See below for video and straw poll results from tonight’s St. Patrick’s Day fete, the 31st annual put on by Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA11) and his team, and with an apparent record 1,200 people in attendance. That’s encouraging, by the way, as it yet again shows significant engagement by Virginia Democrats – also see the large turnouts at town halls, local Democratic commitee meetings, etc. – which should bode well for November. Speaking tonight, in addition to Rep. Connolly, were Reps. Suhas Subramanyam (D-VA10) and Eugene Vindman (D-VA07), plus former Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA07), who’s now running for governor, plus the Democratic candidates for Lt. Governor and Attorney General. I’ll have more tomorrow, but for now, here are the videos and straw poll results…
P.S. I’m not going to post transcripts of the LG and AG candidates’ speeches, as they’re mostly the same (but shorter, given that they had less time at this event) as at the Mt. Vernon Dems’ Mardi Gras party a few weeks ago…see here for those. I did post an excerpt from Jay Jones’ speech last night, as he wasn’t at the Mt. Vernon Dems’ event, so there’s obviously no stump speech from that event for him.
Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA11) introductory remarks
Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-VA10): “Virginia has an opportunity to send a message to the rest of the country that we reject MAGA, we reject DOGE, and we will make sure that Democrats are back in power soon.”
Rep. Eugene Vindman (D-VA07), who Rep. Gerry Connolly correctly called an “American hero”: “I love this man [Gerry Connolly]…He is my hero, he is my mentor…This November is going to be critical, the message we send when we elect Abigail Spanberger as the next governor and we have a Democratic LG and a Democratic Attorney General is going to resound around the country. And we need to make it not 5 points, but we need to make it 10 points – we need to make it clear.”
State Senator Aaron Rouse:
Former Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney
Attorney Victor Salgado
Prince William County School Board Chair Babur Lateef
Attorney/Labor Activist Alex Bastani
State Senator Ghazala Hashmi
Henrico County Commonwealth’s Attorney Shannon Taylor
Former VA Del. Jay Jones: “It has been six or seven crazy weeks and every person across Virginia has a story about
how these crazy things are impacting them. It’s personal for me; my mother-in-law is a 30-year government employee and she’s gotten not one but two emails from Elon Musk telling her to tell him what she did last week. And there are people stepping up to fight – it’s the Democratic Attorneys General – but the problem we have here in Virginia is that our guy [Jason Miyares] won’t lift a finger to help us”
Former Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA07)
Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA11) announces straw poll results
LG: Aaron Rouse 25% – Levar Stoney 24% – Babur Lateef 22% – Ghazala Hashmi 15.5% – Victor Salgado 8.5% – Carl Eggleston 2.9% – Alex Bastani 2.9%
AG: Shannon Taylor 62% – Jay Jones 38%
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