future.

Chase said she would not concede to Sturtevant. She also indicated Thursday that she may run a write-in campaign for the seat, a threat that, if she follows through, could potentially jeopardize the GOP’s ability to hold a must-have district.

“It looks bad for the Republican Party,” Chase said. “We’ve got to ensure to voters that the process is fair, that it’s transparent. And it’s been anything but.”

Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sarah Vogelsong for questions: info@virginiamercury.com. Follow Virginia Mercury on Facebook and Twitter.

“If you get rid of this man, get rid of him on facts,” Clarke said, referring to Nottoway Registrar Rodney Reynolds, whose appointment as the rural county’s top election official isn’t being automatically renewed by the newly Republican controlled Nottoway Electoral Board.

Another speaker, Sue Yeatts, said she was concerned about errors with voter registration cards recently sent out to Nottoway residents and “rudeness” she said she’s seen from Reynolds. The ability to do the job well, she said, should be all that matters.

“I’m tired of the race card,” Yeatts said. “I’m done with it. I don’t want to hear it anymore.”

The Nottoway Electoral Board announced at a meeting Thursday night it would soon be interviewing five candidates for the job at an “undisclosed location,” but much of its discussion of the registrar job occurred during an hourlong closed session. After the meeting, held in a former elementary school building with noticeably broken air conditioning, board members wouldn’t specify if Reynolds would be one of the interviewees. But there was no vote or announcement indicating an official decision had been made to remove him from consideration entirely.

Nottoway, a rural Southside county of roughly 15,500 people about 60 miles southwest of Richmond, is the latest Virginia locality having a heated debate about who should run its elections. The recent turmoil in Buckingham County — where the entire election staff quit and a Republican-allied registrar hired to keep things running was fired after less than a month in the job — has been a cautionary tale for other electoral boards considering similar staff overhauls. Nevertheless, comparisons to Buckingham didn’t deter the Lynchburg Electoral Board from hiring a new registrar last week, according to reporting by Cardinal News, after what a former Democratic board member called a “coordinated attack” against the former registrar who had held the job since 2018.

[Read more: Buckingham Electoral Board fires Republican registrar after less than a month in the job]

The increase in battles over local election administration is driven by several factors. After years in the minority, Republicans recently became entitled to majority control of all 133 of Virginia’s local electoral boards, a legally required result of Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s victory in 2021. That’s happening just as registrars’ four-year terms are expiring this summer, an opportunity for the reshaped boards to decide to keep their existing registrar or bring in someone new. Many of the local Republican activists who play a role in nominating people to serve on electoral boards have also grown increasingly distrustful of and antagonistic toward election administrators, a trend partly fueled by former President Donald Trump’s false claims that rampant voter fraud cost him the 2020 election.

Though Republicans feel they are simply exercising the power state law grants them to oversee local election offices, some in the elections community are concerned departures of experienced registrars could bring more chaos to election offices that are supposed to function more like bland bureaucracies than partisan battlegrounds.

Republican electoral board members thinking of initiating a change in their local registrar’s office recently got legal guidance on how they can and can’t achieve that goal. In a May 15 advisory opinion, Attorney General Jason Miyares said electoral boards have no legal obligation to reappoint incumbent registrars, but they cannot refuse to reappoint a registrar for political reasons alone. However, the line between the political and nonpolitical is often blurry, and Miyares noted the legality of registrar changes ultimately comes down to the facts of each case.

It remains to be seen whether Nottoway will also oust its registrar, but the issue is already stirring up the same type of division seen elsewhere.

Near the end of Thursday’s Nottoway Electoral Board meeting, board Chairman Tom Reynolds, a Republican, pointed to an anonymous quote from a county resident published in a local newspaper warning there was “going to be trouble” if Rodney Reynolds didn’t keep his job as registrar.

“I took that as a threat. And I will not be intimidated,” said Tom Reynolds, who is not related to Rodney Reynolds.

Board member Sarah Allen, now the panel’s lone Democrat, chimed in with her own anecdote about seemingly threatening behavior.

“No more white pickup trucks coming down my driveway please,” she said.

Rodney Reynolds stayed out of the public debate over whether he was worth keeping, entering the meeting room only temporarily to give the board a few updates on election-related business. After the meeting, he said he wasn’t sure whether he would be one of the five people interviewing for his job, which he would like to keep.

“I know this job,” he said.

Though the trend of registrars fighting for their jobs is largely being driven by a partisan shift this year from Democratic to Republican control of local electoral boards, the facts of each situation differ. In Nottoway, the Electoral Board is not looking to replace a longtime registrar. Reynolds was hired in 2021 when the Democratic-led Electoral Board chose to replace former registrar Angela Stewart, who had held the job for almost three decades. That vote was bipartisan, but local Republicans contend the Nottoway situation is about rectifying a situation caused by Democratic officials’ past disregard for the norms of election administration.

The controversy in Nottoway predates Republicans taking a majority on the board earlier this year. A special prosecutor was called in last year to look into various allegations of wrongdoing by the board and election office, and the county’s former registrar has filed a federal lawsuit claiming she was wrongfully fired.

[Read more: Special prosecutor trying to sort out elections drama in Nottoway County]

When the board was under Democratic control, former state elections Commissioner Chris Piper sent Nottoway officials a letter ordering board members to be re-trained on the duties of the office and the Freedom of Information Act due to the high volume of complaints the state was receiving about the way the election office and board meetings were being run. During the midterm elections last year, a judge rejected an attempt to keep some Nottoway polling places open after the normal closing time after concerns were raised that not all candidates had been notified of the move.

