Dominion Energy has canceled its plans to build a $2 billion hydroelectric pump storage power station in Tazewell County.

A spokesperson for Virginia’s largest electric utility cited several reasons, including the cost, the expiration of a federal permit and the availability of better and cheaper ways of producing energy.

Spokesperson Jeremy Slayton said the project, for which Dominion first applied for a permit in 2017, didn’t fit with the company’s current strategy. The utility’s latest long-term roadmap for meeting future energy demand includes more solar, nuclear and offshore wind power but not the Tazewell proposal.

“When we modeled everything out, the pump storage facility just didn’t make the cut for that,” Slayton said.

[Disclosure: Dominion is one of our donors, but donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy.]

Slayton called the cancellation a “very recent decision.”

“In the coming months, we will focus on closing out development activities at the site and will collaborate with federal and state authorities, as well as local landowners,” he said.

What is a pump storage facility?

Generally speaking, a pump storage facility has an upper reservoir and lower reservoir to store water, with electricity-generating turbines between them.

Water is released from the upper reservoir and sent through the turbines into the lower reservoir to produce energy during periods of higher demand. It’s pumped back to the upper reservoir during periods of lower demand when the electricity to operate the pumps is cheaper.

Pump storage facilities typically consume more energy than they generate. They can be thought of as similar to giant batteries; their value comes from their ability to produce power during those high-demand periods and to help balance electricity supply and demand.

Dominion already operates the largest such project in the United States: the 3,003-megawatt Bath County Pumped Storage Station, which went into service in 1985.

Virginia has another hydroelectric pump storage facility: the 636-megawatt Smith Mountain Project, which was created when Appalachian Power built the Smith Mountain Dam on the Roanoke River in the 1960s and formed the reservoirs known as Smith Mountain Lake and Leesville Lake. 

Since the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission granted its preliminary permit for the Tazewell project in 2017, Dominion has filed nine status reports with that agency. The utility was due to file its next report by the end of this month.

In its most recent report, from November 2023, Dominion said that it was still conducting engineering and environmental study work to evaluate the project’s feasibility.

It also was still looking for a viable source of water to fill the proposed facility’s two reservoirs and was exploring using Wolf Creek near Rocky Gap in Bland County.

Future of East River Mountain site is unclear

Dominion owns 2,600 acres on top of the East River Mountain in Tazewell County that it had planned to use for the pump storage project. The utility will keep that land, Slayton said.

“We’re going to hold on to it. … We have not made any decisions regarding its future use,” he said.

Had the project moved forward, its 10-year development timeline could have brought more than 2,000 jobs to the region, creating nearly $320 million in total economic impact and $12 million annually in local tax revenue, Dominion said in 2019, citing a study by Richmond-based Chmura Economics & Analytics.

Del. Will Morefield, R-Tazewell County, said Thursday that he is disappointed that the pump storage facility will not be built but that he understands the challenges Dominion faced, and “like most large projects, there is always the chance they will not come to fruition.”

“Dominion invested a significant amount of resources to acquire property and perform engineering studies,” Morefield said in a text message. “I am hopeful they will be able to put the property to good use with a project that will create much needed jobs and tax revenue.”

The post Dominion cancels Tazewell pump storage project appeared first on Cardinal News.

You suffer an unexpected illness and go to the doctor. The doctor comes in with a bunch of X-rays and lab results.

The natural question is: “How bad is it?”

That’s the position Democrats are in after the presidential election. I’m no doctor, but I did portray one in a high school play at the now-defunct Montevideo High School in Rockingham County “back in the day.” I do, however, have the political equivalent of some X-rays and lab results. I have election numbers that I’ve looked at under a microscope, so to speak. 

Perhaps the most worrisome result for Democrats in this year’s election results in Virginia was that they saw their vote count drop in Northern Virginia while Donald Trump’s vote count went up. Northern Virginia is where Virginia Democrats build up the margins that enable them to win statewide elections, and while they did ultimately win, the presidential election was closer than they would have liked. That raises a question: Is this a one-time blip or the start of a trend? We won’t know that until we go through another election cycle, so that’s not particularly helpful. The next question then becomes: Just how serious was this decline in the Democratic vote and the increase in the Republican vote?

Earlier I showed some charts that tracked how both parties’ raw vote has changed over the years in some of these counties, principally Fairfax, Loudoun and Prince William counties:

Though a date for the special election has yet to be set, six Republicans and one Democrat have announced their plan to run for Virginia’s 10th Senate District, the seat state Sen. John McGuire will need to vacate to serve in Congress next year. 

McGuire has yet to resign from the state Senate, after winning the 5th Congressional District election on Nov. 5, and Virginia’s Senate leaders are unable to set a date for the special election until he steps down. Virginia’s Nov. 5 election results will be certified by the State Board of Elections on Dec. 2.

The inability to schedule the special election hasn’t stopped the candidates from campaigning. It also hasn’t stopped a forum for the Republicans in the race to be scheduled. 

That forum is slated to take place in Cumberland County at 7 p.m. Friday at Spruceberry Farm. Five of the six Republican candidates plan to attend that forum, including Duane Adams, Luther Cifers, Jean Gannon, Bryan Hamlet and Shane Snavely. Amanda Chase declined to attend the event. The Democrat, Jack Trammell, was not invited. 

The lack of a set date for the special election hasn’t deterred Republicans from deciding when and how their nominee will be selected, either. On Tuesday, the Republican Legislative District Committee determined that their nominating process will take place through a mass meeting, currently slated for Dec. 12. Check-in for voters to take part in the meeting will take place between 5:30 and 6:30 p.m. that evening, though the location has yet to be determined. 

So who are the candidates? Here’s what Cardinal News has learned, through in-person and phone interviews with each of the six Republicans and one Democrat vying to represent Virginia’s 10th Senate District. The six Republican candidates are listed in alphabetical order. 

Duane Adams, Republican

Duane Adams, 62, currently serves as the chair of the Louisa County Board of Supervisors. He has sat on the board for seven years: three years as chair and two years as vice chair. He ran in the Republican primary for the 10th Senate District in 2023 and came in second in a four-person convention to McGuire. 

Adams said his motivation to run for state Senate has remained unchanged in the year between that race and his announcement to again seek the seat. 

“I look at this as an opportunity to serve my community on a larger basis, and frankly, I’m not pleased with a lot of things that we see coming out of Richmond,” he said. “I’m the guy that believes in less government, smaller government, more efficient government and returning as much power and authority as we can to local government,” he said. 

Adams said he would work with Democrats in the General Assembly to pass legislation that would support his constituents. He supported Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s record number of vetoes that were handed down during the 2024 session.

“I do believe, at the end of the day, that most people want the same things for their families and their communities, and that’s to provide a better opportunity in the future than we had in the past. How we get there is where we diverge,” he said. 

Adams is a husband, father and grandfather. He and his wife are small business owners of a small independent insurance agency and a boat and jet ski rental service on Lake Anna. Adams is also part-owner of a waterfowl and spring-turkey guiding service. He retired as an executive from an insurance company after 41 years. 

He’s lived in Louisa County for nearly 25 years. Before that, he lived in Hanover County. 

“I’m a solid conservative, Christian, family man, my family is very very important to me, I’m focused on trying to leave this place a little bit better than I found it,” he said. 

His platform in the race for the 10th District includes support for the Second Amendment, decreased taxes and regulation, support for law enforcement, a stance against abortion, support for parental rights in education and voter integrity.

Amanda Chase, Republican

Amanda Chase, 54, is a former state senator who represented Virginia’s 11th District, which included Amelia County, Chesterfield County and Colonial Heights. She defeated a 20-year incumbent in 2015 and served that district for two terms. She was defeated by state Sen. Glenn Sturtevant in the 2023 primary after the legislative maps were redrawn. She moved to Appomattox recently, prior to launching her campaign for the 10th District, she said. 

She graduated from Virginia Tech and worked for banks before she decided to become a stay-at-home parent of four children, who are now grown. Her background is in finance, management and business, she said. 

“I’m very proud of my kids, they’re the ‘why’ behind everything that I do,” she said. “I’m a mom who fights for everyone.”

Chase was removed from the Chesterfield County Republican Committee in 2019 and was censured in the state Senate in 2021, at the start of her second term in office. The censure vote came after she spread baseless claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent. She advocated for “limited martial law” after that election which, she said in a recent interview, would have only pertained to election data and records.

“People know me in Virginia politics, I’ve been a household name and someone who’s been a fighter for the people, and the political class don’t really like me,” she said. 

She disagreed with the premise of the censure vote, which stripped her of her seniority and committee assignments, and her removal from the Chesterfield County Republican Party. She claimed both were driven by people with vendettas who didn’t like that she “stood up to the political machines in Richmond.” 

After she was censured, Chase ran for governor in 2021 and came in third in the Republican nominating convention. 

Her platform in the race for the 10th District includes support for parental rights in education, school choice, election integrity, an anti-abortion stance, and support for business, veterans and law enforcement. 

“I’ve done debates before in the governor’s race, I’ve done them in the Senate races prior to that, people know what they’re getting — I’ve got an eight-year voting record,” she said when asked why she declined to attend Friday’s forum. “I never agreed to that debate, at all.”

Luther Cifers, Republican

Luther Cifers, 50, was homeschooled as a child and started working in tobacco fields in Amelia County at age 10. He said that his experience being homeschooled, at a time when it wasn’t as socially accepted as it is today, created a disadvantage for him. 

“A lot of people considered that to be the equivalent of uneducated at the time,” he said. 

He worked in construction and manufacturing jobs and eventually moved into engineering. He started YakAttack, a kayak and fishing product company, in 2009 with $2,000, he said, and grew it into a business that employs 70 people. He sold a large portion of that business in 2021 in pursuit of problems to solve, he said. 

He decided to enter the race for the 10th District about a month ago, after he began to look into ways to build affordable housing for first-time homebuyers and ran into a litany of regulations that halted his efforts. 

“I’ve reached this chapter in my life where serving the people and trying to make sure that my children and future generations have the same opportunities that we had is much more important than just building the next business,” he said. “In the town that I live in, you can’t paint a storefront without asking the town’s permission, and I think we went from a place where the government was accountable to the people, and one piece of legislation at a time and one small cultural shift at a time, and we’ve landed in a place where the people are very much accountable to the government.”

Cifers said he is willing to work across the aisle with his Democratic counterparts to pass legislation to support the people in his district, though he said he would not be willing to compromise his values. 

A husband and father of five, he has lived in Prince Edward County since 2019. He’s lived in the area since he was 2 years old, he said.

His campaign platforms include government deregulation, accessible homeownership for first-time buyers, resources for teachers and support for families who homeschool their children and preservation of culture in rural communities. 

Jean Gannon, Republican

Jean Gannon, 66, a former chair of the Powhatan County Republican Party, has worked to support other candidates for office in Virginia politics for years before making the decision to enter into the race for the 10th District. 

Her first foray into politics came after she met former governor, then Attorney General Bob McDonnell, who was the keynote speaker at her daughter’s high school graduation in 2008. She was impressed with his speech and heard, later that summer, that he planned to run for governor. She started volunteering for his campaign, knocking on doors and driving young Republicans around. 

“It was great fun, I loved it and that was it, I was all in,” she said. 

She worked as a region director for the Trump 2024 campaign’s “Protect the Vote” initiative. 

Gannon was born and raised in New Jersey and has lived in Powhatan County for 24 years. A wife and mother, she has two grown daughters and grandchildren. She has been a real estate appraiser for over 40 years and runs her own office. She was appointed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin in 2022 to serve on the Virginia Real Estate Appraisal Board. 

She noted that politics in Virginia is polarized at the moment. She said she believes what is needed in the 10th District senate seat is someone who won’t agitate or further that polarization. 

“You have to be able to work with people in order to get your job done, and sometimes we have people who just like to throw bombs all of the time and that’s not productive,” she said. But, she said, she plans to hold fast to her principles. 

“I’m a nice lady, but I’m not a pushover,” she said. “I’m going to work hard to make sure that we get what we want to achieve.”

Her campaign platform includes support for policies that promote safer communities, an anti-abortion stance, support for economic and fiscal responsibility and support for the Second Amendment.

Bryan Hamlet, Republican

Bryan Hamlet, 47, currently serves on the Cumberland County Board of Supervisors after winning election to the seat in 2023. He is a husband and father of four children and has lived in Cumberland County for five years. He owned land in the county for about 17 years, he said. He lived in Glen Allen prior to that and grew up in the Hopewell area. He works in sales in the building material industry.

“I’m not a politician, I’m an average guy that decided two years ago that I wanted to use my skills and abilities to make a difference in my community,” he said. “I want to be a voice for rural Virginia.”

He said he was approached by people who encouraged him to get involved in state-level politics. After some thinking and praying, he decided to enter the race. 

“I want to take a common sense approach, a principled approach,” he said, to state lawmaking. 

He said he would be willing to work with Democrats to get legislation passed for the senate district. 

His platform includes hunting rights, as well as support for agriculture and forestry. He considers himself a “constitutional conservative,” a staunch supporter of the First and Second Amendments. He is also a supporter of first responders and wants to provide more resources to law enforcement. He supports school choice, economic growth, fiscal responsibility, and the reduction of regulations on small businesses.

Shayne Snavely, Republican

Shayne Snavely, 57, is an Army veteran who worked in the Virginia Senate as a legislative aide for Senators Amanda Chase and Bryce Reeves. He now works as a co-owner and head of security for a consulting firm, Rainmaker Strategic Partners. 

Snavely made his first foray into politics when he was hired to run security for Chase’s governor’s race in 2021. He then worked as a legislative aide in her office. He left her office on bad terms in March 2022. 

He helped to run an opposition campaign in support of Chase’s 2023 opponent, state Sen. Glen Sturtevant, who ultimately defeated Chase in the primary. Snavely did not work for Sturtevant’s campaign directly, he said. 

Snavely has lived in Amelia County for almost four years, he said, and before that, he lived in Floyd County. 

Snavely said he was motivated to enter the race because he became tired of politicians promising to work for the people and then not following through on that promise once in office. 

“My overall outlook is that it’s the people’s seat, it’s not the senator’s seat,” he said. “If I talk to the majority of the people and they tell me they want something done — even if I don’t necessarily agree with it, they’re the ones that hired me, this is what they want done.”

He said he would like to hold regular town hall meetings with constituents across the district if elected. 

He said he wants to be a uniter between the two parties and said he’s willing to work with Democrats to get bills passed for his district. 

His platform includes support for parental rights in education and funding for homeschooling, as well as vocational, technical and trade education for K-12 students; support for small manufacturers to build businesses in the 10th District; and tax and regulation reductions for farmers and other agricultural producers. 

Jack Trammell, Democrat

Jack Trammell, 60, ran for Congress to represent Virginia’s 7th District in 2014 against Republican Dave Brat, who had unseated the incumbent Rep. Eric Cantor in the Republican primary earlier that year. That year, the 7th District was considered solidly Republican by Cook Political Report. Trammell ultimately lost.

“After what happened a week or two ago, in the [2024] election, I started rethinking getting involved again,” he said. 

When he heard the 10th Senate District didn’t have a Democratic candidate, he thought, “This isn’t tolerable,” even if the district is solidly Republican. 

“There needs to be at least a voice in the process for people who are on the Democratic side, or Independent or who don’t like the Republican candidate and agenda,” he said. “I believe, in a two-party system, you should always have at least one person on each side, if not an independent thrown in there too to represent as many voices as possible.”

Trammell is a college professor and sociologist at Mount St. Mary’s in Maryland. He lives in central Virginia with his wife, who is a public school teacher. He’s a father and a grandfather of seven grandchildren with one on the way. He has a small farm in Louisa. 

“We have been a part of the rural fabric in District 10 for a long time,” he said. 

Trammell said living as a Democrat in a largely Republican and rural community can be frustrating at times, but he has been able to cultivate relationships with his neighbors and folks in the county. 

“I try to let them know that I’m a centrist in many ways, and I’m really concerned about rural issues but also the same things they’re worried about, I’m worried about,” he said. “One of my goals, win or lose, is to get people who like the ideas I have more excited, and maybe that will help in the general election this coming fall.”

Trammell said, if elected, he’s ready to work with members of the General Assembly regardless of their party affiliation and that he’s worked with Republican local supervisors and local officials in the past. 

“People who know me know that I am not necessarily always a compromiser, but I am a person who is reasonable in working with people who don’t think the same way that I do,” he said. “Going into the Virginia Senate, I would not be a rubber stamp for the Democrats.”

He named the clear-cutting of timber in the district and supporting agricultural entrepreneurs and education as his main areas of concern. His main legislative concerns also include improving transportation and safety within and between rural communities and tamping down inflation while supporting economic development and growth within the district. He said he would like to provide first responders with technology to help them to better serve sprawling rural communities.

The post 6 Republicans, 1 Democrat vie for McGuire’s state Senate seat appeared first on Cardinal News.

David Bowers has filed for a recount in the Roanoke mayoral election, he announced Thursday.

Bowers, a Republican, held the lead on election night by 19 votes, which quickly dwindled as more votes were counted. Vice Mayor Joe Cobb, a Democrat, eventually was declared the winner by 59 votes after all votes, including more than 1,200 provisional ballots, were counted in the week following the election.

At a news conference Thursday, Bowers said he thinks there were “contradictions, imperfections and irregularities” in the election. Melvin Williams, Bowers’ attorney, accompanied him but did not speak on the record.

Nicholas Ocampo, the city’s director of elections and general registrar, said earlier this month that provisional ballots are offered to voters when “further research is required to confirm their eligibility to vote.” Voters who register on Election Day — which has been legal in Virginia since 2022 — receive provisional ballots.

Bowers said that same-day registration shouldn’t be legal and that voters can register before Election Day “if you’re a responsible person.” 

In a Nov. 14 statement, Ocampo said that “90 days into this role, I have been inspired by our election officials’ dedication to administering an honest, fair and secure election despite increased scrutiny and heightened pressure.” 

Bowers claimed Thursday that there were 200 votes left to be counted, but that he had forgotten where he’d heard that. Ocampo confirmed Thursday afternoon that there are no remaining ballots to count. 

“Ultimately, I’m confident in our voting equipment processes and policies throughout this entire election,” Ocampo said Thursday. “We followed state law and federal law to a T. I trust our system and know that it works and the checks and balances that are in place do function at a high level.”

Later Thursday, Cobb held a press conference, where he read a statement thanking and commending election officials, saying they had “diligently followed secure procedures and verified and counted all ballots in certifying the election results.”

“I stand by this outcome,” Cobb said. “It accurately reflects the votes of the people of the city of Roanoke.” He said he’s asked Lichtenstein Law Group to assist him “to the extent necessary.”

He said he does not believe that the recount will affect the ongoing interviews the city council is undertaking to hire a new city manager.

Since the vote totals for the mayor’s race fall within the 0.5% margin permissible by Virginia state code for a locality-funded recount, the recount will be funded by the city of Roanoke. 

Previous recounts in Virginia rarely have changed many votes. Virginia Public Access Project records show that only once since 2017 has a recount changed the result of an election in a state legislative race: The 2017 94th House District race resulted in a tie after a recount.

Asked if he would accept the results of the recount, Bowers mentioned the process of contesting the election. When asked if he was planning to contest the election, he said, “I don’t know. We’ll see.”

According to Virginia state law, contesting the election would require Bowers to have objections to Cobb’s eligibility based on specific allegations or objections to the conduct or results of the election accompanied by specific allegations which, if proven true, would have a probable impact on the outcome of the election.

Ocampo said it will take at minimum a full day’s work to recount all 42,586 ballots cast in Roanoke. He said this recount might not take place until mid-December. 

The post Bowers seeks recount in Roanoke mayoral election appeared first on Cardinal News.

Martinsville will continue efforts to better understand potential flood-related risks following Tuesday’s city council work session presentation on mitigation. 

This is part of Martinsville’s participation in the Community Flood Preparedness Study, a multiyear effort for Martinsville, and the towns of Halifax and South Boston, to identify their respective needs to address potential risks. It also increases Martinsville’s chances of securing grant funding to pursue mitigation projects, according to John Turner, the city’s emergency management coordinator, who spoke about the plan on Tuesday. 

“One of the requirements for federal funding of projects is some type of study to identify what’s going on and what your hazards are,” Turner said. 

Turner’s comments come a month after the remnants of Hurricane Helene caused wind- and flood-related destruction in communities throughout Virginia. Martinsville and surrounding Henry County were largely spared from the worst of the storm. 

This won’t always be the case. 

“Can it happen here, what happened in the Carolinas?” Turner asked. “Absolutely.” 

The study identified a number of areas adjacent to bodies of water as areas of concern. These include, among others, sections of Liberty Street and Memorial Drive adjacent to Jones Creek, and Spruce Street, which runs along Mulberry Creek. 

Problem areas were identified via a number of criteria, including topographic wetness, distance to drainage, stream power and surrounding rock formations. 

Points of interest also included critical facilities. Turner said that in a flood scenario, residents would have access to schools and the hospital, as they are not located in a flood-prone area. Access to other facilities might present a challenge. 

Turner used the water treatment facility as an example. 

“The water treatment facility is located in a high-hazard area,” he said. “So disruption to that facility would significantly impact everyone in the area, residents, businesses, visitors.” 

The plant is on Clearview Drive. At a daily capacity of 7.5 million gallons, the plant is operated by a staff of supervisors, mechanics and laboratory technicians. 

Turner said a storm disrupting access to the wastewater treatment facility has the potential to be a lengthy ordeal. 

“Southwest Virginia and parts of western North Carolina, several of their water treatment facilities and wastewater treatment facilities are deemed beyond repair,” Turner said. “So how long would it take to rebuild a water treatment plant? We’re looking at years.” 

Turner said identifying problem areas is the first step to mitigating possible disasters and properly responding to emergencies after the fact. 

While the city is still in the early stages of creating a plan, Turner said next steps include three tasks: continuing to identify impacted parcels, developing an emergency warning system for highlighted areas and establishing emergency plans for critical facilities. 

The post Martinsville continues work on flood mitigation plans appeared first on Cardinal News.

Here’s a roundup of news briefs from around Southwest and Southside. Send yours for possible inclusion to news@cardinalnews.org.

* * *

SCHEV announces grants for work-based learning efforts

The State Council of Higher Education for Virginia and the Virginia Talent and Opportunity Partnership will allocate more than $3.9 million in grants to 20 institutions to support the expansion of paid internships and work-based learning opportunities for students.

The grants are designed to strengthen collaborations between higher education institutions and Virginia employers and are made possible through the Commonwealth Innovative Internship Fund, according to a news release announcing the awards.

Vision Grant awardees
Roanoke College and Virginia Wesleyan University each will receive a one-year Vision Grant of $25,000 to help them establish a task force, conduct strategic planning and determine priorities for initiatives that will support future internships and work-based learning opportunities for students.
 
Capacity-Building Grant awardees
The following institutions will each receive a one-year grant of up to $150,000 to enhance program infrastructure, improve tracking mechanisms, strengthen employer partnerships and develop a hub focused on internships and work-based learning: Christopher Newport University, James Madison University, Longwood University, Marymount University, Norfolk State University, Old Dominion University, Radford University, Richard Bland College, University of Mary Washington, University of Virginia’s College at Wise, Virginia Military Institute, Virginia State University, Virginia Tech and the College of William & Mary.

Scaling Grant awardees
George Mason University, University of Virginia and Virginia Commonwealth University will each receive a two-year grant of up to $250,000. These awards will support them in expanding existing programs, particularly those that can accommodate a higher volume of students and prioritize high-demand fields, such as health care and information technology.
 
Community College award
The Virginia Community College System will receive $1.1 million to support the establishment of a systemwide effort to improve internships and work-based learning on community college campuses. In addition, Patrick and Henry Community College and Tidewater Community College will receive one-year capacity-building grants of up to $150,000.

* * *

Floyd Liars Contest announces winners

Three storytellers took top honors at Saturday’s Liars Contest at the June Bug Center in Floyd.

First place and $100 cash went to Paul Armstrong of Chatham. Chriss Tarantino of Roanoke County, a storytelling newcomer, took second place and $50. Leisa Thompson of Salem won third place and $25. They competed in a field of seven contestants before a live audience.

A three-judge panel gave all an ornamental golden shovel, rewarding “digging deep” for a delightfully deceptive story.

Armstrong spun a yarn called “Lessons Learned on the Farm.”

“Storytelling is life shared,” he said in a news release announcing the winners. “We get to know one another through stories.”

Tarantino told a story about a gourmet Mexican adventure, while Thompson embellished a childhood vacation, learning chores at her “Aunt Ethel’s” farm.

Clint Atwater, founder of Storytelling Connections LLC and Let Me Tell Ya! events, which produced the contest, said many in the audience drove for more than an hour to attend. “We plan to have a Liars Contest every year,” he said in the release.

The contest donated entry fee proceeds to the June Bug Center.

* * *

Farm-to-table conference scheduled for Dec. 5-6

Registration is open for the 2024 Virginia Farm to Table Conference, Dec. 5-6 at Blue Ridge Community College’s Plecker Workforce Development Center in Weyers Cave. 

This year’s conference theme is “Connecting Food, Farms and Health.” Topics will include regenerative agriculture, soil health, business marketing and promotion, market trends, and local and regional food system development.

The full conference agenda and topics can be found online.

Virginia Cooperative Extension and the Virginia Soil Health Coalition are hosting the conference in partnership with entities, including Virginia Tech’s School of Plant and Environmental Sciences, Virginia Tech’s Center for Food Systems and Community Transformation, Virginia State University’s Small Farm Outreach Program and the Virginia U.S. Department of Agriculture-Natural Resources Conservation Service. 

Conference registration ends at noon Dec. 2. To register online, visit https://tinyurl.com/2024VAF2TConfRegistration. Cost to attend is $50 per day for the conference and $20 for the Thursday evening networking event.

The post SCHEV announces grants for work-based learning efforts; more … appeared first on Cardinal News.

Here’s a roundup of news briefs from around Southwest and Southside. Send yours for possible inclusion to news@cardinalnews.org.

* * *

SCHEV announces grants for work-based learning efforts

The State Council of Higher Education for Virginia and the Virginia Talent and Opportunity Partnership will allocate more than $3.9 million in grants to 20 institutions to support the expansion of paid internships and work-based learning opportunities for students.

The grants are designed to strengthen collaborations between higher education institutions and Virginia employers and are made possible through the Commonwealth Innovative Internship Fund, according to a news release announcing the awards.

Vision Grant awardees
Roanoke College and Virginia Wesleyan University each will receive a one-year Vision Grant of $25,000 to help them establish a task force, conduct strategic planning and determine priorities for initiatives that will support future internships and work-based learning opportunities for students.
 
Capacity-Building Grant awardees
The following institutions will each receive a one-year grant of up to $150,000 to enhance program infrastructure, improve tracking mechanisms, strengthen employer partnerships and develop a hub focused on internships and work-based learning: Christopher Newport University, James Madison University, Longwood University, Marymount University, Norfolk State University, Old Dominion University, Radford University, Richard Bland College, University of Mary Washington, University of Virginia’s College at Wise, Virginia Military Institute, Virginia State University, Virginia Tech and the College of William & Mary.

Scaling Grant awardees
George Mason University, University of Virginia and Virginia Commonwealth University will each receive a two-year grant of up to $250,000. These awards will support them in expanding existing programs, particularly those that can accommodate a higher volume of students and prioritize high-demand fields, such as health care and information technology.
 
