Democrats flipped a Virginia State Senate seat that had been held by a Republican. This victory basically stops Youngkin’s agenda and 15 week abortion ban in its tracks.
🚨 SEAT FLIP! 🚨
✅ Aaron Rouse has won his race for the Virginia Senate in SD-07! pic.twitter.com/urPUQqtFGI
— Virginia Democrats (@vademocrats) January 11, 2023
War for Ukraine Day 320: Soledar!
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Yay! Hopefully VA Dems can flip the House of Delegates back to blue this fall
Tom Levenson
Yes to every flip.
H.E.Wolf
That’s great news! He was one of the candidates that PostcardsToVoters supported (and I’m sure there were other postcarding groups supporting him too). https://twitter.com/DemocratWit/status/1601679365460611072
As with most of the PTV candidates (which is one the reasons I volunteer with them), Aaron Rouse is pro-choice. https://rouseforsenate.com/issues/
opiejeanne
This is great news!
Ohio Mom
Happy news to end my day with. Probably should put the phone down right now.
Congrats to the people of Virgina!
Planetjanet
We are fired up and organized in Virginia. The legislative session begins tomorrow and he may be able to start immediately.
Geminid
@H.E.Wolf: Rouse needed those postcards! Final totals:
Rouse 19,430
Adams 19,082
Sister Golden Bear
Woot!
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Geminid:
Really close margins! Those postcards definitely helped
@H.E.Wolf:
I didn’t get any emails from PtV about this special election. Was it for Virginia residents only?
Jackie
@Geminid: 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Great news to end the day!
BlueGuitarist
huzzah!
LNNVA
This Virginia Senate seat belonged to Jen Kiggens, who beat Elaine Luria for US Representative VA-02 in November. It was a republican seat, so this is a big pick-up. It gives us 22-18 lead in the Virginia Senate going into next falls elections. Although I live in Albemarle County (Charlottesville), I worked hard for Luria and this helps a bit with the hurt of that loss.
David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
Yes. We. Can.
Mike in NC
Glenn Skunkin. Fuck that creep.
eclare
As I said downstairs, this means women in Eastern TN will be able to go to VA for health care. Yay!
NotMax
Yes, Virginia, there is a sanity cause.
Geminid
The result shifts the Virginia Senate from 21D, 19R to 22-18.
This will be important in the upcoming session because Senator McClellan is expected to win the late Don McEachin’s 4th CD seat later this winter. That will cut the Democrat’s lead to 21-18 until her seat is filled, but it would have been 20-19 without Rouse’s win.
Democrats need that extra vote, because Dem Senator Joe Morrissey (D-Jerk) is mad at his party over how they scheduled the 4th CD primary that McLellan won and he lost. Now even if Morrissey wants to make trouble, he can’t help Republicans get bills past Senator Louise Lucas’s Brick Wall.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Geminid:
Thanks for your in-depth coverage of VA politics. Does this Morrissey have a history of being a jerk?
Planetjanet
@Geminid: He can make a lot of trouble between February 21st and when the special election is held. A tie vote on abortion is broken by the Lt. Gov. That is the last whole month of the legislative session.
Planetjanet
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): A colossal jerk. He is pro-life.
Steve in the ATL
@Planetjanet: no, he’s not. He’s anti-choice.
Jess
Woo-hoo!!!
Edit: I know we don’t have this in the bag yet, but I’m beginning to believe that the crazies have done all they can in the political sphere, and the voices of reason are peeling back their grip, finger by broken finger. Of course, there will no doubt be more tragic violence and ugliness committed by unmoored Magats, but we will survive.
Planetjanet
@Steve in the ATL: true
randy khan)
@Planetjanet:
Because it’s 22-18 now, assuming the Dems win the House special election and the seat is vacant, the State Senate will be 21-18 during that time, so him voting for Youngkin’s abortion agenda would still mean the Dems would win – 20-19. But nobody had better miss any sessions.
West of the Rockies
@NotMax:
Tee-hee!
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Planetjanet:
Eww. A “pro-life” Dem, those are pretty rare these days
randy khan)
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
He is a famous jerk, on nearly every level, but sadly he keeps getting elected in his district. People have been highlighting his bad record on abortion (as they should), but that is kind of like the rancid cherry on top of the e. coli sundae.
Planetjanet
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): If I recall correctly, he also married his teenage employee after their child was born. He is a piece of work. I think he is 65 years old now, 58 when he married her.
Geminid
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Oh my goodness! Joe Morrissey has a very checkered career. He developed a reputation in Richmond as being the lawyer to choose if you want a Big Jerk on your side. In 2017 Morrissey parleyed that reputation into a Senate seat representing a majority-Black district. He’d been an unreliable State Delegate in years past.
Morrissey’s been in and out of trouble with the Bar, and did jail time for sleeping with his 17 year-old secretary. They married, he won his Senate seat, and one of Governor Northam’s last official acts was to pardon Morrisey for the crime. There was grumbling at the time, but the pardon may have helped ensure that Morrissey wasn’t a pain in Senate leader Louise Lucas’s ass. His natural inclination is to rock the boat, hard.
tobie
Well done, Virginians. Limiting the damage of Youngkin, protecting women’s rights are very good things.