On Thursday, Nottoway County Democratic Committee Chairman Thomas Crews reminded the board the decision to hire Rodney Reynolds was bipartisan. The upcoming personnel decision, he said, should be similarly bipartisan in order for Nottoway residents to have confidence Republicans aren’t orchestrating a “hostile takeover” of the election office.

“We do not want to see Nottoway County turned into Buckingham, but that is the dangerous road down which we could end up traveling,” Crews said.

Diana-Lynn Wilkins-Mitchell, a Nottoway resident who has repeatedly asked the state to intervene in the county’s elections drama, pointed to the recent attorney general opinion to assure the Electoral Board it has every right to make a change if it feels hiring a new registrar is in the best interest of the county.

“Somehow in all of the things going on, we have lost sight of one important fact,” Wilkins-Mitchell said. “Which is that the code of Virginia dictates how we move forward in everything we do.”

Under Virginia law, registrars are appointed to four-year terms on a timeline that puts them up for reappointment by July 1 of this year. The law says registrars “shall continue in office until a successor is appointed and qualifies.”

The recent opinion from Miyares, issued in response to a request from Del. Kathy Byron, R-Bedford, said the law shouldn’t be interpreted to mean registrars are entitled to a “lifetime appointment” when the General Assembly clearly envisioned four-year terms.

“The board may replace the registrar for a wide variety of reasons, including for example, underperformance, availability of a better candidate, or any other permitted reason,” Miyares wrote. “A board, however, may not refuse to reappoint an incumbent based on prohibited grounds such as race or other legally protected status or political affiliation.”

Any local process of hiring a new registrar, Miyares said, “must be objective and apolitical.”

Last week, Buckingham moved a step toward normalcy when a local judge made an appointment to fill an empty Republican seat on the Buckingham Electoral Board. The local GOP previously nominated just-fired registrar Luis Gutierrez for the seat, but withdrew his nomination after the move was reported by the Virginia Mercury and set for a public court hearing.

As of June 1, the new Republican member of the Buckingham Electoral Board is Sandy Banks-Bertwell, a real estate agent who previously served on the board but had quit in April. In a nomination letter to the judge, Buckingham County Republican Committee Chairwoman Ramona Christian said Banks-Bertwell had resolved “out of state work issues” and could return to the board.

“The intense persecution from Jordan Miles left her little time to pursue her career as a real estate agent in Virginia and South Carolina,” Christian wrote, referring to Democratic Buckingham Supervisor Jordan Miles. “Sandy believes she is now in a better position to handle the pressures of the electoral board and her career.”

Asked for a response to the “persecution” claim, Miles said he’s had virtually no interaction with Banks-Bertwell outside of public records requests and speaking at formal board meetings. The board should get to work “hiring a competent, permanent registrar,” he said, instead of “peddling fairy tales.”

Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sarah Vogelsong for questions: info@virginiamercury.com. Follow Virginia Mercury on Facebook and Twitter.

A former state senator with a moderate profile who is trying to make a political comeback in a more conservative district, Sturtevant opened his remarks by telling the crowd he had cast some votes he “regretted.” Supporting a proposed red flag law in 2019, he said later in Thursday’s candidate forum hosted by the pro-gun Virginia Citizens Defense League, was “a mistake.”

“At the time we thought it was a way to try to stop some of these shootings by mentally ill folks,” Sturtevant said, noting that both former President Donald Trump and the National Rifle Association had expressed support for red flag laws as a general concept. “We’ve seen since that it is abusive and bad policy.”

Sturtevant’s vote for a red flag law, an idea that didn’t pass in 2019 but was enacted in 2020 once Democrats took full control of the General Assembly, has been an early sticking point in what’s expected to be one of the liveliest Republican primary battles of 2023.

Both of Sturtevant’s GOP opponents in the suburban Richmond district — firebrand Sen. Amanda Chase, R-Chesterfield, and nonprofit leader and former congressional candidate Tina Ramirez — have used the issue to attack Sturtevant, highlighting the electoral risks for Republicans who express any support for limitations on gun rights.

Sturtevant, Chase and Ramirez will face off in a primary on June 20. The district they’re competing in leans Republican, covering a large swathe of Chesterfield County and the city of Colonial Heights.

At the VCDL forum, all three candidates said they would vote to repeal Virginia’s red flag law.

“I don’t have any votes that I need to apologize for, though I do appreciate the apology,” Chase said. “I have a 100% VCDL score, 100% of the time.”

Ramirez said she believes the law, which allows authorities to temporarily seize firearms from people deemed to pose a threat to themselves or others, violates both the Second Amendment and Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.

“Anyone that would support this kind of legislation isn’t only not a conservative, they’re not a constitutionalist,” Ramirez said.

Over more than an hour of questioning from VCDL President Philip Van Cleave, all three candidates repeatedly said they’d work to repeal gun control laws Democrats passed in 2020 and support a so-called constitutional carry law, which would allow Virginians to carry concealed weapons without a permit.

All three said they support lifting restrictions on regular citizens owning fully automatic machine guns. Federal law prohibits civilian ownership of machine guns made after 1986 but includes exemptions for machine guns legally owned prior to that year. Both state and federal law require machine guns to be registered with government agencies.

Raising the specter of war with China, Chase said “we as Americans always have to be ready to go to war.”

“I want to have what they have,” Chase said. “Because I’m not gonna go with a knife to a gunfight.”

Ramirez said people should be able to choose whichever type of firearm works for them.

“Sometimes it’s actually really nice to have one that shoots all over the place if you don’t know exactly how to shoot the target as well as you would like,” she said.