Community College award
The Virginia Community College System will receive $1.1 million to support the establishment of a systemwide effort to improve internships and work-based learning on community college campuses. In addition, Patrick and Henry Community College and Tidewater Community College will receive one-year capacity-building grants of up to $150,000.

* * *

Floyd Liars Contest announces winners

Three storytellers took top honors at Saturday’s Liars Contest at the June Bug Center in Floyd.

First place and $100 cash went to Paul Armstrong of Chatham. Chriss Tarantino of Roanoke County, a storytelling newcomer, took second place and $50. Leisa Thompson of Salem won third place and $25. They competed in a field of seven contestants before a live audience.

A three-judge panel gave all an ornamental golden shovel, rewarding “digging deep” for a delightfully deceptive story.

Armstrong spun a yarn called “Lessons Learned on the Farm.”

“Storytelling is life shared,” he said in a news release announcing the winners. “We get to know one another through stories.”

Tarantino told a story about a gourmet Mexican adventure, while Thompson embellished a childhood vacation, learning chores at her “Aunt Ethel’s” farm.

Clint Atwater, founder of Storytelling Connections LLC and Let Me Tell Ya! events, which produced the contest, said many in the audience drove for more than an hour to attend. “We plan to have a Liars Contest every year,” he said in the release.

The contest donated entry fee proceeds to the June Bug Center.

* * *

Farm-to-table conference scheduled for Dec. 5-6

Registration is open for the 2024 Virginia Farm to Table Conference, Dec. 5-6 at Blue Ridge Community College’s Plecker Workforce Development Center in Weyers Cave. 

This year’s conference theme is “Connecting Food, Farms and Health.” Topics will include regenerative agriculture, soil health, business marketing and promotion, market trends, and local and regional food system development.

The full conference agenda and topics can be found online.

Virginia Cooperative Extension and the Virginia Soil Health Coalition are hosting the conference in partnership with entities, including Virginia Tech’s School of Plant and Environmental Sciences, Virginia Tech’s Center for Food Systems and Community Transformation, Virginia State University’s Small Farm Outreach Program and the Virginia U.S. Department of Agriculture-Natural Resources Conservation Service. 

Conference registration ends at noon Dec. 2. To register online, visit https://tinyurl.com/2024VAF2TConfRegistration. Cost to attend is $50 per day for the conference and $20 for the Thursday evening networking event.

The post SCHEV announces grants for work-based learning efforts; more … appeared first on Cardinal News.

Here are some of the top headlines from other news outlets around Virginia. Some content may be behind a metered paywall:

Politics:

Virginia House lawmakers lay potential legislative groundwork in response to campus protests. — Virginia Mercury.

Youngkin establishes task force to combat negative effects of social media on youth mental health. — Virginia Mercury.

Lynchburg GOP takes removal of Reed, Faraldi off the table. — The (Lynchburg) News & Advance (paywall).

Decision on massive Pittsylvania County zoning overhaul pushed to January. — Danville Register & Bee (paywall).

Economy:

Solar energy proposed at Wise County Justice Center. — The Coalfield Progress (paywall).

Culture:

Angels of Assisi’s new facility draws closer to opening. — WDBJ-TV.

Weather:

For more weather news, follow weather journalist Kevin Myatt on Twitter / X at @kevinmyattwx and sign up for his free weather email newsletter. His weekly column appears in Cardinal News each Wednesday afternoon.

The post Virginia House lawmakers lay potential legislative groundwork in response to campus protests; more … appeared first on Cardinal News.

Apple and cherry trees in Southwest Virginia started blooming about three weeks ago — five months too early. 

Orchard owners have seen handfuls of autumn blossoms pop open in their fields in years past, but the consensus is that early blossoming is occurring more frequently due to increasingly warmer weather. Experts say this phenomenon is tied to climate change and are concerned for the future.

Last week, orchards in Cana were quiet and empty. The harvest was over, the workers had gone home. Carroll County farmers were taking a rest before the holidays, before pruning and planting would begin anew. 

The fields, though — they sat waiting, seemingly willing the season to go on. Though the calendar said mid-November, tall green grass was still growing between the trees. Immature, rosy-cheeked green apples still clung to summer-strong branches, and the trees were still covered in bright green canopies of healthy leaves. On and on this went … one row after another, one orchard after another.

There was a single row of apple trees, right next to a road. Though the orchard’s other trees were full and green, the trees in that row had begun to shed their leaves. The process was nowhere near finished, but through those bare spots, it became easier to see that these particular trees were doing something new: They were sending up crisp green growth. 

The cherry trees at Ayers Orchard were mostly bare, but just a week or so prior, they had been hanging full of blossoms, according to packhouse operator Phyllis Allan, whose brother owns the orchard. She was readying things for the winter; that Saturday was the last market day until spring.

The packhouse sits on the edge of a hill. Just beneath the parking area, the cherry trees’ skeletal limbs waved their last bouquets of wilted blossoms. Swollen bulbs predicted that more blooms would be on the way, if a frost didn’t kill the buds first. Lower branches sported fresh greenery. The trees were readying themselves for spring.

These trees should have been preparing for their own winter’s nap, a period of dormancy in which cold-weather acclimated fruit trees stop growing.

“I’m not worried, yet,” said Ricky Berrier, a sixth-generation farmer who operates his family’s 171-year-old apple orchard in Carroll County. “Even 20 years ago, I would see a limb blooming this time of year,” he said, explaining that sometimes weaker trees get a little confused.

If the heat continues or blooms show up in even more apple trees, that’s a different story. 

A couple of weeks ago, Bethany Schaepler’s wife, Cortney, was mowing Hill’s Orchard when she noticed blossoms here and there on the trees. 

Schaepler’s father-in-law, Willie Hill, said he’d seen a few blossoms, too. But he had spoken with friends and neighbors who were experiencing entire blocks of bloom. 

He ticked off the names of folks who have told him about premature blossoms over the last few weeks. Entire groups of Golden Delicious at one orchard just over the hill. Two rows of Pink Ladies had bloomed nearby, and another set of the same had broken open down in Wilkes County, North Carolina. 

“For a whole lot of them to bloom? I don’t know,” he said. 

When Tom McMullen has seen fall blossoms, they appear in clusters, he said — perhaps a dozen blooms per tree, not the thousands that people typically see in the spring. 

“It’s not like you’re driving by and seeing a gazillion flowers,” he said, adding that the premature blooms are certainly related to the weather. McMullen co-owns Tumbling Creek Cidery along with three others; he is also a botanist. 

‘Jack Frost is getting them’

Schaepler also attributed the out-of-season bloom to weather. 

“We’re still very warm. I mean, right now I’m in my car running air. It’s 72 degrees,” she said Monday.

The weather in that area was unseasonably warm for much of October and into the beginning of November. There were some cold days during that period, including a freeze for some, but it wasn’t enough to trigger the trees into dormancy, when the leaves would fall and the sap would no longer pump into the tree. 

This stage is critical because it protects the tree from cold weather damage. During winter freezes, fruit trees that are not dormant are at greater risk of structural damage, particularly if those trees are hanging full of blooms, said Kaden Kilgore, owner and operator of Appalachian Cider Co. in Scott County. That would impact the next year’s harvest.

These early November blooms will most certainly freeze; even if the bloom falls away, the parts of the flower that remain will be left to freeze.

“A cold spell comes in and hits those buds and kills them. Then you get some frost damage. You won’t have any apples on those buds. The blooms in the springtime — those buds won’t bloom then,” Kilgore said.

“Jack Frost is getting them regardless,” Kilgore said.

One bloom isn’t a problem. Neither is a dozen. A treeful? A row? A block? What is the point of tolerance?

Apple trees respond to changes in temperature in order to fall into the dormant state, according to Virginia Tech researcher Sherif Sherif, who studies ways to boost fruit tree production and mitigate frost damage at the Alson H. Smith Jr. Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Winchester. 

December, February and March were all warmer than average last winter. McMullen attributes the blooms farmers are seeing now to that warmth. 

Every variety of apple tree needs a specific cumulative number of chill hours — hours spent below 45 degrees Fahrenheit — in order to produce fruit. Apple growers in this state tend to grow varieties that need between 800 and 1,100 chill hours. 

The calculations become increasingly complex depending on the precise temperature of the orchard’s location. Trees perform better at some temperatures than others, and everything really depends on the variety. 

Fruit trees that do not receive enough chill time during the winter months are adversely affected, according to research published in The Texas Horticulturist by Texas A&M researchers David Byrne and Terry Bacon. In conducting their research on peach trees, they found that insufficient chilling led to delayed foliation. When leaves appeared, they were only on the tips of the tree branches during the season following the affected year, and those branches appeared to be weakened.

As with the foliage, blooms were delayed in appearing following winters with insufficient chilling, the researchers found. At other times, the bloom season may have been extended, with blooms appearing throughout the autumn. When this occurred, the fruit failed to develop into full-sized fruit. 

Finally, the fruit quality itself was reduced, they wrote.

“It’s kind of like jet lag for a human. It can really mess you up, you don’t know what’s going on, right?” McMullen said.

Not getting enough chill hours does the same thing for a tree. As Berrier would say, “It confuses it.” 

“We still have a kind of winter that is cold enough to achieve the chilling requirement for most of our deciduous trees,” Sherif said. This includes apples and stone fruits.

“It is a concern for some southern states, like Georgia, Florida. With the warm winter, they might have some issue with achieving the chilling requirement, but not us,” Sherif said.

Sherif is more concerned that farmers will continue to follow their traditional pruning schedules without regard to the state of their trees. 

Farmers absolutely should not prune their fruit trees until they are positive that the trees are dormant, he said — and the trees currently are not dormant. Any Virginia farmer who is planning to prune their trees right now should wait, Sherif repeated adamantly.

Trees that are pruned before they are acclimated to the cold will have a greater risk of suffering extensive damage from a hard freeze or a hard frost. That alone would jeopardize future crops. 

While this may seem to be advice for novice gardeners, pruning an entire orchard is a big job, one that requires a team of employees and a couple of months’ time to complete. To prune Berrier Farms’ 20,000 trees, a team of eight must complete 400 trees a day. It takes about two months. 

Farmers hire crews of seasonal workers to help out. Once employees arrive on the farm, they must work 40 hours a week. A farm with no chores is dead in the water.

The impacts of Hurricane Helene

This is the second time in a matter of months that farmers have needed to realign their traditional farming calendars to align with Mother Nature.

At the end of September, the remnants of Hurricane Helene rushed through the state. Twenty-one Southwest Virginia counties reported suffering agricultural damages in the weeks following the storm, according to a report compiled by the Virginia Cooperative Extension.

In Carroll County, a declared disaster area, Cana farmers found rows and rows full of fallen apples — the ground was so covered in fruit that you could hardly walk from one tree to the next. 

“It hampers your picking when everything’s on the ground,” Berrier said. 

Berrier left the apples to act as fertilizer for next year’s crop. Other farmers swept them into a pile, like the one at Ayers Orchard, where a massive hill of apples rots into compost. The heap smells like the strongest apple cider anyone will ever encounter.

Berrier had a block of Golden Delicious that he had half picked before the storm; that half totaled about 1,500 bushels. After the storm, his crews picked only 20 bushels from the remaining half of the block. A smaller harvest meant fewer days in the fields and fewer days in the packhouse. He kept his seasonal employees on as long as he could, he said. Still, the packhouse employees lost a couple of weeks of work at the end of the season.

According to Virginia Cooperative Extension data released Nov. 7, Southwest Virginia apple farmers suffered an estimated $836,175 in direct losses from Helene — the losses immediately attributable to the storm, a number that includes apples that could not be sold from wind-related fruit drop, damage and loss from power outages, said extension agent Ashley Edwards.

Farmers lost the apples that fell from their trees. They lost the ones that were banged around, bounced into each other and left too battered to be sold. They lost limbs; they lost entire trees.

Depending on which varieties they grow, Carroll County apple farmers lost 25% to 50% of their crop during the storm, Edwards said. Their direct losses totaled $617,000, or nearly 74% of the state’s total estimated direct losses to apple farmers.

Virginia Tech agricultural economist John Bovay found that Helene’s current estimable indirect effect on apple farmers is likely between $1.2 million and $2.8 million, in addition to more than $1.4 million attributable to direct losses and future losses.

On Tuesday, Gov. Glenn Youngkin submitted a request to President Joe Biden, President-elect Donald Trump and Congressional appropriators for $4.4 billion in additional support for recovery efforts. The request includes $630 million to repair and rebuild agricultural producers.

‘It was just warm all along’

But still, the weather still won’t cooperate. The farmers seem to be taking it in stride, saying all will be well. The elders reassure the younger generation: This has all happened before. 

Bert Drake, emeritus scientist and plant physiologist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, has been plant-watching for over 40 years. He pioneered a decades-long research project that sought to understand how plants react to temperature and carbon dioxide concentrations. 

He didn’t specifically study apple trees, instead focusing more generally on the nation’s crops and crops around the world. He wanted to know how the foods we rely on would react to rising carbon dioxide concentrations. It turns out, plants don’t mind higher carbon dioxide, he said. 

The problem comes when the concentration of the greenhouse gas causes the temperatures to climb, which is what he believes we are seeing now. Many crops that we depend on don’t do well when exposed to high heat for long periods of time, he said, referring to temperatures of about 90 degrees.

If those high temperatures eventually encroach too far into Southwest Virginia’s winter, then the apple trees will not meet their required chilling hours.

“Winter isn’t nearly as long. It’s shortened on both ends,” Drake said.

Early springs induce flowers blooming too early in the spring, thus becoming susceptible to frost, Sherif said. 

This is what Ayers Orchard encountered last year, said Phyllis Allan.

“It was just warm all along. We had one frost we thought would surely kill them, but it didn’t.” Allan said of the fruit trees.

“What’s hurting, is they’re blooming about a month or so early. In February, if the blooms start, you can forget about it,” she said. 

Once the danger of frost passed, the fruit all ripened earlier than expected, Allan said.  Cherries started early in May. Peaches came two to three weeks early, in June. Then apples continued that trend on through, starting on the backs of the peaches. 

Drake sees environmental trends such as irregular tree blossoms as key indicators of what a region’s climate may look like not so many years into the future. 

“We can only see [changes] in retrospect because it’s been so slow. When we see the trends, it’s very clear now that things have changed a great deal,” he said.

According to the 2022 State Climate Summary released by the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Virginia’s temperatures have increased by more than 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since the beginning of the 20th century. 

While the state climate summary report recognizes that temperatures in the more mountainous regions tend to be cooler than other parts of the state, data from the U.S. Climate Divisional Database shows that the average minimum temperature in Carroll County is on an upward trajectory.

“Everything has moved north, and it’s moving north in a fairly regular fashion. During the American Revolution, the climate of Richmond, Virginia, was similar to present-day Toronto,” Drake said.

“One of the things we clearly showed with our study was that the increase in crop productivity, or in the growth of plants, is overwhelmed by increases in temperature.

“If I was a farmer, my whole existence depended upon growing apples, I would take that as a warning that that future is not to be had. Doesn’t have a good outlook for me,” Drake said.

Cardinal News weather journalist Kevin Myatt contributed information to this story.

The post As apple and cherry trees burst with blooms months ahead of schedule, climate experts sound a warning appeared first on Cardinal News.

Apple and cherry trees in Southwest Virginia started blooming about three weeks ago — five months too early. 

Orchard owners have seen handfuls of autumn blossoms pop open in their fields in years past, but the consensus is that early blossoming is occurring more frequently due to increasingly warmer weather. Experts say this phenomenon is tied to climate change and are concerned for the future.

Last week, orchards in Cana were quiet and empty. The harvest was over, the workers had gone home. Carroll County farmers were taking a rest before the holidays, before pruning and planting would begin anew. 

The fields, though — they sat waiting, seemingly willing the season to go on. Though the calendar said mid-November, tall green grass was still growing between the trees. Immature, rosy-cheeked green apples still clung to summer-strong branches, and the trees were still covered in bright green canopies of healthy leaves. On and on this went … one row after another, one orchard after another.

There was a single row of apple trees, right next to a road. Though the orchard’s other trees were full and green, the trees in that row had begun to shed their leaves. The process was nowhere near finished, but through those bare spots, it became easier to see that these particular trees were doing something new: They were sending up crisp green growth. 

The cherry trees at Ayers Orchard were mostly bare, but just a week or so prior, they had been hanging full of blossoms, according to packhouse operator Phyllis Allan, whose brother owns the orchard. She was readying things for the winter; that Saturday was the last market day until spring.

The packhouse sits on the edge of a hill. Just beneath the parking area, the cherry trees’ skeletal limbs waved their last bouquets of wilted blossoms. Swollen bulbs predicted that more blooms would be on the way, if a frost didn’t kill the buds first. Lower branches sported fresh greenery. The trees were readying themselves for spring.

These trees should have been preparing for their own winter’s nap, a period of dormancy in which cold-weather acclimated fruit trees stop growing.

“I’m not worried, yet,” said Ricky Berrier, a sixth-generation farmer who operates his family’s 171-year-old apple orchard in Carroll County. “Even 20 years ago, I would see a limb blooming this time of year,” he said, explaining that sometimes weaker trees get a little confused.

If the heat continues or blooms show up in even more apple trees, that’s a different story. 

A couple of weeks ago, Bethany Schaepler’s wife, Cortney, was mowing Hill’s Orchard when she noticed blossoms here and there on the trees. 

Schaepler’s father-in-law, Willie Hill, said he’d seen a few blossoms, too. But he had spoken with friends and neighbors who were experiencing entire blocks of bloom. 

He ticked off the names of folks who have told him about premature blossoms over the last few weeks. Entire groups of Golden Delicious at one orchard just over the hill. Two rows of Pink Ladies had bloomed nearby, and another set of the same had broken open down in Wilkes County, North Carolina. 

“For a whole lot of them to bloom? I don’t know,” he said. 

When Tom McMullen has seen fall blossoms, they appear in clusters, he said — perhaps a dozen blooms per tree, not the thousands that people typically see in the spring. 

“It’s not like you’re driving by and seeing a gazillion flowers,” he said, adding that the premature blooms are certainly related to the weather. McMullen co-owns Tumbling Creek Cidery along with three others; he is also a botanist. 

‘Jack Frost is getting them’

Schaepler also attributed the out-of-season bloom to weather. 

“We’re still very warm. I mean, right now I’m in my car running air. It’s 72 degrees,” she said Monday.

The weather in that area was unseasonably warm for much of October and into the beginning of November. There were some cold days during that period, including a freeze for some, but it wasn’t enough to trigger the trees into dormancy, when the leaves would fall and the sap would no longer pump into the tree. 

This stage is critical because it protects the tree from cold weather damage. During winter freezes, fruit trees that are not dormant are at greater risk of structural damage, particularly if those trees are hanging full of blooms, said Kaden Kilgore, owner and operator of Appalachian Cider Co. in Scott County. That would impact the next year’s harvest.

These early November blooms will most certainly freeze; even if the bloom falls away, the parts of the flower that remain will be left to freeze.

“A cold spell comes in and hits those buds and kills them. Then you get some frost damage. You won’t have any apples on those buds. The blooms in the springtime — those buds won’t bloom then,” Kilgore said.

“Jack Frost is getting them regardless,” Kilgore said.

One bloom isn’t a problem. Neither is a dozen. A treeful? A row? A block? What is the point of tolerance?

Apple trees respond to changes in temperature in order to fall into the dormant state, according to Virginia Tech researcher Sherif Sherif, who studies ways to boost fruit tree production and mitigate frost damage at the Alson H. Smith Jr. Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Winchester. 

December, February and March were all warmer than average last winter. McMullen attributes the blooms farmers are seeing now to that warmth. 

Every variety of apple tree needs a specific cumulative number of chill hours — hours spent below 45 degrees Fahrenheit — in order to produce fruit. Apple growers in this state tend to grow varieties that need between 800 and 1,100 chill hours. 

The calculations become increasingly complex depending on the precise temperature of the orchard’s location. Trees perform better at some temperatures than others, and everything really depends on the variety. 

Fruit trees that do not receive enough chill time during the winter months are adversely affected, according to research published in The Texas Horticulturist by Texas A&M researchers David Byrne and Terry Bacon. In conducting their research on peach trees, they found that insufficient chilling led to delayed foliation. When leaves appeared, they were only on the tips of the tree branches during the season following the affected year, and those branches appeared to be weakened.

As with the foliage, blooms were delayed in appearing following winters with insufficient chilling, the researchers found. At other times, the bloom season may have been extended, with blooms appearing throughout the autumn. When this occurred, the fruit failed to develop into full-sized fruit. 

Finally, the fruit quality itself was reduced, they wrote.

“It’s kind of like jet lag for a human. It can really mess you up, you don’t know what’s going on, right?” McMullen said.

Not getting enough chill hours does the same thing for a tree. As Berrier would say, “It confuses it.” 

“We still have a kind of winter that is cold enough to achieve the chilling requirement for most of our deciduous trees,” Sherif said. This includes apples and stone fruits.

“It is a concern for some southern states, like Georgia, Florida. With the warm winter, they might have some issue with achieving the chilling requirement, but not us,” Sherif said.

Sherif is more concerned that farmers will continue to follow their traditional pruning schedules without regard to the state of their trees. 

Farmers absolutely should not prune their fruit trees until they are positive that the trees are dormant, he said — and the trees currently are not dormant. Any Virginia farmer who is planning to prune their trees right now should wait, Sherif repeated adamantly.

Trees that are pruned before they are acclimated to the cold will have a greater risk of suffering extensive damage from a hard freeze or a hard frost. That alone would jeopardize future crops. 

While this may seem to be advice for novice gardeners, pruning an entire orchard is a big job, one that requires a team of employees and a couple of months’ time to complete. To prune Berrier Farms’ 20,000 trees, a team of eight must complete 400 trees a day. It takes about two months. 

Farmers hire crews of seasonal workers to help out. Once employees arrive on the farm, they must work 40 hours a week. A farm with no chores is dead in the water.

The impacts of Hurricane Helene

This is the second time in a matter of months that farmers have needed to realign their traditional farming calendars to align with Mother Nature.

At the end of September, the remnants of Hurricane Helene rushed through the state. Twenty-one Southwest Virginia counties reported suffering agricultural damages in the weeks following the storm, according to a report compiled by the Virginia Cooperative Extension.

In Carroll County, a declared disaster area, Cana farmers found rows and rows full of fallen apples — the ground was so covered in fruit that you could hardly walk from one tree to the next. 

“It hampers your picking when everything’s on the ground,” Berrier said. 

Berrier left the apples to act as fertilizer for next year’s crop. Other farmers swept them into a pile, like the one at Ayers Orchard, where a massive hill of apples rots into compost. The heap smells like the strongest apple cider anyone will ever encounter.

Berrier had a block of Golden Delicious that he had half picked before the storm; that half totaled about 1,500 bushels. After the storm, his crews picked only 20 bushels from the remaining half of the block. A smaller harvest meant fewer days in the fields and fewer days in the packhouse. He kept his seasonal employees on as long as he could, he said. Still, the packhouse employees lost a couple of weeks of work at the end of the season.

According to Virginia Cooperative Extension data released Nov. 7, Southwest Virginia apple farmers suffered an estimated $836,175 in direct losses from Helene — the losses immediately attributable to the storm, a number that includes apples that could not be sold from wind-related fruit drop, damage and loss from power outages, said extension agent Ashley Edwards.

Farmers lost the apples that fell from their trees. They lost the ones that were banged around, bounced into each other and left too battered to be sold. They lost limbs; they lost entire trees.

Depending on which varieties they grow, Carroll County apple farmers lost 25% to 50% of their crop during the storm, Edwards said. Their direct losses totaled $617,000, or nearly 74% of the state’s total estimated direct losses to apple farmers.

Virginia Tech agricultural economist John Bovay found that Helene’s current estimable indirect effect on apple farmers is likely between $1.2 million and $2.8 million, in addition to more than $1.4 million attributable to direct losses and future losses.

On Tuesday, Gov. Glenn Youngkin submitted a request to President Joe Biden, President-elect Donald Trump and Congressional appropriators for $4.4 billion in additional support for recovery efforts. The request includes $630 million to repair and rebuild agricultural producers.

‘It was just warm all along’

But still, the weather still won’t cooperate. The farmers seem to be taking it in stride, saying all will be well. The elders reassure the younger generation: This has all happened before. 

Bert Drake, emeritus scientist and plant physiologist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, has been plant-watching for over 40 years. He pioneered a decades-long research project that sought to understand how plants react to temperature and carbon dioxide concentrations. 

He didn’t specifically study apple trees, instead focusing more generally on the nation’s crops and crops around the world. He wanted to know how the foods we rely on would react to rising carbon dioxide concentrations. It turns out, plants don’t mind higher carbon dioxide, he said. 

The problem comes when the concentration of the greenhouse gas causes the temperatures to climb, which is what he believes we are seeing now. Many crops that we depend on don’t do well when exposed to high heat for long periods of time, he said, referring to temperatures of about 90 degrees.

If those high temperatures eventually encroach too far into Southwest Virginia’s winter, then the apple trees will not meet their required chilling hours.

“Winter isn’t nearly as long. It’s shortened on both ends,” Drake said.

Early springs induce flowers blooming too early in the spring, thus becoming susceptible to frost, Sherif said. 

This is what Ayers Orchard encountered last year, said Phyllis Allan.

“It was just warm all along. We had one frost we thought would surely kill them, but it didn’t.” Allan said of the fruit trees.

“What’s hurting, is they’re blooming about a month or so early. In February, if the blooms start, you can forget about it,” she said. 

Once the danger of frost passed, the fruit all ripened earlier than expected, Allan said.  Cherries started early in May. Peaches came two to three weeks early, in June. Then apples continued that trend on through, starting on the backs of the peaches. 

Drake sees environmental trends such as irregular tree blossoms as key indicators of what a region’s climate may look like not so many years into the future. 

“We can only see [changes] in retrospect because it’s been so slow. When we see the trends, it’s very clear now that things have changed a great deal,” he said.

According to the 2022 State Climate Summary released by the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Virginia’s temperatures have increased by more than 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since the beginning of the 20th century. 

While the state climate summary report recognizes that temperatures in the more mountainous regions tend to be cooler than other parts of the state, data from the U.S. Climate Divisional Database shows that the average minimum temperature in Carroll County is on an upward trajectory.

“Everything has moved north, and it’s moving north in a fairly regular fashion. During the American Revolution, the climate of Richmond, Virginia, was similar to present-day Toronto,” Drake said.

“One of the things we clearly showed with our study was that the increase in crop productivity, or in the growth of plants, is overwhelmed by increases in temperature.

“If I was a farmer, my whole existence depended upon growing apples, I would take that as a warning that that future is not to be had. Doesn’t have a good outlook for me,” Drake said.

Cardinal News weather journalist Kevin Myatt contributed information to this story.

The post As apple and cherry trees burst with blooms months ahead of schedule, climate experts sound a warning appeared first on Cardinal News.

Roanoke has done something it hasn’t done in nearly a quarter-century: It’s elected a Republican to the city council.

It came close to electing two.

Nick Hagen became the first Republican elected to the council since 2000 when Roanokers elected Ralph Smith as mayor and Bill Carder to the council. David Bowers came within 59 votes of being returned to the mayor’s office.

