Could Virginia be a blueprint for a Republican red wave in 2024?
Editor's note: The following column was first published on OutKick.
On a sunny, brisk weekday in Sterling, Va., state senate candidate Juan Pablo Segura is on a world tour of sorts.
Andres Ruiz, a pastor who works with Segura’s campaign on Latino outreach, gestured to a block of strip-mall of restaurants with a grin. "See? You can go from Peru to Bolivia, Mexico, and around the corner is Venezuela!"
Segura, a Republican entrepreneur vying to be Virginia’s first Latin-American state senator, is courting the immigrant community in the competitive 31st Senate District, a bid to earn both new and disaffected voters in a population he says Democrats have taken for granted. Last week, it was working.
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Control of the Virginia House and Senate hang in the balance in this midterm test of Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s appeal and record in this purple state. The operation is a test-run of the GOP’s message and its ability to avoid the pitfalls that plagued the party in 2020 and 2022.
It could also be a chance to capitalize on President Biden's losses among Hispanic voters, where the president's lead has fallen from 12 points in NYT battleground polling to single digits since September. It's part of a larger shift among all nonwhite voters since 2020, where Biden has seen almost a 20 percent drop in support. If Republicans can attempt to woo them, it would happen in swing districts like the one where Segura is pounding the pavement.
Twenty-year-old Katie Rivas, working the register at her father’s small Loudoun County market, said she was excited to cast her very first vote for Segura next week at her former high school. Edgar Martinez, an administrator at a local church, said he’s been in Virginia more than 30 years, but this will be his first vote for state senate.
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"Republican principles are in a lot of ways immigrant principles," Segura said, referencing the newly redrawn district’s 14% Latino population, along with double-digit Asian and multiracial segments. "This race is really a microcosm for what the coalition can look like."
Control of the Virginia House and Senate hang in the balance in this midterm test of Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s appeal and record in this purple state. The operation is also a test-run of the GOP’s message and its ability to avoid the pitfalls that plagued the party in 2020 and 2022.
Every state seat is up for grabs, but the competitive universe is about seven Senate seats (either party must win 4 for control) and 10 Delegate seats. Republicans currently hold the House and Democrats, the Senate.
As Segura walked the district, he chatted in his fluent Spanish with a pair of women enjoying Peruvian chicken as a telenovela played on the restaurant TV, and a group of 20-somethings at a Mexican restaurant’s bar. These voters shared with him a mix of economic concerns, wariness of Democrats on social issues and public safety, particularly among church-going Latinos, and pride in potentially electing a member of the Latin community. Segura is a native Virginian whose family hails from Argentina.
In 2022, national issue polling showed Republicans with commanding leads in what voters cared about, but the party couldn’t overcome candidate quality issues and a top-down aversion to early voting. The expected red wave never washed ashore.
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This year in Virginia, "top issues for Republicans and Independents…are the economy and inflation, at 41% and 30% respectively, while Democrats said abortion is their highest concern, at 25%."
On a recent weekend, door-knockers with Americans for Prosperity walked pumpkin-dotted porches in Northern Virginia, politely crossing paths with activists for Segura’s Democratic opponent, Russett Perry. Reaching people on the economy, education, and public safety with "policy leaders who believe in freedom and opportunity," is what voters want, said C.J. Sailor, state director of AFP, who says the organization tallied more than 700,000 voter contacts in the cycle. "It’s so important to connect with voters about what’s at stake."
Youngkin’s state operation has done three things to prevent a repeat of 2022 and preserve the term-limited executive’s chance at expanding his legislative agenda. They worked on candidate quality, going 10-for-10 in contested primaries where Youngkin backed a candidate.
"We really focused on finding good candidates that could run good campaigns, that could effectively communicate what they want to do in Richmond and who would be good public servants," said Dave Rexrode, a senior adviser to Youngkin.
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The state party rolled out an early-voting effort in July they say got buy-in from candidates, the state party, and local activists. The push has ruffled feathers in Segura’s district, where the area’s liberal prosecutor cease-and-desist letter over having a mariachi band and a taco truck at one of his "early-vote fiestas." Segura said such events have been attracting hundreds of new and infrequent voters, which is what Republicans must do to win these uphill-climb districts.
"We’re certainly seeing a lot of good progress, and I think it’s gonna pay dividends for us in these targeted races where the margins are going to be incredibly close," Rexrode said.
Finally, the party’s operation spent money early defining candidates positively while Youngkin himself staked out a "compassionate consensus" position on abortion— a 15-week limit with exceptions— that gave Republican candidates a position to embrace, making it harder for Democratic opponents to claim they want the kind of early bans that risked swing and suburban voters in 2022.
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"One of the big lessons learned from 2022 is we can’t just let Democrats get way with their fear-mongering on the issue," Rexrode said. "We have to clearly articulate where we stand on the issue but also explain where they stand on the issue," which he said represents only a very small minority of Virginia voters.
Segura and the rest of the battleground candidates also hope to be buoyed by Youngkin’s popularity. Youngkin’s approval rating has been above 50 percent all year and goes as high as 60% with Independent voters. Notably absent from the constant attack ads on Virginia TV and radio are attacks on the governor himself. Instead, many Democrats are running on promises to work across the aisle with the governor.
Youngkin was propelled to the governor’s mansion in 2021 on his own political savvy and a normie-dad vibe, bolstered by a series of missteps by Virginia Democrats. Most notably, former Gov. Terry McAulliffe threw in with teachers’ unions to keep schools closed for more than a year during the pandemic, and pooh-poohed parents’ concerns, making parental rights an issue that still resonates in a place like Loudoun County, which became ground zero for education fights. Joshua Raimundo, strategic director with the LIBRE initiative in Virginia, said education is a top issue for Hispanic voters in the state, who favor school choice in large numbers.
"They (Democrats) have forgotten the Latino," Martinez said as he showed Segura out of the church lobby and back into the autumn sun. "We are traditional values. I don’t see the Democrats support that anymore at all. We want to see you at the state to help Glenn Youngkin!"
Next week, we’ll find out whether new messengers, a popular governor, and a conversion on early voting can improve on the GOP’s 2022 performance and lay the groundwork for this battleground state in 2024.