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Based on the criteria listed in the ISSUES section, VMPAC directly
participated in 57 races in 2007, while engaging over 100
candidates.
In a nutshell, VMPAC-endorsed candidates did well in
Arlington, Fairfax and Loudoun
Counties, although Prince William
County results were a
little less encouraging.
However, it is worth noting that all across Northern Virginia, the
immigrant-bashing platform which many Republican candidates adopted
with the hope of appealing to polarized electorates, largely either
backfired or at most, yielded very little advantage.
No strongly anti-immigrant challenger (Democrat or
Republican) won and many incumbents with such a divisive platform
squeaked by with narrow margins.
Voters clearly didn’t see anti-immigrant position as a compelling
reason to support candidates. The
net result was the gain of 4 seats in the Senate and 3 seats in the
House of Delegates by the Democrats – along with several key
positions at the county levels in Fairfax and Loudoun.
Democrats won the 21st, the 34th, the 51st
and the 83rd House District seats and gave up the 68th
District seat. In the
Senate, the Democrats picked up the 1st, the 6th,
the 34th and the 39th Districts.
In the 37th District, incumbent Ken Cuccinelli was
ahead of the Democrat Janet Olaszek (whom VMPAC endorsed) by only 91
votes – and the contest has entered a recount phase!
Loudoun County Board of Supervisors became overwhelmingly Democrat –
where Democrats picked up 4 new Districts – for a total of 5 out of
9 seats – with 2 Independents and 2 Republicans.
Including the gains (one open seat and one gain from Republican
incumbent), Fairfax County
now has 8 out of 10 Democrat Supervisors and 2 Republicans.
Prince
William County
maintained the old composition of 2 Democrats and 6 Republicans as
Supervisors.
While VMPAC was unexpectedly successful in raising funds for either
itself or for endorsed candidates – over $70 thousand dollars – the
get-out-the-vote (GOTV) campaign seems to have been less successful
than last year.
Preliminary survey shows, only 58% of the Muslim voters turned out
to vote. While that’s
much higher than the average 2007 voter turnout ratio in the
Commonwealth, it was disappointing compared to the rate at which
Muslims voted in Virginia last year (86% of the registered voters).
VMPAC directly worked on 8 Senate, 14 House of Delegate and 35
County races. Almost 70,000
VMPAC endorsement cards and 20,000 campaign literature for select
races (some in English and Spanish) were distributed in
Northern Virginia counties.
For 2007 election results by county, please
click link below for downloadable PDF file.
Election_2007_RESULTS.pdf |