The closeness of the Roanoke mayor’s race is easily explained: Independent Stephanie Moon pulled away many votes that would have normally gone to Democrat Joe Cobb. This is best seen in the city’s predominantly Black precincts, which Moon won: She carried Forest Park, Grandview and Peters Creek with pluralities, she won Eureka Park and Lincoln Terrace with outright majorities.

Citywide, Bowers, running as a Republican after switching parties last year, took 37.11% of the vote. That’s almost exactly what Donald Trump took in Roanoke: 37.31%. It looks to me as if Bowers won the basic Republican vote and nothing more. Without Moon in the race, it seems likely that Cobb would have won the mayor’s race in a landslide.

The city council results are more complicated, and therefore more interesting, because voters had three votes to cast and seven candidates to choose from. Here are some observations:

There was a lot of ticket-splitting; no candidate won a majority

Kamala Harris took 60.82% in the presidential race in Roanoke. Tim Kaine took 63.76% in the Senate race. Ken Mitchell, the Democratic candidate for the 6th District House seat, took 57.22% in Roanoke. As noted above, in a two-person race, Cobb might well have polled about 62%. 

Based on those numbers, you might think the three Democratic council candidates should have taken about the same share of the vote. They did not. Not even close. This reflects how common it was for otherwise Democratic voters to cast a ballot for someone else in the council race.

The percentages you see on the State Board of Elections site aren’t accurate. Its software can’t handle races where people have more than one vote to cast. Here are the actual percentages, based on the the total number of people who cast ballots in the council race, which was 42,517:

Terry McGuire (D) 42.5%
Phazhon Nash (D) 41.7%
Nick Hagen (R) 35.2%
Evelyn Powers (I) 32.2%
Jim Garrett (R) 29.3%
Benjamin Woods (D) 27.6%
Cathy Reynolds (I) 13.7%

This means none of the candidates Roanoke just elected — Cobb and the three new council members, Hagen, McGuire and Nash — won a majority.

Democrats were not united behind Woods

The opening for Hagen was created by Democratic disunity. For reasons I have yet to ferret out, Democrats were not fully supportive of Benjamin Woods. During the campaign, Democratic council member Peter Volosin endorsed McGuire and Nash but also independent Evelyn Powers and never said why he was backing Powers over Woods. Powers had been elected to five terms as treasurer as a Democrat so certainly had Democratic credentials. Woods was also poorly funded, relative to the other candidates, so had a hard time getting his name out. 

Powers appears to have taken a lot of Democratic votes that might otherwise have gone to Woods

We can see this most clearly in the most Democratic precincts.

Eureka Park went 88.67% for Harris and 90.46% for Kaine. In that precinct, here’s how the council candidates ran in terms of actual votes cast:

Nash (D) 1,298
McGuire (D) 797
Powers (I) 647
Woods (D) 467
Hagen (R ) 429
Reynolds (I) 290
Garrett (R ) 187

Lincoln Terrace went 86.73% for Harris and 89.53% for Kaine. In that precinct, here’s how the council candidates ran:

Nash (D) 847
McGuire (D) 585
Powers (I) 451
Woods (D) 350
Reynolds (I) 274
Hagen (R ) 262
Garrett (R ) 178

In both cases, two of the Democratic council candidates placed first and second, with Powers third. In looking at these and other precincts, it seems clear to me that Powers took votes away from Woods and blocked him from winning. That alone doesn’t explain Hagen’s victory, though.

Hagen ran better than his fellow Republican, Jim Garrett

Hagen ran 2,520 votes ahead of his Republican ticket mate. Those “extra” 2,520 votes made all the difference. Without them, he wouldn’t have won and Evelyn Powers would have. So where did those votes come from? Let’s dig deeper.

Hagen ran ahead of Garrett in all but one precinct — South Roanoke — and there he trailed Garrett by just eight votes. Their biggest gap was in the Williamson Road precinct, where Hagen finished first and Garrett finished fifth.

The more useful comparison may be between Hagen and Powers, his nearest competitor for the third and final council slot. He finished ahead of her by 1,258 votes, so where did he manage to get those votes? More than 80% of that margin came from just three precincts, all blue-collar precincts in parts of Roanoke that once voted Democratic but now vote Republican: East Gate, Garden City and Williamson Road.

Hagen finished first in all three precincts (he won six precincts in all), and it was there that he built up his biggest margins over Powers — a difference of 485 votes in Garden City, 286 in East Gate, 263 in Williamson Road. That adds up to 1,034 votes from his ultimate 1,258-vote margin over Powers.

The realignment of working-class voters is one of the national stories coming out of this year’s election; this didn’t happen suddenly but many have just noticed it for the first time. In Roanoke, Hagen seemed to fit these voters more comfortably than did fellow Republican Garrett. 

Where Hagen won, he tended to win by a lot

In Garden City, Hagen ran 376 votes ahead of the top Democratic vote-getter (McGuire) and 485 votes ahead of Powers, his nearest rival. In East Gate, he ran 213 votes ahead of the top Democratic voter-getter and 286 votes ahead of Powers. That helped him build up margins to offset the parts of town where he didn’t run so well. Whether this speaks to Hagens’ prowess in winning those voters, the weakness of Democrats in those precincts or some combination of the two, is hard to say. All we know is that’s where Hagen rolled up a lot of votes. 

Hagen ran well in some Democratic-voting precincts, too

Harris won the Crystal Spring precinct with 59.71% of the vote, so we shouldn’t be surprised that a Democrat, McGuire, led the balloting for council there. But Hagen came in second. Harris took 60.75% in Grandin Court, so we shouldn’t be surprised that McGuire and Nash led the balloting for council there — but Hagen came in third. 

McGuire was the most consistent vote-getter

McGuire placed first or second in all but four precincts. He finished third, still good enough to win, in Deyerle and Garden City. Only in Preston Park and South Roanoke, where he finished fourth, did he finish out of the money.

The key to winning an at-large election in Roanoke is usually to perform consistently citywide, and McGuire did that.

Nash was less consistent. He finished first in six precincts (Eureka Park, Forest Park, Grandview, Lincoln Terrace, Peters Creek, Summit Hills), second or third in seven, but finished out of the top three in seven others. However, in the places he won, he tended to win by a lot. In Eureka Park, he ran 501 votes ahead of the second-place finisher, fellow Democrat McGuire. In Forest Park, he ran 282 votes ahead of McGuire. In Lincoln Terrace, he ran 262 votes ahead of McGuire. That suggests that many voters in those predominantly Black precincts may have simply cast a single vote — for Nash. Such “single-shotting” is a time-honored way to make sure a favored candidate doesn’t accidentally get crowded by a ticketmate.

Hagen’s performance was almost the mirror image of Nash’s: He finished first in six precincts, second or third in four others, but out of the top three in 10 others. Powers didn’t finish first anywhere, and while she was consistent citywide, she didn’t build up the margins that Nash and Hagen did. 

So what does this mean?

All this explains how Hagen and the other candidates won, but not why. Why did so many Democrats desert one of their nominees? The election results can’t speak to that. Did Hagen simply get the Trump vote? That’s possible but doesn’t explain why Hagen ran ahead of other Democratic candidates in places such as Crystal Spring. The fact that there was so much ticket-splitting in the council races suggests voters weren’t just blindly going down a party list; they were putting some thought into their choices. We just don’t know exactly what those thoughts were, but it seems fair to surmise that anyone voting for Hagen was not satisfied with the current direction of the council. 

We can say this, though:

Four years ago, the third-place finisher for council received 12,857 votes. Hagen this year topped that by 16.5%.

Lynchburg’s political drama continues

Before the elections, some Lynchburg Republicans wanted to kick Mayor Stephanie Reed and Vice Mayor Chris Faraldi off the party’s local committee, part of an ongoing feud between two rival factions. That meeting is now set for Saturday, although the explusion is now off the table so the meeting will deal with the rift more generally. I’ll have more to say about it in this week’s edition of West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter that goes out Friday afternoons.

You can sign up for that or any of our other free newsletters below:

• The Daily Everything we publish, every weekday
• The Roundup A roundup of our most popular stories each week, sent Saturdays at 7 a.m.
• Cardinal Weather In-depth weather news and analysis on our region, sent Wednesdays
• West of the Capital A weekly round-up of politics, with a focus on our region, sent Fridays
• Your Weekend Spread your wings this weekend with our go-to guide for celebrations, festivities, and other events happening in our region, delivered every Thursday at noon.
• Cardinal 250 Revisiting stories from our nation’s founding. Delivered monthly

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The post How Roanoke elected its first Republican to city council in 24 years appeared first on Cardinal News.

Roanoke has done something it hasn’t done in nearly a quarter-century: It’s elected a Republican to the city council.

It came close to electing two.

Nick Hagen became the first Republican elected to the council since 2000 when Roanokers elected Ralph Smith as mayor and Bill Carder to the council. David Bowers came within 59 votes of being returned to the mayor’s office.

The closeness of the Roanoke mayor’s race is easily explained: Independent Stephanie Moon pulled away many votes that would have normally gone to Democrat Joe Cobb. This is best seen in the city’s predominantly Black precincts, which Moon won: She carried Forest Park, Grandview and Peters Creek with pluralities, she won Eureka Park and Lincoln Terrace with outright majorities.

Citywide, Bowers, running as a Republican after switching parties last year, took 37.11% of the vote. That’s almost exactly what Donald Trump took in Roanoke: 37.31%. It looks to me as if Bowers won the basic Republican vote and nothing more. Without Moon in the race, it seems likely that Cobb would have won the mayor’s race in a landslide.

The city council results are more complicated, and therefore more interesting, because voters had three votes to cast and seven candidates to choose from. Here are some observations:

There was a lot of ticket-splitting; no candidate won a majority

Kamala Harris took 60.82% in the presidential race in Roanoke. Tim Kaine took 63.76% in the Senate race. Ken Mitchell, the Democratic candidate for the 6th District House seat, took 57.22% in Roanoke. As noted above, in a two-person race, Cobb might well have polled about 62%. 

Based on those numbers, you might think the three Democratic council candidates should have taken about the same share of the vote. They did not. Not even close. This reflects how common it was for otherwise Democratic voters to cast a ballot for someone else in the council race.

The percentages you see on the State Board of Elections site aren’t accurate. Its software can’t handle races where people have more than one vote to cast. Here are the actual percentages, based on the the total number of people who cast ballots in the council race, which was 42,517:

Terry McGuire (D) 42.5%
Phazhon Nash (D) 41.7%
Nick Hagen (R) 35.2%
Evelyn Powers (I) 32.2%
Jim Garrett (R) 29.3%
Benjamin Woods (D) 27.6%
Cathy Reynolds (I) 13.7%

This means none of the candidates Roanoke just elected — Cobb and the three new council members, Hagen, McGuire and Nash — won a majority.

Democrats were not united behind Woods

The opening for Hagen was created by Democratic disunity. For reasons I have yet to ferret out, Democrats were not fully supportive of Benjamin Woods. During the campaign, Democratic council member Peter Volosin endorsed McGuire and Nash but also independent Evelyn Powers and never said why he was backing Powers over Woods. Powers had been elected to five terms as treasurer as a Democrat so certainly had Democratic credentials. Woods was also poorly funded, relative to the other candidates, so had a hard time getting his name out. 

Powers appears to have taken a lot of Democratic votes that might otherwise have gone to Woods

We can see this most clearly in the most Democratic precincts.

Eureka Park went 88.67% for Harris and 90.46% for Kaine. In that precinct, here’s how the council candidates ran in terms of actual votes cast:

Nash (D) 1,298
McGuire (D) 797
Powers (I) 647
Woods (D) 467
Hagen (R ) 429
Reynolds (I) 290
Garrett (R ) 187

Lincoln Terrace went 86.73% for Harris and 89.53% for Kaine. In that precinct, here’s how the council candidates ran:

Nash (D) 847
McGuire (D) 585
Powers (I) 451
Woods (D) 350
Reynolds (I) 274
Hagen (R ) 262
Garrett (R ) 178

In both cases, two of the Democratic council candidates placed first and second, with Powers third. In looking at these and other precincts, it seems clear to me that Powers took votes away from Woods and blocked him from winning. That alone doesn’t explain Hagen’s victory, though.

Hagen ran better than his fellow Republican, Jim Garrett

Hagen ran 2,520 votes ahead of his Republican ticket mate. Those “extra” 2,520 votes made all the difference. Without them, he wouldn’t have won and Evelyn Powers would have. So where did those votes come from? Let’s dig deeper.

Hagen ran ahead of Garrett in all but one precinct — South Roanoke — and there he trailed Garrett by just eight votes. Their biggest gap was in the Williamson Road precinct, where Hagen finished first and Garrett finished fifth.

The more useful comparison may be between Hagen and Powers, his nearest competitor for the third and final council slot. He finished ahead of her by 1,258 votes, so where did he manage to get those votes? More than 80% of that margin came from just three precincts, all blue-collar precincts in parts of Roanoke that once voted Democratic but now vote Republican: East Gate, Garden City and Williamson Road.

Hagen finished first in all three precincts (he won six precincts in all), and it was there that he built up his biggest margins over Powers — a difference of 485 votes in Garden City, 286 in East Gate, 263 in Williamson Road. That adds up to 1,034 votes from his ultimate 1,258-vote margin over Powers.

The realignment of working-class voters is one of the national stories coming out of this year’s election; this didn’t happen suddenly but many have just noticed it for the first time. In Roanoke, Hagen seemed to fit these voters more comfortably than did fellow Republican Garrett. 

Where Hagen won, he tended to win by a lot

In Garden City, Hagen ran 376 votes ahead of the top Democratic vote-getter (McGuire) and 485 votes ahead of Powers, his nearest rival. In East Gate, he ran 213 votes ahead of the top Democratic voter-getter and 286 votes ahead of Powers. That helped him build up margins to offset the parts of town where he didn’t run so well. Whether this speaks to Hagens’ prowess in winning those voters, the weakness of Democrats in those precincts or some combination of the two, is hard to say. All we know is that’s where Hagen rolled up a lot of votes. 

Hagen ran well in some Democratic-voting precincts, too

Harris won the Crystal Spring precinct with 59.71% of the vote, so we shouldn’t be surprised that a Democrat, McGuire, led the balloting for council there. But Hagen came in second. Harris took 60.75% in Grandin Court, so we shouldn’t be surprised that McGuire and Nash led the balloting for council there — but Hagen came in third. 

McGuire was the most consistent vote-getter

McGuire placed first or second in all but four precincts. He finished third, still good enough to win, in Deyerle and Garden City. Only in Preston Park and South Roanoke, where he finished fourth, did he finish out of the money.

The key to winning an at-large election in Roanoke is usually to perform consistently citywide, and McGuire did that.

Nash was less consistent. He finished first in six precincts (Eureka Park, Forest Park, Grandview, Lincoln Terrace, Peters Creek, Summit Hills), second or third in seven, but finished out of the top three in seven others. However, in the places he won, he tended to win by a lot. In Eureka Park, he ran 501 votes ahead of the second-place finisher, fellow Democrat McGuire. In Forest Park, he ran 282 votes ahead of McGuire. In Lincoln Terrace, he ran 262 votes ahead of McGuire. That suggests that many voters in those predominantly Black precincts may have simply cast a single vote — for Nash. Such “single-shotting” is a time-honored way to make sure a favored candidate doesn’t accidentally get crowded by a ticketmate.

Hagen’s performance was almost the mirror image of Nash’s: He finished first in six precincts, second or third in four others, but out of the top three in 10 others. Powers didn’t finish first anywhere, and while she was consistent citywide, she didn’t build up the margins that Nash and Hagen did. 

So what does this mean?

All this explains how Hagen and the other candidates won, but not why. Why did so many Democrats desert one of their nominees? The election results can’t speak to that. Did Hagen simply get the Trump vote? That’s possible but doesn’t explain why Hagen ran ahead of other Democratic candidates in places such as Crystal Spring. The fact that there was so much ticket-splitting in the council races suggests voters weren’t just blindly going down a party list; they were putting some thought into their choices. We just don’t know exactly what those thoughts were, but it seems fair to surmise that anyone voting for Hagen was not satisfied with the current direction of the council. 

We can say this, though:

Four years ago, the third-place finisher for council received 12,857 votes. Hagen this year topped that by 16.5%.

Lynchburg’s political drama continues

Before the elections, some Lynchburg Republicans wanted to kick Mayor Stephanie Reed and Vice Mayor Chris Faraldi off the party’s local committee, part of an ongoing feud between two rival factions. That meeting is now set for Saturday, although the explusion is now off the table so the meeting will deal with the rift more generally. I’ll have more to say about it in this week’s edition of West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter that goes out Friday afternoons.

You can sign up for that or any of our other free newsletters below:

• The Daily Everything we publish, every weekday
• The Roundup A roundup of our most popular stories each week, sent Saturdays at 7 a.m.
• Cardinal Weather In-depth weather news and analysis on our region, sent Wednesdays
• West of the Capital A weekly round-up of politics, with a focus on our region, sent Fridays
• Your Weekend Spread your wings this weekend with our go-to guide for celebrations, festivities, and other events happening in our region, delivered every Thursday at noon.
• Cardinal 250 Revisiting stories from our nation’s founding. Delivered monthly

Sign up

The post How Roanoke elected its first Republican to city council in 24 years appeared first on Cardinal News.

Roanoke has done something it hasn’t done in nearly a quarter-century: It’s elected a Republican to the city council.

It came close to electing two.

Nick Hagen became the first Republican elected to the council since 2000 when Roanokers elected Ralph Smith as mayor and Bill Carder to the council. David Bowers came within 59 votes of being returned to the mayor’s office.

The closeness of the Roanoke mayor’s race is easily explained: Independent Stephanie Moon pulled away many votes that would have normally gone to Democrat Joe Cobb. This is best seen in the city’s predominantly Black precincts, which Moon won: She carried Forest Park, Grandview and Peters Creek with pluralities, she won Eureka Park and Lincoln Terrace with outright majorities.

Citywide, Bowers, running as a Republican after switching parties last year, took 37.11% of the vote. That’s almost exactly what Donald Trump took in Roanoke: 37.31%. It looks to me as if Bowers won the basic Republican vote and nothing more. Without Moon in the race, it seems likely that Cobb would have won the mayor’s race in a landslide.

The city council results are more complicated, and therefore more interesting, because voters had three votes to cast and seven candidates to choose from. Here are some observations:

There was a lot of ticket-splitting; no candidate won a majority

Kamala Harris took 60.82% in the presidential race in Roanoke. Tim Kaine took 63.76% in the Senate race. Ken Mitchell, the Democratic candidate for the 6th District House seat, took 57.22% in Roanoke. As noted above, in a two-person race, Cobb might well have polled about 62%. 

Based on those numbers, you might think the three Democratic council candidates should have taken about the same share of the vote. They did not. Not even close. This reflects how common it was for otherwise Democratic voters to cast a ballot for someone else in the council race.

The percentages you see on the State Board of Elections site aren’t accurate. Its software can’t handle races where people have more than one vote to cast. Here are the actual percentages, based on the the total number of people who cast ballots in the council race, which was 42,517:

Terry McGuire (D) 42.5%
Phazhon Nash (D) 41.7%
Nick Hagen (R) 35.2%
Evelyn Powers (I) 32.2%
Jim Garrett (R) 29.3%
Benjamin Woods (D) 27.6%
Cathy Reynolds (I) 13.7%

This means none of the candidates Roanoke just elected — Cobb and the three new council members, Hagen, McGuire and Nash — won a majority.

Democrats were not united behind Woods

The opening for Hagen was created by Democratic disunity. For reasons I have yet to ferret out, Democrats were not fully supportive of Benjamin Woods. During the campaign, Democratic council member Peter Volosin endorsed McGuire and Nash but also independent Evelyn Powers and never said why he was backing Powers over Woods. Powers had been elected to five terms as treasurer as a Democrat so certainly had Democratic credentials. Woods was also poorly funded, relative to the other candidates, so had a hard time getting his name out. 

Powers appears to have taken a lot of Democratic votes that might otherwise have gone to Woods

We can see this most clearly in the most Democratic precincts.

Eureka Park went 88.67% for Harris and 90.46% for Kaine. In that precinct, here’s how the council candidates ran in terms of actual votes cast:

Nash (D) 1,298
McGuire (D) 797
Powers (I) 647
Woods (D) 467
Hagen (R ) 429
Reynolds (I) 290
Garrett (R ) 187

Lincoln Terrace went 86.73% for Harris and 89.53% for Kaine. In that precinct, here’s how the council candidates ran:

Nash (D) 847
McGuire (D) 585
Powers (I) 451
Woods (D) 350
Reynolds (I) 274
Hagen (R ) 262
Garrett (R ) 178

In both cases, two of the Democratic council candidates placed first and second, with Powers third. In looking at these and other precincts, it seems clear to me that Powers took votes away from Woods and blocked him from winning. That alone doesn’t explain Hagen’s victory, though.

Hagen ran better than his fellow Republican, Jim Garrett

Hagen ran 2,520 votes ahead of his Republican ticket mate. Those “extra” 2,520 votes made all the difference. Without them, he wouldn’t have won and Evelyn Powers would have. So where did those votes come from? Let’s dig deeper.

Hagen ran ahead of Garrett in all but one precinct — South Roanoke — and there he trailed Garrett by just eight votes. Their biggest gap was in the Williamson Road precinct, where Hagen finished first and Garrett finished fifth.

The more useful comparison may be between Hagen and Powers, his nearest competitor for the third and final council slot. He finished ahead of her by 1,258 votes, so where did he manage to get those votes? More than 80% of that margin came from just three precincts, all blue-collar precincts in parts of Roanoke that once voted Democratic but now vote Republican: East Gate, Garden City and Williamson Road.

Hagen finished first in all three precincts (he won six precincts in all), and it was there that he built up his biggest margins over Powers — a difference of 485 votes in Garden City, 286 in East Gate, 263 in Williamson Road. That adds up to 1,034 votes from his ultimate 1,258-vote margin over Powers.

The realignment of working-class voters is one of the national stories coming out of this year’s election; this didn’t happen suddenly but many have just noticed it for the first time. In Roanoke, Hagen seemed to fit these voters more comfortably than did fellow Republican Garrett. 

Where Hagen won, he tended to win by a lot

In Garden City, Hagen ran 376 votes ahead of the top Democratic vote-getter (McGuire) and 485 votes ahead of Powers, his nearest rival. In East Gate, he ran 213 votes ahead of the top Democratic voter-getter and 286 votes ahead of Powers. That helped him build up margins to offset the parts of town where he didn’t run so well. Whether this speaks to Hagens’ prowess in winning those voters, the weakness of Democrats in those precincts or some combination of the two, is hard to say. All we know is that’s where Hagen rolled up a lot of votes. 

Hagen ran well in some Democratic-voting precincts, too

Harris won the Crystal Spring precinct with 59.71% of the vote, so we shouldn’t be surprised that a Democrat, McGuire, led the balloting for council there. But Hagen came in second. Harris took 60.75% in Grandin Court, so we shouldn’t be surprised that McGuire and Nash led the balloting for council there — but Hagen came in third. 

McGuire was the most consistent vote-getter

McGuire placed first or second in all but four precincts. He finished third, still good enough to win, in Deyerle and Garden City. Only in Preston Park and South Roanoke, where he finished fourth, did he finish out of the money.

The key to winning an at-large election in Roanoke is usually to perform consistently citywide, and McGuire did that.

Nash was less consistent. He finished first in six precincts (Eureka Park, Forest Park, Grandview, Lincoln Terrace, Peters Creek, Summit Hills), second or third in seven, but finished out of the top three in seven others. However, in the places he won, he tended to win by a lot. In Eureka Park, he ran 501 votes ahead of the second-place finisher, fellow Democrat McGuire. In Forest Park, he ran 282 votes ahead of McGuire. In Lincoln Terrace, he ran 262 votes ahead of McGuire. That suggests that many voters in those predominantly Black precincts may have simply cast a single vote — for Nash. Such “single-shotting” is a time-honored way to make sure a favored candidate doesn’t accidentally get crowded by a ticketmate.

Hagen’s performance was almost the mirror image of Nash’s: He finished first in six precincts, second or third in four others, but out of the top three in 10 others. Powers didn’t finish first anywhere, and while she was consistent citywide, she didn’t build up the margins that Nash and Hagen did. 

So what does this mean?

All this explains how Hagen and the other candidates won, but not why. Why did so many Democrats desert one of their nominees? The election results can’t speak to that. Did Hagen simply get the Trump vote? That’s possible but doesn’t explain why Hagen ran ahead of other Democratic candidates in places such as Crystal Spring. The fact that there was so much ticket-splitting in the council races suggests voters weren’t just blindly going down a party list; they were putting some thought into their choices. We just don’t know exactly what those thoughts were, but it seems fair to surmise that anyone voting for Hagen was not satisfied with the current direction of the council. 

We can say this, though:

Four years ago, the third-place finisher for council received 12,857 votes. Hagen this year topped that by 16.5%.

Lynchburg’s political drama continues

Before the elections, some Lynchburg Republicans wanted to kick Mayor Stephanie Reed and Vice Mayor Chris Faraldi off the party’s local committee, part of an ongoing feud between two rival factions. That meeting is now set for Saturday, although the explusion is now off the table so the meeting will deal with the rift more generally. I’ll have more to say about it in this week’s edition of West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter that goes out Friday afternoons.

You can sign up for that or any of our other free newsletters below:

• The Daily Everything we publish, every weekday
• The Roundup A roundup of our most popular stories each week, sent Saturdays at 7 a.m.
• Cardinal Weather In-depth weather news and analysis on our region, sent Wednesdays
• West of the Capital A weekly round-up of politics, with a focus on our region, sent Fridays
• Your Weekend Spread your wings this weekend with our go-to guide for celebrations, festivities, and other events happening in our region, delivered every Thursday at noon.
• Cardinal 250 Revisiting stories from our nation’s founding. Delivered monthly

Sign up

The post How Roanoke elected its first Republican to city council in 24 years appeared first on Cardinal News.

Roanoke has done something it hasn’t done in nearly a quarter-century: It’s elected a Republican to the city council.

It came close to electing two.

Nick Hagen became the first Republican elected to the council since 2000 when Roanokers elected Ralph Smith as mayor and Bill Carder to the council. David Bowers came within 59 votes of being returned to the mayor’s office.

The closeness of the Roanoke mayor’s race is easily explained: Independent Stephanie Moon pulled away many votes that would have normally gone to Democrat Joe Cobb. This is best seen in the city’s predominantly Black precincts, which Moon won: She carried Forest Park, Grandview and Peters Creek with pluralities, she won Eureka Park and Lincoln Terrace with outright majorities.

Citywide, Bowers, running as a Republican after switching parties last year, took 37.11% of the vote. That’s almost exactly what Donald Trump took in Roanoke: 37.31%. It looks to me as if Bowers won the basic Republican vote and nothing more. Without Moon in the race, it seems likely that Cobb would have won the mayor’s race in a landslide.

The city council results are more complicated, and therefore more interesting, because voters had three votes to cast and seven candidates to choose from. Here are some observations:

There was a lot of ticket-splitting; no candidate won a majority

Kamala Harris took 60.82% in the presidential race in Roanoke. Tim Kaine took 63.76% in the Senate race. Ken Mitchell, the Democratic candidate for the 6th District House seat, took 57.22% in Roanoke. As noted above, in a two-person race, Cobb might well have polled about 62%. 

