rawdog

Jens Soering’s nearly four-decade drive to prove he is not guilty of the 1985 bloody, knife slaying of Derek and Nancy Haysom has hit a major roadblock — opposition from the Virginia attorney general.

In legal arguments filed Wednesday, the attorney general, through senior assistant Jeremy J. Key, urged the Virginia Court of Appeals to reject Soering’s contention that new evidence proves he is not guilty and dismiss his petition for a writ of absolute innocence.

The attorney general’s position relies on legal technicalities, mainly that Soering’s petition does not meet the required burden to prove that the new evidence is, in fact, new. The attorney general also argues that the evidence in Soering’s petition fails to prove a requirement that, when considered with all the other evidence in the current record, “no rational trier of fact would have found proof of guilt … beyond a reasonable doubt.”

The attorney general’s response emphasizes that “the burden of proving the elements of an actual innocence claim rests with the petitioner.” In addition, it points out that the appeals court has previously noted that a “person seeking a writ of actual innocence faces a daunting task; the process begins not with a presumption that a petitioner is innocent, but rather that he or she is guilty.” 

Soering’s main argument in his petition is that new evidence from DNA tests of blood samples taken at the murder scene shows no link to him but indicates the presence of two other men.

The response from prosecutors dismisses the DNA evidence as inconclusive, in part because of lack of proof about the chain of evidence in some of the comparisons and because some of the DNA profiles “may be attributable to either Derek or Nancy Haysom.” 

The commonwealth’s response also contends that Soering’s petition “offers statistics that make his claims theoretically possible but do not provide a framework that allows this court to make any fair inferences therefrom.”

In addition, prosecutors contend that while the DNA tests eliminated Soering from the tested blood, “this does not mean that, scientifically, he was not present at the crime scene.”

Now, it’s up to the appeals court to decide whether to grant or dismiss Soering’s petition for a writ of absolute innocence, or it could schedule a hearing to evaluate the opposing arguments and evidence.

See our previous story on Soering’s request for a writ of innocence.

Haysom killings drew international attention

The gruesome Haysom murders and Soering’s numerous efforts to win parole, pardon or exoneration prompted widespread national and international news attention and television documentaries, including Netflix’s 2023 four-part series “Till Murder Do Us Part: Soering vs. Haysom.”

The murders occurred on the evening of March 30, 1985, at the Haysoms’ Boonesboro retirement home in the Blue Ridge foothills of Bedford County. The bodies of Derek Haysom, 71, and his wife, Nancy, 53, were discovered by a friend several days later. They had been slashed to death during a struggle for their lives. They were stabbed multiple times, and their necks slit ear-to-ear.

Soering and his girlfriend, Elizabeth Haysom, the Haysoms’ daughter, soon became suspects. The two were honor students at the University of Virginia. Suspicion focused on them when they suddenly fled to Europe, where they ran out of money and were arrested April 30, 1986, in London on check fraud charges. 

London police notified Bedford County authorities, who flew to London. After several days of questioning by Bedford and London authorities, Soering confessed that he had killed the Haysoms while Elizabeth helped create an alibi that she and Soering were vacationing in Washington, D.C.

Soering told Cardinal News that he only confessed because he wanted to protect Elizabeth, who had told him she killed her parents. He mistakenly thought then that because his father was a German diplomat, he would be sent back to Germany for trial. Because he was 18 at the time of the murders, he thought he would receive a far lower punishment than in Virginia, where Elizabeth might have faced a death sentence. 

When Bedford County authorities agreed to remove the death sentence as a possibility for Soering if convicted, he was returned to Virginia for trial.

Elizabeth Haysom pleaded guilty to being an accessory before the fact in 1987 and was sentenced to 90 years in prison. She maintained that Soering committed the murders. Soering rescinded his confession and, at trial in 1990, pleaded not guilty, a position he has maintained ever since. He was sentenced to two life in prison terms. 

Both were paroled in 2019 after 33 years in prison. Soering was deported to Germany and Elizabeth to Canada.

A struggle that will continue

Writs of actual innocence were created to give the wrongly convicted and incarcerated a chance to clear their name. However, the odds of a convicted person winning one are slim. For example, of 84 writs reviewed by the court of appeals in the past three years, just two had their convictions vacated. Most were thrown out as without legal merit.

In August, after the appeals court ordered the attorney general to file a response to Soering’s petition for a writ of actual innocence, Soering expressed hope. He said, “I am confident that the attorney general and the court will grant me the justice I have been denied for so long.”

In an email statement sent to Cardinal News on Thursday in response to the filing this week, Soering wrote, “Of course I am disappointed that the office of the attorney general chose not to support my petition.” He went on to say, “However I have seen the entirety of the files supplied by Bedford County, so I am confident that the commonwealth of Virginia in its pursuit of justice will come to the right conclusion — for which I’ve been waiting 40 years.” 

Elliott Harding, Soering’s Charlottesville attorney, also expressed disappointment in the attorney general’s opposition. But he said, “We remain optimistic that both the victims and Mr. Soering will finally get the justice they deserve.”

Harding added, “Soering will be adamantly pursuing all avenues to advance this case to the court of appeals.” He said he remains hopeful the attorney general and the court of appeals “will come to the conclusion that the petition must be granted.”

In the meantime, Harding said, “We’re going to seek a remand to circuit court for an evidentiary hearing to consider and establish some very basic and obvious facts.” Among those was a bloody sock print introduced in Soering’s 1990 trial in Bedford County Circuit Court as appearing to match Soering’s foot. Harding wants to prove in circuit court that the sock print testimony, a key element in Soering’s conviction, is “junk science.” 

Harding also said the attorney general’s response is simply wrong in claiming the DNA is inconclusive and not new.

If he cannot change the opposition to Soering’s petition, Harding said, he anticipates opposing the attorney general’s response and “hope the court of appeals will allow us to present our case in a hearing. … innocence has no statute of limitation.”

The post Attorney General Jones wants Soering’s innocence claim dismissed appeared first on Cardinal News.

Got a question about the election results? Let us know here.

In 1910, The Roanoke Times used a beacon atop Mill Mountain to signal that year’s election results. If the light moved sideways, that indicated a Democratic victory. If it moved up and down, that meant a Republican win. In between, there was a complicated series of flashes that — if you’d followed the instructions printed in the paper — you could use to figure out which race was about to be announced.

Today we have other technologies — you’re using one of them right now — but if Roanoke officials wanted to honor the city’s legacy, they could simply change the color of the Mill Mountain Star to match whoever won. In this year’s case, that would be blue. A very bright blue.

Democrats swept all three council seats on the ballot in Roanoke on Tuesday. Not surprising, since Roanoke these days is a very reliably Democratic city.

However, a decision back in 1997 prevented Republican Amanda Marko from winning a seat on the council.

That was the year that Roanoke voters, by a margin of 54% to 46%, rejected a ward system. To this day, Roanoke elects all seven members of the city council — well, six council members plus a mayor — on an at-large basis. For a city of almost 100,000, that’s unusual but not unheard-of. Chesapeake is 2.5 times as large and also has a completely at-large council.

There are good arguments for and against a ward system, and I’m not here to litigate those. Instead, I’m just here to look at the electoral implications: In a Democratic city such as Roanoke, the at-large system makes it difficult for one particular political minority to win representation on the council. That political minority? Republicans.

If we look into where the candidates this year got their votes, we get a better sense of how there is not one Roanoke but many Roanokes — but some of them aren’t able to elect candidates to the council.