The three contenders also backed the idea of automatically restoring gun rights to people with felony convictions once they leave prison.

“That’s something that I’m going to champion,” Sturtevant said. “When a person has paid their debt to society, and they have done their sentence, they need to get all their rights back, including their gun rights. We’re not gonna pick and choose what rights the state is willing to give back to you.”

Under current law, felons who have had their voting rights restored by a governor can petition a court for restoration of their firearm rights, with an opportunity for prosecutors to object if the requester has a history of violence.

The candidates all expressed broad opposition to location-specific restrictions on guns. But they differed in their responses to questions on how to handle guns in schools.

After Van Cleave asked if Virginia should follow Utah’s lead and allow concealed carry permit holders to take guns into schools, Sturtevant, who formerly served on the Richmond City School Board, said he supports Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s push for armed police officers in every school. But he said he believes it should be up to local officials to decide who should be allowed to have guns in school buildings. Chase and Ramirez disagreed, saying teachers and others should be allowed to have firearms to protect themselves and students.

“Whether you’re a teacher or a coach, no matter who you are, you should be able to carry,” Chase said.

Asked after the forum if she thinks gun-carrying privileges in schools should also extend to students who are 18 or older, Chase said she sees the situation as no different than allowing 18-year-olds to serve in the military.

“If they’re reckless with it, they can lose that right,” she said. “We do have responsible 18-year-olds.”

Sturtevant was the only Senate Republican who voted for the initial bill creating a red flag law when it was put to a committee vote in 2019. The bill failed to advance out of that committee in a 7-7 vote. When the red flag legislation that ultimately passed came to the Senate floor the next year, no Republicans supported it.

Republican lawmakers, including Chase, have filed several bills to repeal Virginia’s red flag law, but those efforts have been unsuccessful due to the Democratic majority in the state Senate.

Sturtevant was one of the most imperiled Senate Republicans in 2019, a year when the suburban anti-Trump backlash delivered Democratic majorites in both General Assembly chambers. Sturtevant lost his seat to Sen. Ghazala Hashmi, D-Richmond, in one of the most expensive races of the 2019 cycle.

In interviews after the forum, both Ramirez and Chase said they think Sturtevant’s 2019 vote shows his willingness to compromise on what they see as a core issue for conservatives.

“If you couldn’t trust him then because he was willing to compromise his values to get reelected, then why should we trust him now when it’s a more conservative seat?” Ramirez said.

In an interview, Sturtevant said his change of heart on red flag laws came about when he realized there was “too much of an opportunity for abuse.”

“It allows the taking away of a constitutional right without due process,” he said, emphasizing his legislative record as a whole was broadly supportive of gun rights.

In his closing remarks to the VCDL crowd, he pitched himself as the most electable candidate in a race Senate Republicans can’t afford to lose if they want to give Youngkin Republican majorities for the final two years of the governor’s four-year term.

“We cannot mess around,” Sturtevant said. “Because we are not guaranteed another Republican governor in the next gubernatorial election.”

Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sarah Vogelsong for questions: info@virginiamercury.com. Follow Virginia Mercury on Facebook and Twitter.

Building on past efforts to grant photo-less ID cards to Old Order Mennonite and Amish communities, the Virginia General Assembly appears set to create a religious-based exemption to rules requiring photo ID as part of the background check process for gun purchases.

Under a bill drawing bipartisan support, roughly 2,000 Virginians would gain the ability to buy firearms using special ID cards state lawmakers approved in 2019, according to the legislator sponsoring the plan.

Del. Chris Runion, R-Rockingham, told a Democratic-controlled Senate committee Monday he was advocating for the exemption on behalf of religious groups mostly located in the Shenandoah Valley that have a “quiet voice” and rarely vote or participate in government affairs.

“These folks are sportsmen and they own firearms to protect their livestock,” Runion said.

Virginia residents without photo IDs used to be able to buy firearms from private sellers at gun shows, Runion said. That access was essentially shut off, he added, when the state tightened its laws in 2020 to close the so-called gun show loophole by making background checks mandatory for private person-to-person sales as well as purchases from federally licensed gun shops.

Under the proposed law, gun buyers covered by the exemption would still go through the regular background check process overseen by the Virginia State Police, but a photo-less ID card would satisfy the identification requirement. A representative for the State Police testified Monday that the lack of a photo wouldn’t impair the agency’s ability to perform background checks.

“We do not need the photograph,” said Chad Rogers, a legislative liaison for Virginia State Police, which took no position on the bill.

Sen. Joe Morrissey, D-Richmond, asked whether the legislation would allow someone not currently eligible for the exemption to become eligible by joining one of the covered religious groups. Runion noted the photo-less ID law the state already has only applies to people who have valid federal paperwork exempting themselves from Social Security and Medicare programs on religious grounds.

“It’s a fairly high bar for you to do that,” Runion said.

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved the bill 15-0, a tally indicating the proposal has a good shot at passing the full Senate later this week. The legislation passed the GOP-led House of Delegates 73-27 earlier this month, making it a rare Republican-sponsored gun bill drawing Democratic support.

Senate Democrats have blocked numerous bills aiming to roll back aspects of the breakthrough package of gun-control laws their party passed in 2020. Even as the religious exemption bill advanced at Monday’s committee meeting, Democratic senators blocked several other Republican proposals dealing with gun policy.

One of the rejected bills would have exempted highway rest areas from a law banning guns at state-owned facilities. Supporters of the legislation said it would let motorists, particularly those on the road late at night, defend themselves as they travel through Virginia. Opponents said they didn’t support “chipping away” at the law by starting to create carveouts allowing guns in more places.