Based on those numbers, you might think the three Democratic council candidates should have taken about the same share of the vote. They did not. Not even close. This reflects how common it was for otherwise Democratic voters to cast a ballot for someone else in the council race.

The percentages you see on the State Board of Elections site aren’t accurate. Its software can’t handle races where people have more than one vote to cast. Here are the actual percentages, based on the the total number of people who cast ballots in the council race, which was 42,517:

Terry McGuire (D) 42.5%
Phazhon Nash (D) 41.7%
Nick Hagen (R) 35.2%
Evelyn Powers (I) 32.2%
Jim Garrett (R) 29.3%
Benjamin Woods (D) 27.6%
Cathy Reynolds (I) 13.7%

This means none of the candidates Roanoke just elected — Cobb and the three new council members, Hagen, McGuire and Nash — won a majority.

Democrats were not united behind Woods

The opening for Hagen was created by Democratic disunity. For reasons I have yet to ferret out, Democrats were not fully supportive of Benjamin Woods. During the campaign, Democratic council member Peter Volosin endorsed McGuire and Nash but also independent Evelyn Powers and never said why he was backing Powers over Woods. Powers had been elected to five terms as treasurer as a Democrat so certainly had Democratic credentials. Woods was also poorly funded, relative to the other candidates, so had a hard time getting his name out. 

Powers appears to have taken a lot of Democratic votes that might otherwise have gone to Woods

We can see this most clearly in the most Democratic precincts.

Eureka Park went 88.67% for Harris and 90.46% for Kaine. In that precinct, here’s how the council candidates ran in terms of actual votes cast:

Nash (D) 1,298
McGuire (D) 797
Powers (I) 647
Woods (D) 467
Hagen (R ) 429
Reynolds (I) 290
Garrett (R ) 187

Lincoln Terrace went 86.73% for Harris and 89.53% for Kaine. In that precinct, here’s how the council candidates ran:

Nash (D) 847
McGuire (D) 585
Powers (I) 451
Woods (D) 350
Reynolds (I) 274
Hagen (R ) 262
Garrett (R ) 178

In both cases, two of the Democratic council candidates placed first and second, with Powers third. In looking at these and other precincts, it seems clear to me that Powers took votes away from Woods and blocked him from winning. That alone doesn’t explain Hagen’s victory, though.

Hagen ran better than his fellow Republican, Jim Garrett

Hagen ran 2,520 votes ahead of his Republican ticket mate. Those “extra” 2,520 votes made all the difference. Without them, he wouldn’t have won and Evelyn Powers would have. So where did those votes come from? Let’s dig deeper.

Hagen ran ahead of Garrett in all but one precinct — South Roanoke — and there he trailed Garrett by just eight votes. Their biggest gap was in the Williamson Road precinct, where Hagen finished first and Garrett finished fifth.

The more useful comparison may be between Hagen and Powers, his nearest competitor for the third and final council slot. He finished ahead of her by 1,258 votes, so where did he manage to get those votes? More than 80% of that margin came from just three precincts, all blue-collar precincts in parts of Roanoke that once voted Democratic but now vote Republican: East Gate, Garden City and Williamson Road.

Hagen finished first in all three precincts (he won six precincts in all), and it was there that he built up his biggest margins over Powers — a difference of 485 votes in Garden City, 286 in East Gate, 263 in Williamson Road. That adds up to 1,034 votes from his ultimate 1,258-vote margin over Powers.

The realignment of working-class voters is one of the national stories coming out of this year’s election; this didn’t happen suddenly but many have just noticed it for the first time. In Roanoke, Hagen seemed to fit these voters more comfortably than did fellow Republican Garrett. 

Where Hagen won, he tended to win by a lot

In Garden City, Hagen ran 376 votes ahead of the top Democratic vote-getter (McGuire) and 485 votes ahead of Powers, his nearest rival. In East Gate, he ran 213 votes ahead of the top Democratic voter-getter and 286 votes ahead of Powers. That helped him build up margins to offset the parts of town where he didn’t run so well. Whether this speaks to Hagens’ prowess in winning those voters, the weakness of Democrats in those precincts or some combination of the two, is hard to say. All we know is that’s where Hagen rolled up a lot of votes. 

Hagen ran well in some Democratic-voting precincts, too

Harris won the Crystal Spring precinct with 59.71% of the vote, so we shouldn’t be surprised that a Democrat, McGuire, led the balloting for council there. But Hagen came in second. Harris took 60.75% in Grandin Court, so we shouldn’t be surprised that McGuire and Nash led the balloting for council there — but Hagen came in third. 

McGuire was the most consistent vote-getter

McGuire placed first or second in all but four precincts. He finished third, still good enough to win, in Deyerle and Garden City. Only in Preston Park and South Roanoke, where he finished fourth, did he finish out of the money.

The key to winning an at-large election in Roanoke is usually to perform consistently citywide, and McGuire did that.

Nash was less consistent. He finished first in six precincts (Eureka Park, Forest Park, Grandview, Lincoln Terrace, Peters Creek, Summit Hills), second or third in seven, but finished out of the top three in seven others. However, in the places he won, he tended to win by a lot. In Eureka Park, he ran 501 votes ahead of the second-place finisher, fellow Democrat McGuire. In Forest Park, he ran 282 votes ahead of McGuire. In Lincoln Terrace, he ran 262 votes ahead of McGuire. That suggests that many voters in those predominantly Black precincts may have simply cast a single vote — for Nash. Such “single-shotting” is a time-honored way to make sure a favored candidate doesn’t accidentally get crowded by a ticketmate.

Hagen’s performance was almost the mirror image of Nash’s: He finished first in six precincts, second or third in four others, but out of the top three in 10 others. Powers didn’t finish first anywhere, and while she was consistent citywide, she didn’t build up the margins that Nash and Hagen did. 

So what does this mean?

All this explains how Hagen and the other candidates won, but not why. Why did so many Democrats desert one of their nominees? The election results can’t speak to that. Did Hagen simply get the Trump vote? That’s possible but doesn’t explain why Hagen ran ahead of other Democratic candidates in places such as Crystal Spring. The fact that there was so much ticket-splitting in the council races suggests voters weren’t just blindly going down a party list; they were putting some thought into their choices. We just don’t know exactly what those thoughts were, but it seems fair to surmise that anyone voting for Hagen was not satisfied with the current direction of the council. 

We can say this, though:

Four years ago, the third-place finisher for council received 12,857 votes. Hagen this year topped that by 16.5%.

Lynchburg’s political drama continues

Before the elections, some Lynchburg Republicans wanted to kick Mayor Stephanie Reed and Vice Mayor Chris Faraldi off the party’s local committee, part of an ongoing feud between two rival factions. That meeting is now set for Saturday, although the explusion is now off the table so the meeting will deal with the rift more generally. I’ll have more to say about it in this week’s edition of West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter that goes out Friday afternoons.

You can sign up for that or any of our other free newsletters below:

• The Daily Everything we publish, every weekday
• The Roundup A roundup of our most popular stories each week, sent Saturdays at 7 a.m.
• Cardinal Weather In-depth weather news and analysis on our region, sent Wednesdays
• West of the Capital A weekly round-up of politics, with a focus on our region, sent Fridays
• Your Weekend Spread your wings this weekend with our go-to guide for celebrations, festivities, and other events happening in our region, delivered every Thursday at noon.
• Cardinal 250 Revisiting stories from our nation’s founding. Delivered monthly

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The post How Roanoke elected its first Republican to city council in 24 years appeared first on Cardinal News.

Roanoke has done something it hasn’t done in nearly a quarter-century: It’s elected a Republican to the city council.

It came close to electing two.

Nick Hagen became the first Republican elected to the council since 2000 when Roanokers elected Ralph Smith as mayor and Bill Carder to the council. David Bowers came within 59 votes of being returned to the mayor’s office.

The closeness of the Roanoke mayor’s race is easily explained: Independent Stephanie Moon pulled away many votes that would have normally gone to Democrat Joe Cobb. This is best seen in the city’s predominantly Black precincts, which Moon won: She carried Forest Park, Grandview and Peters Creek with pluralities, she won Eureka Park and Lincoln Terrace with outright majorities.

Citywide, Bowers, running as a Republican after switching parties last year, took 37.11% of the vote. That’s almost exactly what Donald Trump took in Roanoke: 37.31%. It looks to me as if Bowers won the basic Republican vote and nothing more. Without Moon in the race, it seems likely that Cobb would have won the mayor’s race in a landslide.

The city council results are more complicated, and therefore more interesting, because voters had three votes to cast and seven candidates to choose from. Here are some observations:

There was a lot of ticket-splitting; no candidate won a majority

Kamala Harris took 60.82% in the presidential race in Roanoke. Tim Kaine took 63.76% in the Senate race. Ken Mitchell, the Democratic candidate for the 6th District House seat, took 57.22% in Roanoke. As noted above, in a two-person race, Cobb might well have polled about 62%. 

Based on those numbers, you might think the three Democratic council candidates should have taken about the same share of the vote. They did not. Not even close. This reflects how common it was for otherwise Democratic voters to cast a ballot for someone else in the council race.

The percentages you see on the State Board of Elections site aren’t accurate. Its software can’t handle races where people have more than one vote to cast. Here are the actual percentages, based on the the total number of people who cast ballots in the council race, which was 42,517:

Terry McGuire (D) 42.5%
Phazhon Nash (D) 41.7%
Nick Hagen (R) 35.2%
Evelyn Powers (I) 32.2%
Jim Garrett (R) 29.3%
Benjamin Woods (D) 27.6%
Cathy Reynolds (I) 13.7%

This means none of the candidates Roanoke just elected — Cobb and the three new council members, Hagen, McGuire and Nash — won a majority.

Democrats were not united behind Woods

The opening for Hagen was created by Democratic disunity. For reasons I have yet to ferret out, Democrats were not fully supportive of Benjamin Woods. During the campaign, Democratic council member Peter Volosin endorsed McGuire and Nash but also independent Evelyn Powers and never said why he was backing Powers over Woods. Powers had been elected to five terms as treasurer as a Democrat so certainly had Democratic credentials. Woods was also poorly funded, relative to the other candidates, so had a hard time getting his name out. 

Powers appears to have taken a lot of Democratic votes that might otherwise have gone to Woods

We can see this most clearly in the most Democratic precincts.

Eureka Park went 88.67% for Harris and 90.46% for Kaine. In that precinct, here’s how the council candidates ran in terms of actual votes cast:

Nash (D) 1,298
McGuire (D) 797
Powers (I) 647
Woods (D) 467
Hagen (R ) 429
Reynolds (I) 290
Garrett (R ) 187

Lincoln Terrace went 86.73% for Harris and 89.53% for Kaine. In that precinct, here’s how the council candidates ran:

Nash (D) 847
McGuire (D) 585
Powers (I) 451
Woods (D) 350
Reynolds (I) 274
Hagen (R ) 262
Garrett (R ) 178

In both cases, two of the Democratic council candidates placed first and second, with Powers third. In looking at these and other precincts, it seems clear to me that Powers took votes away from Woods and blocked him from winning. That alone doesn’t explain Hagen’s victory, though.

Hagen ran better than his fellow Republican, Jim Garrett

Hagen ran 2,520 votes ahead of his Republican ticket mate. Those “extra” 2,520 votes made all the difference. Without them, he wouldn’t have won and Evelyn Powers would have. So where did those votes come from? Let’s dig deeper.

Hagen ran ahead of Garrett in all but one precinct — South Roanoke — and there he trailed Garrett by just eight votes. Their biggest gap was in the Williamson Road precinct, where Hagen finished first and Garrett finished fifth.

The more useful comparison may be between Hagen and Powers, his nearest competitor for the third and final council slot. He finished ahead of her by 1,258 votes, so where did he manage to get those votes? More than 80% of that margin came from just three precincts, all blue-collar precincts in parts of Roanoke that once voted Democratic but now vote Republican: East Gate, Garden City and Williamson Road.

Hagen finished first in all three precincts (he won six precincts in all), and it was there that he built up his biggest margins over Powers — a difference of 485 votes in Garden City, 286 in East Gate, 263 in Williamson Road. That adds up to 1,034 votes from his ultimate 1,258-vote margin over Powers.

The realignment of working-class voters is one of the national stories coming out of this year’s election; this didn’t happen suddenly but many have just noticed it for the first time. In Roanoke, Hagen seemed to fit these voters more comfortably than did fellow Republican Garrett. 

Where Hagen won, he tended to win by a lot

In Garden City, Hagen ran 376 votes ahead of the top Democratic vote-getter (McGuire) and 485 votes ahead of Powers, his nearest rival. In East Gate, he ran 213 votes ahead of the top Democratic voter-getter and 286 votes ahead of Powers. That helped him build up margins to offset the parts of town where he didn’t run so well. Whether this speaks to Hagens’ prowess in winning those voters, the weakness of Democrats in those precincts or some combination of the two, is hard to say. All we know is that’s where Hagen rolled up a lot of votes. 

Hagen ran well in some Democratic-voting precincts, too

Harris won the Crystal Spring precinct with 59.71% of the vote, so we shouldn’t be surprised that a Democrat, McGuire, led the balloting for council there. But Hagen came in second. Harris took 60.75% in Grandin Court, so we shouldn’t be surprised that McGuire and Nash led the balloting for council there — but Hagen came in third. 

McGuire was the most consistent vote-getter

McGuire placed first or second in all but four precincts. He finished third, still good enough to win, in Deyerle and Garden City. Only in Preston Park and South Roanoke, where he finished fourth, did he finish out of the money.

The key to winning an at-large election in Roanoke is usually to perform consistently citywide, and McGuire did that.

Nash was less consistent. He finished first in six precincts (Eureka Park, Forest Park, Grandview, Lincoln Terrace, Peters Creek, Summit Hills), second or third in seven, but finished out of the top three in seven others. However, in the places he won, he tended to win by a lot. In Eureka Park, he ran 501 votes ahead of the second-place finisher, fellow Democrat McGuire. In Forest Park, he ran 282 votes ahead of McGuire. In Lincoln Terrace, he ran 262 votes ahead of McGuire. That suggests that many voters in those predominantly Black precincts may have simply cast a single vote — for Nash. Such “single-shotting” is a time-honored way to make sure a favored candidate doesn’t accidentally get crowded by a ticketmate.

Hagen’s performance was almost the mirror image of Nash’s: He finished first in six precincts, second or third in four others, but out of the top three in 10 others. Powers didn’t finish first anywhere, and while she was consistent citywide, she didn’t build up the margins that Nash and Hagen did. 

So what does this mean?

All this explains how Hagen and the other candidates won, but not why. Why did so many Democrats desert one of their nominees? The election results can’t speak to that. Did Hagen simply get the Trump vote? That’s possible but doesn’t explain why Hagen ran ahead of other Democratic candidates in places such as Crystal Spring. The fact that there was so much ticket-splitting in the council races suggests voters weren’t just blindly going down a party list; they were putting some thought into their choices. We just don’t know exactly what those thoughts were, but it seems fair to surmise that anyone voting for Hagen was not satisfied with the current direction of the council. 

We can say this, though:

Four years ago, the third-place finisher for council received 12,857 votes. Hagen this year topped that by 16.5%.

Lynchburg’s political drama continues

Before the elections, some Lynchburg Republicans wanted to kick Mayor Stephanie Reed and Vice Mayor Chris Faraldi off the party’s local committee, part of an ongoing feud between two rival factions. That meeting is now set for Saturday, although the explusion is now off the table so the meeting will deal with the rift more generally. I’ll have more to say about it in this week’s edition of West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter that goes out Friday afternoons.

You can sign up for that or any of our other free newsletters below:

• The Daily Everything we publish, every weekday
• The Roundup A roundup of our most popular stories each week, sent Saturdays at 7 a.m.
• Cardinal Weather In-depth weather news and analysis on our region, sent Wednesdays
• West of the Capital A weekly round-up of politics, with a focus on our region, sent Fridays
• Your Weekend Spread your wings this weekend with our go-to guide for celebrations, festivities, and other events happening in our region, delivered every Thursday at noon.
• Cardinal 250 Revisiting stories from our nation’s founding. Delivered monthly

Sign up

The post How Roanoke elected its first Republican to city council in 24 years appeared first on Cardinal News.

Roanoke has done something it hasn’t done in nearly a quarter-century: It’s elected a Republican to the city council.

It came close to electing two.

Nick Hagen became the first Republican elected to the council since 2000 when Roanokers elected Ralph Smith as mayor and Bill Carder to the council. David Bowers came within 59 votes of being returned to the mayor’s office.

The closeness of the Roanoke mayor’s race is easily explained: Independent Stephanie Moon pulled away many votes that would have normally gone to Democrat Joe Cobb. This is best seen in the city’s predominantly Black precincts, which Moon won: She carried Forest Park, Grandview and Peters Creek with pluralities, she won Eureka Park and Lincoln Terrace with outright majorities.

Citywide, Bowers, running as a Republican after switching parties last year, took 37.11% of the vote. That’s almost exactly what Donald Trump took in Roanoke: 37.31%. It looks to me as if Bowers won the basic Republican vote and nothing more. Without Moon in the race, it seems likely that Cobb would have won the mayor’s race in a landslide.

The city council results are more complicated, and therefore more interesting, because voters had three votes to cast and seven candidates to choose from. Here are some observations:

There was a lot of ticket-splitting; no candidate won a majority

Kamala Harris took 60.82% in the presidential race in Roanoke. Tim Kaine took 63.76% in the Senate race. Ken Mitchell, the Democratic candidate for the 6th District House seat, took 57.22% in Roanoke. As noted above, in a two-person race, Cobb might well have polled about 62%. 

Based on those numbers, you might think the three Democratic council candidates should have taken about the same share of the vote. They did not. Not even close. This reflects how common it was for otherwise Democratic voters to cast a ballot for someone else in the council race.

The percentages you see on the State Board of Elections site aren’t accurate. Its software can’t handle races where people have more than one vote to cast. Here are the actual percentages, based on the the total number of people who cast ballots in the council race, which was 42,517:

Terry McGuire (D) 42.5%
Phazhon Nash (D) 41.7%
Nick Hagen (R) 35.2%
Evelyn Powers (I) 32.2%
Jim Garrett (R) 29.3%
Benjamin Woods (D) 27.6%
Cathy Reynolds (I) 13.7%

This means none of the candidates Roanoke just elected — Cobb and the three new council members, Hagen, McGuire and Nash — won a majority.

Democrats were not united behind Woods

The opening for Hagen was created by Democratic disunity. For reasons I have yet to ferret out, Democrats were not fully supportive of Benjamin Woods. During the campaign, Democratic council member Peter Volosin endorsed McGuire and Nash but also independent Evelyn Powers and never said why he was backing Powers over Woods. Powers had been elected to five terms as treasurer as a Democrat so certainly had Democratic credentials. Woods was also poorly funded, relative to the other candidates, so had a hard time getting his name out. 

Powers appears to have taken a lot of Democratic votes that might otherwise have gone to Woods

We can see this most clearly in the most Democratic precincts.

Eureka Park went 88.67% for Harris and 90.46% for Kaine. In that precinct, here’s how the council candidates ran in terms of actual votes cast:

Nash (D) 1,298
McGuire (D) 797
Powers (I) 647
Woods (D) 467
Hagen (R ) 429
Reynolds (I) 290
Garrett (R ) 187

Lincoln Terrace went 86.73% for Harris and 89.53% for Kaine. In that precinct, here’s how the council candidates ran:

Nash (D) 847
McGuire (D) 585
Powers (I) 451
Woods (D) 350
Reynolds (I) 274
Hagen (R ) 262
Garrett (R ) 178

In both cases, two of the Democratic council candidates placed first and second, with Powers third. In looking at these and other precincts, it seems clear to me that Powers took votes away from Woods and blocked him from winning. That alone doesn’t explain Hagen’s victory, though.

Hagen ran better than his fellow Republican, Jim Garrett

Hagen ran 2,520 votes ahead of his Republican ticket mate. Those “extra” 2,520 votes made all the difference. Without them, he wouldn’t have won and Evelyn Powers would have. So where did those votes come from? Let’s dig deeper.

Hagen ran ahead of Garrett in all but one precinct — South Roanoke — and there he trailed Garrett by just eight votes. Their biggest gap was in the Williamson Road precinct, where Hagen finished first and Garrett finished fifth.

The more useful comparison may be between Hagen and Powers, his nearest competitor for the third and final council slot. He finished ahead of her by 1,258 votes, so where did he manage to get those votes? More than 80% of that margin came from just three precincts, all blue-collar precincts in parts of Roanoke that once voted Democratic but now vote Republican: East Gate, Garden City and Williamson Road.

Hagen finished first in all three precincts (he won six precincts in all), and it was there that he built up his biggest margins over Powers — a difference of 485 votes in Garden City, 286 in East Gate, 263 in Williamson Road. That adds up to 1,034 votes from his ultimate 1,258-vote margin over Powers.

The realignment of working-class voters is one of the national stories coming out of this year’s election; this didn’t happen suddenly but many have just noticed it for the first time. In Roanoke, Hagen seemed to fit these voters more comfortably than did fellow Republican Garrett. 

Where Hagen won, he tended to win by a lot

In Garden City, Hagen ran 376 votes ahead of the top Democratic vote-getter (McGuire) and 485 votes ahead of Powers, his nearest rival. In East Gate, he ran 213 votes ahead of the top Democratic voter-getter and 286 votes ahead of Powers. That helped him build up margins to offset the parts of town where he didn’t run so well. Whether this speaks to Hagens’ prowess in winning those voters, the weakness of Democrats in those precincts or some combination of the two, is hard to say. All we know is that’s where Hagen rolled up a lot of votes. 

Hagen ran well in some Democratic-voting precincts, too

Harris won the Crystal Spring precinct with 59.71% of the vote, so we shouldn’t be surprised that a Democrat, McGuire, led the balloting for council there. But Hagen came in second. Harris took 60.75% in Grandin Court, so we shouldn’t be surprised that McGuire and Nash led the balloting for council there — but Hagen came in third. 

McGuire was the most consistent vote-getter

McGuire placed first or second in all but four precincts. He finished third, still good enough to win, in Deyerle and Garden City. Only in Preston Park and South Roanoke, where he finished fourth, did he finish out of the money.

The key to winning an at-large election in Roanoke is usually to perform consistently citywide, and McGuire did that.

Nash was less consistent. He finished first in six precincts (Eureka Park, Forest Park, Grandview, Lincoln Terrace, Peters Creek, Summit Hills), second or third in seven, but finished out of the top three in seven others. However, in the places he won, he tended to win by a lot. In Eureka Park, he ran 501 votes ahead of the second-place finisher, fellow Democrat McGuire. In Forest Park, he ran 282 votes ahead of McGuire. In Lincoln Terrace, he ran 262 votes ahead of McGuire. That suggests that many voters in those predominantly Black precincts may have simply cast a single vote — for Nash. Such “single-shotting” is a time-honored way to make sure a favored candidate doesn’t accidentally get crowded by a ticketmate.

Hagen’s performance was almost the mirror image of Nash’s: He finished first in six precincts, second or third in four others, but out of the top three in 10 others. Powers didn’t finish first anywhere, and while she was consistent citywide, she didn’t build up the margins that Nash and Hagen did. 

So what does this mean?

All this explains how Hagen and the other candidates won, but not why. Why did so many Democrats desert one of their nominees? The election results can’t speak to that. Did Hagen simply get the Trump vote? That’s possible but doesn’t explain why Hagen ran ahead of other Democratic candidates in places such as Crystal Spring. The fact that there was so much ticket-splitting in the council races suggests voters weren’t just blindly going down a party list; they were putting some thought into their choices. We just don’t know exactly what those thoughts were, but it seems fair to surmise that anyone voting for Hagen was not satisfied with the current direction of the council. 

We can say this, though:

Four years ago, the third-place finisher for council received 12,857 votes. Hagen this year topped that by 16.5%.

Lynchburg’s political drama continues

Before the elections, some Lynchburg Republicans wanted to kick Mayor Stephanie Reed and Vice Mayor Chris Faraldi off the party’s local committee, part of an ongoing feud between two rival factions. That meeting is now set for Saturday, although the explusion is now off the table so the meeting will deal with the rift more generally. I’ll have more to say about it in this week’s edition of West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter that goes out Friday afternoons.

You can sign up for that or any of our other free newsletters below:

• The Daily Everything we publish, every weekday
• The Roundup A roundup of our most popular stories each week, sent Saturdays at 7 a.m.
• Cardinal Weather In-depth weather news and analysis on our region, sent Wednesdays
• West of the Capital A weekly round-up of politics, with a focus on our region, sent Fridays
• Your Weekend Spread your wings this weekend with our go-to guide for celebrations, festivities, and other events happening in our region, delivered every Thursday at noon.
• Cardinal 250 Revisiting stories from our nation’s founding. Delivered monthly

Sign up

The post How Roanoke elected its first Republican to city council in 24 years appeared first on Cardinal News.

Miriam’s House, an organization that serves homeless families and individuals based in Lynchburg, received $1.25 million in a grant from Jeff Bezos’ Day 1 Families Fund — essentially doubling its budget in a year.

“It was sort of unbelievable,” said Sarah Quarantotto, executive director of Miriam’s House, adding that her team had a small celebration after the news was out. 

In 2023, the nonprofit housed 537 individuals, including 165 children. That year, 94% of households it served obtained stable housing and didn’t become homeless again, Quarantotto said. 

The fund, started by Amazon founder Bezos and his fiancee, Lauren Sanchez, has distributed nearly $750 million to organizations combating homelessness in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico since 2018. This week it announced 40 grants, totaling $110 million.

Miriam’s House isn’t the first Virginia shelter to receive this grant. In the past few years, shelters in Fairfax, Alexandria, Arlington, Richmond, South Boston, Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Henrico and Oakton have also been awarded up to $2.5 million each.

Miriam’s House’s yearly budget, Quarantotto said, is about $1.5 million. She said the organization will receive the entire grant in November, but the intent is to use the money over the course of five years. She said it’s “probably the most flexible funding” the nonprofit has received.

She said the grant will go toward expanding the Community First program, which works with homeless families to help them get into stable housing. This includes paying security deposits and first-month rent and offering case management services and financial literacy programming. Quarantotto said her staff usually works with families for six to nine months before they’re back on their feet. 

“We’ve always been really committed to best practices and addressing homelessness in a way that’s really thoughtful based on data and the input of those who have experienced it,” she said. “Our work has been really respected over the years.”

On Wednesday, Sanchez spoke on the “Today” show about the Day 1 Families Fund.

“I’ve never been more proud of something as walking into a shelter and seeing not just the people that they’re helping but the people that are helping these people,” she said. “They’re so prideful, and they take so much pride in what they’re doing.”

In November 2023, Miriam’s House received the Virginia Governor’s Housing Conference Award for Best Housing Program in Virginia.

The post Lynchburg nonprofit receives $1.25 million from Bezos foundation to battle homelessness appeared first on Cardinal News.

State regulators on Wednesday approved a rate increase for Appalachian Power that would allow the company to earn a little more than a tenth of the additional annual revenue that it asked for earlier this year.

