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RICHMOND — Virginia Democrats say they are mounting the largest and most coordinated early voting campaign they’ve ever undertaken for this year’s legislative elections, countering a Republican operation that’s geared up to help Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) win control of the General Assembly to enact his conservative agenda.
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Dubbed “The Majority Project,” the targeted early voting campaign is being rolled out publicly Thursday but has been in the works for months, party officials said. Democrats began hiring field staff in May and expect to continue through August, with more than 100 paid organizers already fanned out across the state, officials said.
In the last comparable election cycle, in 2019, Democrats’ coordinated campaign for House and Senate candidates didn’t begin hiring until July, with only about a dozen staffers in place by mid-month, the officials said. They added that the new effort will cost “in the seven figures.”
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“The main thrust of what we’re trying to do here is to make sure it’s easier than ever for folks to vote early, to have the information that they need and are galvanized and aware of the threats Republicans pose to reproductive freedom and also gun violence prevention,” said Samson Signori, executive director of the Majority Project.
Youngkin debuts web portal urging Virginia Republicans to vote early
The project will work to organize campaigns across the state for both the House of Delegates and Senate, with the goal of protecting the Democratic majority in the Senate and flipping control of the Republican-led House.
All 140 seats in the General Assembly are on the Nov. 7 ballot, a scenario that rolls around every four years and always comes the year before a presidential race. That timing routinely draws outside attention, with Virginia seen as a bellwether and laboratory for issues and trends that might play out a year later on the national stage.
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Stress levels are even higher this year, partly because new political maps have swept out about a third of Virginia’s legislature and left many districts without an incumbent, which leads to a more wide-open contest. But another factor is Youngkin, who is continually flirting with a last-minute presidential run. Winning control of the General Assembly would not only enable him to enact his agenda, it would burnish his national stature.
Youngkin announced last week that he is leading an effort to get Republicans to vote early — countering years of GOP orthodoxy that early voting is untrustworthy — and his Spirit of Virginia political action committee laid out a plan for using artificial intelligence to target voters in swing districts that could determine the balance of power in the General Assembly.
Democrats countered in interviews Wednesday that they have been on the ground for weeks in a little more than two dozen especially tight House and Senate races — mostly in suburban districts in Northern Virginia, Richmond and Hampton Roads — knocking on doors and gathering data.
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But the effort to get people to sign up for early voting actually began last year, they said, after the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and its protection of abortion rights. Thousands of Virginians surged onto the permanent absentee voter list, which means the state will send them a mail-in ballot automatically every year. Virginia is one of only a handful of states that has such a program, along with Maryland. The District sends each of its active registered voters a ballot automatically.
Party officials believe as much as 75 percent of the names on the list are of Democrats, based on voting patterns in recent elections.
Most of the steps aimed at expanding access to the ballot box — including 45-day, no-excuses early voting; drop boxes for mail-in ballots; in-person voting on Sundays; and the permanent absentee list — were passed between 2020 and 2021, when Democrats had majorities in the General Assembly. They were signed into law by a Democrat, Gov. Ralph Northam.
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Republicans largely voted against those efforts, and this year GOP lawmakers supported bills to limit early voting and eliminate ballot drop boxes. Both of those bills were killed in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
Youngkin encouraged early voting when he ran for governor in 2021, and last week announced that the Republican Party of Virginia had signed on to an effort called “Secure Your Vote Virginia” aimed at boosting early voting among GOP supporters.
House Minority Leader Don L. Scott Jr. (D-Portsmouth) said he views Youngkin’s move as partly a response to a special election earlier this year in Virginia Beach, where Democrats energized by the issue of protecting abortion rights voted early and flipped what had been a longtime GOP state Senate seat.
Republicans are learning that “this is what happens when you tell your voters for the last four years that elections are rigged and women’s reproductive health care is not important,” Scott said.
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While Republicans are rallying behind Youngkin as they run in districts around the state, Democrats have no individual standard-bearer. That’s not entirely different from 2019, when Northam — hobbled by a blackface scandal — was too controversial for much of the year to be an effective fundraiser. Former governor Terry McAuliffe (D) stepped in to pinch-hit.
This year, McAuliffe — who fell just short in his comeback bid against Youngkin — and Northam both have made a handful of endorsements, but have not yet ventured out on the stump for Democratic candidates. The lack of a central figure has driven the party to instead summon all hands on deck, including its congressional delegation, with U.S. Sens. Mark R. Warner and Tim Kaine lending fundraising and staff support, said Susan Swecker, chairwoman of the Democratic Party of Virginia.
“Honestly I think it’s been a good exercise of reaching out and bringing everybody together so that everyone in our commonwealth owns a piece of this,” Swecker said.
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State Sen. Mamie E. Locke (D-Hampton), chair of the Senate Democratic Caucus, said she believes the party’s emphasis on issues such as access to abortion, limiting gun violence and increasing funding for education matter more than having a figurehead to rally around.
“We’re not about bringing in personalities to help us do what we know is important for the community,” Locke said.
Besides the push for early voting, Democrats say they’re using technology in new ways to broaden their ability to identify likely voters and persuade them to cast ballots. Tracking allows them to follow up with people who requested mail-in ballots and remind them to vote.
Through “relational campaigning,” candidates or staffers who encounter a possible voter at community events — as opposed to during traditional door-knocking efforts — can enter information in a shared database for follow-up. Campaign field directors coordinate those efforts across House and Senate races, allowing overlapping districts to support one another.
“We invested in people,” Scott said. “We’re doing the hard work on the ground every day.”
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