Similarly, the committee blocked a Republican bill that would have created an exemption to the gun ban on Capitol Square for people with concealed carry permits.

Another bill dealing with photo ID rules for background checks seemed like it had a chance to pass with Democratic support, but failed after two rounds of voting. The other ID proposal would have repealed a 30-day waiting period preventing people with a brand-new Virginia driver’s license from buying firearms.

Officials said the rule was implemented in the 1990s as a way to prevent people from establishing temporary Virginia residency to take advantage of the state’s gun laws. At the time, policymakers were particularly concerned about gun trafficking across state lines.

The bill to lift the 30-day rule initially deadlocked in a 7-7 vote, with one Republican senator missing. After a Virginia State Police representative explained the origins of the law later in the meeting, the bill failed 6-9.

Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sarah Vogelsong for questions: info@virginiamercury.com. Follow Virginia Mercury on Facebook and Twitter.

A scaled-back proposal to repeal Virginia’s antiquated constitutional ban on same-sex marriage was blocked Friday by the Republican-controlled House of Delegates, despite supporters’ attempts to win bipartisan votes by stripping out any language overtly backing LGBTQ equality.

Same-sex marriage has been recognized in Virginia for years, and the ban voters approved in 2006 doesn’t currently carry any legal weight. But after the conservative-leaning U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion last year, LGBTQ advocates say the issue of marriage equality looks less settled than it once did.

Just prior to Friday’s vote in a House Rules subcommittee set up to hear proposals for constitutional amendments, a representative of the socially conservative Family Foundation raised the prospect of the Supreme Court overturning the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationally.

“If and when it does, Virginia’s constitution should continue to reflect the truth about marriage,” said Family Foundation lobbyist Todd Gathje.

None of the four Republicans on the subcommittee spoke about the proposal or disagreed with Gathje’s comments before the 4-1 vote to block it.

Because the proposed amendment was being heard in a special Rules subcommittee dominated by members of the chamber’s leadership, the Republicans who opposed the measure were Speaker Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah, Majority Leader Terry Kilgore, R-Scott, House Appropriations Chairman Barry Knight, R-Virginia Beach, and House Commerce and Energy Chairwoman Kathy Byron, R-Bedford.

The speaker’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The amendment repealing the same-sex marriage ban had passed the Virginia Senate 25-14, with four Republicans joining Democrats in support.

The Senate had passed a similar but more detailed repeal measure last year. That version not only would have repealed the constitutional language limiting marriage to one man and one woman, but would have enshrined marriage as a “fundamental right” and declared government officials must “treat all marriages equally.”

After some Republican legislators warned of unintended consequences of making marriage an affirmative right, repeal proponents filed stripped-down versions that only got rid of the currently unenforceable ban without adding anything new.

The repeal legislation “provides a fundamental dignity and equality to our families, friends, neighbors and to me,” Sen. Adam Ebbin, D-Alexandria, one of the Virginia General Assembly’s first openly gay members, told the subcommittee.

Del. Tim Anderson, R-Virginia Beach, had filed an amendment similar to Ebbin’s, saying prior to the session that support for same-sex marriage aligned with conservative principles like small government and equal treatment under the law. Six Democrats and one Republican, Del. Glenn Davis, R-Virginia Beach, had co-patroned Anderson’s measure, indicating it would have had a chance of passing if it had cleared the committee process and gotten to a full floor vote. Republicans have a 52-48 majority in the House. But the Republican-backed version never got docketed for a committee hearing.

If it had passed, the amendment would have needed General Assembly approval again next year before going to voters in a 2024 ballot referendum.

After Friday’s vote, Democrats and LGBTQ advocacy groups issued statements accusing Republicans of scuttling a chance to let Virginians weigh in on gay marriage again to rectify the 2006 vote.

Pro-LGBTQ rights group Equality Virginia said the amendment would give same-sex couples in Virginia “peace of mind about the future of their relationships.”

“There has been a common theme from the anti-equality leadership in the House of Delegates this session: pass anti-LGBTQ+ bills, kill any proactive protections for our community and do all of this without consulting LGBTQ+ Virginians or taking us seriously as people and constituents,” said Equality Virginia Executive Director Narissa Rahaman. “Rest assured, Equality Virginia will remember this in the fall when we head to the ballot box.”

In a statement, the Democratic Party of Virginia said the vote indicates House Republicans share the desire for courts to take action in the future to nullify some Virginians’ marriages.

Friday morning’s vote also came up on the House floor later in the day.

“We already know that folks like the Family Foundation and other extreme elements of the party are salivating at the opportunity to start taking these freedoms away,” Del. Marcus Simon, D-Fairfax, said as he recounted what had happened in the subcommittee.

No Republicans stood to offer a rebuttal.

The only other group to speak against the repeal at Friday’s subcommittee hearing was the Virginia Catholic Conference.

“If you believe, as we do, that marriage is the union of one man and one woman and that we should preserve this original design, please vote to continue reflecting that in our state constitution,” said Catholic Conference Executive Director Jeff Caruso.

Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sarah Vogelsong for questions: info@virginiamercury.com. Follow Virginia Mercury on Facebook and Twitter.

A proposal to put menstrual data stored on period-tracking apps beyond the reach of Virginia authorities failed in the state House of Delegates Monday after Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration expressed opposition to the idea for the first time.

The legislation, which had passed the Democratic-controlled Senate with bipartisan support, was backed by abortion rights supporters who see it as a way to ease a privacy concern that arose from the fall of Roe v. Wade last year. Supporters of the bill said it would remove any possibility that data stored in menstrual apps could be used in abortion-related prosecutions.