The State Corporation Commission gave the OK for Virginia’s second-largest electric utility to raise rates to earn $9.768 million more revenue per year for the next two years. The new rates take effect Jan. 1.

In March, Appalachian asked regulators for permission to earn $95.1 million more each year, which would have increased the average residential customer bill by $10.22, or 6%. The company said it needed to pay for investments, including making its service more reliable.

Appalachian Power spokesperson Ashley Workman said Wednesday that the utility still is reviewing the SCC’s decision and calculating how it would impact customers’ bills. 

“We feel that the Order strikes a reasonable balance between the company’s financial health and the impact on our customers,” Workman said in an email.

Appalachian’s initial proposal was criticized by residents, lawmakers, businesses and advocacy groups, in part because it came on the heels of other rate increases that have upped the bill of the average resident who uses 1,000 kilowatt-hours per month by about $50, to $173, over approximately the past two years.

The environmental advocacy nonprofit Appalachian Voices participated in the SCC’s rate case evaluating Appalachian’s request.

Josephus Allmond, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center representing Appalachian Voices, praised the SCC’s order on Wednesday and said it was evident that commissioners took utility customers’ concerns to heart.

“We think it’s a strong decision from the commission,” Allmond said. “We think they took a hard look at the evidence and came back with something that will allow APCo to still attract capital but also protect their ratepayers.”

Allmond noted that the SCC denied Appalachian’s request to raise its basic service charge from $7.96 to $9. The charge is a fixed monthly fee that covers meter reading, billing and other services.

“That would have been just a little bit more saddled on APCo’s ratepayers, who have already had enough,” he said.

The utility’s request came as part of a biennial review of rates with the SCC. Previously, Appalachian was required by law to submit its rates for SCC review every three years. State legislation passed last year changed that frequency.

After its original $95.1 million revenue increase proposal in March, Appalachian lowered its request to $64.2 million. In August, the staff of the SCC recommended allowing $47.2 million in additional revenue.

Virginia law allows Appalachian to recover “reasonable and prudent” costs and earn a “fair” rate of return, but what constitutes “reasonable,” “prudent” and “fair” is up for public debate during any rate case. The decision ultimately rests with the commissioners of the SCC, which since January is back up to its full allotment of three commissioners after having two vacancies for two years prior.

Among the topics debated as the rate case proceeded was how much return on equity — essentially, the utility’s ability to earn profit for its investors — Appalachian should be allowed. The SCC approved a return on equity of 9.75%. Appalachian had requested an annual return on equity of 10.8%, up from 9.5%, and said that in 2023 its actual earnings were below that 9.5% mark.

In requesting higher rates and a higher return on equity, Appalachian said that it needed to cover the costs of restoring service after storms; increased capital, material and labor costs; and expenses associated with vegetation management to improve service reliability.

The utility’s proposal was met with backlash from a ratepaying public already feeling the effects of inflation on top of previous rate increases.

“The rate hike that Appalachian Power are asking for will literally cause people to have to choose between having power, having food, having medications they need,” Robin Belcher of Grundy said during a public hearing that the SCC held in September.

That public hearing preceded a five-day evidentiary hearing in September. Both involved attorneys for various stakeholders and witnesses who provided testimony.

The SCC’s public record in the case holds more than 150 individually submitted online comments, a letter from the Charlottesville-based advocacy group Clean Virginia with more than 3,600 electronic signatures, a letter from more than a dozen state lawmakers and multiple resolutions passed by county boards of supervisors opposing higher rates.

Besides Appalachian Voices, also participating in the rate case were the Office of the Attorney General’s Division of Consumer Counsel, the Old Dominion Committee for Fair Utility Rates, the VML/VaCo APCo Steering Committee, Walmart, Kroger, Steel Dynamics and the Virginia Poverty Law Center.

Appalachian Power is a subsidiary of publicly traded American Electric Power (NASDAQ:AEP). It has approximately 540,000 customers in Western Virginia and is the largest electric utility in Southwest Virginia.

The post Va. regulators OK smaller rate hike for Appalachian Power appeared first on Cardinal News.

Here are some of the top headlines from other news outlets around Virginia. Some content may be behind a metered paywall:

Economy:

Washington County supervisors look to revisit solar energy regulations. — Bristol Herald Courier (paywall).

Once Roanoke’s sleepy blue-collar neighbor, Vinton tries making itself a hip destination. — Roanoke Rambler (subscription).

Towing companies lose bid for rotation system in Lynchburg. — The (Lynchburg) News & Advance (paywall).

Bluefield Town Council has second reading for stadium question. — Bluefield Daily Telegraph (paywall).

Education:

Virginia lawmakers will consider teacher compact to stem shortage. — Virginia Mercury.

Amherst high school expansion progressing nicely at project’s one-year mark. — The (Lynchburg) News & Advance (paywall).

School board chair challenges Lynchburg City Council on delayed school funding decision. — WSET-TV.

Public safety:

State senators press Department of Corrections for answers on Red Onion. — Radio IQ/WVTF.

Politics:

Roanoke woman who rioted at U.S. Capitol gets 31 months in prison. — The Roanoke Times (paywall).

Weather:

For more weather news, follow weather journalist Kevin Myatt on Twitter / X at @kevinmyattwx and sign up for his free weather email newsletter. His weekly column appears in Cardinal News each Wednesday afternoon.

The post Washington County supervisors look to revisit solar energy regulations; more … appeared first on Cardinal News.

A circuit court judge has ruled that Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s removal of Virginia from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative was unlawful. 

Virginia had entered into RGGI, and was the first Southern state to do so, after a law passed by the Democratic-controlled General Assembly in 2020 required the commonwealth’s participation. The initiative is a multistate effort aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. Eleven Eastern states, including Virginia, joined the program. 

In 2022, Youngkin issued an executive order to reevaluate Virginia’s participation in the program, with the intent of ending it. The State Air Pollution Control Board repealed Virginia’s participation in RGGI in 2023. The program was not included in the 2024 budget, solidifying the commonwealth’s departure from the initiative. 

Floyd County Circuit Judge Randall Lowe, in his decision handed down Wednesday, said that the governor lacked the statutory authority to repeal the RGGI regulation. 

“The only body with the authority to repeal the RGGI Regulation would be the General Assembly. This is because a statute, the RGGI Act, requires the RGGI Regulation to exist,” Lowe wrote in his opinion. 

Youngkin’s office said the administration plans to pursue an appeal. 

“We respectfully disagree with the judge’s decision,” said Christian Martinez, press secretary for Youngkin, in a statement Wednesday. “Governor Youngkin remains committed to lowering the cost of living for Virginians by continuing to oppose [RGGI], which fails to effectively incentivize emission reductions in the commonwealth. Instead it functions as a regressive tax, hidden in utility bills, passed on to all Virginians.”

Lee Francis, deputy director of the Virginia League of Conservation Voters, which has supported the commonwealth’s participation in the program, pushed back against the characterization of the fee associated with RGGI as a “tax” by Youngkin’s office.

“They’ve kind of mischaracterized this all along,” Francis said in a phone call Wednesday. 

He argued that the roughly 0.44 cents per kilowatt-hour added to consumers’ electric bills in connection to RGGI is an environmental compliance fee, not a “tax.” The per-month cost of that compliance fee to consumers depends on how much energy they use. Francis, for example, said he saw about $1.50 to $2 per month in RGGI-related compliance fees on his electric bill.

“You can look at your electric bill and point to any number of riders, or line items, and they’re not calling those ‘taxes,’ they’re just calling this a tax because it’s rhetoric that they’re trying to spin onto the citizens of Virginia.”

RGGI participation netted millions in Virginia for flood mitigation

The Virginia League of Conservation Voters noted that participation in RGGI created $830 million in dedicated revenue to combat flooding.

That revenue stemmed primarily from regional carbon dioxide allowance auctions, the proceeds from which are returned to RGGI states. The League of Conservation Voters noted that Virginia has been without a dedicated funding source for flood prevention and energy-efficiency programs since the state left the program.

Matt Allenbaugh, campaign coordinator for Appalachian Voices Virginia, said Wednesday that his organization is pleased with the court’s decision. 

“A significant portion of RGGI proceeds were allocated by the General Assembly to the Community Flood Preparedness Fund to help communities prepare for and prevent catastrophic flooding,” Allenbaugh said in a statement. “Getting back into RGGI as quickly as possible will help communities across the state prepare for, and hopefully prevent, damaging flooding from the next storm.”  

He said that the flooding associated with Hurricane Helene demonstrated the importance of the efforts supported by RGGI and that nearly half of the revenue from the program was meant to pay for projects and planning to mitigate similar natural disasters.

Helene damaged hundreds of homes in Virginia, including dozens of houses that were completely destroyed. Many businesses were also damaged or destroyed, and two lives were lost.

Democratic leaders applaud court decision

Democratic leaders in Virginia’s General Assembly took to social media on Wednesday to issue their support for the court’s decision. 

House of Delegates Speaker Don Scott, D-Portsmouth, called the court’s decision a win not only for Virginians who have faced severe flooding but for the wallets of residents across the commonwealth. 

“Today’s decision saves hardworking Virginians money by ensuring the resources generated by RGGI are used to protect our communities,” he said in a statement. 

Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax County, said that Youngkin acted illegally in removing Virginia from RGGI and that Attorney General Jason Miyares, who argued in support of the governor’s action, did not interpret the law correctly.

“Unfortunately, his decision has now cost Virginians $200 million of funds that could have been appropriated in the last two years to protect the commonwealth against flood damage like what just happened in Southwest Virginia because of Hurricane Helene,” he said in a post on X. 

The post Youngkin’s departure from RGGI determined unlawful by circuit judge appeared first on Cardinal News.

There is no better way to start the annual snowfall prediction contest than with a preliminary round of accumulating snow for parts of our region.

If you want to enter the snowfall prediction contest, you can read through (or scroll down) to the subheads below. But we’re going to start off describing what will be for some of the western localities in Cardinal News country the first accumulating snowfall of the 2024-25 cold season, and might briefly spray a few flakes even toward the middle of our broad Southwest and Southside Virginia coverage area.

A deep upper-level low will swing through the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley region and across the Appalachians over the next three days. It will provide strong lift and some instability with extremely cold air aloft as gusty northwest winds lift moisture against the Appalachians behind an Arctic cold front.

The result will be periods of snow showers and snow squalls forming over the Appalachians, as moisture primarily from the Great Lakes is lifted, cooled and condensed. This is the “upslope snow” phenomenon that commonly recurs throughout our winters with almost every Arctic cold front, but this particular setup has more upper-level atmospheric support than many others do, so some periods of heavier snow are likely.

The heaviest amounts, with a potential for more than 6 inches, will focus on the western slopes of the ridges in eastern West Virginia, with Thursday night and early Friday likely to be the most likely time for some heavier bands of snow. Some West Virginia ski resorts are not only going to be loving the snow but several nights of cold, snowmaking-friendly weather to kick off their seasons in time for Thanksgiving weekend.

In Virginia, many Southwest Virginia locations along and west of Interstate 77, especially those in higher elevations, may see 1 to 4 inches of snow, as may some higher elevations rimming the western edge of the state northward.

Lower elevations as far east as the Blue Ridge may see periods of snow showers with minor, streaky accumulations possible in the New River Valley. Even the Roanoke Valley might get a few flakes by early Friday. Snow is doubtful east of the Blue Ridge — maybe a few flakes dribble as far east as Bedford, Smith Mountain Lake and Martinsville, but it would be brief. Lower elevations near and east of the Blue Ridge may see more of a mix of sprinkles and flakes.

After being stuck in the 30s and 40s most of Thursday and Friday, maybe even upper 20s where it is snowing most, temperatures in our region will gradually warm back up toward 50s-60s for highs early next week. But there are signs that more dumps of cold air are on the way near Thanksgiving and beyond. There may be wintry precipitation implications for holiday travel, if not in our region in places people may be traveling.

Winter looks like it wants to get out of the gate fast this year. What that means for how often it returns or how long it stays, and how much snow it dumps after consecutive weak snowfall winters and a general five-year snowfall slump, remain to be seen. But you can take your best guess.

Guess how much it will snow

As discussed here three weeks ago particular to this winter, and last March in regard to broader and longer climate patterns, there are many reasons to think that this will be another winter on the lower end of historic snowfall totals for our region.

But then, there is no one in sports betting who, a couple months ago, would have expected Indiana to be 10-0 and Florida State to be 1-9 at this point in the college football season. Surprises can happen. Even if this is a mild winter, just one big winter storm setup could completely change the scoreboard for snow in our region.

It’s time for you to take your best guess at how much snow locations in Cardinal News’ Southwest and Southside Virgina coverage region will get this winter.

This is the third Cardinal Weather snowfall prediction contest. But the contest has a much longer history, as many Roanoke and New River Valley area folks reading this would know, dating back to 2008 in The Roanoke Times. It started with just asking folks reading my Weather Journal column to email in some snowfall total guesses for Roanoke and Blacksburg for the 2008-09 winter. That was the third year of a slow snow period not too different than what we’ve had the last couple winters,  but the response was surprisingly strong. Our epic snowy 2009-10 winter stoked further interest in the contest and it became an annual event with more or less the same format throughout the 2010s and into the 2020s, skipping only one year.

Since moving my weather column to Cardinal News in 2022, I’ve struggled a bit in finding an effective format to embrace a much larger region of coverage so that folks everywhere in Southwest and Southside Virginia have at least one location to guess for that is relatively close to where they live. Having verifiable data is a challenge as the National Weather Service operates only four major climate stations within our coverage area (Blacksburg, Danville, Lynchburg and Roanoke). The volunteer cooperative stations scattered across the rest of our region vary their availability of snowfall data. The co-op sites also operate on a different time frame — 7 a.m. to 7 a.m. recording period, instead of midnight to midnight for the major climate stations — so that throws off an effort to have a “first snowfall date” element to the contest as I had for years in the Times.

But the show must go on, whether the snow does or not.

How to enter the contest

Please read this carefully — I get entries every year from people who just randomly pick their own choice of locations or send me a single number for total snow wherever they happen to live.

Contests have to have rules. Mine are simple — but they are slightly different than in years past.

(1)    Select THREE locations out of the 10 listed at the bottom of this column.

(2)    Guess total snowfall rounded to the nearest inch each of those three will receive between Dec. 1 and March 31. (If you give me fractions or decimals, I’ll do it for you, with halves rounding up.)

(3)    Email your guesses to weather@cardinalnews.org. Give me your name and where you live (general location — town, city, part of county — not specific address). It is OK to include more than one entry on the same email, for different family members (no age limits!), or a school group, or something of that nature, just make sure names are clearly labeled for each set of picks.

(4)    Deadline for receiving entries is 11:59 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 30.

The winner of a $25 gift card for first place will be whoever misses total snowfall by the least number of inches — guesses and snow totals rounded to the nearest inch — for the best two of their three picks. If there is a tie, we’ll consider the third pick as a tiebreaker. If it’s still tied, whoever sends me their entry first wins.

If I get 200 entries, I’ll boost it to a $50 gift card for first place and $25 for second place.

Any and all winners, plus some close runner-up finishers, will be recognized in a spring edition of this weather column.

Snowfall contest locations

Remember, pick THREE of the following locations and guess how much snow will occur between Dec. 1 and March 31. It snows sometimes in November and April, but those amounts won’t count here.

I’ve also included seasonal snowfall totals from least to most for each location, rounded to the nearest inch, and a historic average to give you somewhat of a guide for making snowfall guesses. Each of these sites have at least 30 years of data.

Good luck.

Abingdon: 1 (1991-92) to 55 (1995-96); Average, 13.

Appomattox: 0 (multiple winters, most recently 2019-20) to 56 (1995-96); Average, 13.

Blacksburg: 1 (2022-23) to 67 (1995-96); Average, 21.

Burke’s Garden: 7 (1956-57) to 112 (1977-78); Average, 38.

Clintwood: 8 (2022-23) to 90 (1995-96);  Average, 36.

Danville: 0 (multiple winters,  most recently 2023-24) to 41 (1947-48); Average, 7.

Lynchburg: 0 (2019-10) to 57 (1995-96); Average, 15.

Martinsville: 0 (multiple winters, most recently 2023-24) to 46 (1959-60); Average, 9.

Roanoke: 0 (1918-19/1919-20 and 2022-23, rounded down from 0.4) to 63 (1959-60); Average, 18.

Wytheville: 1 (2022-23) to 59 (1986-97); Average, 19.

Journalist Kevin Myatt has been writing about weather for 20 years. His weekly column, appearing on Wednesdays, is sponsored by Oakey’s, a family-run, locally-owned funeral home with locations throughout the Roanoke Valley. Sign up for his weekly newsletter:

The post Snow set to coat western edge of Virginia as annual snowfall prediction contest begins appeared first on Cardinal News.

There is no better way to start the annual snowfall prediction contest than with a preliminary round of accumulating snow for parts of our region.

If you want to enter the snowfall prediction contest, you can read through (or scroll down) to the subheads below. But we’re going to start off describing what will be for some of the western localities in Cardinal News country the first accumulating snowfall of the 2024-25 cold season, and might briefly spray a few flakes even toward the middle of our broad Southwest and Southside Virginia coverage area.

A deep upper-level low will swing through the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley region and across the Appalachians over the next three days. It will provide strong lift and some instability with extremely cold air aloft as gusty northwest winds lift moisture against the Appalachians behind an Arctic cold front.

The result will be periods of snow showers and snow squalls forming over the Appalachians, as moisture primarily from the Great Lakes is lifted, cooled and condensed. This is the “upslope snow” phenomenon that commonly recurs throughout our winters with almost every Arctic cold front, but this particular setup has more upper-level atmospheric support than many others do, so some periods of heavier snow are likely.

The heaviest amounts, with a potential for more than 6 inches, will focus on the western slopes of the ridges in eastern West Virginia, with Thursday night and early Friday likely to be the most likely time for some heavier bands of snow. Some West Virginia ski resorts are not only going to be loving the snow but several nights of cold, snowmaking-friendly weather to kick off their seasons in time for Thanksgiving weekend.

In Virginia, many Southwest Virginia locations along and west of Interstate 77, especially those in higher elevations, may see 1 to 4 inches of snow, as may some higher elevations rimming the western edge of the state northward.

Lower elevations as far east as the Blue Ridge may see periods of snow showers with minor, streaky accumulations possible in the New River Valley. Even the Roanoke Valley might get a few flakes by early Friday. Snow is doubtful east of the Blue Ridge — maybe a few flakes dribble as far east as Bedford, Smith Mountain Lake and Martinsville, but it would be brief. Lower elevations near and east of the Blue Ridge may see more of a mix of sprinkles and flakes.

After being stuck in the 30s and 40s most of Thursday and Friday, maybe even upper 20s where it is snowing most, temperatures in our region will gradually warm back up toward 50s-60s for highs early next week. But there are signs that more dumps of cold air are on the way near Thanksgiving and beyond. There may be wintry precipitation implications for holiday travel, if not in our region in places people may be traveling.

Winter looks like it wants to get out of the gate fast this year. What that means for how often it returns or how long it stays, and how much snow it dumps after consecutive weak snowfall winters and a general five-year snowfall slump, remain to be seen. But you can take your best guess.

Guess how much it will snow

As discussed here three weeks ago particular to this winter, and last March in regard to broader and longer climate patterns, there are many reasons to think that this will be another winter on the lower end of historic snowfall totals for our region.

But then, there is no one in sports betting who, a couple months ago, would have expected Indiana to be 10-0 and Florida State to be 1-9 at this point in the college football season. Surprises can happen. Even if this is a mild winter, just one big winter storm setup could completely change the scoreboard for snow in our region.

It’s time for you to take your best guess at how much snow locations in Cardinal News’ Southwest and Southside Virgina coverage region will get this winter.

This is the third Cardinal Weather snowfall prediction contest. But the contest has a much longer history, as many Roanoke and New River Valley area folks reading this would know, dating back to 2008 in The Roanoke Times. It started with just asking folks reading my Weather Journal column to email in some snowfall total guesses for Roanoke and Blacksburg for the 2008-09 winter. That was the third year of a slow snow period not too different than what we’ve had the last couple winters,  but the response was surprisingly strong. Our epic snowy 2009-10 winter stoked further interest in the contest and it became an annual event with more or less the same format throughout the 2010s and into the 2020s, skipping only one year.

Since moving my weather column to Cardinal News in 2022, I’ve struggled a bit in finding an effective format to embrace a much larger region of coverage so that folks everywhere in Southwest and Southside Virginia have at least one location to guess for that is relatively close to where they live. Having verifiable data is a challenge as the National Weather Service operates only four major climate stations within our coverage area (Blacksburg, Danville, Lynchburg and Roanoke). The volunteer cooperative stations scattered across the rest of our region vary their availability of snowfall data. The co-op sites also operate on a different time frame — 7 a.m. to 7 a.m. recording period, instead of midnight to midnight for the major climate stations — so that throws off an effort to have a “first snowfall date” element to the contest as I had for years in the Times.

But the show must go on, whether the snow does or not.

How to enter the contest

Please read this carefully — I get entries every year from people who just randomly pick their own choice of locations or send me a single number for total snow wherever they happen to live.

Contests have to have rules. Mine are simple — but they are slightly different than in years past.

(1)    Select THREE locations out of the 10 listed at the bottom of this column.

(2)    Guess total snowfall rounded to the nearest inch each of those three will receive between Dec. 1 and March 31. (If you give me fractions or decimals, I’ll do it for you, with halves rounding up.)

(3)    Email your guesses to weather@cardinalnews.org. Give me your name and where you live (general location — town, city, part of county — not specific address). It is OK to include more than one entry on the same email, for different family members (no age limits!), or a school group, or something of that nature, just make sure names are clearly labeled for each set of picks.

(4)    Deadline for receiving entries is 11:59 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 30.

The winner of a $25 gift card for first place will be whoever misses total snowfall by the least number of inches — guesses and snow totals rounded to the nearest inch — for the best two of their three picks. If there is a tie, we’ll consider the third pick as a tiebreaker. If it’s still tied, whoever sends me their entry first wins.

If I get 200 entries, I’ll boost it to a $50 gift card for first place and $25 for second place.

Any and all winners, plus some close runner-up finishers, will be recognized in a spring edition of this weather column.

Snowfall contest locations

Remember, pick THREE of the following locations and guess how much snow will occur between Dec. 1 and March 31. It snows sometimes in November and April, but those amounts won’t count here.

I’ve also included seasonal snowfall totals from least to most for each location, rounded to the nearest inch, and a historic average to give you somewhat of a guide for making snowfall guesses. Each of these sites have at least 30 years of data.

Good luck.

Abingdon: 1 (1991-92) to 55 (1995-96); Average, 13.

Appomattox: 0 (multiple winters, most recently 2019-20) to 56 (1995-96); Average, 13.

Blacksburg: 1 (2022-23) to 67 (1995-96); Average, 21.

Burke’s Garden: 7 (1956-57) to 112 (1977-78); Average, 38.

Clintwood: 8 (2022-23) to 90 (1995-96);  Average, 36.

Danville: 0 (multiple winters,  most recently 2023-24) to 41 (1947-48); Average, 7.

Lynchburg: 0 (2019-10) to 57 (1995-96); Average, 15.

Martinsville: 0 (multiple winters, most recently 2023-24) to 46 (1959-60); Average, 9.

Roanoke: 0 (1918-19/1919-20 and 2022-23, rounded down from 0.4) to 63 (1959-60); Average, 18.

Wytheville: 1 (2022-23) to 59 (1986-97); Average, 19.

Journalist Kevin Myatt has been writing about weather for 20 years. His weekly column, appearing on Wednesdays, is sponsored by Oakey’s, a family-run, locally-owned funeral home with locations throughout the Roanoke Valley. Sign up for his weekly newsletter:

The post Snow set to coat western edge of Virginia as annual snowfall prediction contest begins appeared first on Cardinal News.

There is no better way to start the annual snowfall prediction contest than with a preliminary round of accumulating snow for parts of our region.

If you want to enter the snowfall prediction contest, you can read through (or scroll down) to the subheads below. But we’re going to start off describing what will be for some of the western localities in Cardinal News country the first accumulating snowfall of the 2024-25 cold season, and might briefly spray a few flakes even toward the middle of our broad Southwest and Southside Virginia coverage area.

A deep upper-level low will swing through the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley region and across the Appalachians over the next three days. It will provide strong lift and some instability with extremely cold air aloft as gusty northwest winds lift moisture against the Appalachians behind an Arctic cold front.

The result will be periods of snow showers and snow squalls forming over the Appalachians, as moisture primarily from the Great Lakes is lifted, cooled and condensed. This is the “upslope snow” phenomenon that commonly recurs throughout our winters with almost every Arctic cold front, but this particular setup has more upper-level atmospheric support than many others do, so some periods of heavier snow are likely.

The heaviest amounts, with a potential for more than 6 inches, will focus on the western slopes of the ridges in eastern West Virginia, with Thursday night and early Friday likely to be the most likely time for some heavier bands of snow. Some West Virginia ski resorts are not only going to be loving the snow but several nights of cold, snowmaking-friendly weather to kick off their seasons in time for Thanksgiving weekend.

In Virginia, many Southwest Virginia locations along and west of Interstate 77, especially those in higher elevations, may see 1 to 4 inches of snow, as may some higher elevations rimming the western edge of the state northward.

Lower elevations as far east as the Blue Ridge may see periods of snow showers with minor, streaky accumulations possible in the New River Valley. Even the Roanoke Valley might get a few flakes by early Friday. Snow is doubtful east of the Blue Ridge — maybe a few flakes dribble as far east as Bedford, Smith Mountain Lake and Martinsville, but it would be brief. Lower elevations near and east of the Blue Ridge may see more of a mix of sprinkles and flakes.

After being stuck in the 30s and 40s most of Thursday and Friday, maybe even upper 20s where it is snowing most, temperatures in our region will gradually warm back up toward 50s-60s for highs early next week. But there are signs that more dumps of cold air are on the way near Thanksgiving and beyond. There may be wintry precipitation implications for holiday travel, if not in our region in places people may be traveling.

Winter looks like it wants to get out of the gate fast this year. What that means for how often it returns or how long it stays, and how much snow it dumps after consecutive weak snowfall winters and a general five-year snowfall slump, remain to be seen. But you can take your best guess.

Guess how much it will snow

As discussed here three weeks ago particular to this winter, and last March in regard to broader and longer climate patterns, there are many reasons to think that this will be another winter on the lower end of historic snowfall totals for our region.

But then, there is no one in sports betting who, a couple months ago, would have expected Indiana to be 10-0 and Florida State to be 1-9 at this point in the college football season. Surprises can happen. Even if this is a mild winter, just one big winter storm setup could completely change the scoreboard for snow in our region.

It’s time for you to take your best guess at how much snow locations in Cardinal News’ Southwest and Southside Virgina coverage region will get this winter.

This is the third Cardinal Weather snowfall prediction contest. But the contest has a much longer history, as many Roanoke and New River Valley area folks reading this would know, dating back to 2008 in The Roanoke Times. It started with just asking folks reading my Weather Journal column to email in some snowfall total guesses for Roanoke and Blacksburg for the 2008-09 winter. That was the third year of a slow snow period not too different than what we’ve had the last couple winters,  but the response was surprisingly strong. Our epic snowy 2009-10 winter stoked further interest in the contest and it became an annual event with more or less the same format throughout the 2010s and into the 2020s, skipping only one year.

