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As Democrats try to fire up their fatigued base, two contests for the Virginia legislature will serve as the first measure of partisan enthusiasm since Donald J. Trump’s victory.
Reid J. Epstein has reported on Virginia politics on and off since 2017.
Dec. 8, 2024, 5:00 a.m. ET
Even as the exhausted nation recovers from its two-year presidential campaign, candidates in a pocket of Northern Virginia are gearing up for a pair of special elections that may serve as barometers of partisan enthusiasm in the Trump 2.0 era.
The contests early next year in Loudoun County, for seats in overlapping districts in Virginia’s State Senate and House of Delegates, will not only determine which party holds majorities in the narrowly divided chambers. They will also be the first significant elections since voters returned President-elect Donald J. Trump to office.
Eight years ago, his surprise victory prompted a wave of Democratic energy, unleashing geysers of fund-raising and a zeal to vote that led the party to special-election victories even in deeply Republican districts.
But since Mr. Trump’s defeat of Vice President Kamala Harris, Democrats have focused more on protecting political turf at the state level than on engaging in flashy national demonstrations. Donations to liberal nonprofit groups have not matched the resistance anger that followed Mr. Trump’s first election. And ratings on the left-leaning cable channel MSNBC have dropped — with the hosts of the network’s flagship show having met with the president-elect.
The Loudoun County state legislative districts became vacant when Suhas Subramanyam, a Democratic state senator, resigned after winning an election to the U.S. House on Nov. 5. Kannan Srinivasan, a Democratic member of the Virginia House of Delegates, stepped down from that chamber after winning a Democratic caucus on Nov. 16 for the party’s nomination to replace Mr. Subramanyam.
Then JJ Singh, a first-time candidate, won a Democratic caucus on Nov. 23 to replace Mr. Srinivasan — the third time in November that his district’s voters were asked to go to the polls.