Here are the unofficial results (with provisional ballots and some post-election mail ballots yet to be added):

Raekwon Moore (D): 16,408
Danny Clawson (D): 12,867
Vivian Sanchez-Jones (D): 12,577
David Bowers (I): 10,283
Stephanie Moon Reynolds (I): 10,251
Amanda Marko (R): 8,835
Kathy Cohen (I): 8,403
Write-ins: 491

An at-large system rewards candidates who run consistently strong across the city. Moore finished first because he was consistent. He finished first in 15 of the city’s 20 precincts. In two of the other five, he finished second, so he finished in the top three in 17 of 20 precincts. That explains not just why he won, but why he won with so many more votes than his two ticketmates, whose performances weren’t quite as consistent as his.

Moore was also just darned popular. In many precincts where the Democrats finished one, two, three, he ran well ahead. Take the Highland precinct. That was Moore 1,053, Clawson 880, Sanchez-Jones 771, with the other candidates far behind. And then there were the thunderous numbers he pulled out of the city’s predominantly Black precincts. In Eureka Park, it was Moore 1,041, Sanchez-Jones 764, Moon Reynolds 756, Clawson 542 and the others further back.

In the other places where he didn’t finish in a winning position, he finished fourth, just out of the money. This is a textbook performance for an at-large winner: Do well everywhere and, if possible, do really well in a few places.

Clawson and Sanchez-Jones turned in textbook performances in other ways: Don’t get blown out anywhere. They didn’t always finish in the top three, but they were reasonably competitive everywhere. Clawson didn’t finish first in any precincts but steadily accumulated enough votes to finish second.

Of the others, two stand out: Bowers and Marko. Both ran tantalizingly well in some places — taking first place in multiple precincts — but then cratered elsewhere. In the end, both of them had electoral performances that were too erratic to finish in a winning spot.

Bowers finished first in three precincts: Preston Park, East Gate and Deyerle. He placed second in Hollins Road and Garden City, third in Southeast and South Roanoke. A ward system would not help Bowers: Those places are too geographically distant.

Marko, though, would have benefited from a ward system, depending on how the wards were drawn. She finished first in three adjacent precincts: Crystal Spring, Garden City and South Roanoke. She also lives in the Garden City precinct.

In a ward system that had those three precincts in the same ward (which would be logical), she’d have been a strong contender.

Since we’re talking about a hypothetical ward system, we don’t know what it would look like. Would Roanoke have six wards and an at-large mayor or would it have a system like Lynchburg, where there are some council members elected by ward and some elected at large? Once we start going down this speculative road, we get swallowed up by “what if’s” that look like potholes in the road but are really portals to another dimension. In a ward system, we wouldn’t necessarily have the same set of candidates that we just did. Who would run in a ward system that didn’t run this week in an at-large system?

Still, the point of this exercise is to show how an at-large system works. In those three precincts, voters made their preference clear: Their first choice was Marko, but the rest of the city’s voters vetoed that choice.

It’s not impossible for a Republican to win citywide in Roanoke, just difficult. Republican Nick Hagen, who won a council seat two years ago, showed it’s possible. He was also the first Republican to win a council seat since 2000.

Hagen benefited from something Marko couldn’t on Tuesday: Two years ago there was a weak Democratic candidate, who finished sixth out of seven candidates. That created an opening. There was no such weak Democratic candidate this year. Hagen also turned in a more consistent performance that Marko did this year. He took first in the Williamson Road precinct; she finished last. He took first in Hollins Road; she finished next to last. Hagen also had the benefit of having run unsuccessfully two years before, so he had name recognition that Marko didn’t.

This was a different year, with different candidates, different circumstances. Nonetheless, the numbers point to this: If Roanoke had a ward system, its city council would be more politically diverse.

We’ll have even more math and more politics in West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter that comes out on Friday afternoons. Sign up here:

The post If Roanoke had a ward system, Republican Amanda Marko likely would have won a seat appeared first on Cardinal News.

Got a question about the election results? Let us know here.

Democrats won all three seats available on the Lynchburg City Council on Tuesday, although in many ways they won those seats on June 13 — that’s the date when the governing body for Virginia Republicans voided the results of a party-run nominating process as procedurally flawed.

That set in motion a scenario that had two rival slates of Republicans running as independents. What happened this week was that the Republican vote predictably split between those two slates, opening the way for a Democratic sweep that now gives Democrats control of the council.

For some, that’s maybe all they need to know. For those who want a deeper understanding of the situation, here’s what an analysis of the election results shows.

A unified Republican slate could have won up to three council seats

That doesn’t necessarily mean any three Republicans could have won (more on that to come), but the numbers suggest that the Democratic sweep was not inevitable. As always, let’s see what the math tells us.

In the U.S. Senate race, Democrat Mark Warner carried Lynchburg by a vote of 15,589 to 13,604 over Republican Bert Mizusawa.

In the U.S. House race, Democrat Tom Perriello carried Lynchburg by a vote of 15,034 to 13,576 over Republican John McGuire.

That means there were 15,000-plus Democratic voters in the city.

Now let’s look at the results of the council race. For the sake of clarity, I’ll label the Republicans as Republicans even though they legally had to run as independents. I’ll further label them by their two slates. One group ran as Team Lynchburg; the other slate did not appear to have a name but much of their literature pushed a “Conservative Majority” so that’s how I’ll label them here so we can keep track of who’s on whose side.

Keep in mind that these are unofficial numbers and don’t include about 1,700 provisional ballots, mostly from Liberty University students. Those are likely to be overwhelmingly Republican ballots.

Nathaniel “Nat” Marshall (D) 12,623
Christina Anne Delzingaro (D) 12,600
Dave Henderson (D) 12,348
Stephanie Reed (R-Team) 7,930
Larry Taylor (R-Team) 7,800
Veronica Bratton (R-CM) 7,506
Marty Misjuns (R-CM) 7,435
Chris Boswell (R-Team) 7,085
Eli Rybinni (I) 1,780
Write-ins 471

What we see is the ballot drop-off — the Democratic congressional candidates drew 15,000 votes, the Democratic council candidates in the 12,000 range. The specific drop-off for the Democratic council candidates ran 2,966 to 3,241 votes from Warner’s numbers and 2,411 to 2,686 from Perriello’s numbers.

It’s normal to see some ballot drop-off as voters work their way down the ballot. These numbers quantify what the ballot drop-off was for Democratic voters, but what about for Republican voters?

This gets trickier, and takes us into more speculative realms. Given how split Lynchburg Republicans have been, would Republican votes have stuck together for a single slate?

That voided party-run nomination had produced a ticket of Bratton, Misjuns and Taylor — a split ticket from two different factions. Let’s assume that in this election each faction only voted for its own candidates, so that no Bratton-Misjuns voters cast ballots this fall for Taylor since he was on the Team Lynchburg slate. There’s always some ticket-splitting but for figuring purposes, this seems a reasonable assumption to me. The literature for Bratton and Misjuns encouraged voters to just double-shot those two candidates and not cast a third vote.

What if that original slate of Bratton, Misjuns and Taylor hadn’t been tossed? How many of the voters for Reed and Boswell would have supported Bratton and Misjuns? We have no way of knowing. However, it seems likely that those Bratton-Misjuns voters then would have stuck with Taylor if he was their running mate. In that case, if we add either the Bratton or Misjuns votes to Taylor, then he’d have polled 15,306 or 15,235 votes — and led the balloting. That seems high; that’s more votes than either of the Republican congressional candidates received. However, as we’ve seen, there were 13,576 to 13,604 Republican voters casting ballots this year. If Republicans had been able to minimize ballot drop, the votes were there for them to win all three council seats. They just fumbled the opportunity.

What if Lynchburg Republicans had held a state-run primary to nominate their candidates?

While I’m tracing the trouble back to June when the state party tossed the results of that party-run nomination, we really need to go back to the party’s original decision to find some daylight in the state law that comes very close to requiring a state-run primary but does leave some room for exceptions. Lynchburg Republicans tried to find that exception and make it work — their own state party said they failed.

What if Lynchburg Republicans hadn’t tried to set up a party-run nominating process and instead had simply gone with a state-run primary? We have no way of knowing who would have won. Can the election results give us some clues? Maybe, but not enough.