Addressing a House subcommittee Monday afternoon on Youngkin’s behalf, Deputy Secretary of Public Safety and Homeland Security Maggie Cleary warned legislators that the proposed law appeared to be the first of its kind limiting what information Virginia courts can deem relevant enough to potential criminal cases to authorize warrants to obtain.

“Currently, any health information or any app information is available via search warrant,” Cleary said. “We believe that should continue to be the case.”

In response, Sen. Barbara Favola, D-Arlington, the bill’s patron, suggested menstrual information is uniquely sensitive and should be treated accordingly.

“There’s very little information that is as personal and private as your menstrual data,” Favola told the subcommittee before her bill was defeated 5-3 along party lines.

A legislative staffer told the committee information stored in the apps is not covered by HIPAA, the main federal privacy law protecting health information, because users only store information in them and they don’t involve the provision of health care services.

The Democratic Party of Virginia seized on Cleary’s comments, issuing a statement shortly after the vote calling it “exceptionally disquieting to see Governor Youngkin oppose a bill that would protect women from having their private health data weaponized against them in a court of law.”

“Governor Youngkin’s eagerness to imprison women and doctors for seeking and providing reproductive care is a dangerous step,” said DPVA spokesman Liam Watson.

As they push for stricter abortion restrictions, Republican leaders in Virginia have repeatedly said they don’t intend to prosecute women for abortion, which in the commonwealth remains legal and largely unrestricted in the first and second trimesters of pregnancy but is banned in the third trimester unless there’s a dire threat to the mother’s health. Current Virginia law also criminalizes “partial birth infanticide” and prohibits the promotion of illegal abortions that don’t adhere to medical regulations governing when, where and how the procedures can take place.

Though Republicans have been unable to pass tougher abortion laws and the enforcement practices that could come with them, Youngkin’s office has said he would not sign legislation “which imprisons women.” In a speech at the anti-abortion March for Life in Richmond last month, Attorney General Jason Miyares also said prosecuting women over reproductive choices is “not right.”

In a statement Monday, Youngkin spokeswoman Macaulay Porter accused Democrats of misrepresenting the administration’s reason for opposing the bill shielding menstrual data from search warrants.

“Democrats are deliberately distorting the problems with this bill to distract Virginians from the fact that they chose again today to stand with fentanyl dealers over victim’s families,” Porter said, referring to Senate Democrats’ vote to block a Youngkin-backed bill that would have allowed drug dealers to be prosecuted for felony homicide if their drugs led to a fatal overdose.

Virginia law states search warrants can be used for “any object, thing, or person, including without limitation, documents, books, papers, records or body fluids, constituting evidence of the commission of crime.” The law lays out specific procedures for when search warrants can be issued for lawyers’ offices and when tracking devices can be used, but doesn’t include exceptions for health-related information.

The Republican-led subcommittee that blocked the bill didn’t spend much time discussing it.

“What age group are these apps targeting?” asked Del. Margaret Ransone, R-Westmoreland.

“I cannot answer that,” Favola said. “Anybody might have access to an app.”

A similar Democratic bill that would prohibit period-tracking apps from selling or disseminating reproductive data without users’ permission is currently pending in a House committee after passing the Senate. That bill would also prohibit Virginia authorities from extraditing people charged with abortion-related crimes in other states unless the alleged offense is also considered a crime in Virginia.

Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sarah Vogelsong for questions: info@virginiamercury.com. Follow Virginia Mercury on Facebook and Twitter.

“Can you feel it?” Youngkin said. “It’s happening again.”

Youngkin told the veteran-heavy audience at Gourmeltz, a Fredericksburg-area sandwich shop that made headlines for defying COVID-19 mask mandates, that Virginia’s sharp turn rightward was a preview of what could happen nationally in the midterm elections.

The governor gave one of his signature red vests to the event’s co-star, Republican congressional candidate Yesli Vega, who told supporters no amount of “lies” or media bias can stop her from beating Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger and becoming the first Latina to represent Virginia in Congress.

“What’s been predestined for us in heaven, no man or liberal can take from us,” said Vega, a former police officer and daughter of Salvadoran immigrants who serves on the Prince William Board of County Supervisors.

At a campaign stop in the clubhouse of Prince William’s sprawling Potomac Shores development a week earlier, U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine described what a wild few years it’s been since he was on the ballot with Spanberger during her first run for office in 2018.

Spanberger, a former CIA officer, famously flipped a Republican district that year by beating former GOP congressman and Tea Party favorite Dave Brat, who had shocked the political world himself by ousting former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a Republican primary. Then came two presidential impeachment trials, Kaine said, a pandemic that led to a million American deaths, and an attack on the U.S. Capitol “orchestrated by a commander in chief” that forced members of Congress to barricade themselves in as rioters breached the building.

“I got nerves about this election,” Kaine told an overwhelmingly female crowd at a roundtable discussion on jobs and health care. “Because I think a lot’s at stake for our country.”

Asked in an interview what lessons she took from Virginia’s 2021 election, Spanberger said “a lot of voters in Virginia just kind of thought, ‘Oh look, we’re a blue state.’”

“And we’re not,” she said. “But I’ve never represented a blue district. I’ve always run for Congress in, frankly … a red district.”

Rep. Abigail Spanberger speaks to the media at an early voting stop in Prince William County (Graham Moomaw/Virginia Mercury)

With no U.S. Senate race or other statewide contest on the ballot, Virginia isn’t as close to the center of the national political conversation as it was in 2021. Democrats control seven of the state’s 11 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, a majority they gained after flipping three GOP-held districts in 2018, when suburban voters revolted against former President Donald Trump.

