| After flipping 15 House of Delegates seats in 2017, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee is gearing up to take back the Virginia House of Delegates and State Senate this November. They already committed to investing $1 million into the 2019 elections in the Commonwealth – the largest early investment they have ever made – and are now putting their weight behind 17 incumbents and challengers through its Spotlight program to turn Virginia blue.
With so much attention turned towards the 2020 elections, state legislative campaigns have been sidelined by many national political groups and activists. Virginia campaigns can’t expect to receive the kind of national support they experienced two years ago when the Commonwealth’s elections were viewed as the first big electoral test of the Democrats’ resistance to the Trump administration. This makes the DLCC’s commitment to Virginia all the more important this year.
The million dollar investment and endorsement of over a dozen candidates marks a departure from 2017 when flipping the House of Delegates blue seemed like a pipedream and the Senate wasn’t up for election. The DLCC’s Spotlight program wasn’t even as laser-focused on Virginia back then, but now, Democrats only need to flip two seats in both chambers to take them back and complete a Democratic trifecta in Virginia.
The DLCC’s Virginia Facebook ads are not just targeting the Commonwealth either. Hopefully, their efforts will help attract attention from Democratic activists across the country to focus on the 140 Virginia state legislative seats up for election this November.
How have the DLCC’s Spotlight candidates invested in digital advertising and communication? We took a look at how much the 17 endorsed campaigns spent on Facebook advertising so far, and… it’s not a lot. These are races without a competitive primary, so the campaigns may be in less of a rush to spend big money on paid digital advertising than those that still need to clear the June primary. However that hasn’t stopped their GOP opponents – most of whom are also not facing a primary – from outspending the Spotlight Democrat in nearly every single district.
Investing early in a campaign’s digital infrastructure can boost name ID, build a list of supporters and create a network of small-dollar donors. And with the controversies from earlier in the year still lingering over Virginia Democrats, using digital advertising to draw attention to the Democrats’ legislative successes, like Medicaid expansion, and define their GOP opponents before they can define themselves could go a long way towards flipping Virginia blue.
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