In this election, the top three Republican finishers so far are Reed, Taylor and Bratton — two from one slate, one from the other. (The final provisionals from the Liberty precinct might change that order.) Would a Republican primary have mirrored the general election? We don’t know. A primary turnout would have been smaller, so the composition would have been different.

There was a Republican primary in Lynchburg this year — for U.S. Senate and U.S. House. That primary drew 2,965 Republican voters. A city council primary added to that would have likely boosted the turnout higher, but it’s unreasonable to think it would have reached general election levels, so we can’t predict who would have won. Based on this math, though, it seems likely that if Taylor had been one of those primary winners, he’d have won the general election, too.

The only thing I think we can say for certain is that the Republicans in the general election clearly did not mirror the voters in the party-run “firehouse primary” in the spring. Should Lynchburg Republican leaders conclude from this that they are out of touch with the general election voters they need? Even if the yet-to-be-counted Liberty ballots move Bratton and Misjuns up (which seems likely, given how other Liberty ballots have gone), it’s clear that the general populace outside of the Liberty precinct has a slight preference for Reed and Taylor.

What if there had never been a Republican split?

This is the mother of hypotheticals. It’s like asking: What if there were no moon? What if the Vikings hadn’t abandoned their settlements in North America? What if pigs could fly?

Still, just for the fun of it, let’s look at the math.

In the 2022 election, in which Republicans swept three council seats, their top finishers were:

Reed: 12,287
Taylor: 11,658
Misjuns: 10,685

The next nearest candidate polled 10,157 votes.

Lynchburg this year appears to have had 26.8% more voters than it did four years ago — 23,419 voted then, 29,708 voted this year. That makes a difference. If the three Republican incumbents got the same votes this year that they got four years ago, they’d have still lost, although Reed would have come very close. Most of those new voters appear to have cast Democratic ballots, but not all. Support for the Republican candidate for Congress grew by 1,068 votes. If the Republican council incumbents had been able to do the same, then Reed would have had 13,355 votes and Taylor would have had 12,726 — and would have finished one and two, with the Democrat Marshall third.

Instead, the things that happened over the past four years happened, and on Tuesday this happened: Democrats swept all three seats and now have a 4-3 council majority. Lynchburg Republicans will now have four years to think about ways to avoid this next time.

We’ll have even more politics and more numbers in this week’s edition of West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter that comes out on Friday afternoons. Sign up here:

The post If Lynchburg Republicans hadn’t fractured, they could have won up to three council seats even in a Democratic year appeared first on Cardinal News.

Laura Pritchard-Compton was 34 and had already been working in nonprofit management and consulting for just over a decade when she enrolled in graduate school to become a therapist. It was a second career, and pursuing it meant balancing her education with the financial responsibilities of supporting her family. 

Rather than completing the traditional two-year program, Pritchard-Compton took four years to earn her degree. But graduation didn’t mean she could immediately begin practicing independently. She still had to complete thousands of hours of supervised clinical experience before she could become fully licensed. 

In Virginia, therapists pursuing licensure must log about 3,000 hours of supervised work experience under a fully licensed professional. 

Depending on their chosen specialty and licensing path, therapists in training may have to pay out of pocket for supervision. Because they aren’t fully licensed, they also earn less than independently licensed therapists, making those additional costs difficult to manage. 

Pritchard-Compton, who is originally from the Southwest Virginia town of St. Paul, and her husband lived in Atlanta before moving to Abingdon. They wanted to raise their children in the region while Pritchard-Compton pursued her goal of becoming a licensed couples and sex therapist. But finding a supervisor who could oversee her required hours proved difficult. Her only option was a supervisor based in Northern Virginia, and she would have to pay for the supervision herself.

Then a friend told her about a program that could help cover those expenses. Pritchard-Compton applied for Boost, a Virginia Health Care Foundation program funded by the General Assembly, the Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services and private donors. The program helps eligible therapists pay for supervision as they work toward licensure.

Boost saved Pritchard-Compton $12,000 over two years, she said — about $500 a month, or roughly the cost of a car payment. Adding that expense to the costs of raising two young children would have caused additional financial strain, she said. 

“It would have been a burden on my family. My kids would have gone without certain things,” Pritchard-Compton said. “It just allowed us to breathe easily.”

The Virginia Health Care Foundation recently received additional funding from the Wellspring Foundation of Southwest Virginia to expand Boost to participants in Grayson, Russell, Smyth and Washington counties, according to Rachel Rees, the foundation’s CEO.

Based in Abingdon, the Wellspring Foundation is a philanthropic organization that works to improve health and well-being, education and workforce development in Southwest Virginia. It committed $150,000 to help build the region’s behavioral health workforce through Virginia Health Care Foundation programs.

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

Applicants earn about $50,000, carry more than twice that in student loans

Boost started as a pilot initiative under the Youngkin administration in 2022, Rees said. Then in 2023 the General Assembly expanded it to allow licensed marriage and family therapists to receive payment for supervisory hours, joining licensed clinical social workers and licensed professional counselors. 

More than 545 Virginians have used Boost to help pay for supervision. In Southwest and Southside Virginia, 64 people have enrolled in the program, and 25 have earned their licenses. The program receives about 85 to 90 new applications each quarter.

“It’s a life-changing program,” Rees said. “It helps them realize their dream of becoming licensed, which they’re working really hard towards and providing care in their community.”

Applicants earn an average salary of about $50,000 to $55,000 and carry an average debt load of about $119,000, Rees said.

Trinette Randolph, Boost’s program manager, works with applicants who struggle to pay for supervision when unexpected expenses, such as car repairs, take priority. Some pause their training until they can afford to resume again, Randolph said.

Many applicants are parents like Pritchard-Compton. Some plan to work part time while completing their supervision hours, but Boost has helped participants complete their training with fewer breaks and disruptions, Randolph said.

Randolph reviews Boost applications, which include a personal statement. Many applicants grew up in Virginia and want to return to the communities where they were raised, she said.

“They’re highly motivated to pursue licensure,” Randolph said. 

A path to a career in behavioral health

Before enrolling in graduate school, Pritchard-Compton worked as a consultant for several different nonprofit organizations. She began considering a career in the behavioral health field after attending therapy with her husband and on her own. Through that experience, she noticed that her “moments of joy had a pattern,” she said. 

“What made me really come alive was meaningful, deep discussion with people one-on-one or in small groups, sometimes intersecting with religion, sex, relationships,” Pritchard-Compton said, adding that her undergraduate degree was in religious studies from the University of Virginia. 

Pritchard-Compton said she has loved becoming a therapist and encourages others pursuing licensure to apply for Boost.

The application process required her to provide financial information, details about her supervisor and a personal essay. She found the process easy to navigate, she said.

Boost is open to master’s-level social workers, counselors and marriage and family therapists who have applied to the Virginia Department of Health Professions to begin supervised practice. The program also accepts certain professionals who already hold licenses from the department and are completing additional supervised hours, according to its guidelines.

The program gives preference to people just beginning the licensure process but also considers applicants who have completed no more than 60% of their required supervision hours, according to the Boost participant guidelines.

People interested in applying can find more information on the Virginia Health Care Foundation’s website.

The post Grant program aims to expand Southwest Virginia’s behavioral health workforce by making training more affordable appeared first on Cardinal News.

Even before Old Dominion Power proposed a 23% increase to its electric rates in far Southwest Virginia, utility bills across the coalfields have been going up. 

Old Dominion, which provides electric service to 28,000 customers in the region, hiked its rates last year by 11.12%. Powell Valley Electric Cooperative raised rates by $4 per month for residential customers in April. Appalachian Power Co. sought to raise its rates by $9 in May, but under a proposed compromise with state regulators, said rates would freeze for a year; costs could still increase later.