This year, the overarching question is whether Republicans will regain none, some or all of that lost ground as the party looks to retake a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives and potentially flip the U.S. Senate.

Three Democratic women who ousted Republicans in suburban battlegrounds in 2018 are playing the most defense in Virginia this year, with money pouring into their districts from both sides.

Spanberger is trying to hold off Vega in the redrawn 7th District, which 2021’s redistricting process shifted north from the Richmond suburbs to focus more on rural central Virginia, the Fredericksburg area and Prince William.

In the Virginia Beach-anchored 2nd District, Republican state Sen. Jen Kiggans, a nurse practitioner and former Navy helicopter pilot, is running against Democratic Rep. Elaine Luria, a former Navy commander.

In Northern Virginia’s 10th District, Democratic Rep. Jennifer Wexton, a lawyer and former state senator, is being challenged by Republican Hung Cao, a retired Navy captain who came to America as a Vietnamese refugee.

Political analysts rate the 2nd and 7th Districts as virtual tossups, with Luria facing a slightly tougher challenge than Spanberger because of her swing district’s stronger Republican tilt. The 10th is seen as more safely Democratic but potentially in play if the GOP has a surprisingly strong night.

Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, said that with no statewide race on the ballot, Virginia’s turnout picture is unclear. But if it’s close to what happened in Virginia in 2021, he said, it could be another good year for the GOP.

“That’s a world in which Luria loses. Spanberger is in big danger of losing,” Kondik said. “And Wexton is probably really close.”

Though Virginia is getting less attention than other bellwether states, Kondik said the early returns in the three competitive races could predict whether the country will see a Republican “megawave” (if all three districts flip) or mixed results more in line with typical midterms. If Democrats manage to hold all three Virginia seats, it would show Republicans may be falling flat in areas where they had high expectations.

The party that controls the White House almost always loses seats in the midterms, and numerous polls have pointed to growing GOP momentum in the late campaign season, with voters consistently rating economic concerns as a top issue. In some respects, Kondik said, that’s “a return to the basic fundamentals.”

“You’ve got an unpopular president in the White House,” Kondik said. “There are problems out there that the opposition party has a fairly easy time pinning on Democrats.”

‘People are ready for change’

As Election Day approaches, the two parties are presenting starkly different visions of what the country’s most pressing problems are, let alone how to fix them.

At Democratic events, reelecting the incumbent congresswomen is portrayed as a bulwark against an election-denying, abortion-banning Republican Party that offers no coherent governing vision and remains in thrall to a lawless former president.

At Republican events, ousting the nearest Democrat, regardless of their moderate branding, is pitched as the most direct way for voters to stop the pain of high inflation and restore common sense to a country awash in “woke” ideology that’s upending schools and public safety.

Republican candidates are trying to tie Virginia’s front-line Democrats to the economic policies pursued by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Joe Biden, whose approval ratings have deteriorated in Virginia since his double-digit win in the state two years ago.

“Our gas bill last month was triple what it was when Trump was in,” said Cheryl Gates, a Spotsylvania County resident and Vega supporter who owns a paving company with her husband, Chris. “Try filling some dump trucks. Try filling ’em in this economy.”

Terry Barratt, a Prince William retiree on a fixed income who was working the Republican booth at an early voting site in the county, said a GOP Congress would “balance things.”

“Inflation has taken its toll,” Barratt said. “Every month I need to take more out of savings.”

Speaking to reporters after her rally with Youngkin, Vega said that “Virginians want more money in their pocket,” and higher taxes and more federal spending aren’t making life less expensive for everyone “feeling the squeeze right now.”

“People are ready for change,” Vega said. “And we’re going to give them that change.”

LAKE RIDGE, VIRGINIA – OCTOBER 14: Republican Congressional candidate Yesli Vega speaks at a Hispanic Get Out the Vote Rally on October 14, 2022 in Lake Ridge, Virginia. Vega, a former law enforcement officer is running against incumbent Abigail Spanberger in the general election for Virginia’s 7th Congressional District on November 8, 2022. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images)

Spanberger, who regularly spotlights provisions in the Democratic Inflation Reduction Act designed to lower prescription drug costs for seniors and make health insurance cheaper for families who buy plans through government-run exchanges, said she empathizes with people who are “feeling uneasy” about the country’s direction.

“I recognize it every day,” Spanberger said. “Because I’m actually trying to do something about it.”

Spanberger said she wants to return to Congress so she can continue working to find solutions, and she gave a broad defense of the steps Democrats took to help the country through the pandemic and toward recovery.

“We would have never done these various pieces of legislation if things were normal,” Spanberger said. “When you look at our recovery, compared to peer nations, while I don’t like where we are yet, we are many many paces ahead … because of the hard choices that we made.”

‘I’m not your candidate’

The Democratic incumbents have sought to portray their opponents as extreme and out of step with the swing districts they hope to represent, particularly on election conspiracies that helped fuel the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and abortion policy.

Ted Harris, a retired engineer from Prince William who attended a campaign event with Spanberger during early voting at a local Department of Motor Vehicles office, said the choice to vote against Republicans isn’t a remotely close call.

“When they praise a fascist demagogue, what do you expect?” Harris said.

Luria, the only Democrat on the House’s Jan. 6 committee who is facing a tough reelection bid this year, has made protecting democracy and fair elections a hallmark of her closing campaign message. In an ad reiterating arguments she made in a debate against Kiggans, Luria says flatly she’s “not your candidate” if you believe the 2020 election was stolen, “support insurrectionists” or “attack the FBI and defend Donald Trump.”