Wombat Probability Cloud
Fabulous news. Thanks for the diary, David.
H.E.Wolf
I didn’t get any emails from PtV, either – maybe because it was a relatively small list, given that it was for a state legislative seat.
I’m hoping that PtV will write for Jennifer McClellan’s special election to the US House. And in the meantime, every state legislative race that Democrats win is another person in the pipeline to statewide and/or national (Congressional) office!
Geminid
From Virginia Democratic Senate leader L. Louise Lucas:
Redshift
@Planetjanet:
Possibly. I was reading that the state senate has a practice of waiting until the election is certified, which won’t happen until next Wednesday. They have seated members before that in a few instances, but they were not in races as close as this one. But since the Dems have the majority, they may be able to make it happen. (I’m not sure what the process is.)
CaseyL
This is just fantastic news! Congrats, Virginia Dems!
Westyny
@NotMax: Well done.
James E Powell
@LNNVA:
I’m still kind of pissed about that one, too. Luria is one of the good ones.
Steeplejack
@Geminid:
The Joe Morrissey experience (via Vox in 2015). The photos are 😳.
TriassicSands
@Steve in the ATL:
Anti-choice is definitely a better description than pro-life, but pro-forced birth or forced birther may be even better.
People who only care about fetuses and not children don’t deserve any title that is remotely positive.
Aussie Sheila
@Steve in the ATL:
Thank you! Why do even US liberals use the ‘pro life’ phrase?
It is not only bad politics/bad framing, it also happens to be a lie.
Forced birth, anti women’s health care, any number of frames are better than ‘pro life’.
Oops. I see TriassicSands has said the same. Apologies.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Aussie Sheila: We should start calling the anti abortionist “Miscarriage Deniers”
Matt McIrvin
I just say “pro/anti-abortion-rights”. I figure it’s best to tell it like it is; don’t act as if abortion is a dirty word that you need a euphemism for.
ColoradoGuy
“Pro-life” is a focus-group-tested marketing phrase that goes back to Reagan. The GOP have been using advertising agencies since the Twenties (of the last century).
Aussie Sheila
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Personally I would call them women killers, because that is what they are.
I dread the spectacle, but sooner or later, in a red state, a woman is going to die because she was denied an abortion as a result of a still birth/miscarriage. This will be widely publicised as it should, and then the full weight of people’s disgust and revulsion at the barbarity of abortion denial will burst forth.
Until that time, it will be a matter of agitation and organisation and small gains in such states, if it can be managed at all.
Sadly, it will take a widely publicised ‘sympathetic’ death to really move the needle electorally in conservative states imo.
It is terrible, but I think that is the only way that an electorate that doesn’t really like to think about such things will be moved.
Baud
👍
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
A little wordier, but I like that.
rikyrah
Yeah for this race👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
kalakal
Great! A wonderful start to my day!
EarthWindFire
@Aussie Sheila: Right now, the official stance of the forced birthers is that abortions to treat miscarriages aren’t really abortions. We’re going to need a death like Savita Happanavar’s in Ireland for the red states to give a damn, probably several. Even then, I don’t know how it plays out with these whack jobs.
Elizabelle
@Steeplejack: Ah yes. The glory that is. Joe Morrissey.
His presence in the race ensured a large turnout for Jennifer McClellan, who won by like 84% or something.
The 20 something guy behind me in the (50 minute long line, in 35 degree weather) to vote, to his friends: “I had to show up to make sure a pervert is not running our government.”
===
Very happy to hear of Rouse’s win. You know those postcards made a difference.
Appears seat is up again in 2024. He should have an edge, and sounds like a personable and committed guy. (Born and raised in the Tidewater area; former Green Bay Packer.)
MisterDancer
Kay has been talking about this. I would not assume, based on her observations of reporting on the many horrific close-calls to-date (and my broad agreement therein), that said death will get the publicity you’d expect.
American media is in a rough state in a lot of ways, even excluding outlets prone to downplaying any such situation. It’s also why you do hear people say terms like “pro-life”; that side has spent billions over decades to generate outright propaganda — just as some of their acolytes, like Murdoch, continue to impact your shores.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: Kind of like the way I refuse to call the Republican Party “the GOP” because that’s a cutesy affectionate nickname used by people who like them. Their formal name is polite enough. But I’m way out in left field here.
Betsy
@James E Powell:
@LNNVA:
What happened to Kiggens?
Betsy
@EarthWindFire: I wonder how it will play out, too. There’s no telling. Will the Catholic Church nominate the dead woman for sainthood, like they did about 20 years ago with a couple of European and a central American woman who died rather than abort their fetuses?
It seems to me It was back during a particularly vociferous year or two in the forced-birth versus pro-choice battle. Done to make a point.