Virginia Democrats running on protecting voters’ jobs
Candidates flood field for Virginia’s House of Delegates with filing deadline closing in
Editor’s note:
Welcome to the first dispatch from 24sight News intern and reporter Kaylie Klausing in the new “Sic Semper Tyrannis” covering the race for control of Virginia’s House of Delegates. The name, for anyone not living in Old Dominion or across the Potomac and beyond, draws from Virginia’s state flag and motto dating back to the American Revolution meaning “thus always to tyrants”.
While most national attention is focused on the chaos levied by the White House and second administration of President Donald Trump — from attempting to control speech to placing political donors in top posts overseeing their own businesses and attempting to layoff hundreds of thousands of workers — voters across the country are registering increasing outrage at town halls and events, sometimes dubbed the latest iteration of the “tea party.”
Virginia’s elections, coming in the first year after each presidential race, have long been viewed as the first serious measure of voter sentiment regarding the
Kaylie Klausing is covering the races which will decide control of Virginia’s House of Delegates. If you’d like to get in touch with Kaylie, have a tip or a story lead, email her at kaylie@24sight.news.
You can find all of Kaylie’s reporting and more on the 24sight News homepage — www.24sight.news.
Cheers,
Tom LoBianco
Editor, 24sight News
tom@24sight.news
Virginia voters angry at layoffs
Andrew Schear is hoping that voter anger at Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s massive layoffs will help carry him and other Democrats to Virginia’s House of Delegates in the fall.
Schear is running the Democratic primary in Virginia’s new 57th District, which until last year encompassed much of Charlottesville, but in the newly drawn maps moved to the northwest stretch outside of Richmond.
Schear, a filmmaker and wedding photographer, said the issue he hears about the most from voters is jobs.
“It's one of the first things I hear out of a lot of people's mouths when I ask them, 'What is the most important issue to you this year in 2025?'” Schear told 24sight News. "There's definitely a big concern with insulating the state of Virginia, specifically our community here in District 57, from the effects of the Trump administration.”
Virginia is home to hundreds of thousands of federal workers, and has grown in wealth and stature for decades as a suburb of Washington.
"It's something that sometimes might seem far away, but some of these can easily hit close to home. These are people that live a couple miles from me,” Schear said.
Candidates running to fill one of Virginia’s 100 House of Delegate seats this November have until April 3 to file for office if they’re running as a Democrat or Republican (they have until June 17 if they’re running as an independent or third party.)
With regular protests sweeping the country in response to the Trump administration’s radical changes – from theatrical deportations of immigrants to attacks on the free press – the sweeping, and repeated layoffs by Trump and his team have become a defining issue in the early stages of Virginia’s statewide elections.
For years, the Virginia elections have been a bellwether of national attitudes on the party controlling the White House. In 2017, a major swing toward Democrats foreshadowed the Blue Wave of the 2018 midterm elections. In 2021, voter outrage over pandemic lockdowns and schooling fueled a statewide backlash against Democrats.
The Virginia House of Delegates is narrowly divided with Democrats holding a narrow advantage over Republicans, 51-49. The Virginia Public Access Project (VPAP) has identified 10 districts as competitive, seven of which currently have Republican incumbents.
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"If we are going to be successful, we need to be showing people what they're voting for rather than what they're voting against," Matt Royer, president of the Virginia Young Democrats, told 24sight News.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican who at one point toyed with a possible run for president, has actively defended the Trump administration’s job cuts, saying that the state’s economy is strong and can withstand the hit.
But the anecdotal evidence so far backs up what Richmond-area candidate Schear has been hearing. Layoffs registered as a top issue with regular voters polled by NBC News last month.
The candidates at the top of the ticket for governor, former Democratic U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger and Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears (Virginia’s governor’s are limited to only one consecutive term) have split in their messaging, NBC reported, with Earle-Sears saying that the Trump administration is eliminating “fraud and waste” and Spanberger saying the Trump administration’s layoffs are “deeply damaging” to people.
"It's going to come down to, in a lot of ways, what Trump's approval is in the fall," suggested Blue Virginia founder Lowell Feld, who has noticed increased participation in local Democratic committee meetings and town halls. "A lot of people in Northern Virginia, particularly, are very worried and concerned about the situation in Washington."