“If standing up for what’s right means losing an election, so be it. If you’re looking for someone who will just say anything, just to win, I’m not your candidate,” Luria says in the video ad.

The Kiggans campaign riffed on that theme in a response posted to Twitter.

“If you’re struggling under 8.5% inflation, she’s not your candidate,” Kiggans said. “If you’re worried about crime in your neighborhoods, she’s not your candidate. If you think Biden and Pelosi are wrecking the country, she’s not your candidate!”

‘There’s a recording of her saying it’

The U.S. Supreme Court ruling this June that overturned the constitutional right to abortion seemed to give Democrats a potent issue to run on, reminding voters of the real-world consequences for women if anti-abortion lawmakers get power. However, its prominence as a decisive issue appears to have faded over time, with polls consistently showing independent voters are more concerned about the economy and inflation.

Kiggans, Vega and Cao have all said they’re pro-life, but all three have tried to avoid talking about the topic at length by insisting abortion policy is now a state decision, not a federal one.

Vega has received particular scrutiny for her views on abortion after a recording surfaced of her saying there might be some “truth” to the idea women are less likely to get pregnant from rape. Vega now insists her words were misconstrued, but Spanberger has called the comment “an affront to women who have been victims of sexual violence.”

“There is a recording of her saying it,” Spanberger said in a news release last month.

After state Sen. Amanda Chase, R-Chesterfield, recently announced she’ll push for a strict abortion ban in Virginia next year, Democrats seized on the prospect of the state bill to argue the GOP will indeed pursue draconian abortion policies if given the chance.

At the Spanberger campaign stop in Prince William, Del. Candi Mundon King, D-Prince William, talked up the importance of electing more women to office, with a caveat.

“Women change things,” Mundon King said. “But let me just say that not any old woman will do.”

‘A problem with parents’

Just as Democrats are highlighting state-level abortion legislation that could be coming, GOP candidates have sought to emphasize what they say is Democratic extremism on issues of transgender rights.

After Del. Elizabeth Guzman, D-Prince William, suggested in a TV interview that she would reintroduce a child abuse bill creating specific protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity, conservatives seized on comments she made that seemed to suggest the law could be used against parents who don’t allow a child to change their gender identity.

Guzman insists that’s not what her bill was intended to do, and numerous Democrats, including Wexton, have said they don’t support it.

That hasn’t stopped Republicans from drawing connections between Guzman and the Democrats they’re targeting in the midterms.

“Jennifer Wexton has a problem with parents. And parents have a problem with Jennifer Wexton,” the narrator says in a Cao ad on Guzman’s proposal.

Wexton has sought to portray Cao as an extremist, running ads that reference his past comments calling global warming a “boogeyman” and saying he’d like to “punch Dr. Fauci in the face.”

A special election in the state Senate?

The narrowly divided Virginia General Assembly isn’t up for election for another year, but a Kiggans victory would set off a new special election battle to fill her state Senate seat.

Democrats currently hold a 21-19 majority in the Senate, which they say is the only thing stopping Republicans from passing stricter abortion regulations. A state Senate vacancy in a competitive district would give Democrats an opportunity to grow that advantage and create more of a buffer against GOP legislation. A Republican win would simply maintain the status quo.

The timing of a special election could be a point of contention, because Republicans and Democrats are locked in a procedural disagreement over whether the legislature is or isn’t in special session. That distinction matters, because if the General Assembly isn’t in session, Youngkin would have the power to set the date of the election as opposed to Democratic Senate leaders.

In 2019, Kiggans won the state Senate seat by about 500 votes.

Campaign signs outside the election office in Prince William County, a closely watched battleground in the midterm contests. (Graham Moomaw/Virginia Mercury)

Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sarah Vogelsong for questions: info@virginiamercury.com. Follow Virginia Mercury on Facebook and Twitter.

Prince William County Registrar Eric Olsen said he would resign after the midterm elections after a local GOP leader made phone calls to election officers suggesting they would be getting different Election Day assignments than the ones Olsen had announced. The elections office also received a letter from a lawyer for the local GOP threatening a lawsuit if Republicans didn’t get more representation in the higher-ranking election chief and assistant chief roles.

Olsen said he had worked diligently to recruit more Republican election officers in Prince William — a Northern Virginia county of more than 465,000 people that will be a key battleground in this year’s congressional races — without much assistance from the local Republican party he felt was turning needlessly hostile.

“I am resigning after this election,” Olsen said to the surprise of many attending Friday’s Prince William Electoral Board meeting. “Because if this is how the general registrars are treated when they are trying to do the right thing, then by God, what happens when something goes wrong?”

Olsen, who got the Prince William job just last year after more than a decade of elections work, added that he had recently received bad medical news about a heart condition, and the stress and pressure of working in an atmosphere of rampant suspicion of election officials was becoming too hazardous to his health.

“When I get pissed off, I get pissed off. And I think this is bullshit,” Olsen said. “If I’m dead next year, I won’t be a very good registrar anyway.”

The surprise announcement comes amid growing concern about the morale of the people who do the ground-level work of running Virginia elections. Local election offices throughout the state are still facing intense scrutiny of their operations, much of it tied to unfounded right-wing conspiracy theories about fraud and other problems in the 2020 presidential election. As a result of that, many Republican activists are showing increased interest in signing up for jobs that let them keep a close eye on how voting works.

Prince William appears to be the rare Virginia locality that had a legitimate election problem in 2020. The county’s former registrar, Michele White, was recently indicted on corruption charges related to the 2020 cycle, but state and local officials are refusing to explain what the case is about.