Since moving my weather column to Cardinal News in 2022, I’ve struggled a bit in finding an effective format to embrace a much larger region of coverage so that folks everywhere in Southwest and Southside Virginia have at least one location to guess for that is relatively close to where they live. Having verifiable data is a challenge as the National Weather Service operates only four major climate stations within our coverage area (Blacksburg, Danville, Lynchburg and Roanoke). The volunteer cooperative stations scattered across the rest of our region vary their availability of snowfall data. The co-op sites also operate on a different time frame — 7 a.m. to 7 a.m. recording period, instead of midnight to midnight for the major climate stations — so that throws off an effort to have a “first snowfall date” element to the contest as I had for years in the Times.

But the show must go on, whether the snow does or not.

How to enter the contest

Please read this carefully — I get entries every year from people who just randomly pick their own choice of locations or send me a single number for total snow wherever they happen to live.

Contests have to have rules. Mine are simple — but they are slightly different than in years past.

(1)    Select THREE locations out of the 10 listed at the bottom of this column.

(2)    Guess total snowfall rounded to the nearest inch each of those three will receive between Dec. 1 and March 31. (If you give me fractions or decimals, I’ll do it for you, with halves rounding up.)

(3)    Email your guesses to weather@cardinalnews.org. Give me your name and where you live (general location — town, city, part of county — not specific address). It is OK to include more than one entry on the same email, for different family members (no age limits!), or a school group, or something of that nature, just make sure names are clearly labeled for each set of picks.

(4)    Deadline for receiving entries is 11:59 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 30.

The winner of a $25 gift card for first place will be whoever misses total snowfall by the least number of inches — guesses and snow totals rounded to the nearest inch — for the best two of their three picks. If there is a tie, we’ll consider the third pick as a tiebreaker. If it’s still tied, whoever sends me their entry first wins.

If I get 200 entries, I’ll boost it to a $50 gift card for first place and $25 for second place.

Any and all winners, plus some close runner-up finishers, will be recognized in a spring edition of this weather column.

Snowfall contest locations

Remember, pick THREE of the following locations and guess how much snow will occur between Dec. 1 and March 31. It snows sometimes in November and April, but those amounts won’t count here.

I’ve also included seasonal snowfall totals from least to most for each location, rounded to the nearest inch, and a historic average to give you somewhat of a guide for making snowfall guesses. Each of these sites have at least 30 years of data.

Good luck.

Abingdon: 1 (1991-92) to 55 (1995-96); Average, 13.

Appomattox: 0 (multiple winters, most recently 2019-20) to 56 (1995-96); Average, 13.

Blacksburg: 1 (2022-23) to 67 (1995-96); Average, 21.

Burke’s Garden: 7 (1956-57) to 112 (1977-78); Average, 38.

Clintwood: 8 (2022-23) to 90 (1995-96);  Average, 36.

Danville: 0 (multiple winters,  most recently 2023-24) to 41 (1947-48); Average, 7.

Lynchburg: 0 (2019-10) to 57 (1995-96); Average, 15.

Martinsville: 0 (multiple winters, most recently 2023-24) to 46 (1959-60); Average, 9.

Roanoke: 0 (1918-19/1919-20 and 2022-23, rounded down from 0.4) to 63 (1959-60); Average, 18.

Wytheville: 1 (2022-23) to 59 (1986-97); Average, 19.

Journalist Kevin Myatt has been writing about weather for 20 years. His weekly column, appearing on Wednesdays, is sponsored by Oakey’s, a family-run, locally-owned funeral home with locations throughout the Roanoke Valley. Sign up for his weekly newsletter:

The post Snow set to coat western edge of Virginia as annual snowfall prediction contest begins appeared first on Cardinal News.

There is no better way to start the annual snowfall prediction contest than with a preliminary round of accumulating snow for parts of our region.

If you want to enter the snowfall prediction contest, you can read through (or scroll down) to the subheads below. But we’re going to start off describing what will be for some of the western localities in Cardinal News country the first accumulating snowfall of the 2024-25 cold season, and might briefly spray a few flakes even toward the middle of our broad Southwest and Southside Virginia coverage area.

A deep upper-level low will swing through the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley region and across the Appalachians over the next three days. It will provide strong lift and some instability with extremely cold air aloft as gusty northwest winds lift moisture against the Appalachians behind an Arctic cold front.

The result will be periods of snow showers and snow squalls forming over the Appalachians, as moisture primarily from the Great Lakes is lifted, cooled and condensed. This is the “upslope snow” phenomenon that commonly recurs throughout our winters with almost every Arctic cold front, but this particular setup has more upper-level atmospheric support than many others do, so some periods of heavier snow are likely.

The heaviest amounts, with a potential for more than 6 inches, will focus on the western slopes of the ridges in eastern West Virginia, with Thursday night and early Friday likely to be the most likely time for some heavier bands of snow. Some West Virginia ski resorts are not only going to be loving the snow but several nights of cold, snowmaking-friendly weather to kick off their seasons in time for Thanksgiving weekend.

In Virginia, many Southwest Virginia locations along and west of Interstate 77, especially those in higher elevations, may see 1 to 4 inches of snow, as may some higher elevations rimming the western edge of the state northward.

Lower elevations as far east as the Blue Ridge may see periods of snow showers with minor, streaky accumulations possible in the New River Valley. Even the Roanoke Valley might get a few flakes by early Friday. Snow is doubtful east of the Blue Ridge — maybe a few flakes dribble as far east as Bedford, Smith Mountain Lake and Martinsville, but it would be brief. Lower elevations near and east of the Blue Ridge may see more of a mix of sprinkles and flakes.

After being stuck in the 30s and 40s most of Thursday and Friday, maybe even upper 20s where it is snowing most, temperatures in our region will gradually warm back up toward 50s-60s for highs early next week. But there are signs that more dumps of cold air are on the way near Thanksgiving and beyond. There may be wintry precipitation implications for holiday travel, if not in our region in places people may be traveling.

Winter looks like it wants to get out of the gate fast this year. What that means for how often it returns or how long it stays, and how much snow it dumps after consecutive weak snowfall winters and a general five-year snowfall slump, remain to be seen. But you can take your best guess.

Guess how much it will snow

As discussed here three weeks ago particular to this winter, and last March in regard to broader and longer climate patterns, there are many reasons to think that this will be another winter on the lower end of historic snowfall totals for our region.

But then, there is no one in sports betting who, a couple months ago, would have expected Indiana to be 10-0 and Florida State to be 1-9 at this point in the college football season. Surprises can happen. Even if this is a mild winter, just one big winter storm setup could completely change the scoreboard for snow in our region.

It’s time for you to take your best guess at how much snow locations in Cardinal News’ Southwest and Southside Virgina coverage region will get this winter.

This is the third Cardinal Weather snowfall prediction contest. But the contest has a much longer history, as many Roanoke and New River Valley area folks reading this would know, dating back to 2008 in The Roanoke Times. It started with just asking folks reading my Weather Journal column to email in some snowfall total guesses for Roanoke and Blacksburg for the 2008-09 winter. That was the third year of a slow snow period not too different than what we’ve had the last couple winters,  but the response was surprisingly strong. Our epic snowy 2009-10 winter stoked further interest in the contest and it became an annual event with more or less the same format throughout the 2010s and into the 2020s, skipping only one year.

Since moving my weather column to Cardinal News in 2022, I’ve struggled a bit in finding an effective format to embrace a much larger region of coverage so that folks everywhere in Southwest and Southside Virginia have at least one location to guess for that is relatively close to where they live. Having verifiable data is a challenge as the National Weather Service operates only four major climate stations within our coverage area (Blacksburg, Danville, Lynchburg and Roanoke). The volunteer cooperative stations scattered across the rest of our region vary their availability of snowfall data. The co-op sites also operate on a different time frame — 7 a.m. to 7 a.m. recording period, instead of midnight to midnight for the major climate stations — so that throws off an effort to have a “first snowfall date” element to the contest as I had for years in the Times.

But the show must go on, whether the snow does or not.

How to enter the contest

Please read this carefully — I get entries every year from people who just randomly pick their own choice of locations or send me a single number for total snow wherever they happen to live.

Contests have to have rules. Mine are simple — but they are slightly different than in years past.

(1)    Select THREE locations out of the 10 listed at the bottom of this column.

(2)    Guess total snowfall rounded to the nearest inch each of those three will receive between Dec. 1 and March 31. (If you give me fractions or decimals, I’ll do it for you, with halves rounding up.)

(3)    Email your guesses to weather@cardinalnews.org. Give me your name and where you live (general location — town, city, part of county — not specific address). It is OK to include more than one entry on the same email, for different family members (no age limits!), or a school group, or something of that nature, just make sure names are clearly labeled for each set of picks.

(4)    Deadline for receiving entries is 11:59 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 30.

The winner of a $25 gift card for first place will be whoever misses total snowfall by the least number of inches — guesses and snow totals rounded to the nearest inch — for the best two of their three picks. If there is a tie, we’ll consider the third pick as a tiebreaker. If it’s still tied, whoever sends me their entry first wins.

If I get 200 entries, I’ll boost it to a $50 gift card for first place and $25 for second place.

Any and all winners, plus some close runner-up finishers, will be recognized in a spring edition of this weather column.

Snowfall contest locations

Remember, pick THREE of the following locations and guess how much snow will occur between Dec. 1 and March 31. It snows sometimes in November and April, but those amounts won’t count here.

I’ve also included seasonal snowfall totals from least to most for each location, rounded to the nearest inch, and a historic average to give you somewhat of a guide for making snowfall guesses. Each of these sites have at least 30 years of data.

Good luck.

Abingdon: 1 (1991-92) to 55 (1995-96); Average, 13.

Appomattox: 0 (multiple winters, most recently 2019-20) to 56 (1995-96); Average, 13.

Blacksburg: 1 (2022-23) to 67 (1995-96); Average, 21.

Burke’s Garden: 7 (1956-57) to 112 (1977-78); Average, 38.

Clintwood: 8 (2022-23) to 90 (1995-96);  Average, 36.

Danville: 0 (multiple winters,  most recently 2023-24) to 41 (1947-48); Average, 7.

Lynchburg: 0 (2019-10) to 57 (1995-96); Average, 15.

Martinsville: 0 (multiple winters, most recently 2023-24) to 46 (1959-60); Average, 9.

Roanoke: 0 (1918-19/1919-20 and 2022-23, rounded down from 0.4) to 63 (1959-60); Average, 18.

Wytheville: 1 (2022-23) to 59 (1986-97); Average, 19.

Journalist Kevin Myatt has been writing about weather for 20 years. His weekly column, appearing on Wednesdays, is sponsored by Oakey’s, a family-run, locally-owned funeral home with locations throughout the Roanoke Valley. Sign up for his weekly newsletter:

The post Snow set to coat western edge of Virginia as annual snowfall prediction contest begins appeared first on Cardinal News.

There is no better way to start the annual snowfall prediction contest than with a preliminary round of accumulating snow for parts of our region.

If you want to enter the snowfall prediction contest, you can read through (or scroll down) to the subheads below. But we’re going to start off describing what will be for some of the western localities in Cardinal News country the first accumulating snowfall of the 2024-25 cold season, and might briefly spray a few flakes even toward the middle of our broad Southwest and Southside Virginia coverage area.

A deep upper-level low will swing through the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley region and across the Appalachians over the next three days. It will provide strong lift and some instability with extremely cold air aloft as gusty northwest winds lift moisture against the Appalachians behind an Arctic cold front.

The result will be periods of snow showers and snow squalls forming over the Appalachians, as moisture primarily from the Great Lakes is lifted, cooled and condensed. This is the “upslope snow” phenomenon that commonly recurs throughout our winters with almost every Arctic cold front, but this particular setup has more upper-level atmospheric support than many others do, so some periods of heavier snow are likely.

The heaviest amounts, with a potential for more than 6 inches, will focus on the western slopes of the ridges in eastern West Virginia, with Thursday night and early Friday likely to be the most likely time for some heavier bands of snow. Some West Virginia ski resorts are not only going to be loving the snow but several nights of cold, snowmaking-friendly weather to kick off their seasons in time for Thanksgiving weekend.

In Virginia, many Southwest Virginia locations along and west of Interstate 77, especially those in higher elevations, may see 1 to 4 inches of snow, as may some higher elevations rimming the western edge of the state northward.

Lower elevations as far east as the Blue Ridge may see periods of snow showers with minor, streaky accumulations possible in the New River Valley. Even the Roanoke Valley might get a few flakes by early Friday. Snow is doubtful east of the Blue Ridge — maybe a few flakes dribble as far east as Bedford, Smith Mountain Lake and Martinsville, but it would be brief. Lower elevations near and east of the Blue Ridge may see more of a mix of sprinkles and flakes.

After being stuck in the 30s and 40s most of Thursday and Friday, maybe even upper 20s where it is snowing most, temperatures in our region will gradually warm back up toward 50s-60s for highs early next week. But there are signs that more dumps of cold air are on the way near Thanksgiving and beyond. There may be wintry precipitation implications for holiday travel, if not in our region in places people may be traveling.

Winter looks like it wants to get out of the gate fast this year. What that means for how often it returns or how long it stays, and how much snow it dumps after consecutive weak snowfall winters and a general five-year snowfall slump, remain to be seen. But you can take your best guess.

Guess how much it will snow

As discussed here three weeks ago particular to this winter, and last March in regard to broader and longer climate patterns, there are many reasons to think that this will be another winter on the lower end of historic snowfall totals for our region.

But then, there is no one in sports betting who, a couple months ago, would have expected Indiana to be 10-0 and Florida State to be 1-9 at this point in the college football season. Surprises can happen. Even if this is a mild winter, just one big winter storm setup could completely change the scoreboard for snow in our region.

It’s time for you to take your best guess at how much snow locations in Cardinal News’ Southwest and Southside Virgina coverage region will get this winter.

This is the third Cardinal Weather snowfall prediction contest. But the contest has a much longer history, as many Roanoke and New River Valley area folks reading this would know, dating back to 2008 in The Roanoke Times. It started with just asking folks reading my Weather Journal column to email in some snowfall total guesses for Roanoke and Blacksburg for the 2008-09 winter. That was the third year of a slow snow period not too different than what we’ve had the last couple winters,  but the response was surprisingly strong. Our epic snowy 2009-10 winter stoked further interest in the contest and it became an annual event with more or less the same format throughout the 2010s and into the 2020s, skipping only one year.

Since moving my weather column to Cardinal News in 2022, I’ve struggled a bit in finding an effective format to embrace a much larger region of coverage so that folks everywhere in Southwest and Southside Virginia have at least one location to guess for that is relatively close to where they live. Having verifiable data is a challenge as the National Weather Service operates only four major climate stations within our coverage area (Blacksburg, Danville, Lynchburg and Roanoke). The volunteer cooperative stations scattered across the rest of our region vary their availability of snowfall data. The co-op sites also operate on a different time frame — 7 a.m. to 7 a.m. recording period, instead of midnight to midnight for the major climate stations — so that throws off an effort to have a “first snowfall date” element to the contest as I had for years in the Times.

But the show must go on, whether the snow does or not.

How to enter the contest

Please read this carefully — I get entries every year from people who just randomly pick their own choice of locations or send me a single number for total snow wherever they happen to live.

Contests have to have rules. Mine are simple — but they are slightly different than in years past.

(1)    Select THREE locations out of the 10 listed at the bottom of this column.

(2)    Guess total snowfall rounded to the nearest inch each of those three will receive between Dec. 1 and March 31. (If you give me fractions or decimals, I’ll do it for you, with halves rounding up.)

(3)    Email your guesses to weather@cardinalnews.org. Give me your name and where you live (general location — town, city, part of county — not specific address). It is OK to include more than one entry on the same email, for different family members (no age limits!), or a school group, or something of that nature, just make sure names are clearly labeled for each set of picks.

(4)    Deadline for receiving entries is 11:59 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 30.

The winner of a $25 gift card for first place will be whoever misses total snowfall by the least number of inches — guesses and snow totals rounded to the nearest inch — for the best two of their three picks. If there is a tie, we’ll consider the third pick as a tiebreaker. If it’s still tied, whoever sends me their entry first wins.

If I get 200 entries, I’ll boost it to a $50 gift card for first place and $25 for second place.

Any and all winners, plus some close runner-up finishers, will be recognized in a spring edition of this weather column.

Snowfall contest locations

Remember, pick THREE of the following locations and guess how much snow will occur between Dec. 1 and March 31. It snows sometimes in November and April, but those amounts won’t count here.

I’ve also included seasonal snowfall totals from least to most for each location, rounded to the nearest inch, and a historic average to give you somewhat of a guide for making snowfall guesses. Each of these sites have at least 30 years of data.

Good luck.

Abingdon: 1 (1991-92) to 55 (1995-96); Average, 13.

Appomattox: 0 (multiple winters, most recently 2019-20) to 56 (1995-96); Average, 13.

Blacksburg: 1 (2022-23) to 67 (1995-96); Average, 21.

Burke’s Garden: 7 (1956-57) to 112 (1977-78); Average, 38.

Clintwood: 8 (2022-23) to 90 (1995-96);  Average, 36.

Danville: 0 (multiple winters,  most recently 2023-24) to 41 (1947-48); Average, 7.

Lynchburg: 0 (2019-10) to 57 (1995-96); Average, 15.

Martinsville: 0 (multiple winters, most recently 2023-24) to 46 (1959-60); Average, 9.

Roanoke: 0 (1918-19/1919-20 and 2022-23, rounded down from 0.4) to 63 (1959-60); Average, 18.

Wytheville: 1 (2022-23) to 59 (1986-97); Average, 19.

Journalist Kevin Myatt has been writing about weather for 20 years. His weekly column, appearing on Wednesdays, is sponsored by Oakey’s, a family-run, locally-owned funeral home with locations throughout the Roanoke Valley. Sign up for his weekly newsletter:

The post Snow set to coat western edge of Virginia as annual snowfall prediction contest begins appeared first on Cardinal News.

Curtis Millner is taking part in one of Henry County’s oldest conflicts. It involves a majority Black neighborhood’s decades-long effort to reliably source clean potable water and the financial hurdles keeping them from doing so. 

During the Aug. 19 meeting of the Public Service Authority, Millner and the other PSA members crammed into a small conference room for bad news: Their most recent grant application had failed, and they would have to continue searching for funds to bridge Henry County’s water line into a neighborhood where residents face unreliable well water. 

“For the most part, people don’t want to drink the water,” Millner said, contextualizing an issue that, depending on who you speak to, is between years or decades old. 

Millner lives in Laurel Park with his wife, Virginia. While not a resident of the affected area, he has gotten to know residents via his efforts to expand the county system.  

Millner said that while the water is technically safe to drink, ongoing issues, like excess sediment, bacteria and odor, have disincentivized neighbors from doing so.   

The neighborhood is in the vicinity of Stoney Mountain Road and Virginia 57. The county’s water infrastructure runs up to but abruptly ends just beyond this area, creating a cluster of well water users, which isn’t rare for the state.  

The Virginia Department of Health states that the majority of households in 60 of Virginia’s 95 counties rely on well water. Henry County has 12,369 active water accounts, which the county estimates at 25% of possible households. 

Expanding a water system into a particular neighborhood is far from unheard of, particularly if Henry County’s line runs close to the affected area, said Michael Ward, Henry County’s director of regulatory compliance and technical applications.  

In the affected neighborhood, the county’s water line ends at a fire station on Virginia 57, according to Millner. 

County water vs. well water: monitoring makes the difference

Ward said that water quality issues have been among the reasons neighborhoods have sought inclusion in the county’s system. 

Henry County sources its water supply from the Smith River while undergoing a process that isn’t available to most well water users. It’s because of this, Ward said customers usually see an uptick in quality when transitioning. 

Transitioning from well water to a local system usually increases quality due to the frequency of monitoring and treatment. 

“We test every day,” Ward said. “We take 30 bacteria samples every month, and we do a certain number every week and that’s throughout the whole water system.” 

Ward said even a sudden addition of hundreds of homes to the system wouldn’t be prohibitively taxing to the system. 

“The plant was originally built in 1984, and we just had a plant expansion that finished in 2021,” Ward said. “It went from 4 million gallons a day to 6 million gallons a day.” 

Millner and county school board member Ben Gravely said expansion is the next logical step for neighborhoods just outside the existing water lines. When Gravely was a child, personal well water systems were preferrable to manually retrieving water from a nearby source. 

Millner said hooking up to a more regulated communal system represents a natural progression. 

Bringing the system to the 21st century 

“It’s called progress. Nobody wants to live in the dark ages anymore,” Millner said over the sound of a running faucet at the neighborhood’s community center. 

The center has a small kitchen, so it wasn’t long before the faint smell of sulfur became more noticeable. After a few minutes, the smell wafted past the kitchen’s confines into the general meeting area. Even after the water was turned off, the smell lingered.   

“This is what we’ve been living with,” Millner said about the smell and condition of the water, which varies from home to home.    

It’s almost been a year since Millner began serving as the PSA’s Iriswood District representative. The position not only allows him to emphasize the issue, it also affords him a top-down perspective, something he didn’t have when he was just a concerned citizen. 

At $10 million, Millner knows that the project’s major bottleneck is funding.   

“The PSA is the one that has to move forward with [the project],” Millner said, reiterating that while the county is aware of the issue, the authority to secure grant funding and initiate a water system extension is under the purview of the PSA.  

“We do not receive any funds from the county but generate our own through sale of service,” Millner said. The PSA’s current fiscal year’s budget is $14.2 million, and $15.0 million in the previous fiscal year. 

While the PSA is focused on securing grant funding, Millner said a loan from the county is a possible route. 

Obstacles to extending the water line are numerous, as are ways in which well water can be bad for residents

Recently, the PSA’s grant application to the Virginia Department of Health Office of Drinking Water was not successful. 

“Henry County Public Service Authority has been diligently working to bring water service to your area,” reads a letter sent in February to affected residents. “The PSA applied in 2023 for VDH funding to extend the water line to your area; however, the application was unsuccessful due, in part, to poor participation in community water service surveys.” 

That survey was distributed to neighbors in the affected area, asking if they were experiencing water-related issues and gauging their willingness to connect to county water. 

Millner said community consensus is an important factor. While he is confident that the majority would like to make the transition, not everyone in the neighborhood is on board with transitioning to the county’s system out of fear of having to pay the county’s rates. 

In 2024, a single-family connection is $30 per month for the first 4,000 gallons. After that, it’s $4.70 for every 1,000 gallons used. 

Households using private wells don’t have to pay for water. Not every home in the neighborhood is dealing with water quality issues. 

Millner described it as “varied.” While some households are dealing with odors, others may have entirely different problems, or none at all. 

“I can’t use my cold water because there is so much sand in it,” Carolyn Noel said. 

Noel lives in a cul-de-sac in the affected area. Her door was wide open even before Millner rang the doorbell as a courtesy. Her home is cozy, decorated with an assortment of knickknacks.

She said the sediment in her water affects more than just her water quality. It also affects her pocketbook. There was a time when the amount of sediment reached a point where it burst her pipes. 

“I have messed up three [washing] machines with sand,” Noel said. 

Water quality tests backed up Millner’s claim of differences and similarities among residents in the area. The PSA conducted tests of 30 households in March of last year.  They showed the presence of coliform in the water of 17 of the 30 households sampled. 

Virginia’s Department of Health describes coliform as an indicator for other harder-to-detect bacteria, known as pathogens. These pathogens could lead to a number of health issues, including diarrhea, headaches, cramps and nausea.   

“While most coliforms are not pathogens, they serve as indicators of the microbial quality of water,” reads information from the Virginia Department of Health on well water safety. “Pathogens — the bacteria, protozoa, and viruses that make people sick — can be rare and difficult to detect even if they are present in the water.”

In recent years, more neighbors have learned about the potential danger, and Millner said more are on board with making the transition. Noel is among them, saying she would request a connection if the county line were extended. 

Millner said Noel and her neighbors have a choice. If the PSA manages to secure project funding, the system extension would be along the road and not across individual properties. This means homeowners dealing with water quality issues could opt in to the municipal system while those who are happy with well water could opt out. 

It’s going to take time. Millner said the next step after securing funding is to accept project bids prior to construction. There is also the business of letting households know about the change and helping them weigh the pros and cons of connecting to the county. 

“We’re certainly doing our best,” Millner said. “It would probably be about one or two years, the whole process.” 

Looking forward, Millner said the PSA will continue searching for possible sources of funding. He and his fellow board members are currently waiting to hear if their pending grant with the Virginia Department of Health will be successful. In the meantime, Millner refuses to let the issue become his proverbial white whale, saying a resolution isn’t a question of if but when.

The post Water advocate champions change for a Henry County neighborhood long dependent on wells appeared first on Cardinal News.

Updated Nov. 21: State Navigate has recalculated results based on new numbers from Hampton, and that changed the number of districts from seven to seven. This column has been updated to reflect that change.

Even in a weak year for Democrats, Kamala Harris carried 59 of Virginia’s House of Delegates districts, according to computations by the Virginia-based State Navigate site that tracks state legislative races across the country.

Democrats currently hold 51 seats in the House, with Republicans claiming 49.

The fact that the Democratic presidential candidate carried eight districts now held by Republicans raises the question of whether Democrats are positioned to increase their majority in the House in the 2025 elections.

In addition, three other Republican-held House districts saw Donald Trump carry those districts but with less than a majority vote. In four more, Trump won with less than 52% of the vote, which suggests that those Republican incumbents might be vulnerable, too. Ten more Republican legislators are in districts that Trump carried with between 52% and 55% of the vote.

By contrast, no Democratic legislators are in districts that Trump won. Only one is in a district where Harris won with less than 52% of the vote; three are in districts where she won with between 52% and 55%.

The State Navigate analysis, which was shared with Cardinal News, suggests that Republicans will be playing more defense than offense in next year’s elections. This is not necessarily unusual. Before Trump, it was common for General Assembly districts that voted Democratic in a presidential election to vote Republican in a state election, primarily because many Democrats tended to only vote in presidential years. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won 17 House of Delegates districts held by Republicans. The next year, though, Democrats turned out in force and won 14 of those districts, the biggest legislative shift in Virgnia since 1899.

That brings us to three political factors that will be at play next year that could emphasize or negate these numbers:

• How Virginians react to the second Trump administration: With just one exception since 1977, the party out of power in Washington has won the governor’s race in Virginia. When Trump was president the first time around, Virginians reacted negatively, and Democrats saw those big gains in the House of Delegates in 2017. Will Virginians react the same way this time around, or are they more numb to Trump these days? They certainly didn’t react as negatively in the recent election; will things be different once Trump is actually in office?
  
• Which party does the better job of turning out their voters: Off-year elections have traditionally favored Republicans because Democratic voters tended to be more low-propensity voters who only showed up in presidential years, which is how Republican state legislators held onto those state legislative districts that otherwise voted Democratic. As the parties have realigned, Democrats have picked up more white-collar voters (who tend to vote regularly), and Republicans have picked up more blue-collar voters (who tend to show up less regularly). Glenn Youngkin was able to buck that trend in 2021; rural turnout was up markedly, and it benefited him, but that was also against the backdrop of a Democratic presidency. Can Republicans repeat that with Trump in office?
  