At the same time, groceries and gas prices are at record highs. As the winter months approach, there are a number of organizations gearing up to provide fuel assistance in the coalfield counties of Lee, Scott, Wise, Dickenson, Buchanan, Russell and Tazewell and the city of Norton. 

Mountain Empire Older Citizens fund 

On Tuesday, Mountain Empire Older Citizens began accepting applications for its emergency fuel fund. 

The program, which runs through March 31, helps older adults heat their homes in the winter months. They can assist with electric bills, said Care Coordinator Tiffany Jacobs, or provide an equivalent amount for alternative heating methods, such as wood or propane. 

Assistance is equal to about a month of fuel assistance and is available one time per winter. The group typically provides up to $350 toward an electric bill, but if a resident has a larger bill, the organization can pay the amount in full, she added. 

“We try to encourage them to wait [for when] they have a larger bill,” Jacobs said. “But they are getting a lot more expensive … we have people call in at the beginning and then again at the end of the cycle, when they still have high bills.”

Residents of Lee, Scott and Wise counties and the city of Norton who are 60 and older can qualify if their household income is at or below 150% of the federal poverty level, which would be $1,995 per month for one person or $2,705 for two people. 

Interested residents can call the organization or apply online. You should have your contact information, household size and income available, and an account number if help is needed with an electric bill.

Program for customers of APCo and Old Dominion Power

Some community agencies in the region administer a funding program that helps customers of APCo and Old Dominion Power. APCo calls the program Neighbor to Neighbor, and Old Dominion Power calls it WinterShare.

The programs, administered by the Dollar Energy Fund based in Pittsburgh, help those whose household income is at or below 150% of the federal poverty level with assistance one time per year. The fund has an income calculator online. 

APCo customers can receive up to $300, and Old Dominion Power customers can receive up to $250. Anyone who applies is required to have paid at least $100 in utilities in the past 90 days, coordinators at several local agencies said.

Lynn Lane, an intake specialist at Appalachian Community Action and Development Agency, which has offices in Jonesville and Gate City, said that sometimes the program is restarted and she can get two payments in for a customer per year. But if the balance is larger than the amount the program covers, she said, the customer can’t qualify for assistance until the bill is paid down. 

Lane said it doesn’t matter which county you live in — if you are a customer of either of the two utilities, you can call her organization. Clinch Valley Community Action in North Tazewell and Family Crisis Center in Norton also administer this program. 

Family Crisis Center in Norton 

Family Crisis Center in Norton has helped pay utility bills through the Virginia Eviction Reduction Pilot program ever since the state allocated funding for the program in 2020. 

The program has served thousands of households across the state by using funds to pay delinquent rent and utilities for up to six months for qualifying households. Funding through the Family Crisis Center has grown through the years, Director Marybeth Adkins said, and this year the $776,000 awarded has helped serve nearly 700 households so far. 

New money for the program will be awarded in January, but Adkins said the group has been running extremely low on funds since September. 

Across the utility assistance the center administers, “We’re down to almost nothing, which is very fearful for November and December,” she said. “We’ve gotten low on funds at the end of the year, but never like this.”

Still, Adkins said the eviction reduction program is crucial for the area, since many renters who can’t pay their utilities are then evicted. The crisis center serves the coalfields and also Bristol and Washington County through this program.

It takes creativity to meet the need: In November, the center starts getting donations for the holidays, and Adkins said the group will see if other agencies on the grant have leftover money. Staffers call localities to find out the cutoff date on someone’s power — in December, the center is able to pledge payments that can be fulfilled later when new funding comes in January. 

Individuals and households qualify if they have incomes at or below 80% of area median income, which is designed to help households that “earn too much to qualify for traditional safety-net programs but not enough to remain stably housed,” according to the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development. In Norton, that would be $41,495, according to the U.S. Census.

Interested renters should contact the Family Crisis Center. You can call, walk in or use the chat feature on the website.

Options from utility companies and other tips 

APCo administers multiple programs for customers to help lower their bills, including a low-income weatherization program and energy efficiency kits that might include new shower heads or smart thermostats. 

The company also participates in the Percentage of Income Payment Program, which allows customers whose income is at or below 150% of the poverty level to pay 10% of their monthly income if they heat their homes with electricity. Interested customers can apply through the state. 

An Old Dominion Power spokesperson pointed to its partnerships with local agencies for fuel assistance, which can be found online, and it has a library of energy-saving tips for customers. 

Powell Valley Electric does not offer any personal assistance but works alongside county social services.

Those who need assistance can also turn to their local churches and food pantries, employees at local agencies said. Kevin Barnett, the vice mayor of Gate City and the president of Scott County Christian Social Ministry, said his ministry provides free firewood for families in need and helps pay utility bills with proceeds from the thrift store it runs. 

If you need electricity or heat for medical reasons, such as for oxygen machines or keeping insulin cold, call your utility, Lane said. She also encouraged people to attend local municipal meetings to speak out against electric rate increases.

Liz Lester, who works for Clinch Valley Community Action, said calling 211 can help anyone in Virginia connect with local resources for housing and food assistance. 

Organizations often have to work together to help keep people’s lights on, agency employees said, and many of the programs they offer are funded through community donations. 

Of the latest rate increase proposal, Jacobs said, “It’s going to take organizations coming together to care for individuals and keep them warm.”

The post Heating and utility assistance is available in far Southwest this winter appeared first on Cardinal News.

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This week’s midterm elections provided some answers.

But with one more week of Virginia High School League football games to settle the pairings for the postseason, there remain plenty of questions.

Such as:

• Who will emerge from the logjam at the top of Region 4D and Region 3D where three undefeated teams currently reside in each set of standings?
• Will William Fleming and Northside make 11th-hour rallies to qualify in regions 5C and 3D, respectively?
• Is once-beaten Liberty Christian going to finish No. 4 in Region 3D?
• Will the Three Rivers District claim the top four spots in Region 2C?
• Will Union or Gate City grab the No. 2 spot behind Graham in Region 2D?
• Will Craig County or Grayson County finish No. 1 in Region 1C?
• Will Rural Retreat overcome a six-game losing streak in the middle of its schedule to make the field in Region 1D?

Below is a short rundown of the scenarios in regions affecting the Roanoke and New River Valleys and Southside and Southwest Virginia:

A shoutout to the folks who run the impeccable website at harpcrate.com for their assistance with points in Region 6C. The region is using a college-style RPI formula that is based 40% on a team’s winning percentage, another 40% on that team’s opponents’ winning percentage and an additional 20% on the winning percentage of those opponents’ 10 opponents. In short, to compute one team’s rating in Region 6C, it requires determining the winning percentage of approximately 100 schools.

REGION 5C

Highland Springs might rate as a favorite here, but a schedule that included a close loss last week to Class 4 power Varina could have the Springers finishing No. 2 behind Midlothian.

Patrick Henry-Roanoke is all but locked in to the No. 3 position if the Patriots finish with a victory over Blacksburg.

Douglas Freeman and Hermitage have qualified, while Glen Allen also is a virtual lock for a spot.

William Fleming, currently on the outside at No. 9, has a shot to qualify, but the Colonels will need some help. First, Fleming must defeat Franklin County, and they hope either Meadowbrook or James River-Midlothian loses on Friday.

REGION 4D

Jefferson Forest, Sherando and George Washington are all 9-0.

What does that show? For one, this region is really spread out geographically, going all the way from Mecklenburg County to Winchester. Secondly, it is very top-heavy.

George Washington isn’t even in the top three at the moment as James Wood (8-1) sits ahead of the Eagles in third place. However, GW can make up big points if the Eagles can score a Piedmont District victory Friday over Class 3 Magna Vista (9-0).

If GW wins, the likely order would be Jefferson Forest, GW, Sherando and James Wood.