The new Prince William controversy centers on a state law that gives local political parties oversight of who’s serving as election officers and extra power to designate who should serve as chief and assistant chief election officers. The law requires parties to submit nominees for officers of election early in the year and instructs registrars to pull from those lists “if practicable” and prioritize partisan nominees for the chief roles.

Republicans suggested Olsen was overreacting to a request that he follow a law that they said prohibits Prince William from using more experienced nonpartisan election officers if a Republican, no matter their experience level, is available.

“Best efforts and good intentions are not a substitute for obeying the law,” said Republican Electoral Board member London Steverson. “And I’m sorry Eric has gone to the nuclear option here.”

In an interview, Prince William County GOP Chair Denny Daugherty said he’s simply asking the county to honor the political parties’ rights to pick their own representatives instead of having to accept the registrar’s choices.

“I shouldn’t be stuck with people who are not really Republicans and she shouldn’t be stuck with people who aren’t really Democrats,” Daugherty said, motioning to Prince William Democratic Committee Chair Tonya James.

James said she felt there may be valid concern about the process, but she said it could be addressed in future election cycles instead of creating uncertainty just a few weeks out from Election Day.

“I do understand Denny’s concerns about some of the chiefs and assistant chiefs,” James said. “I’m not concerned to the point that maybe they need to be reassigned at this juncture. But moving forward, that needs to be a priority.”

Daugherty estimated the issue involved 20 to 30 positions.

The state Department of Elections recently resent old guidance clarifying the process on partisan involvement in picking officers of election, a document Daugherty said backs his interpretation of the law.

The dustup drew a thundering condemnation from Prince William Electoral Board member Keith Scarborough, a Democrat, who pounded the table while calling the GOP’s move “incredibly outrageous.”

“I genuinely cannot believe that anyone thinks it’s a good idea to take an experienced chief out of a precinct and plug in someone who’s never worked an election,” Scarborough told reporters after the meeting. “If that’s what the Republicans think should be happening, I don’t buy it.”

After the electoral board held a closed session to discuss the issue, Scarborough indicated the county would not be acceding to Daugherty’s request. But Olsen said he expects the two sides to try to work out a compromise.

Daugherty said he was surprised the board didn’t appear to be consulting with the county attorney on what the law requires.

“It would be a shame if we had to file a suit in order to get their involvement in reviewing what is patently illegal,” Daugherty said.

Most of Prince William’s voters live in the 7th Congressional District, where a hotly competitive contest is playing out between Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger and Republican challenger Yesli Vega. The county also touches the 10th Congressional District, where Republican Hung Cao is challenging Democratic Rep. Jennifer Wexton in a race that should favor Democrats but could be close if Republicans have a surprisingly strong showing in November.

Though Olsen won bipartisan praise as a competent and effective election administrator who’s served Prince William voters well, he told reporters he wouldn’t reconsider his decision to step down, possibly as soon as late November.

In 2020, Olsen said, Prince William had 466 Democratic election officers and 201 Republicans. This year, he said, there are 399 Democrats and 402 Republicans, the result of a targeted recruitment effort by his office to achieve partisan parity.

“To do all that and then to have the party come in with a team of lawyers … They didn’t even nominate officers by the deadline,” Olsen said. “They haven’t done much in the way of recruiting.”

The timing of Olsen’s departure could be significant. For now, Democrats have a 2-1 majority on the county electoral board to which Olsen reports. But the board will flip to Republican control at the end of the year due to Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s victory last year, raising questions about who will be in control when the board picks Olsen’s successor.

“It’s not a good time to be an election official right now,” Olsen said as he publicly announced his departure. “And I think there’s legitimate fear about what could come down the road for people who are just trying to do their jobs.”

Unanswered questions about 2020

At the meeting, Scarborough, the Democratic board member, denounced the trend of election offices being inundated with Freedom of Information Act requests about the 2020 election. Those requests, he said, are a waste of time and money by people still hung up on “the big lie” that widespread fraud occurred in 2020.

But Scarborough said he too could not comment on the pending corruption case that has raised doubts about the accuracy of the official vote totals Prince William reported in 2020.

Scarborough largely declined to discuss the indictment of White on charges of corrupt conduct, making a false statement as an election official and neglect of duty by an election official. Asked if the county’s 2020 vote counts were accurate, Scarborough said “that’s one of the things in question.”

“But I can tell you that whatever issues there were with the vote reporting, there was nothing that would’ve changed the results of any election on the ballot,” he said.

Electoral Board member Pamela R. Walker said Attorney General Jason Miyares hasn’t briefed local officials on the case.

“So I don’t know what he’s found,” Walker said.

Miyares spokeswoman Victoria LaCivita refused to elaborate on the indictments this week, saying, “I cannot comment on ongoing cases.”

The attorney general’s office revealed the indictments against White just a few days before announcing a dedicated “election integrity unit.” In a statement last month, the Republican Party of Virginia said the prosecution sends “a strong message to election officials throughout the state to follow the law.”

State Board of Elections Chairman Bob Brink also refused to comment on the case, citing “pending litigation.”

In an interview, Olsen said he too isn’t fully aware of what the indictments are based on. But he acknowledged the problem, whatever it was, led to slightly skewed vote counts from Prince William in 2020.

“Were they accurate? No,” Olsen said. “Were they enough to make a difference in any of the races? No.”

Former President Donald Trump lost Virginia to President Joe Biden by 10 percentage points, or more than 450,000 votes.

In her first public comments on the matter, White told The Washington Post the case against her was a politically motivated effort by Republicans to justify the new election integrity unit. The attorney general’s office called that claim “utterly false.”

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