Boom. Another special election, another flip: Three Democrats get the boot in Virginia By Monica Showalter
Special elections can be tricky to gauge the general election from.
But when all of the results of them go just one way, it’s pretty obvious the other party is in trouble.
Latest news: Three Virginia Democrats in a reliably blue city have just gotten the boot. A local reporter called it ‘stunning beyond belief.’
The Daily Caller reports:
Three Democratic members of the Staunton, Virginia, city council were ousted by Republicans on Tuesday despite receiving more votes than they did four years ago.
Republican candidates Mark Robertson, Amy Darby, and Steve Claffey all joined incumbent Andrea Oakes in a four-seat GOP sweep, WHSV reported. The three incoming council members replaced Democratic incumbents Erik Curren, Ophie Kier, and James Harrington all almost doubled their vote totals from 2016, yet still lost.
And it wasn’t just that city where Democrats lost out, there was also this:
Nearby Wayesboro also put two conservatives, Lana Williams and Bruce Allen, on their city council to “give conservatives a working majority,” Graham reported.
The Caller noted that even the Democrats’ huge turnout machine was no match for the high enthusiasm rate of the Republican voters. Why was that? Well, because Virginia has seen some fearsome abuse from its Democratic rulers — gun control legislation that makes no sense in Virginia’s hinterlands, and then the coronavirus lockdown, which was a death sentence on small business.
Yet it also follows from a string of GOP special election pickups, some with lockdown on the table, some without. In deep blue Connecticut last March, two seats were flipped to Republicans in a state legislature election, one by a candidate with a difficult-to-sell last name (“Bizzarro”)
It was followed by the ‘red shockwave‘ special election less than two weeks ago, that saw the election of Republican Mike Garcia to Congress, in a heavily ballot-harvested California congressional district, no less. There also was a comparable win in political battleground Wisconsin.
They’re all going one way — towards red, and no ballot-harvesting nor mail-in ballot schemes has been able to stop them. Again, it’s not a certainty that these special elections, all going the same way. are going to turn the sky red come November. but this is a sign of something big in the works.
Image credit: Pixabay public domain
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