by Dick Hall-Sizemore
Now that the Presidential election is over, Virginians can do what we always do at this time—start seriously considering the next election.
Jason Miyares has taken care of one big unknown; he has announced that he will run for reelection as Attorney General.
For those of us who have been around Virginia government and politics for 40 or 50 years, the line-ups for the elections for statewide offices next year are astounding. They are graphic evidence of how much the population and politics of the Commonwealth have changed in those years. Here are the potential pairings:
Governor—a Republican Black woman vs. a Democratic white woman
Lt. Governor—for the Republicans, no formal announcement yet, but an openly gay man is seriously “exploring” a possible candidacy. For the Democrats, the candidates announced so far include a Muslim female state senator born in India, a male Pakistani-American, and two Black men.
Attorney General—a Republican son of Cuban immigrants versus either a Black male or white female.
To provide some perspective, it was only 38 years ago when Doug Wilder shocked Virginia’s political world by winning election as Lieutenant Governor. I can remember attending his inauguration four years later as the country’s first Black elected governor. Until Winsome Sears was elected Lieutenant Governor in 2021, only one woman, Mary Sue Terry, had held statewide elected office in Virginia. After Wilder, Justin Fairfax was the only Black man to hold a statewide elected office. In summary, over the last 50 years, only Wilder, Terry, Fairfax, Sears, and Miyares were the exceptions to the conventional Virginia statewide officeholder—white hetereosexual males, often with roots in Virginia politics. The so-called “Plantation Elite.” None of the candidates who have declared so far fit that mold.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.