• How Virginians feel about the state’s direction, and who they credit or blame for that: The Roanoke College poll shows that Virginians generally think the state is on the right track. If that mood holds, will voters credit their outgoing Republican governor or their Democratic legislature?

Here’s a look at the most vulnerable House districts in 2025 (the Senate won’t be up for reelection until 2027):

The 8 Republican districts that went for Harris

We’ll look at these in descending order, from the highest Harris vote to the lowest. Consider these the most vulnerable Republican incumbents.

House District 57: Del. David Owen (R-Henrico County)

2023: David Owen (R) 50.77%, Susanna Gibson (D) 48.77%
2024: Kamala Harris (D) 53.53%, Donald Trump (R) 44.12%

Of the seven Republican districts that Harris won, this is where Democrats did best and Republicans worst (we’ll take these in descending order). This is the district where last year the Democratic candidate had her sex videos exposed. I wrote a post-election analysis in which I concluded that Owen would have likely won anyway but every year is different. One thing that will be very different in all these races in 2025: The General Assembly candidates won’t be at the top of the ticket as they were last year; they’ll be running at the same time as the candidates for governor. In an era with less ticket-splitting than in the past, that might influence some of these races.

House District 75: Del. Carrie Coyner, R-Chesterfield County

2023: Carrie Coyner (R) 52.76%, Stephen Miller-Pitts Jr. (D) 46.97%
2024: Kamala Harris (D) 52.51%, Donald Trump (R) 45.94%

Coyner has been one of the Republicans’ rising stars and has struck a more moderate tone than most. She was one of three Republican legislators to vote to abolish the death penalty and one of five to vote to protect same-sex marriages. She also has the political misfortune to be in Chesterfield County, a county that’s been trending Democratic and one of the few localities where Harris got more votes in 2024 than Biden did in 2020.

House District 71: Del. Amanda Batten, R-James City County

2023: Amanda Batten (R) 50.90%, Jessica Anderson (D) 49.03%
2024: Kamala Harris (D) 51.61%, Donald Trump (R) 46.68%

Batten is a member of the Republican House leadership; she’s the caucus chair. She also narrowly won reelection last year, by just 667 votes. Batten also benefited because Democratic donors didn’t put much money into Anderson’s campaign. I wrote a post-election analysis that showed how underfunded Anderson’s campaign was relative to some other Democratic candidates who didn’t do as well as she did. Will Democrats make that same mistake again?

House District 82: Del. Kim Taylor, R-Petersburg

2023: Kim Taylor (R) 50.05%, Kimberly Adams (D) 49.78%
2024: Kamala Harris (D) 51.51%, Donald Trump (R) 47.36%

This race went to a recount last year, with Taylor winning by 53 votes, so this district was always expected to be close, no matter how the presidential candidates fared. One thing of note: This district includes Surry County, which voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1972 until this one, when it went Republican. While some suburban Republicans might suffer from realignment, Taylor might benefit.

House District 89: Del. Baxter Ennis, R-Chesapeake

2023: Baxter Ennis (R) 50.76%, Karen Jenkins (D) 48.97%
2024: Kamala Harris (D) 50.83%, Donald Trump (R) 47.58%

Of the seven Republican districts that Harris won, this was the last one where she won a majority. In the final two, she won only a plurality, which makes things a wee bit better for Republicans next year.

House District 86: Del. A.C. Cordoza, R-Hampton

2023: A.C. Cordoza (R) 56.35%, Jarris Taylor (D) 43.48%
2024: Kamala Harris (D) 49.86%, Donald Trump (R) 48.30%

A.C. Cordoza won this districtly handily in 2023 but new calculations how it went slightly for Harris this year.

House District 73: Del. Mark Earley Jr., R-Chesterfield County

2023: Mark Earley Jr. (R) 54.41%, Herb Walke Jr. 45.40%
2024: Kamala Harris (D) 49.57%, Donald Trump (R) 48.50%

Earley, the son of a former attorney general, won by a comfortable margin last year, but this is Chesterfield County, which, as we noted, has been trending blue. Still, Harris couldn’t quite manage a majority here, although she still outpolled Trump, slightly.

House District 22: Del. Ian Lovejoy, R-Prince William County

2023: Ian Lovejoy (R) 52.19%, Travis Hembhard (D) 47.58%
2024: Kamala Harris (D) 48.8%, Donald Trump (R) 48.09%

Lovejoy won one of the closer House races last year; this year, of the seven Republican districts that went for Harris, his was the closest.

* * *

Other vulnerable Republicans

There are 13 other Republican legislators in districts where the presidential race was close but tipped toward the Republican side. I’m counting anything under 55% as close. Of those 13, here are eight where Trump took less than 53%.

House District 30: Del. Geary Higgins, R-Loudoun County

2023: Geary Higgins (R) 53.12%, Rob Banse (D) 46.71%
2024: Donald Trump (R) 49.39%, Kamala Harris (D) 48.21%

This had been considered a close race last year but didn’t really end up that way. Might next year be different? The presidential results suggest “maybe.”

House District 69: Del. Chad Green, R-York County

2023: Chad Green (R) 91.27%, Write-ins 8.73%
2024: Donald Trump (R) 49.89%, Kamala Harris 48.29%

It seems safe to say that Green is going to have a tougher campaign next year than he did last year, when there was no Democrat on the ballot to oppose him.

House District 64: Del. Paul Milde, R-Stafford County

2023: Paul Milde (R) 54.32%, Leonard Lacey (D) 45.29%
2024: Donald Trump (R) 49.94%, Kamala Harris (D) 48.03%

Milde won by a decent margin last year. However, Stafford County is one of five localities in the state that voted for Trump in 2016 but didn’t in 2020 or 2024. This is a county that’s realigning, and his challenge will be to not get caught in those electoral changes.

House District 41: Del. Chris Obenshain, R-Montgomery County

2023: Chris Obenshain (R) 50.31%, Lily Franklin (D) 49.57%
2024: Donald Trump (R) 50.35%, Kamala Harris (D) 47.47%

Blacksburg, a blue island surrounded by a red sea, is what makes this district competitive. Franklin came close two years ago and complained after the election that Democratic donors “didn’t understand or care about Southwest Virginia.” She pointed out that she received one-fourth of what some battleground races received but wound up running better. My post-election analysis found that, mathematically speaking, she was right: Democrats underfunded this race, along with Anderson’s race in James City County. Franklin has already announced she’s seeking a rematch; will Democratic donors take her more seriously this time? Conversely, will Republicans realize that just because this district is west of the Blue Ridge, it’s not a given for their party and invest more in Obenshain?

House District 66: Del. Bobby Orrock, R-Spotsylvania County

2023: Bobby Orrock (R) 55.61%, Mark Lux (D) 44.13%
2024: Donald Trump (R) 50.42%, Kamala Harris (D) 48.10%

Orrock has been a popular vote-getter in this district, but Trump barely scraped out a majority. If there’s a voter backlash to Trump next year the way there was the last time he was president, can Orrock manage to disassociate himself?

House District 99: Del. Anne Ferrell Tata, R-Virginia Beach

2023: Anne Tata (R) 57.28%, Cat Porterfield (D) 42.61%
2024: Donald Trump (R) 51.46%, Kamala Harris 46.71%

Tata won handily last year, but Trump struggled in this district. Virginia Beach is one of five localities that he won in 2016 but lost in 2020 and 2024. If “the beach” is realigning, will secure Republicans such as Tata find themselves in trouble? We’ll find out.

House District 100: Del. Robert Bloxom Jr., R-Accomack County

2023: Robert Bloxom (R) 59.64%, Charlena Jones (D) 40.23%
2024: Donald Trump (R) 51.95%, Kamala Harris (D) 46.75%

The Bloxom name goes back a long way in Eastern Shore politics, and this particular Bloxom won by a landslide margin last year. Trump, however, did not. Will Democrats see an opportunity here or think Bloxom is immune?

House District 34: Del. Tony Wilt, R-Harrisonburg

2023: Tony Wilt (R) 56.87%, Esther Nizer (D) 43.04%
2024: Donald Trump (R) 52.28%, Kamala Harris 45.74%

The key to this district for Democrats is Harrisonburg; can they squeeze more student votes out of James Madison University? For Republicans, the hope is they can’t and the Republican base in Rockingham County holds (including my hometown of McGaheysville).

The other six Republicans who represent districts where Trump took between 53% and 55%:

House District 83: Del. Otto Wachmann, R-Sussex County; Trump vote 53.47%
House District 74: Del. Mike Cherry, R-Colonial Heights; Trump vote 53.49%
House District 49: Del. Danny Marshall, R-Danville; Trump vote 53.70%
House District 40: Del. Joe McNamara, R-Roanoke; Trump vote 53.79%
House District 52: Del. Wendell Walker, R-Lynchburg; Trump vote 54.85%

* * *

Vulnerable Democrats

There aren’t nearly as many, at least based on the presidential math, but there are some. Three are in districts where Harris took less than 53% of the vote:

House District 21: Del. Josh Thomas, D-Prince William County

2023: Josh Thomas (D) 51.72%, John Stirrup (R) 48.10%
2024: Kamala Harris (D) 51.26%, Donald Trump (R) 46.03%

This was one of the closest races in the state last year; there’s no reason to think it won’t be again.

House District 55: Del. Amy Laufer, D-Albemarle County

2023: Amy Laufer (D) 61.38%, Steve Harvey (R) 38.50%
2024: Kamala Harris (D) 52.66%, Donald Trump (R) 44.79%

Laufer won by a thunderous margin last year, but Harris was not nearly so popular in this district this time. Based on the 2023 results, Laufer would seem to be safe. Based on the 2024 numbers, maybe not so much. Of note: Laufer is one of the few Democrats these days whose district has a lot of rural territory. No doubt mindful of that, she recently attended the Virginia Rural Summit in Wytheville.

House District 97: Del. Michael Feggans, D-Virginia Beach

2023: Michael Feggans (D) 52.37%, Karen Greenhalgh (R) 47.52%
2024: Kamala Harris (D) 52.99%, Donald Trump (R) 45.15%

This was one of the most closely contested House races last year and could well be so again next year.

One other Democrat has a district that came close to hitting the 53% or less mark: Del. Joshua Cole, D-Fredericksburg, represents House District 65. He won last year with 52.84% of the vote. Harris this year took 53.59% in that district, an unusual case of a district where the Harris mark exceeded the Democratic share a year ago.

In presidential races, we’re accustomed to having battleground states. These districts will be the battleground districts in next year’s House races.

The post Harris carried 8 House of Delegates districts now represented by Republicans appeared first on Cardinal News.

Even in a weak year for Democrats, Kamala Harris carried 58 of Virginia’s House of Delegates districts, according to computations by the Blacksburg-based State Navigate site that tracks state legislative races across the country.

Democrats currently hold 51 seats in the House, with Republicans claiming 49.

The fact that the Democratic presidential candidate carried seven districts now held by Republicans raises the question of whether Democrats are positioned to increase their majority in the House in the 2025 elections.

In addition, three other Republican-held House districts saw Donald Trump carry those districts but with less than a majority vote. In four more, Trump won with less than 52% of the vote, which suggests that those Republican incumbents might be vulnerable, too. Ten more Republican legislators are in districts that Trump carried with between 52% and 55% of the vote.

By contrast, no Democratic legislators are in districts that Trump won. Only one is in a district where Harris won with less than 52% of the vote; three are in districts where she won with between 52% and 55%.

The State Navigate analysis, which was shared with Cardinal News, suggests that Republicans will be playing more defense than offense in next year’s elections. This is not necessarily unusual. Before Trump, it was common for General Assembly districts that voted Democratic in a presidential election to vote Republican in a state election, primarily because many Democrats tended to only vote in presidential years. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won 17 House of Delegates districts held by Republicans. The next year, though, Democrats turned out in force and won 14 of those districts, the biggest legislative shift in Virgnia since 1899.

That brings us to three political factors that will be at play next year that could emphasize or negate these numbers:

• How Virginians react to the second Trump administration: With just one exception since 1977, the party out of power in Washington has won the governor’s race in Virginia. When Trump was president the first time around, Virginians reacted negatively, and Democrats saw those big gains in the House of Delegates in 2017. Will Virginians react the same way this time around, or are they more numb to Trump these days? They certainly didn’t react as negatively in the recent election; will things be different once Trump is actually in office?
  
• Which party does the better job of turning out their voters: Off-year elections have traditionally favored Republicans because Democratic voters tended to be more low-propensity voters who only showed up in presidential years, which is how Republican state legislators held onto those state legislative districts that otherwise voted Democratic. As the parties have realigned, Democrats have picked up more white-collar voters (who tend to vote regularly), and Republicans have picked up more blue-collar voters (who tend to show up less regularly). Glenn Youngkin was able to buck that trend in 2021; rural turnout was up markedly, and it benefited him, but that was also against the backdrop of a Democratic presidency. Can Republicans repeat that with Trump in office?
  
• How Virginians feel about the state’s direction, and who they credit or blame for that: The Roanoke College poll shows that Virginians generally think the state is on the right track. If that mood holds, will voters credit their outgoing Republican governor or their Democratic legislature?

Here’s a look at the most vulnerable House districts in 2025 (the Senate won’t be up for reelection until 2027):

The 7 Republican districts that went for Harris

We’ll look at these in descending order, from the highest Harris vote to the lowest. Consider these the most vulnerable Republican incumbents.

House District 57: Del. David Owen (R-Henrico County)

2023: David Owen (R) 50.77%, Susanna Gibson (D) 48.77%
2024: Kamala Harris (D) 53.53%, Donald Trump (R) 44.12%

Of the seven Republican districts that Harris won, this is where Democrats did best and Republicans worst (we’ll take these in descending order). This is the district where last year the Democratic candidate had her sex videos exposed. I wrote a post-election analysis in which I concluded that Owen would have likely won anyway but every year is different. One thing that will be very different in all these races in 2025: The General Assembly candidates won’t be at the top of the ticket as they were last year; they’ll be running at the same time as the candidates for governor. In an era with less ticket-splitting than in the past, that might influence some of these races.

House District 75: Del. Carrie Coyner, R-Chesterfield County

2023: Carrie Coyner (R) 52.76%, Stephen Miller-Pitts Jr. (D) 46.97%
2024: Kamala Harris (D) 52.51%, Donald Trump (R) 45.94%

Coyner has been one of the Republicans’ rising stars and has struck a more moderate tone than most. She was one of three Republican legislators to vote to abolish the death penalty and one of five to vote to protect same-sex marriages. She also has the political misfortune to be in Chesterfield County, a county that’s been trending Democratic and one of the few localities where Harris got more votes in 2024 than Biden did in 2020.

House District 71: Del. Amanda Batten, R-James City County

2023: Amanda Batten (R) 50.90%, Jessica Anderson (D) 49.03%
2024: Kamala Harris (D) 51.61%, Donald Trump (R) 46.68%

Batten is a member of the Republican House leadership; she’s the caucus chair. She also narrowly won reelection last year, by just 667 votes. Batten also benefited because Democratic donors didn’t put much money into Anderson’s campaign. I wrote a post-election analysis that showed how underfunded Anderson’s campaign was relative to some other Democratic candidates who didn’t do as well as she did. Will Democrats make that same mistake again?

House District 82: Del. Kim Taylor, R-Petersburg

2023: Kim Taylor (R) 50.05%, Kimberly Adams (D) 49.78%
2024: Kamala Harris (D) 51.51%, Donald Trump (R) 47.36%

This race went to a recount last year, with Taylor winning by 53 votes, so this district was always expected to be close, no matter how the presidential candidates fared. One thing of note: This district includes Surry County, which voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1972 until this one, when it went Republican. While some suburban Republicans might suffer from realignment, Taylor might benefit.

House District 89: Del. Baxter Ennis, R-Chesapeake

2023: Baxter Ennis (R) 50.76%, Karen Jenkins (D) 48.97%
2024: Kamala Harris (D) 50.83%, Donald Trump (R) 47.58%

Of the seven Republican districts that Harris won, this was the last one where she won a majority. In the final two, she won only a plurality, which makes things a wee bit better for Republicans next year.

House District 73: Del. Mark Earley Jr., R-Chesterfield County

2023: Mark Earley Jr. (R) 54.41%, Herb Walke Jr. 45.40%
2024: Kamala Harris (D) 49.57%, Donald Trump (R) 48.50%

Earley, the son of a former attorney general, won by a comfortable margin last year, but this is Chesterfield County, which, as we noted, has been trending blue. Still, Harris couldn’t quite manage a majority here, although she still outpolled Trump, slightly.

House District 22: Del. Ian Lovejoy, R-Prince William County

2023: Ian Lovejoy (R) 52.19%, Travis Hembhard (D) 47.58%
2024: Kamala Harris (D) 48.8%, Donald Trump (R) 48.09%

Lovejoy won one of the closer House races last year; this year, of the seven Republican districts that went for Harris, his was the closest.

* * *

Other vulnerable Republicans

There are 14 other Republican legislators in districts where the presidential race was close but tipped toward the Republican side. I’m counting anything under 55% as close. Of those 14, here are eight where Trump took less than 53%.

House District 30: Del. Geary Higgins, R-Loudoun County

2023: Geary Higgins (R) 53.12%, Rob Banse (D) 46.71%
2024: Donald Trump (R) 49.39%, Kamala Harris (D) 48.21%

This had been considered a close race last year but didn’t really end up that way. Might next year be different? The presidential results suggest “maybe.”

House District 69: Del. Chad Green, R-York County

2023: Chad Green (R) 91.27%, Write-ins 8.73%
2024: Donald Trump (R) 49.89%, Kamala Harris 48.29%

It seems safe to say that Green is going to have a tougher campaign next year than he did last year, when there was no Democrat on the ballot to oppose him.

House District 64: Del. Paul Milde, R-Stafford County

2023: Paul Milde (R) 54.32%, Leonard Lacey (D) 45.29%
2024: Donald Trump (R) 49.94%, Kamala Harris (D) 48.03%

Milde won by a decent margin last year. However, Stafford County is one of five localities in the state that voted for Trump in 2016 but didn’t in 2020 or 2024. This is a county that’s realigning, and his challenge will be to not get caught in those electoral changes.

House District 41: Del. Chris Obenshain, R-Montgomery County

2023: Chris Obenshain (R) 50.31%, Lily Franklin (D) 49.57%
2024: Donald Trump (R) 50.35%, Kamala Harris (D) 47.47%

Blacksburg, a blue island surrounded by a red sea, is what makes this district competitive. Franklin came close two years ago and complained after the election that Democratic donors “didn’t understand or care about Southwest Virginia.” She pointed out that she received one-fourth of what some battleground races received but wound up running better. My post-election analysis found that, mathematically speaking, she was right: Democrats underfunded this race, along with Anderson’s race in James City County. Franklin has already announced she’s seeking a rematch; will Democratic donors take her more seriously this time? Conversely, will Republicans realize that just because this district is west of the Blue Ridge, it’s not a given for their party and invest more in Obenshain?

House District 66: Del. Bobby Orrock, R-Spotsylvania County

2023: Bobby Orrock (R) 55.61%, Mark Lux (D) 44.13%
2024: Donald Trump (R) 50.42%, Kamala Harris (D) 48.10%

Orrock has been a popular vote-getter in this district, but Trump barely scraped out a majority. If there’s a voter backlash to Trump next year the way there was the last time he was president, can Orrock manage to disassociate himself?

House District 99: Del. Anne Ferrell Tata, R-Virginia Beach

2023: Anne Tata (R) 57.28%, Cat Porterfield (D) 42.61%
2024: Donald Trump (R) 51.46%, Kamala Harris 46.71%

Tata won handily last year, but Trump struggled in this district. Virginia Beach is one of five localities that he won in 2016 but lost in 2020 and 2024. If “the beach” is realigning, will secure Republicans such as Tata find themselves in trouble? We’ll find out.

House District 100: Del. Robert Bloxom Jr., R-Accomack County

2023: Robert Bloxom (R) 59.64%, Charlena Jones (D) 40.23%
2024: Donald Trump (R) 51.95%, Kamala Harris (D) 46.75%

The Bloxom name goes back a long way in Eastern Shore politics, and this particular Bloxom won by a landslide margin last year. Trump, however, did not. Will Democrats see an opportunity here or think Bloxom is immune?

House District 34: Del. Tony Wilt, R-Harrisonburg

2023: Tony Wilt (R) 56.87%, Esther Nizer (D) 43.04%
2024: Donald Trump (R) 52.28%, Kamala Harris 45.74%

The key to this district for Democrats is Harrisonburg; can they squeeze more student votes out of James Madison University? For Republicans, the hope is they can’t and the Republican base in Rockingham County holds (including my hometown of McGaheysville).

The other seven Republicans who represent districts where Trump took between 53% and 55%:

House District 53: Del. A.C. Cordoza, R-Hampton; Trump vote 53.11%
House District 83: Del. Otto Wachmann, R-Sussex County; Trump vote 53.47%
House District 74: Del. Mike Cherry, R-Colonial Heights; Trump vote 53.49%
House District 49: Del. Danny Marshall, R-Danville; Trump vote 53.70%
House District 40: Del. Joe McNamara, R-Roanoke; Trump vote 53.79%
House District 52: Del. Wendell Walker, R-Lynchburg; Trump vote 54.85%

* * *

Vulnerable Democrats

There aren’t nearly as many, at least based on the presidential math, but there are some. Three are in districts where Harris took less than 53% of the vote:

House District 21: Del. Josh Thomas, D-Prince William County

2023: Josh Thomas (D) 51.72%, John Stirrup (R) 48.10%
2024: Kamala Harris (D) 51.26%, Donald Trump (R) 46.03%

This was one of the closest races in the state last year; there’s no reason to think it won’t be again.

House District 55: Del. Amy Laufer, D-Albemarle County

2023: Amy Laufer (D) 61.38%, Steve Harvey (R) 38.50%
2024: Kamala Harris (D) 52.66%, Donald Trump (R) 44.79%

Laufer won by a thunderous margin last year, but Harris was not nearly so popular in this district this time. Based on the 2023 results, Laufer would seem to be safe. Based on the 2024 numbers, maybe not so much. Of note: Laufer is one of the few Democrats these days whose district has a lot of rural territory. No doubt mindful of that, she recently attended the Virginia Rural Summit in Wytheville.

House District 97: Del. Michael Feggans, D-Virginia Beach

2023: Michael Feggans (D) 52.37%, Karen Greenhalgh (R) 47.52%
2024: Kamala Harris (D) 52.99%, Donald Trump (R) 45.15%

This was one of the most closely contested House races last year and could well be so again next year.

One other Democrat has a district that came close to hitting the 53% or less mark: Del. Joshua Cole, D-Fredericksburg, represents House District 65. He won last year with 52.84% of the vote. Harris this year took 53.59% in that district, an unusual case of a district where the Harris mark exceeded the Democratic share a year ago.

In presidential races, we’re accustomed to having battleground states. These districts will be the battleground districts in next year’s House races.

The post Harris carried 7 House of Delegates districts now represented by Republicans appeared first on Cardinal News.

Even in a weak year for Democrats, Kamala Harris carried 58 of Virginia’s House of Delegates districts, according to computations by the Blacksburg-based State Navigate site that tracks state legislative races across the country.

Democrats currently hold 51 seats in the House, with Republicans claiming 49.

The fact that the Democratic presidential candidate carried seven districts now held by Republicans raises the question of whether Democrats are positioned to increase their majority in the House in the 2025 elections.

In addition, three other Republican-held House districts saw Donald Trump carry those districts but with less than a majority vote. In four more, Trump won with less than 52% of the vote, which suggests that those Republican incumbents might be vulnerable, too. Ten more Republican legislators are in districts that Trump carried with between 52% and 55% of the vote.

By contrast, no Democratic legislators are in districts that Trump won. Only one is in a district where Harris won with less than 52% of the vote; three are in districts where she won with between 52% and 55%.

The State Navigate analysis, which was shared with Cardinal News, suggests that Republicans will be playing more defense than offense in next year’s elections. This is not necessarily unusual. Before Trump, it was common for General Assembly districts that voted Democratic in a presidential election to vote Republican in a state election, primarily because many Democrats tended to only vote in presidential years. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won 17 House of Delegates districts held by Republicans. The next year, though, Democrats turned out in force and won 14 of those districts, the biggest legislative shift in Virgnia since 1899.

That brings us to three political factors that will be at play next year that could emphasize or negate these numbers:

• How Virginians react to the second Trump administration: With just one exception since 1977, the party out of power in Washington has won the governor’s race in Virginia. When Trump was president the first time around, Virginians reacted negatively, and Democrats saw those big gains in the House of Delegates in 2017. Will Virginians react the same way this time around, or are they more numb to Trump these days? They certainly didn’t react as negatively in the recent election; will things be different once Trump is actually in office?
  
• Which party does the better job of turning out their voters: Off-year elections have traditionally favored Republicans because Democratic voters tended to be more low-propensity voters who only showed up in presidential years, which is how Republican state legislators held onto those state legislative districts that otherwise voted Democratic. As the parties have realigned, Democrats have picked up more white-collar voters (who tend to vote regularly), and Republicans have picked up more blue-collar voters (who tend to show up less regularly). Glenn Youngkin was able to buck that trend in 2021; rural turnout was up markedly, and it benefited him, but that was also against the backdrop of a Democratic presidency. Can Republicans repeat that with Trump in office?
  
• How Virginians feel about the state’s direction, and who they credit or blame for that: The Roanoke College poll shows that Virginians generally think the state is on the right track. If that mood holds, will voters credit their outgoing Republican governor or their Democratic legislature?

Here’s a look at the most vulnerable House districts in 2025 (the Senate won’t be up for reelection until 2027):

The 7 Republican districts that went for Harris

We’ll look at these in descending order, from the highest Harris vote to the lowest. Consider these the most vulnerable Republican incumbents.

House District 57: Del. David Owen (R-Henrico County)

2023: David Owen (R) 50.77%, Susanna Gibson (D) 48.77%
2024: Kamala Harris (D) 53.53%, Donald Trump (R) 44.12%

Of the seven Republican districts that Harris won, this is where Democrats did best and Republicans worst (we’ll take these in descending order). This is the district where last year the Democratic candidate had her sex videos exposed. I wrote a post-election analysis in which I concluded that Owen would have likely won anyway but every year is different. One thing that will be very different in all these races in 2025: The General Assembly candidates won’t be at the top of the ticket as they were last year; they’ll be running at the same time as the candidates for governor. In an era with less ticket-splitting than in the past, that might influence some of these races.

House District 75: Del. Carrie Coyner, R-Chesterfield County

2023: Carrie Coyner (R) 52.76%, Stephen Miller-Pitts Jr. (D) 46.97%
2024: Kamala Harris (D) 52.51%, Donald Trump (R) 45.94%

Coyner has been one of the Republicans’ rising stars and has struck a more moderate tone than most. She was one of three Republican legislators to vote to abolish the death penalty and one of five to vote to protect same-sex marriages. She also has the political misfortune to be in Chesterfield County, a county that’s been trending Democratic and one of the few localities where Harris got more votes in 2024 than Biden did in 2020.

