Kathleen Murphy (D)
Yeah, there's no question about it: We got our asses kicked last month. But while we lick our wounds, analyze what went wrong, and plan for the future, progressives can't just hide in a corner and mope. We've got to get right back out there and do some ass-kicking of our own. And the good news is, we have a great chance to get started on that immediately.
One of the few upsides to all the GOP victories at the congressional level is that we're about to start seeing a bunch of special elections further down the ballot to fill seats that Republicans are now leaving vacant as they head to D.C. And one of those belongs to Virginia Del. Barbara Comstock, one of the most notorious Republican sleazebags in all of Republican sleazebagdom:
Comstock was the lead thug on the RNC's 2000 hit squad, a group of born liars engaged in manic projection who somehow succeeded in portraying Al Gore as the dishonest one. The Atlantic's Joshua Green called her one of the "the leading lights in the low-lit world of opposition research," a creature "held in about the same regard as spammers and ivory smugglers."
Indeed, Comstock's political career nearly came to an abrupt end last year, when Democrat Kathleen Murphy
fell just 422 votes short of defeating her when her 34th District seat in the state House (based in Northern Virginia) was last up for election. It was a painfully close loss for Murphy, but the good news is, she's already back in the thick of things, running hard in the Jan. 6 special election. And that's why Daily Kos is proud to endorse her once again.
Murphy will face Republican businessman Craig Parisot, but this is a seat Democrats should have a very good chance at picking up. Barack Obama narrowly carried it, 50-49, but in the close 2013 gubernatorial election, Democrat Terry McAuliffe expanded that margin considerably, winning the district 52-42 over Republican Ken Cuccinelli. And even in the attorney general's race, which went to a statewide recount, Democrat Mark Herring also prevailed by 10 points.
So this is blue turf, even in off-years, and Republicans ought to have an even harder time without the advantage of incumbency. But the question for Murphy will be whether she can motivate Democrats to show up for an oddly timed special election, but that's where we come in. The last time Murphy ran, an extraordinary 5,424 members of the Daily Kos community contributed $32,826 to her cause—a very big sum for a legislative race.
Thanks in large part to Republican gerrymandering, Democrats are deep in the hole in the state House. But Virginia is a purple state that's gone blue in the last two presidential elections, and all its statewide officials are Democrats. It should have a legislature that matches. We have a long way to go, but this is where the battle starts, right here.
So please give $3 to Kathleen Murphy so that we can keep turning Virginia—and our country—blue. And let's start winning some Republican seats!