The top of the region is so points-heavy that a 9-1 Salem team can do no better than the No. 5 spot. Blame Salem’s rating on the fact that three of the Spartans’ opponents — Franklin County, Pulaski County and Hidden Valley — haven’t won a game.

Salem will play at the No. 4 seed in the first round.

The outcome of Friday’s John Handley-Millbrook game will determine plenty. The winner likely gets the No. 6 spot. A loss by Millbrook also would open the door for both No. 8 Blacksburg and No. 9 E.C. Glass to move up.

If Millbrook loses, that means Blacksburg is in regardless of the Bruins’ game Friday against Patrick Henry.

E.C. Glass is in a must-win situation Friday at Brookville. A victory could move the Hilltoppers as high as No. 7. A loss means the season is over.

REGION 3C

This is one of the state’s largest regions, but there are only 10 teams still vying for one of the eight spots.

Forget No. 1. Unbeaten Broadway (9-0) has it locked up.

Fluvanna County would get the No. 2 spot with a win Friday at Albemarle. If the Flying Flucos stumble, either Liberty Christian or Turner Ashby could move up.

Turner Ashby appears to have a slight points edge on LCA if both win their final games.

Monticello and Heritage are neck and neck for the No. 5 and No. 6 spots. Both have tough tests Friday, with Monticello facing unbeaten Louisa County and Heritage facing unbeaten Jefferson Forest.

Losses by Monticello and Heritage could allow Wilson Memorial to pass both if the Green Hornets win at Stuarts Draft.

Idle East Rockingham has the edge over Rocktown for the No. 8 spot.

It is worth noting that Brookville has the No. 5 points rating in the region, but the Bees’ program is ineligible for the playoffs because of VHSL sanctions.

REGION 3D

Carroll County (9-0) is in the midst of a historic season. The Cavaliers are on the verge of their first 10-0 mark in school history.

But will Carroll get the No. 1 seed in Region 3D?

William Byrd (9-0) has the inside track on the top spot if the Terriers can defeat Staunton River. Magna Vista (9-0) also might be able to squeak past Carroll if the Warriors get past George Washington.

Cave Spring has finished its season and is at No. 5. Lord Botetourt likely would pass the Knights into the fifth if the Cavaliers defeat Northside in their finale.

Bassett, currently No. 6, might need a victory over Halifax County, but it would take a lot to go wrong in other games for the Bengals to be left on the sideline.

Fans of Staunton River and Northside need to pay attention to the outcome of the Tunstall-Mecklenburg County game. A Tunstall loss could benefit both teams.

Northside must defeat Lord Botetourt to have any chance of qualifying, however. It is possible but not likely the Vikings could outpoint Staunton River.

Don’t forget Christiansburg. Even with a loss to Salem, the Blue Demons could get in with losses by Tunstall and Northside.

REGION 2C

Radford needs a victory over Martinsville to clinch the No. 1 seed.

What happens if Martinsville upsets Radford? The Bulldogs actually could be the No. 1 seed. Floyd County could also be in the picture with a victory over Glenvar.

A win Friday by Radford would put the Bobcats at No. 1 and Martinsville at No. 4. The Floyd County-Glenvar winner would take the No. 2 spot with the loser at No. 3.

Appomattox County appears ticketed for the No. 5 spot.

Gretna would take No. 6 if the Hawks can defeat Altavista. Otherwise, Dan River would move up to No. 6 with a win over Chatham.

James River-Buchanan looks like the best bet for the No. 8 spot, even with a loss to unbeaten Carroll County. Patrick County and Nelson County have a chance, but it is very remote.

REGION 2D

Graham can clinch the No. 1 spot with a Thursday victory over Richlands.

Union sits in the No. 2 spot, but the winner of Friday’s Gate City-Ridgeview game likely will move up and drop the Bears to No. 3. The Gate City-Ridgeview loser will be No. 4

Southern Gap has clinched a berth in its first season of existence. The Buchanan County school can hold on to the No. 5 spot with a closing win over Central-Wise. Virginia High and Central-Wise are poised to move up if Southern Gap stumbles.

Lee can clinch a berth with a victory over Class 3 Abingdon or a loss by Tazewell to Lebanon. Tazewell needs a win over Lebanon and a loss by Lee to Abingdon in order to qualify.

REGION 1C

Region 1C has adopted an alternate formula from the old VHSL model.

The region setup is similar to what it uses for basketball where the schools are seeded based on the finish within their respective districts, the Mountain Empire and Pioneer.

However, the district order is still determined by the Rating Scale, and not district won-lost records.

The big question at the moment is which team will be the overall No. 1 seed for the region. Craig County can clinch its first unbeaten regular season in school history Friday as the Rockets welcome 9-0 Meadow Bridge (W.Va.) to New Castle.

A victory by Craig would give the Rockets the No. 1 seed. A loss would open the door for Grayson County to claim the top spot.

The district with the top overall seed will have the No. 1, 3 and 5 seeds. The other district will have seeds 2, 4 and 6. The final two qualifiers will be determined by Rating Scale points.

REGION 1D

With regular-season victories over Rye Cove and Eastside in the bag, Chilhowie already has clinched the No. 1 spot here.

Rye Cove would get the No. 2 spot with a closing victory over Twin Springs. Eastside is currently No. 3 and finished its regular season. It is possible that Patrick Henry-Glade Spring could pass Eastside with a win over Northwood.

If Northwood defeats PH-Glade, the Panthers would move up to No. 4 and set a rematch with the Rebels in the first round in Saltville.

Holston is currently No. 6, but, minus a huge upset over Chilhowie, the Cavaliers could be passed by J.I. Burton or Honaker if those teams win their games.

Burton would get a berth with a win over Thomas Walker. That would leave the No. 8 spot to the winner of the Rural Retreat-Honaker game.

VHSL Football Regional Playoff Points

Through Oct. 31 games

x = Team is ineligible for playoffs

Region 6A

Region 6B

Region 6C

Region 6D

Region 5A

Region 5B

Region 5C

Region 5D

Region 4A

Region 4B

Region 4C

Region 4D

Region 3A

Region 3B

Region 3C

Region 3D

Region 2A

Region 2B

Region 2C

Region 2D

Region 1A

Region 1B

Region 1C

Region 1D

The post VHSL points update: Here are the playoff implications for final weekend of regular season appeared first on Cardinal News.

In August I wrote in these pages that Buckingham County was “not short of fight. It is short of a place to put it.” The bill for the Joshua Falls to Yeat line had been divided in Washington, the State Corporation Commission could not divide it again, and the hearings ahead could argue about where the line goes but not about who pays. On Oct. 29, PJM, the regional grid operator that chose the line, posted numbers that give the counties along the route something new to ask.

PJM’s materials for its Nov. 3 planning committee meeting raise the estimated cost of Valley Link, the set of high-voltage projects that includes Joshua Falls to Yeat, from $3 billion in 2024 dollars to $5.1 billion in 2026 dollars. All 14 of its projects were due June 1, 2029. All 14 now show later dates. The line and its Yeat substation are now set for Jan. 17, 2031. In August, after the route was cut from 156 miles to 115 and the Yeat substation moved, PJM put the line and that substation at $753 million. Its November table puts the same pieces at $1.56 billion, in 2026 dollars.

Campbell County’s part is not in that table. The relocation of Appalachian Power’s Joshua Falls substation, where the line begins, appears in a separate PJM spreadsheet posted for the same meeting. Its estimate is $225.5 million, up from $99.1 million when the plan was to expand the existing station rather than move it. Its required date is June 1, 2029, and the spreadsheet shows no revised date. The new line it will connect now shows 2031.

PJM lists the reasons for the higher price: labor, materials and equipment, and right-of-way and land costs “which continue to increase at unprecedented multiples.” None of it changes the formula that decides who pays. That formula divides the bill among utility zones across PJM’s 13-state region, and on the shares now in PJM’s tariff, Dominion’s customers carry about 45% of the line. The formula divides whatever number arrives.

