This Week in Statehouse Action: November and Everything After edition
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On one hand, the Virginia elections were, like, a week and a half ago. (That comes out to approximately three months in Trump Time.) On the other, with recounts and lawsuits pending in enough races to push Virginia Democrats from their current post-electionThis Week in Statehouse Action: November and Everything After edition
On one hand, the Virginia elections were, like, a week and a half ago. (That comes out to approximately three months in Trump Time.) On the other, with recounts and lawsuits pending in enough races to push Virginia Democrats from their current post-election tally of 49 seats in the House of Delegates to a 50-50 power-sharing arrangement—or even an outright majority in the 100-seat chamber—there’s still quite a lot of statehouse action afoot here. (More on this later.) Also, everyone and their cat is trying to claim credit for the big wins in Virginia. “Victory has a thousand fathers” or whatever, and pretty much all of the dozens of “outside” groups on the ground can credibly claim a slice of credit for Nov. 7’s successes. Campaign Action But what nobody’s talking about is how the existing Democratic Party apparatus—especially the Virginia House Democratic Caucus—facilitated these victories. Virginia’s election laws provide great flexibility in terms of allowing outside groups to share information with campaigns and committees, and the extant party infrastructure helped new organizations avoid duplicating efforts and allowed everyone involved to maximize resources (while reporting all investments and transactions—helpfully easily searchable via the Virginia Public Access Project). But since Virginia’s election laws are as rare as they are permissive, the myriad groups jockeying to lay a hand on the Old Dominion trophy will have to adjust their tactics to have similar success in other state legislative elections in 2018. Okay, back to the ongoing action in Virginia. Rage Against the Voting Machine: Three districts are preventing either political party from feeling satisfied with its numbers in the Virginia House of Delegates. Recounts or legal action are likely or underway in House Districts 28, 40, and 94. Read more