John,
If you're like me, you're probably sick of election takes at this point.
During the last few weeks, I've refrained from adding to the pile of blather because the hard truth is there is no one reason why everything collapsed for Democrats at the national level on November 5 but every single election, we're subjected to the same frickin' post-game commentary from people who have all the answers. "Ohhh, if only they had listened to me!"
A lot of things went wrong. A lot. As someone who's won four campaigns -- three for the House of Delegates and one for the state Senate -- the one thing I know for certain is splintering the Democratic coalition by pointing fingers at each other for who or what was the problem will not win us our next election.
That doesn't mean we don't learn from this election. It does mean we do need to rally and be in a position to win when the incoming administration inevitably overreaches and turns off large swaths of the American public -- including those of us here in Virginia, which has now supported our Democrat nominees for president five elections in a row after voting for the Republican presidential nominees the previous 10 elections.
So I'd rather offer you at least something positive because -- again, if you're like me -- you need just something (anything, really) that's not the absolute worst right now.
Before we get started: I put my own fundraising on hold for most of this year so I wouldn't be diverting resources from our 2024 candidates. Now I need to rebuild my warchest so I can pay my bills and donate to our Democratic nominees in the Jan. 7 special elections we have coming up to protect our 21-19 Democratic majority in the Senate and 51-49 Democratic majority in the House of Delegates. So please chip in $10, $25, $50, $100 or whatever you can do today. Thank you!
So, about that positive news: I offer a look right here at SD-30, where our Democrats in the Cities of Manassas and Manassas Park had a great night electorally, albeit in the way that you walk out of a car crash (POTUS and Congress nationwide) and find a $20 bill on the ground (local).
Every Democratic nominee and Democratic-endorsed candidate won in the two cities located here in the 30th District:
Manassas Mayor Michelle Davis-Younger earned a second term in office with a dramatically increased margin of victory from 2020, winning by 2.3% four years ago (51%-48.7%) to now winning by 14.8% (57.2%-42.4%), despite a much more aggressive Republican campaign against her.
Our three Manassas City Council nominees -- Council members Mark Wolfe and Tom Osina and first-time candidate Ashley Hutson -- swept their races, defeating their three Republican challengers (including a former city council member and a sitting school board member).
All three of our endorsed Manassas School Board candidates -- Chair Suzanne Seaberg and first-time candidates Dr. Zella Jones and Diana Brown -- won their races, flipping one independent-held seat Blue while only one of the four Republican-endorsed candidates won, retaining a Republican-held seat. (We only ran three Democrats for four seats because our fourth candidate dropped out right before the filing deadline.)
Manassas Park Mayor-elect Alanna Mensing won in a landslide (83.9%-16.1%) against a Republican write-in candidate. Alanna is in her second term as a member of the Manassas Park Governing Body after previously serving on the School Board. She currently serves as the vice mayor.
Our three Manassas Park Governing Body nominees -- Council members Yesy Amaya and Darryl Moore and first-time candidate Stacy Seiberling from the Manassas Park School Board -- swept their races, with Stacy unseating an independent incumbent.
In sum, our city Democrats won all 11 of the races they contested out of a maximum of 12 total seats that were on the ballot. And, yes, some of our candidates' margins of victory weren't as high as in earlier but we really can't compare every single election cycle to our peak year. We found a way to win in a tough election cycle in two cities that were Republican dominated for the first 30 years of my life (I turned 40 two months ago), so, yes, that's something to celebrate. As Nancy Pelosi once said, "Just win, baby."
Meanwhile in the Town of Haymarket, I'm so excited my friend TracyLynn Pater won her campaign to be the town's mayor, making her the first out LGBTQ+ person ever elected mayor in the six municipalities located in greater Prince William (the Cities of Manassas and Manassas Park and the Towns of Haymarket, Occoquan, Dumfries and Quantico). Another one of my dear friends and allies in Joe Pasanello also earned re-election to the Town Council. I'm likewise pleased to see the outgoing mayor Ken Luersen -- who's done a terrific job leading the town over four years -- swap places with TracyLynn as he'll now be on council and she'll become mayor after serving as vice-mayor.
Here's another fact: this election marks the first time ever that women will be mayors of the three municipalities located in SD-30 (Manassas, Manassas Park and Haymarket) at the same time.
More broadly -- of the nine localities that make up Northern Virginia (Prince William, Manassas, Manassas Park, Loudoun, Fairfax County, Fairfax city, Falls Church, Alexandria and Arlington) -- eight of them will be led by Democratic women. (Another Democrat, Jeff McKay, chairs the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors.) That includes the county chairs of Prince William (Deshundra Jefferson), Loudoun (Phyllis Randall) and Arlington (Libby Garvey) and the mayors of Manassas (Michelle Davis-Younger), Manassas Park (Alanna Mensing), Falls Church (Letti Hardy), Alexandria (Alyia Gaskins) and Fairfax city (Catherine Read). Women of color will make up a majority of NOVA's leaders, with Black women serving in 4/9 of those positions (Board chairs of Prince William and Loudoun and mayors of Manassas and Alexandria) and an AAPI mayor leading Falls Church. That's a huge historic-first for NOVA, an area where it was legal as recently as 1968 to restrict people of color from purchasing homes. That's only 56 years ago.