What has changed is that a schedule has slipped, and PJM has a rule for that. Its operating agreement, the rulebook its members sign, says that if a developer PJM selected through its competitive window “fails to meet a milestone in the development schedule” and that “causes a delay of the project’s in-service date,” PJM “shall re-evaluate the need” for the project. It may then keep the project, remove it from the regional plan, or “include an alternative solution.” Any change PJM makes under that rule has to go to its planning committee “for review and comment” and be approved by its board.

That is a question about need under PJM’s own rules, and PJM is the one that has to answer it. Every date in Valley Link’s table has moved, the line’s by more than a year and a half. PJM attributes the new dates to “more detailed routing analysis, expanded stakeholder and regulatory engagement” and permitting work. In July it said one reason for moving the Yeat substation was “to enhance schedule certainty.” The dates slipped anyway. PJM’s November materials do not say whether the rule applies, or whether the milestones in Valley Link’s agreement with PJM were simply moved to fit the new dates.

A second question sits inside the first. PJM chose these lines to fix reliability problems it said had to be solved by June 2029. In July, PJM concluded that the shortened line “continues to address the identified reliability violations.” That was before the $5.1 billion estimate and the 2031 date. If the problems arrive in 2029 and the line in 2031, something has to cover the gap. Elsewhere in its August materials, PJM’s answer to a similar gap was “operational measures.” Its November materials do not say what would cover this one, or for how long.

Campbell’s supervisors voted in October to oppose the line, and other localities have done the same. They, and the landowners who will be asked for easements, can put five questions to PJM in writing now. PJM has listed the Joshua Falls relocation for its board’s review this month, so the time to ask is before the board acts. Did Valley Link miss a milestone in its development schedule? If the schedule was changed instead, when and on whose request? Has PJM re-evaluated the need for the project, as its own rule requires when a missed milestone delays it? What covers the reliability problem between 2029 and 2031? And will the Joshua Falls substation, which shows no revised date, be built for 2029 when the line it serves is not due until 2031?

None of these questions asks PJM to stop the line. They ask it to follow its own rule and show its work at the new price and the new date. In August the counties’ fight had nowhere to go. It has an address now, and the rule behind the questions is written in PJM’s own words.

Tommy N. Turner is an independent researcher who documents the local government and energy side of data center expansion in Virginia, and the author of the Virginia Data Center Series. He serves on the advisory board of an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation study at Emory University on data centers and the Southern energy buildout; the study did not fund or review this piece.

The post Researcher: Valley Link is now $5.1 billion and 2031. PJM’s own rules give the counties a question to ask. 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 partners with NASA to use weather, climate data in energy policy. — WHRO.

Economy:

Public hearings for the NextEra-Dominion merger have begun. Here’s what you need to know. — Virginia Mercury.

Local:

Solar farm project in Nelson County slated to start in 2030. — Nelson County Times (paywall).

Hanover’s drunk raccoon is now funding body cameras. — Axios Richmond.

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 Headlines from across Virginia: Virginia partners with NASA to use weather, climate data in energy policy; more … appeared first on Cardinal News.

Former Congressman Tom Perriello, the Democratic challenger in the race for Virginia’s 5th Congressional District, conceded his campaign’s defeat Thursday evening, two days after the election. 

Perriello called incumbent Republican Rep. John McGuire on Thursday to congratulate him on his reelection and to wish him well on his second term in Congress, according to a statement from Perriello’s campaign. 

“I am grateful to the voters and more than 1,000 volunteers who helped us build a grassroots campaign that moved all 24 counties in the district in our direction, helped to flip the Lynchburg City Council, and almost defied the odds to flip a district that was 15-points ruby red, just two years ago,” Perriello said in the statement. 

His campaign added that there are more than 7,000 provisional and absentee ballots still to be counted, and they expect McGuire’s margin of victory to narrow from its current 2.2 percentage points. Regardless, the campaign said it no longer sees “a path for changing the outcome.”

As of election night, the race was too close to call. The Associated Press called the race in McGuire’s favor at 11:59 a.m. Thursday, with 98% of the vote counted. 

The slim margin represents a significant swing left in a district that has been historically solidly Republican. McGuire was first elected to Congress in 2024 with a 15-point margin over his Democratic challenger. In 2025, the Republican gubernatorial candidate Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears won in the district by a 7.6 percentage point margin even as Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger went on to win with a 15 percentage point margin statewide. 

Perriello had been elected to represent Virginia’s 5th District with a margin of roughly 700 votes in 2008, during the same wave that saw former President Barack Obama become the first Democratic presidential candidate to win in the commonwealth since 1964. Perriello lost his reelection bid in 2010 by a 3.8 percentage point margin. Virginia’s congressional maps had been redrawn twice since then, shifting the 5th District slightly more conservative with each round of redistricting. 

The “near-upset” reflects a change in the political landscape of Virginia’s 5th District, according to Perriello’s campaign. 

“I’ve been fighting for our communities long before this campaign, and I will continue to fight long after the last vote is counted so that we can prevent this generational assault on rural and maternal healthcare, end this war to bring down costs and establish guardrails on artificial intelligence that can protect our kids, our jobs and our future. This is a generational emergency, and it demands urgency from everyone who has the ability to help,” Perriello said in a statement. 

McGuire’s campaign declined to comment on Perriello’s concession. 

“By the grace of God we won. Two days after Election Day, the AP finally declared our race a victory, something Decision Desk formally projected on election night,” the Congressman said in a post on X on Thursday. “I’m honored and humbled by the trust of Virginia’s Fifth District and look forward to continuing to serve our communities, fight for conservative values, and deliver results for the district we call home.”

The post Perriello concedes 5th District race to McGuire appeared first on Cardinal News.

Former Congressman Tom Perriello, the Democratic challenger in the race for Virginia’s 5th Congressional District, conceded his campaign’s defeat Thursday evening, two days after the election. 

Perriello called incumbent Republican Rep. John McGuire on Thursday to congratulate him on his reelection and to wish him well on his second term in Congress, according to a statement from Perriello’s campaign. 

“I am grateful to the voters and more than 1,000 volunteers who helped us build a grassroots campaign that moved all 24 counties in the district in our direction, helped to flip the Lynchburg City Council, and almost defied the odds to flip a district that was 15-points ruby red, just two years ago,” Perriello said in the statement. 

His campaign added that there are more than 7,000 provisional and absentee ballots still to be counted, and they expect McGuire’s margin of victory to narrow from its current 2.2 percentage points. Regardless, the campaign said it no longer sees “a path for changing the outcome.”

As of election night, the race was too close to call. The Associated Press called the race in McGuire’s favor at 11:59 a.m. Thursday, with 98% of the vote counted. 

The slim margin represents a significant swing left in a district that has been historically solidly Republican. McGuire was first elected to Congress in 2024 with a 15-point margin over his Democratic challenger. In 2025, the Republican gubernatorial candidate Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears won in the district by a 7.6 percentage point margin even as Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger went on to win with a 15 percentage point margin statewide. 

Perriello had been elected to represent Virginia’s 5th District with a margin of roughly 700 votes in 2008, during the same wave that saw former President Barack Obama become the first Democratic presidential candidate to win in the commonwealth since 1964. Perriello lost his reelection bid in 2010 by a 3.8 percentage point margin. Virginia’s congressional maps had been redrawn twice since then, shifting the 5th District slightly more conservative with each round of redistricting. 

The “near-upset” reflects a change in the political landscape of Virginia’s 5th District, according to Perriello’s campaign. 

“I’ve been fighting for our communities long before this campaign, and I will continue to fight long after the last vote is counted so that we can prevent this generational assault on rural and maternal healthcare, end this war to bring down costs and establish guardrails on artificial intelligence that can protect our kids, our jobs and our future. This is a generational emergency, and it demands urgency from everyone who has the ability to help,” Perriello said in a statement. 

