Election night brought a lot of mixed emotions for all of Democrats across the nation. On one hand, we took the House of Representatives back. That is huge, it is something that not so long ago many thought would be impossible for Democrats because of GOP gerrymandering across the country. We also won some governorships and numerous state legislative seats across the country as well. But, of course, on the other hand, we lost some Senate seats, some we thought we would win like Donnelly in Indiana or McCaskill in Missouri and maybe Nelson in Florida (still depending on the final results). Overall we Democrats should be very proud of our accomplishments nationwide, we won the House and defended a very tough Senate map.
Southwest Virginia's 9th congressional district did not go the way we had hoped it would. My friend Anthony Flaccavento ran a great campaign with over 100 townhalls across the district, Flacc won the battle of yard signs, he raised a great deal of money, he had far more volunteers who greatly outworked the opposition, he had a very good message that focused on local issues and real solutions to them, and his opponent could not have been any more of an absentee generic GOP congressman who has consistently voted against the best interest of the district. But yet our boy Flacc got beat by the worst margins of anywhere in Virginia.
Why? The district that was once the heart and soul of the Democratic Party in Virginia is now solidly for the GOP on the national level. Trump has a very good approval rating there (and I know for many of you this is where you will stop reading but please hear me out). Anthony Flaccavento sent out a call for a meeting of progressive leaders for a debriefing and meeting to discuss the path forward in December, my advice is this: DO NOT GIVE UP.
First, yes we need national Democrats to push a message that relays that “yes, we do care about rural America” and we need to have a real plan for how to help regions like Appalachia and more especially Appalachian Coal Country with major issues like the growing opioid crisis, healthcare, protecting pensions for retired coal miners, protecting labor rights, unemployment (with good paying jobs), school funding, access to high-speed internet and cell service etc. We have to break down the urban-rural divide and turn on a really positive P-R campaign about what we accomplish and how it will benefit rural Americans in their everyday lives.
Anthony Flaccavento wrote a great book called “Bottom-up economy”, he is right if we are going to build a sustainable economy we have to start from the bottom up, build a strong foundation and strong local economies. We have to do the same thing in politics in rural areas. What I mean by this is, our foundation in southwest Virginia and many other rural areas just is not there like it needs to be, what we need to do is exactly what Flacc said we should do with the economy: Build our way up from the bottom. Many of us want to go straight for the top (winning the congressional seat) but we need to start lower, we should be taking aim at winning back our county and or city/town governments. Board of Supervisors races, School Boards, town/city council races, and of course country wide seats. These races are really important because they run our local government and really have a lot of control of local issues. But also they give us an important opportunity to rebuild our party on the precinct level, rebuild the trust of rural voters in our party and build a bench of candidates. Plus these are races we can win now.
I know this is not as “sexy” as winning a seat in Congress, but this is really a very important first step in doing so. There are a lot of Democrats in local-office across Southwest Virginia, a lot of them have been there for a long time, but most of them are aging and are not going to be around forever. We need to elect more Democrats on the local level and young Democrats at that. This will allow us to rebuild that strong foundation we need and once we start getting that strong foundation on the local level we can start going after bigger seats like House of Delegates seats and then eventually State Senate seats. If we can build a foundation strong enough to start flipping those state legislature seats we stand a much better chance of winning our congressional seat again. (I was once a Democratic committee chair in Southwest Virginia, I remember how hard it was to find people to fill all of our committee seats, or even to get enough people to show up to have a quorum for a meeting. These local elections offer us a great opportunity to connect with more local Democrats who we can get involved or get reinvolved. Having people in every precinct and at every polling place can make a difference and that’s a very important infrastructure to have. The best thing for us here in Virginia in rebuilding this is that we have an election every year.)
It is very important for us to remember that the 9th district and places like West Virginia did not turn red overnight. It slowly turned red over the course of decades of work by our opponents. The GOP did exactly this same thing to us, they started small, and slowly worked their way up. Before the Republicans in Southwest Virginia took down Congressman Boucher in 2010 they took down Delegates like John H. Tate Jr. in 2001, Dan Bowling in 2009 and others. Now here in 2018 going into 2019, we have already started chipping away against the GOP’s red wall. It really started in 2017 with Chris Hurst winning back the 12th district in the House of Delegates. This is a great start.
We have to keep fighting because we are making progress. Flaccavento and his campaign should be incredibly proud of the fact that they won almost 86,000 votes. That's a big deal because the Democrats in 2016 in this district got about 88,000 in a presidential election. SO we had almost presidential level turnout in a midterm. That is fantastic. The GOP turnout was way down from 2016. Of course, we still a lot of work to do. We have to find a way to break through this hyperpartisanship.
Flaccavento and Senator Richard Ojeda of our neighboring district West Virginia’s 3rd (and newly announced Presidential candidate) have really shown us a great example of how we do this. They both showed up, listened, talked about real solutions, and were strong advocates for working people. Ojeda swung WV-03 towards Dems by a larger margin than anywhere else in the nation doing exactly that winning over thousands of voters who voted for Trump in 2016. Flaccavento scared his “entrenched” opponent to the point that he actually agreed to three debates, and spent a ton of money on campaigning against Flaccavento. Something he had not done in a meaningful way since 2012. Even though their campaigns did not end with either of them in Congress it could be the beginning of a resurgence for Democrats in central Appalachia if we stay involved and keep fighting.
Right now Republicans in Virginia are gearing up for 2019. And so should we. My message to my fellow rural Virginians who may be feeling hopeless right after a tough year of campaigning and feeling like it may have been for nothing is“It was not for nothing. Keep fighting. Step up and run for local office. Stay involved in your local committees and keep supporting other Democrats running in tough red districts.”