Also: U.S. Reps.-elect Suhas Subramanyam (D-10th) and Eugene Vindman (D-7th) will be representing Prince William County after winning two of the three closest congressional races in Virginia. That means all nine NOVA localities will continue to be represented exclusively by Democrats in Congress, with Reps. Don Beyer and Gerry Connolly also earning re-election. In fact, along the I-395/I-95 corridor, there isn't a locality represented by a Republican member of Congress until you get to Hanover County. Along I-66, it's the same until you get to Warren County.
So, at least here at home in SD-30, greater Prince William and Northern Virginia as a whole, we've got strong representation at the local and Congressional levels, especially with Sen. Tim Kaine winning by just under nine points statewide.
That said, our local wins aren't going to isolate NOVA from the repercussions of the incoming Republican trifecta taking over the federal government.
NOVA will in all likelihood be disproportionately harmed by what's to come in economic and social policies alike, from firing federal workers to targeting undocumented people for mass deportation to attacking the civil rights of LGBTQ people. (Before my colleagues across the aisle high-five each other over that, a reminder of what Dwayne Yancey from Cardinal News wrote: "...even the parts of Virginia most distant from Northern Virginia have a vested interest in making sure its economy is strong.")
First, we're looking at perhaps an unprecedented number of layoffs from the federal government -- tens of thousands of whom live in Northern Virginia. When those workers then try to re-enter the job market in the private sector, that will likely put downward pressure on wages as more workers compete for fewer open jobs and more people spend more time collecting unemployment benefits. It'll also make it harder for the overall labor participation rate to go up when you have fewer jobs available because thousands of former federal workers are trying to feed their families.
Second, for children of undocumented parents, there is a real fear they have of going to school and coming home to their parents being gone. During my first campaign in 2017, I was out collecting petition signatures when I talked to a teacher who described one of her students being upset for exactly this fear. I don't know how many of my student constituents have papers and how many don't. What I do know is when I first toured Manassas Park City Schools after winning my first election, I was asked by students four times that day what was my stance on the undocumented or DACA. People have got to understand that when the incoming administration says they're targeting "criminals," they don't just mean people convicted of felonies and misdemeanors. There is real fear out there about family separation.
Third, as a trans woman living in and representing Northern Virginia in the state Senate, I've watched Manassas Park residents shift from getting rid of Confederate flags to installing Pride flags in my lifetime -- and that is a wonderful thing. What's not wonderful is knowing that any trans person commuting to Capitol Hill from Northern Virginia is now being made out by the Speaker of the House to be a fraud and risk to public safety risk for simply using the same restroom they've been using for years, all because the Speaker caved to his right flank. This is what happens when someone in power concerns himself more about where someone else goes to the restroom than how his constituents afford their bills: childcare, elder care, prescriptions, housing, utilities, groceries, you name it.
So what do we do now?
To be honest, this time feels different than in 2016, when we had a national collective outrage at the loser of the popular vote winning the Electoral College for the second time in 16 years. We marched -- a lot -- we organized and we won big in Virginia on November 7, 2017, sweeping the three statewide races and flipping 15 House of Delegates seats Red to Blue.
Before then though, we started out by winning special elections, including that April here in greater Prince William when Jacqueline Smith flipped the Clerk of the Court office from Red to Blue against the state House majority whip, who outraised her 7 to 1 but still lost because we out-organized and out-hustled the other side.
With that in mind, we have two state Senate special elections and one for the House of Delegates coming up January 7, 2025. Our Democratic majorities rest on our ability to win the two races in Loudoun County. With my state Senate seatmate heading to Congress, Delegate Kannan Srinivasan has clinched the Democratic nomination to replace him while JJ Singh has done the same for Del. Srinivasan's House seat. (The other special election in SD-10 is in deep Republican territory and I'm glad to see that we have a Democratic nominee there too in Jack Trammell, the Democratic nominee for CD-7 in 2014.)
Winning the two Loudoun races would ensure that we can begin the process for amending Virginia's constitution to do three things:
1) Protect your right to vote.
2) Repeal Marshall-Newman and replace it with an affirmative right to marry.
3) Enshrine reproductive freedom.
The special elections are January 7. The next General Assembly session starts January 8 and is scheduled to conclude February 22. I'm ready to do everything I can to help our nominees keep our Democratic majorities so we can do the work to protect our civil rights in Virginia and pass bills that help our constituents instead of single out and stigmatize the very people we're elected to serve.
When I kicked off my first campaign in 2017, Barack Obama was still president for another 17 days. We've rallied through the bad times, raised up each other in the good times and done everything we can to change what's possible in American politics for the best. We need to set a nationwide example in Virginia in 2025, both through our productive work in the General Assembly as we're passing bills and by helping our statewide and House of Delegates nominees win big next fall. Please chip in today and let's go be the change we seek in the world.
Warmly,
Danica Roem