McGuire’s campaign declined to comment on Perriello’s concession. 

“By the grace of God we won. Two days after Election Day, the AP finally declared our race a victory, something Decision Desk formally projected on election night,” the Congressman said in a post on X on Thursday. “I’m honored and humbled by the trust of Virginia’s Fifth District and look forward to continuing to serve our communities, fight for conservative values, and deliver results for the district we call home.”

The post Perriello concedes 5th District race to McGuire appeared first on Cardinal News.

The Lynchburg City Council turned blue Tuesday night, like the U.S. House and Senate and multiple state legislative chambers and governor’s offices. The Democrats who won in the Hill City said the flip was more about a vision for the community than affiliation with a party. 

“I don’t think that this is historic in terms of ‘Oh, it was Republican, and now it’s Democrat,’” Christina Delzingaro, one of the winners, said at a press conference Wednesday. “I think it’s historic in the swing from being negative, looking backward, to being positive and looking forward; being exclusive and divisive, to being inclusive and caring and kind.”

Each of the winners — Delzingaro, Dave Henderson and Nat Marshall — tallied more than 12,000 votes, according to unofficial results from the state Department of Elections. There is a more than 4,000-vote gap between the third- and fourth-place finishers. Provisional votes had not yet been counted, as of Wednesday afternoon. 

The Democratic slate flipped the three at-large council seats formerly held by Republicans, Mayor Larry Taylor, Marty Misjuns and Stephanie Reed, who all ran for reelection. Tuesday’s vote ended what was a 6-1 Republican majority on council, which was often seen as divided by GOP infighting.

Delzingaro, Henderson and Marshall campaigned on bringing civility and collaboration back to city hall. 

“I think that is the shift that was made: not between party, but between outlook of what we think this community can be, outlook about how we treat each other, and outlook as to where we can be in the future,” Delzingaro said. 

The shift starts with making sure that all Lynchburg residents feel represented by the new at-large members, Henderson said at the press conference.

“To everyone who voted for someone else: I will work to earn your trust. I will listen to you, and I will remember every day that serving the city means serving you too,” he said. 

Sterling Wilder, the sole current Democratic city council member, said at the press conference that he’s looking forward to working with the new members toward “putting the interest of the people first — not about politics or about agendas, but the people of Lynchburg need to be put first.” 

The new city council members will join the dais in January. In the meantime, they said they plan to get caught up to speed on existing city plans and policies, build relationships with city leaders and sharpen their vision for the future. Central priorities include the city schools, affordable housing, public transportation and city employee morale and retention, the winners said at the press conference.  

Nine candidates were on the ballot this year, including two rival slates of candidates seeking the Republican vote: Misjuns was joined by Veronica Bratton on one team, and Taylor and Reed were joined by Chris Boswell on the other. There were no official Republican candidates this year, in the aftermath of a nullified nomination process. Independent candidate Eli “Shawn Hunter” Rybinni also ran.

Taylor, Reed and Boswell issued a press release late Tuesday night to congratulate the Democratic winners and “thank them for running a professional and respectful campaign,” which “reflects the best of Lynchburg and serves as an example of how political opponents should conduct themselves.”

“While tonight’s results were not what we had hoped for, we are incredibly proud of the race we ran and the campaign we built together. Clearly, Republicans across the country did not have the night we were hoping for, but we remain grateful for the opportunity to stand firm for the people of Lynchburg and the principles we believe in,” the press release states. 

Marshall said the Democratic slate went into Tuesday feeling “guardedly optimistic,” knowing that Republican voters’ ballots would be divided among five candidates. Even so, the Democratic candidates worked to ensure they were connecting with residents across the community, and not just “preaching to the choir.”

“I think it’s proven that we were preaching to the congregation,” he said, now seeing the vote gap between the Democratic finishers and others on the ballot.

Now that Democrats have a majority on the city council, Marshall said, one of them will likely be voted in as mayor. The members-elect said they have not yet decided who the mayor should be. 

Henderson encouraged “everyone who found their voice in this campaign” to keep using it by attending city council meetings, helping their neighbors, being involved with the school system, and holding the new city council members accountable. Volunteers participated in election preparations through an organization called Lynchburg Better Together, a local initiative partnered with Rural GroundGame, an organization that supports Democratic campaigns, committees and community leaders.

“The energy that brought us here has a place in the work ahead,” he said.

Meet the new city council members

Delzingaro is a founder and the CEO of Community Access Network, which provides accessible primary care and wellness services for tens of thousands of Lynchburg residents each year. She oversees the organization’s $16 million budget and staff of 75.

Her experience with strategic planning, budget management, workforce leadership, and collaboration with local governments, healthcare providers, nonprofit partners and community stakeholders prepares her for service on the city council, according to her bio on Lynchburg Better Together’s website. She first got to know Lynchburg in 1980 as a student at what was then Randolph-Macon Woman’s College and moved back to the Hill City about a dozen years ago.

“It’s going to take making difficult decisions, supporting our city staff and holding them accountable, making sure that every public dollar is invested wisely and results in a real return on investment,” Delzingaro said of her new role as a city council member. “It’ll take not just hard work, but conversation and collaboration between city departments, our local nonprofits who are doing incredible things, and our local private businesses who have invested in this city. Most importantly, it will take a willingness for all of us to listen to each other and to respect each other, even when we disagree.”

Henderson is a Lynchburg native and local business owner. He opened the downtown restaurant The Water Dog in 2016 and since then has helped to grow multiple businesses that together employ more than 100 people and contribute to the downtown economy, according to Lynchburg Better Together. 

He worked across the country in corporate finance before returning to the Hill City about a decade ago. He holds numerous community leadership positions with the Lynchburg Planning Commission, the Downtown Lynchburg Association’s board, Lynchburg Grows’ board and other organizations. 

“We can disagree and still solve problems. We can ask hard questions and still treat people with respect. We can expect more from our government and from ourselves,” he said of his vision for how the new city council members will work together.

Marshall has called Central Virginia home his entire life and recently retired from a 40-year career at BWXT. His roles there involved strategic planning, human resource management and community partnerships, according to Lynchburg Better Together.

He has served on numerous local boards including those of Big Brothers Big Sisters, United Way, the University of Lynchburg and Johnson Health Center. He’s extended his leadership commonwealth-wide in roles on the State Board for Community Colleges and workforce development boards. He also serves as treasurer, trustee, deacon and Sunday school teacher at his church.

“We worked hard those 10 months and talked to so many people — teachers and city workers and police officers and so many other folks — and really learned a lot about what’s going on in the community,” Marshall said of the campaign journey since January. “So I think that we are in the right place, in the right time, with the right folks to really make a difference.”

The post After nationwide blue wave, Democrats who won Lynchburg City Council seats say flip was about perspective, not party appeared first on Cardinal News.

The Lynchburg City Council turned blue Tuesday night, like the U.S. House and Senate and multiple state legislative chambers and governor’s offices. The Democrats who won in the Hill City said the flip was more about a vision for the community than affiliation with a party. 

“I don’t think that this is historic in terms of ‘Oh, it was Republican, and now it’s Democrat,’” Christina Delzingaro, one of the winners, said at a press conference Wednesday. “I think it’s historic in the swing from being negative, looking backward, to being positive and looking forward; being exclusive and divisive, to being inclusive and caring and kind.”

Each of the winners — Delzingaro, Dave Henderson and Nat Marshall — tallied more than 12,000 votes, according to unofficial results from the state Department of Elections. There is a more than 4,000-vote gap between the third- and fourth-place finishers. Provisional votes had not yet been counted, as of Wednesday afternoon. 

