I haven’t decided who, if anyone, I’ll end up supporting in the VA11 Democratic primary to replace the great Rep. Gerry Connolly – for a list of candidates, see here. Last night, I got to see the kickoff of one of those candidates, VA State Senator Stella Pekarsky, which had 80-100 in attendance, including VA Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell (see his speech, below), Del. Holly Seibold (ditto for her speech), State Senator Jennifer Carroll Foy and Fairfax County School Board member Ricardy Anderson.
A few takeaways from this event: 1) this nomination process could move very quickly, with Democrats potentially choosing a nominee in just a few weeks – early or mid July?; 2) we still don’t have a special election date from Gov. Youngkin, but the feeling seemed to be that he won’t drag it out too much, so maybe late summer/early fall (hopefully we’ll know soon, maybe this week)?; 3) we also still don’t have the date or rules for the Democratic nomination process, but those will be set by the VA11 Democratic committee, specifying when exactly the election will take place, whether it will be a “firehouse primary” or something else (presumably it will be a “firehouse”; would be very surprising if it isn’t), how many polling locations there will be, whether there will be Ranked Choice Voting or not, etc; 4) it will be challenging to communicate with voters – see here for some previous examples of turnout in special, party-run nomination contests (e.g., 27,900 votes in the 12/20/22 VA04 Dem nomination, won by Jennifer McClellan) – given that turnout will likely be a very small percentage of registered voters in VA11, that it’s super-expensive to advertise on broadcast TV in the DC metro market, etc., so more likely it will be a lot of targeted digital ads, mailers, phone banks, door knocking, tapping into political/personal networks, etc; 5) presumably, candidates all start with low name ID in the district as a whole; 6) we’re going to see how much weight voters give to Gerry Connolly’s strong endorsement of his former Chief of Staff, James Walkinshaw, as well as how much other endorsements matter (or not).
With that, here are the speeches from last night’s kickoff for Stella Pekarsky. In her speech, Pekarsky said:
- “…now we are faced with a choice of who represents us next, perhaps for years to come, in the face of the most threatening time any of us have ever seen in this country”
- ” we need a member of Congress who understands that this is no time for normalcy; we have to stand up and be loud in our opposition to what Trump is doing…we have to be effective in working to build coalitions across the political spectrum to slow down and stop his extreme agenda in its tracks…I will stand up and be loud” – “for our local teachers when they are shortchanged by local officials”; “for gun safety,” “to preserve our environmental protections while taking real action on climate crisis”; “for our federal workers”; “for our seniors who are watching MAGA eye their Social Security benefits that they have worked for and actually earned”; “to stop cuts to Medicaid”; “for our immigrants and DREAMers”; “for our democracy”…
- “I ran against an incumbent state senator that people said couldn’t be defeated and I won that too. And that’s why I’m standing up against the machine in Fairfax County and demanding that we get a choice in who to send to represent us in Congress”
- Sen. Surovell emphasized the importance of electing a woman to this seat, given that we’ve lost three Democratic women – Jennifer Wexton, Elaine Luria and Abigail Spanberger – from our Congressional delegation in the past couple years. Surovell added that Pekarsky is a “fearless fighter” who is used to standing up to hostility and “aggression” on the School Board, and also that “I’m not a big fan of coronations” – a shot at the fact that many Fairfax County elected officials have endorsed James Walkinshaw…
