News from the front: Cook Political upgrades VA-02 from “lean R” to “toss up.”
The VA-02 race features Rep Incumbent Scott Taylor squaring off with retired Naval officer Elaine Luria. Cook adjusted their rating in the Dem’s favor this morning.
A primary reason for the change was the disqualification of a third party candidate, who the Taylor campaign had collected signatures for to get on the ballot. A judge booted the independent based on outright fraud on the part of Taylor operatives...the old forged signatures trick.
So let’s pause and consider this corruption. Taylor, afraid he couldn’t win on his own merits, went and found some random independent who didn’t want to serve, but was willing to run. He chose an African American candidate specifically to siphon votes. But he couldn’t competently get the required signatures, so he had his campaign sit around looking up voter information and forging signatures.
Pink slip incoming! This jerk needs to go.
Our candidate
Can I just point out that not only do we have a qualified, brilliant woman running for this seat...which is awesome in it’s own right...but she was a freaking nuclear engineer on a guided missile cruiser. That’s amazing!
The district
Sabato also rates this race a toss-up. 538’s model is more bearish, currently only offering the Dem a 6.1% chance. HOWEVER, as a reminder to non-math nerds, the 538 model is designed to look at polls and fundamentals and use the same methodology across all 435 races. There is no recent polling, and the unique nature of this race isn’t filtering into their projections yet. Their model could shift as we get polls in...the last was in April. They expect their model could fail in some races, and this was on their initial list as a possible outlier.
The district went Dem in the governor’s race by +4. Considering this, the strong movement to the left in VA, and our high-quality candidate, we should feel optimistic about this one.
Cook’s Toss up count
Cook made a second change today, moving IA-01 from toss up to lean Dem. This brings the count to:
11: GOP seats rated lean/likely D
28: GOP seats rated toss up
26: GOP seats rated lean R
25: GOP seats rated likely R
important note: In past oppositional midterms (2010, 2006), over half of the flips were rated lean/likely for the incumbent party in August before the election. So we need the 39 currently in toss up or better, but there is time to move a lot of the 51 lean/likely seats our way. Let’s do it!
Congrats to the Luria campaign!
As always, let me applaud the hard work of the candidate, her campaign staff, and the army of volunteers that is making this a competitive race. This is a tough district, and the current ratings reflect the blood, sweat and tears you are all putting in. Kudos!