House District 71: Del. Amanda Batten, R-James City County

2023: Amanda Batten (R) 50.90%, Jessica Anderson (D) 49.03%
2024: Kamala Harris (D) 51.61%, Donald Trump (R) 46.68%

Batten is a member of the Republican House leadership; she’s the caucus chair. She also narrowly won reelection last year, by just 667 votes. Batten also benefited because Democratic donors didn’t put much money into Anderson’s campaign. I wrote a post-election analysis that showed how underfunded Anderson’s campaign was relative to some other Democratic candidates who didn’t do as well as she did. Will Democrats make that same mistake again?

House District 82: Del. Kim Taylor, R-Petersburg

2023: Kim Taylor (R) 50.05%, Kimberly Adams (D) 49.78%
2024: Kamala Harris (D) 51.51%, Donald Trump (R) 47.36%

This race went to a recount last year, with Taylor winning by 53 votes, so this district was always expected to be close, no matter how the presidential candidates fared. One thing of note: This district includes Surry County, which voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1972 until this one, when it went Republican. While some suburban Republicans might suffer from realignment, Taylor might benefit.

House District 89: Del. Baxter Ennis, R-Chesapeake

2023: Baxter Ennis (R) 50.76%, Karen Jenkins (D) 48.97%
2024: Kamala Harris (D) 50.83%, Donald Trump (R) 47.58%

Of the seven Republican districts that Harris won, this was the last one where she won a majority. In the final two, she won only a plurality, which makes things a wee bit better for Republicans next year.

House District 73: Del. Mark Earley Jr., R-Chesterfield County

2023: Mark Earley Jr. (R) 54.41%, Herb Walke Jr. 45.40%
2024: Kamala Harris (D) 49.57%, Donald Trump (R) 48.50%

Earley, the son of a former attorney general, won by a comfortable margin last year, but this is Chesterfield County, which, as we noted, has been trending blue. Still, Harris couldn’t quite manage a majority here, although she still outpolled Trump, slightly.

House District 22: Del. Ian Lovejoy, R-Prince William County

2023: Ian Lovejoy (R) 52.19%, Travis Hembhard (D) 47.58%
2024: Kamala Harris (D) 48.8%, Donald Trump (R) 48.09%

Lovejoy won one of the closer House races last year; this year, of the seven Republican districts that went for Harris, his was the closest.

* * *

Other vulnerable Republicans

There are 14 other Republican legislators in districts where the presidential race was close but tipped toward the Republican side. I’m counting anything under 55% as close. Of those 14, here are eight where Trump took less than 53%.

House District 30: Del. Geary Higgins, R-Loudoun County

2023: Geary Higgins (R) 53.12%, Rob Banse (D) 46.71%
2024: Donald Trump (R) 49.39%, Kamala Harris (D) 48.21%

This had been considered a close race last year but didn’t really end up that way. Might next year be different? The presidential results suggest “maybe.”

House District 69: Del. Chad Green, R-York County

2023: Chad Green (R) 91.27%, Write-ins 8.73%
2024: Donald Trump (R) 49.89%, Kamala Harris 48.29%

It seems safe to say that Green is going to have a tougher campaign next year than he did last year, when there was no Democrat on the ballot to oppose him.

House District 64: Del. Paul Milde, R-Stafford County

2023: Paul Milde (R) 54.32%, Leonard Lacey (D) 45.29%
2024: Donald Trump (R) 49.94%, Kamala Harris (D) 48.03%

Milde won by a decent margin last year. However, Stafford County is one of five localities in the state that voted for Trump in 2016 but didn’t in 2020 or 2024. This is a county that’s realigning, and his challenge will be to not get caught in those electoral changes.

House District 41: Del. Chris Obenshain, R-Montgomery County

2023: Chris Obenshain (R) 50.31%, Lily Franklin (D) 49.57%
2024: Donald Trump (R) 50.35%, Kamala Harris (D) 47.47%

Blacksburg, a blue island surrounded by a red sea, is what makes this district competitive. Franklin came close two years ago and complained after the election that Democratic donors “didn’t understand or care about Southwest Virginia.” She pointed out that she received one-fourth of what some battleground races received but wound up running better. My post-election analysis found that, mathematically speaking, she was right: Democrats underfunded this race, along with Anderson’s race in James City County. Franklin has already announced she’s seeking a rematch; will Democratic donors take her more seriously this time? Conversely, will Republicans realize that just because this district is west of the Blue Ridge, it’s not a given for their party and invest more in Obenshain?

House District 66: Del. Bobby Orrock, R-Spotsylvania County

2023: Bobby Orrock (R) 55.61%, Mark Lux (D) 44.13%
2024: Donald Trump (R) 50.42%, Kamala Harris (D) 48.10%

Orrock has been a popular vote-getter in this district, but Trump barely scraped out a majority. If there’s a voter backlash to Trump next year the way there was the last time he was president, can Orrock manage to disassociate himself?

House District 99: Del. Anne Ferrell Tata, R-Virginia Beach

2023: Anne Tata (R) 57.28%, Cat Porterfield (D) 42.61%
2024: Donald Trump (R) 51.46%, Kamala Harris 46.71%

Tata won handily last year, but Trump struggled in this district. Virginia Beach is one of five localities that he won in 2016 but lost in 2020 and 2024. If “the beach” is realigning, will secure Republicans such as Tata find themselves in trouble? We’ll find out.

House District 100: Del. Robert Bloxom Jr., R-Accomack County

2023: Robert Bloxom (R) 59.64%, Charlena Jones (D) 40.23%
2024: Donald Trump (R) 51.95%, Kamala Harris (D) 46.75%

The Bloxom name goes back a long way in Eastern Shore politics, and this particular Bloxom won by a landslide margin last year. Trump, however, did not. Will Democrats see an opportunity here or think Bloxom is immune?

House District 34: Del. Tony Wilt, R-Harrisonburg

2023: Tony Wilt (R) 56.87%, Esther Nizer (D) 43.04%
2024: Donald Trump (R) 52.28%, Kamala Harris 45.74%

The key to this district for Democrats is Harrisonburg; can they squeeze more student votes out of James Madison University? For Republicans, the hope is they can’t and the Republican base in Rockingham County holds (including my hometown of McGaheysville).

The other seven Republicans who represent districts where Trump took between 53% and 55%:

House District 53: Del. A.C. Cordoza, R-Hampton; Trump vote 53.11%
House District 83: Del. Otto Wachmann, R-Sussex County; Trump vote 53.47%
House District 74: Del. Mike Cherry, R-Colonial Heights; Trump vote 53.49%
House District 49: Del. Danny Marshall, R-Danville; Trump vote 53.70%
House District 40: Del. Joe McNamara, R-Roanoke; Trump vote 53.79%
House District 52: Del. Wendell Walker, R-Lynchburg; Trump vote 54.85%

* * *

Vulnerable Democrats

There aren’t nearly as many, at least based on the presidential math, but there are some. Three are in districts where Harris took less than 53% of the vote:

House District 21: Del. Josh Thomas, D-Prince William County

2023: Josh Thomas (D) 51.72%, John Stirrup (R) 48.10%
2024: Kamala Harris (D) 51.26%, Donald Trump (R) 46.03%

This was one of the closest races in the state last year; there’s no reason to think it won’t be again.

House District 55: Del. Amy Laufer, D-Albemarle County

2023: Amy Laufer (D) 61.38%, Steve Harvey (R) 38.50%
2024: Kamala Harris (D) 52.66%, Donald Trump (R) 44.79%

Laufer won by a thunderous margin last year, but Harris was not nearly so popular in this district this time. Based on the 2023 results, Laufer would seem to be safe. Based on the 2024 numbers, maybe not so much. Of note: Laufer is one of the few Democrats these days whose district has a lot of rural territory. No doubt mindful of that, she recently attended the Virginia Rural Summit in Wytheville.

House District 97: Del. Michael Feggans, D-Virginia Beach

2023: Michael Feggans (D) 52.37%, Karen Greenhalgh (R) 47.52%
2024: Kamala Harris (D) 52.99%, Donald Trump (R) 45.15%

This was one of the most closely contested House races last year and could well be so again next year.

One other Democrat has a district that came close to hitting the 53% or less mark: Del. Joshua Cole, D-Fredericksburg, represents House District 65. He won last year with 52.84% of the vote. Harris this year took 53.59% in that district, an unusual case of a district where the Harris mark exceeded the Democratic share a year ago.

In presidential races, we’re accustomed to having battleground states. These districts will be the battleground districts in next year’s House races.

The post Harris carried 7 House of Delegates districts now represented by Republicans appeared first on Cardinal News.

Updated Nov. 21: State Navigate has recalculated results based on new numbers from Hampton, and that changed the number of districts from seven to seven. This column has been updated to reflect that change.

Even in a weak year for Democrats, Kamala Harris carried 59 of Virginia’s House of Delegates districts, according to computations by the Virginia-based State Navigate site that tracks state legislative races across the country.

Democrats currently hold 51 seats in the House, with Republicans claiming 49.

The fact that the Democratic presidential candidate carried eight districts now held by Republicans raises the question of whether Democrats are positioned to increase their majority in the House in the 2025 elections.

In addition, three other Republican-held House districts saw Donald Trump carry those districts but with less than a majority vote. In four more, Trump won with less than 52% of the vote, which suggests that those Republican incumbents might be vulnerable, too. Ten more Republican legislators are in districts that Trump carried with between 52% and 55% of the vote.

By contrast, no Democratic legislators are in districts that Trump won. Only one is in a district where Harris won with less than 52% of the vote; three are in districts where she won with between 52% and 55%.

The State Navigate analysis, which was shared with Cardinal News, suggests that Republicans will be playing more defense than offense in next year’s elections. This is not necessarily unusual. Before Trump, it was common for General Assembly districts that voted Democratic in a presidential election to vote Republican in a state election, primarily because many Democrats tended to only vote in presidential years. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won 17 House of Delegates districts held by Republicans. The next year, though, Democrats turned out in force and won 14 of those districts, the biggest legislative shift in Virgnia since 1899.

That brings us to three political factors that will be at play next year that could emphasize or negate these numbers:

• How Virginians react to the second Trump administration: With just one exception since 1977, the party out of power in Washington has won the governor’s race in Virginia. When Trump was president the first time around, Virginians reacted negatively, and Democrats saw those big gains in the House of Delegates in 2017. Will Virginians react the same way this time around, or are they more numb to Trump these days? They certainly didn’t react as negatively in the recent election; will things be different once Trump is actually in office?
  
• Which party does the better job of turning out their voters: Off-year elections have traditionally favored Republicans because Democratic voters tended to be more low-propensity voters who only showed up in presidential years, which is how Republican state legislators held onto those state legislative districts that otherwise voted Democratic. As the parties have realigned, Democrats have picked up more white-collar voters (who tend to vote regularly), and Republicans have picked up more blue-collar voters (who tend to show up less regularly). Glenn Youngkin was able to buck that trend in 2021; rural turnout was up markedly, and it benefited him, but that was also against the backdrop of a Democratic presidency. Can Republicans repeat that with Trump in office?
  
• How Virginians feel about the state’s direction, and who they credit or blame for that: The Roanoke College poll shows that Virginians generally think the state is on the right track. If that mood holds, will voters credit their outgoing Republican governor or their Democratic legislature?

Here’s a look at the most vulnerable House districts in 2025 (the Senate won’t be up for reelection until 2027):

The 8 Republican districts that went for Harris

We’ll look at these in descending order, from the highest Harris vote to the lowest. Consider these the most vulnerable Republican incumbents.

House District 57: Del. David Owen (R-Henrico County)

2023: David Owen (R) 50.77%, Susanna Gibson (D) 48.77%
2024: Kamala Harris (D) 53.53%, Donald Trump (R) 44.12%

Of the seven Republican districts that Harris won, this is where Democrats did best and Republicans worst (we’ll take these in descending order). This is the district where last year the Democratic candidate had her sex videos exposed. I wrote a post-election analysis in which I concluded that Owen would have likely won anyway but every year is different. One thing that will be very different in all these races in 2025: The General Assembly candidates won’t be at the top of the ticket as they were last year; they’ll be running at the same time as the candidates for governor. In an era with less ticket-splitting than in the past, that might influence some of these races.

House District 75: Del. Carrie Coyner, R-Chesterfield County

2023: Carrie Coyner (R) 52.76%, Stephen Miller-Pitts Jr. (D) 46.97%
2024: Kamala Harris (D) 52.51%, Donald Trump (R) 45.94%

Coyner has been one of the Republicans’ rising stars and has struck a more moderate tone than most. She was one of three Republican legislators to vote to abolish the death penalty and one of five to vote to protect same-sex marriages. She also has the political misfortune to be in Chesterfield County, a county that’s been trending Democratic and one of the few localities where Harris got more votes in 2024 than Biden did in 2020.

House District 71: Del. Amanda Batten, R-James City County

2023: Amanda Batten (R) 50.90%, Jessica Anderson (D) 49.03%
2024: Kamala Harris (D) 51.61%, Donald Trump (R) 46.68%

Batten is a member of the Republican House leadership; she’s the caucus chair. She also narrowly won reelection last year, by just 667 votes. Batten also benefited because Democratic donors didn’t put much money into Anderson’s campaign. I wrote a post-election analysis that showed how underfunded Anderson’s campaign was relative to some other Democratic candidates who didn’t do as well as she did. Will Democrats make that same mistake again?

House District 82: Del. Kim Taylor, R-Petersburg

2023: Kim Taylor (R) 50.05%, Kimberly Adams (D) 49.78%
2024: Kamala Harris (D) 51.51%, Donald Trump (R) 47.36%

This race went to a recount last year, with Taylor winning by 53 votes, so this district was always expected to be close, no matter how the presidential candidates fared. One thing of note: This district includes Surry County, which voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1972 until this one, when it went Republican. While some suburban Republicans might suffer from realignment, Taylor might benefit.

House District 89: Del. Baxter Ennis, R-Chesapeake

2023: Baxter Ennis (R) 50.76%, Karen Jenkins (D) 48.97%
2024: Kamala Harris (D) 50.83%, Donald Trump (R) 47.58%

Of the seven Republican districts that Harris won, this was the last one where she won a majority. In the final two, she won only a plurality, which makes things a wee bit better for Republicans next year.

House District 86: Del. A.C. Cordoza, R-Hampton

2023: A.C. Cordoza (R) 56.35%, Jarris Taylor (D) 43.48%
2024: Kamala Harris (D) 49.86%, Donald Trump (R) 48.30%

A.C. Cordoza won this districtly handily in 2023 but new calculations how it went slightly for Harris this year.

House District 73: Del. Mark Earley Jr., R-Chesterfield County

2023: Mark Earley Jr. (R) 54.41%, Herb Walke Jr. 45.40%
2024: Kamala Harris (D) 49.57%, Donald Trump (R) 48.50%

Earley, the son of a former attorney general, won by a comfortable margin last year, but this is Chesterfield County, which, as we noted, has been trending blue. Still, Harris couldn’t quite manage a majority here, although she still outpolled Trump, slightly.

House District 22: Del. Ian Lovejoy, R-Prince William County

2023: Ian Lovejoy (R) 52.19%, Travis Hembhard (D) 47.58%
2024: Kamala Harris (D) 48.8%, Donald Trump (R) 48.09%

Lovejoy won one of the closer House races last year; this year, of the seven Republican districts that went for Harris, his was the closest.

* * *

Other vulnerable Republicans

There are 13 other Republican legislators in districts where the presidential race was close but tipped toward the Republican side. I’m counting anything under 55% as close. Of those 13, here are eight where Trump took less than 53%.

House District 30: Del. Geary Higgins, R-Loudoun County

2023: Geary Higgins (R) 53.12%, Rob Banse (D) 46.71%
2024: Donald Trump (R) 49.39%, Kamala Harris (D) 48.21%

This had been considered a close race last year but didn’t really end up that way. Might next year be different? The presidential results suggest “maybe.”

House District 69: Del. Chad Green, R-York County

2023: Chad Green (R) 91.27%, Write-ins 8.73%
2024: Donald Trump (R) 49.89%, Kamala Harris 48.29%

It seems safe to say that Green is going to have a tougher campaign next year than he did last year, when there was no Democrat on the ballot to oppose him.

House District 64: Del. Paul Milde, R-Stafford County

2023: Paul Milde (R) 54.32%, Leonard Lacey (D) 45.29%
2024: Donald Trump (R) 49.94%, Kamala Harris (D) 48.03%

Milde won by a decent margin last year. However, Stafford County is one of five localities in the state that voted for Trump in 2016 but didn’t in 2020 or 2024. This is a county that’s realigning, and his challenge will be to not get caught in those electoral changes.

House District 41: Del. Chris Obenshain, R-Montgomery County

2023: Chris Obenshain (R) 50.31%, Lily Franklin (D) 49.57%
2024: Donald Trump (R) 50.35%, Kamala Harris (D) 47.47%

Blacksburg, a blue island surrounded by a red sea, is what makes this district competitive. Franklin came close two years ago and complained after the election that Democratic donors “didn’t understand or care about Southwest Virginia.” She pointed out that she received one-fourth of what some battleground races received but wound up running better. My post-election analysis found that, mathematically speaking, she was right: Democrats underfunded this race, along with Anderson’s race in James City County. Franklin has already announced she’s seeking a rematch; will Democratic donors take her more seriously this time? Conversely, will Republicans realize that just because this district is west of the Blue Ridge, it’s not a given for their party and invest more in Obenshain?

House District 66: Del. Bobby Orrock, R-Spotsylvania County

2023: Bobby Orrock (R) 55.61%, Mark Lux (D) 44.13%
2024: Donald Trump (R) 50.42%, Kamala Harris (D) 48.10%

Orrock has been a popular vote-getter in this district, but Trump barely scraped out a majority. If there’s a voter backlash to Trump next year the way there was the last time he was president, can Orrock manage to disassociate himself?

House District 99: Del. Anne Ferrell Tata, R-Virginia Beach

2023: Anne Tata (R) 57.28%, Cat Porterfield (D) 42.61%
2024: Donald Trump (R) 51.46%, Kamala Harris 46.71%

Tata won handily last year, but Trump struggled in this district. Virginia Beach is one of five localities that he won in 2016 but lost in 2020 and 2024. If “the beach” is realigning, will secure Republicans such as Tata find themselves in trouble? We’ll find out.

House District 100: Del. Robert Bloxom Jr., R-Accomack County

2023: Robert Bloxom (R) 59.64%, Charlena Jones (D) 40.23%
2024: Donald Trump (R) 51.95%, Kamala Harris (D) 46.75%

The Bloxom name goes back a long way in Eastern Shore politics, and this particular Bloxom won by a landslide margin last year. Trump, however, did not. Will Democrats see an opportunity here or think Bloxom is immune?

House District 34: Del. Tony Wilt, R-Harrisonburg

2023: Tony Wilt (R) 56.87%, Esther Nizer (D) 43.04%
2024: Donald Trump (R) 52.28%, Kamala Harris 45.74%

The key to this district for Democrats is Harrisonburg; can they squeeze more student votes out of James Madison University? For Republicans, the hope is they can’t and the Republican base in Rockingham County holds (including my hometown of McGaheysville).

The other six Republicans who represent districts where Trump took between 53% and 55%:

House District 83: Del. Otto Wachmann, R-Sussex County; Trump vote 53.47%
House District 74: Del. Mike Cherry, R-Colonial Heights; Trump vote 53.49%
House District 49: Del. Danny Marshall, R-Danville; Trump vote 53.70%
House District 40: Del. Joe McNamara, R-Roanoke; Trump vote 53.79%
House District 52: Del. Wendell Walker, R-Lynchburg; Trump vote 54.85%

* * *

Vulnerable Democrats

There aren’t nearly as many, at least based on the presidential math, but there are some. Three are in districts where Harris took less than 53% of the vote:

House District 21: Del. Josh Thomas, D-Prince William County

2023: Josh Thomas (D) 51.72%, John Stirrup (R) 48.10%
2024: Kamala Harris (D) 51.26%, Donald Trump (R) 46.03%

This was one of the closest races in the state last year; there’s no reason to think it won’t be again.

House District 55: Del. Amy Laufer, D-Albemarle County

2023: Amy Laufer (D) 61.38%, Steve Harvey (R) 38.50%
2024: Kamala Harris (D) 52.66%, Donald Trump (R) 44.79%

Laufer won by a thunderous margin last year, but Harris was not nearly so popular in this district this time. Based on the 2023 results, Laufer would seem to be safe. Based on the 2024 numbers, maybe not so much. Of note: Laufer is one of the few Democrats these days whose district has a lot of rural territory. No doubt mindful of that, she recently attended the Virginia Rural Summit in Wytheville.

House District 97: Del. Michael Feggans, D-Virginia Beach

2023: Michael Feggans (D) 52.37%, Karen Greenhalgh (R) 47.52%
2024: Kamala Harris (D) 52.99%, Donald Trump (R) 45.15%

This was one of the most closely contested House races last year and could well be so again next year.

One other Democrat has a district that came close to hitting the 53% or less mark: Del. Joshua Cole, D-Fredericksburg, represents House District 65. He won last year with 52.84% of the vote. Harris this year took 53.59% in that district, an unusual case of a district where the Harris mark exceeded the Democratic share a year ago.

In presidential races, we’re accustomed to having battleground states. These districts will be the battleground districts in next year’s House races.

The post Harris carried 8 House of Delegates districts now represented by Republicans appeared first on Cardinal News.

Greenway planners have been working since 1995 to extend the Roanoke River Greenway through as many communities as possible. Three construction projects are underway now, stretching the network farther west and to Explore Park to the east by early 2025.

Frank Maguire and his team at the Roanoke Valley Greenway Commission have a vision where the greenway extends even farther west, all the way to Green Hill Park in Salem — which Maguire said is a major trip generator with trailhead facilities such as parking, restrooms and shelters.

This vision for what they call Phase 2 is proving to be challenging, and the commission has worked to create a plan for years.

A few factors are at play: cost and homeowner negotiations.

Though the section is just 0.8 miles long, it’s an expensive one.

Two options have been discussed for continuing this section of the greenway, which stretches from Kingsmill Drive to Green Hill Park. It would connect the park with a proposed trailhead parking lot on West Riverside Drive, which should be completed by next summer.

Option 1 is to build two bridges across the Roanoke River and a separate grade crossing under Diuguids Lane. Maguire estimates this would cost around $10 million. 

“That’s a really hard pill to swallow,” Maguire said. He said it’s harder to get funding when a section doesn’t connect to a school or neighborhood like this section does. But, he said, it’s a “critical step in the process to get to Green Hill Park.”

Option 2 would allow the greenway to remain on the same side of the river, at half the price, Maguire said. But it would require homeowners to agree to the trail being built across their property.

Twenty parcels could be affected, said Lindsay Webb, the county’s parks, planning and development manager, including homes, one vacant property and Riverside Nursery.

In April and May, Roanoke County surveyed public opinion on greenway expansion and the options for Phase 2. A survey followed a community meeting on April 11, which 95 people attended. Of 188 survey respondents, most were excited about greenway improvements and extensions and many encouraged negotiations with homeowners. 

Of 185 respondents, over 80% said they walk or ride bikes here. About 27% of these respondents live in the area of the proposed extension.

Almost all said they would like to have a greenway adjacent to the river or through the woods.

About half of respondents said they would like a greenway within walking distance, but no closer than a quarter-mile from their own property. Among the concerns they listed: increased trash, drugs and violence, safety in secluded portions and a right to privacy.

No schedule, no funding yet

Travis Jenkins bought his childhood home on West Riverside Drive three years ago. His opinions differ from some of his neighbors, he said. 

He said he’d love to see the greenway extend across his property. He’s legally blind, and he said it would help local amenities become more accessible to him, as he doesn’t drive. He also said he would no longer have to pay taxes on the property if it were sold to the county.

There is no schedule set for this phase and no funding.

According to Maguire, 20 years ago, a promise was made by county supervisors to the property owners on West Riverside Drive that the county would not build a greenway on their side of the river. 

Maguire said that it would save millions of dollars to buy the land and stay on the same side of the river. He said eminent domain is not being considered, but the county has tried to negotiate with homeowners. He said hypothetically, with the homeowners’ agreement, the commission could pay the property owners the values of their homes and allow them to stay there, just to use a part of the property by the river to build.

“The reality is, we could pay them all, their entire property value, and still come out cheaper than paying to build the bridges,” Maguire said. “We have to have that conversation with the community.” He estimated being able to buy the necessary land for $4 million. 

But he said it would be hard to round up funding for this plan. “You can get money for construction because you can prove you’re doing something. The purchases, it’s more difficult,” Maguire said. 

According to Webb, the plan that involves building bridges at this point might be the most feasible, but no concrete plans are set for this section. There’s no money attached to this project yet. 

Maguire said the federal grants that would typically fund this kind of project generally require a 20% contribution from the locality. 

“One of the hardest things to prove is that you’ve got a viable project,” Maguire said. “And if you don’t have willing landowners, you don’t have a viable project.”

For some homeowners, safety is their main concern. 

Battling a perception of crime

McGuire said analyses have shown that crime is low on the greenways, but “the perceptions are there” of crime, and some homeowners are worried that the project will “bring crime to their backyard.”

Cronise compiled crime data from all greenways in the region to find that 10 criminal offenses occurred from October 2021 to September 2024 around the following greenways: Green Hill, Hinchee, Mud Lick, Tinker Creek, Wolf Creek, Catawba and Highland. The Green Hill section had the majority of the offenses listed, which were mostly theft from motor vehicles and vandalism of property. 

Using a 50-foot buffer zone to measure calls taken near or on the greenways, Kinga Roszak from the Roanoke Police Department found higher numbers on the Roanoke River Greenway specifically. 

From 2020 to 2024, she recorded 17 instances of vandalism, 11 instances of disorderly conduct, 13 instances of drug or narcotic violations, 24 instances of drunkenness, and 26 hit-and-run reports. 

Instances such as purse snatchings, assaults and fondling proved to be much less frequent. 

Brandy Campbell lives in a house along the Roanoke River Greenway and hasn’t been immune to crime. 

The shed behind her house, painted to mimic a Campbell’s Soup can, has been broken into twice since 2007, and her water hose was stolen. 

However, Campbell said she doesn’t think the crime she’s experienced is related to the greenway. 

She sees the greenways as a “family space,” but she can understand where the West Riverside Drive neighbors’ hesitations and concerns come from. 

“I would say their concerns are valid. Change is hard,” Campbell said. “But also, change is needed for the community to grow and for the continuity of the greenway.”

Not all residents who live along the greenway see it like Campbell does.

Tina Guilliams bought her house in Southeast Roanoke in the late 1990s, before the city broke ground on the Roanoke River Greenway. She said she was “forced” to sell a portion of her backyard to the city to allow for the greenway to be extended through the area.

She’s had concerns about homelessness on the greenways and concerns about greenway maintenance that would affect her home. She said it took the city eight months to respond after she asked it to remove a tree branch that was hitting her house.

Guilliams said she appreciates the benefits the greenway provides but has concerns about homelessness and has called the police on occasions when she has seen individuals “in distress.”

As of right now, Phase 2 is a waiting game, Maguire said. He’s confident that it can get done in seven to 10 years — which he said, in this line of work, “that’s next week.” He hopes people will realize the greenway is a “community benefit.”

“The reality is,” Maguire said, “these are community-wide decisions.”

The post ‘Critical’ portion of the Roanoke River Greenway remains in the planning phase. Here’s why it’s been so challenging. appeared first on Cardinal News.