The Democratic slate flipped the three at-large council seats formerly held by Republicans, Mayor Larry Taylor, Marty Misjuns and Stephanie Reed, who all ran for reelection. Tuesday’s vote ended what was a 6-1 Republican majority on council, which was often seen as divided by GOP infighting.

Delzingaro, Henderson and Marshall campaigned on bringing civility and collaboration back to city hall. 

“I think that is the shift that was made: not between party, but between outlook of what we think this community can be, outlook about how we treat each other, and outlook as to where we can be in the future,” Delzingaro said. 

The shift starts with making sure that all Lynchburg residents feel represented by the new at-large members, Henderson said at the press conference.

“To everyone who voted for someone else: I will work to earn your trust. I will listen to you, and I will remember every day that serving the city means serving you too,” he said. 

Sterling Wilder, the sole current Democratic city council member, said at the press conference that he’s looking forward to working with the new members toward “putting the interest of the people first — not about politics or about agendas, but the people of Lynchburg need to be put first.” 

The new city council members will join the dais in January. In the meantime, they said they plan to get caught up to speed on existing city plans and policies, build relationships with city leaders and sharpen their vision for the future. Central priorities include the city schools, affordable housing, public transportation and city employee morale and retention, the winners said at the press conference.  

Nine candidates were on the ballot this year, including two rival slates of candidates seeking the Republican vote: Misjuns was joined by Veronica Bratton on one team, and Taylor and Reed were joined by Chris Boswell on the other. There were no official Republican candidates this year, in the aftermath of a nullified nomination process. Independent candidate Eli “Shawn Hunter” Rybinni also ran.

Taylor, Reed and Boswell issued a press release late Tuesday night to congratulate the Democratic winners and “thank them for running a professional and respectful campaign,” which “reflects the best of Lynchburg and serves as an example of how political opponents should conduct themselves.”

“While tonight’s results were not what we had hoped for, we are incredibly proud of the race we ran and the campaign we built together. Clearly, Republicans across the country did not have the night we were hoping for, but we remain grateful for the opportunity to stand firm for the people of Lynchburg and the principles we believe in,” the press release states. 

Marshall said the Democratic slate went into Tuesday feeling “guardedly optimistic,” knowing that Republican voters’ ballots would be divided among five candidates. Even so, the Democratic candidates worked to ensure they were connecting with residents across the community, and not just “preaching to the choir.”

“I think it’s proven that we were preaching to the congregation,” he said, now seeing the vote gap between the Democratic finishers and others on the ballot.

Now that Democrats have a majority on the city council, Marshall said, one of them will likely be voted in as mayor. The members-elect said they have not yet decided who the mayor should be. 

Henderson encouraged “everyone who found their voice in this campaign” to keep using it by attending city council meetings, helping their neighbors, being involved with the school system, and holding the new city council members accountable. Volunteers participated in election preparations through an organization called Lynchburg Better Together, a local initiative partnered with Rural GroundGame, an organization that supports Democratic campaigns, committees and community leaders.

“The energy that brought us here has a place in the work ahead,” he said.

Meet the new city council members

Delzingaro is a founder and the CEO of Community Access Network, which provides accessible primary care and wellness services for tens of thousands of Lynchburg residents each year. She oversees the organization’s $16 million budget and staff of 75.

Her experience with strategic planning, budget management, workforce leadership, and collaboration with local governments, healthcare providers, nonprofit partners and community stakeholders prepares her for service on the city council, according to her bio on Lynchburg Better Together’s website. She first got to know Lynchburg in 1980 as a student at what was then Randolph-Macon Woman’s College and moved back to the Hill City about a dozen years ago.

“It’s going to take making difficult decisions, supporting our city staff and holding them accountable, making sure that every public dollar is invested wisely and results in a real return on investment,” Delzingaro said of her new role as a city council member. “It’ll take not just hard work, but conversation and collaboration between city departments, our local nonprofits who are doing incredible things, and our local private businesses who have invested in this city. Most importantly, it will take a willingness for all of us to listen to each other and to respect each other, even when we disagree.”

Henderson is a Lynchburg native and local business owner. He opened the downtown restaurant The Water Dog in 2016 and since then has helped to grow multiple businesses that together employ more than 100 people and contribute to the downtown economy, according to Lynchburg Better Together. 

He worked across the country in corporate finance before returning to the Hill City about a decade ago. He holds numerous community leadership positions with the Lynchburg Planning Commission, the Downtown Lynchburg Association’s board, Lynchburg Grows’ board and other organizations. 

“We can disagree and still solve problems. We can ask hard questions and still treat people with respect. We can expect more from our government and from ourselves,” he said of his vision for how the new city council members will work together.

Marshall has called Central Virginia home his entire life and recently retired from a 40-year career at BWXT. His roles there involved strategic planning, human resource management and community partnerships, according to Lynchburg Better Together.

He has served on numerous local boards including those of Big Brothers Big Sisters, United Way, the University of Lynchburg and Johnson Health Center. He’s extended his leadership commonwealth-wide in roles on the State Board for Community Colleges and workforce development boards. He also serves as treasurer, trustee, deacon and Sunday school teacher at his church.

“We worked hard those 10 months and talked to so many people — teachers and city workers and police officers and so many other folks — and really learned a lot about what’s going on in the community,” Marshall said of the campaign journey since January. “So I think that we are in the right place, in the right time, with the right folks to really make a difference.”

The post After nationwide blue wave, Democrats who won Lynchburg City Council seats say flip was about perspective, not party appeared first on Cardinal News.

Twenty years ago, voters in Goochland County went to the polls and voted for Republicans up and down the line — for U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives. They also voted in favor of an amendment to the state constitution that banned same-sex marriage.

This year, voters from Goochland again went to the polls and once again voted for Republicans for the Senate and the House — but then they did something else. They voted for two constitutional amendments that Republicans have generally opposed. They approved Amendment 2, which repealed the ban on same-sex marriage that Goochland voters had helped enact in 2006, and instead guaranteed the right to such a union. They also voted in favor of Amendment 1, which guarantees the right to an abortion and addresses other reproductive health matters. Only on Amendment 3, which automatically restores civil rights to convicted felons after their sentence is served, did Goochland voters stick with the standard Republican line and vote no.

Goochland was unusual, but not unique: Voters in Clarke County and Rappahannock County also backed the Republican candidates for Senate and House and then voted in favor of the same two amendments. Like Goochland, Clarke and Rappahanock had favored a ban on same-sex marriage in 2006; this year, a majority of voters in those counties voted to guarantee that as a constitutional right in Virginia.

Then there were four other counties that backed Republican candidates but still voted for Amendment 1 on abortion — and came reasonably close to approving Amendment 2 on same-sex marriage: Frederick County, Isle of Wight County, Orange County and Westmoreland County.

Finally, there were other localities that supported a Republican candidate for the U.S. House — even in a bad Republican year — but still supported one or more of the constitutional amendments. Lancaster County and York County backed Republican Rob Wittman for Congress, but then voted in favor of Amendments 1 and 2. Accomack County and Essex County backed Republican candidates for the House and then voted for Amendment 1. Chesapeake appears to be the only locality that backed a Republican candidate for the House and then voted for all three amendments.

Political campaigns are often won or lost around the margins; these localities were the ones at the margin of some fascinating trends Tuesday. We have seen in other states that when measures to guarantee abortion rights are on the ballot, they win support in some otherwise Republican-voting places. That was certainly the case in Virginia. The same-sex marriage amendment was fascinating in a different way: It gives us a chance to measure how much attitudes have changed in 20 years. There are likely many Virginians who voted for a ban on same-sex marriage in 2006 who in 2026 changed their minds and voted to guarantee that as a right. With a secret ballot, we can’t measure that exactly, but we can document which localities changed their minds, and by how much. Two decades ago, 57.1% of Virginians backed a constitutional ban; on Tuesday, 57.38% backed a constitutional right. In historical terms, that’s a pretty dramatic pivot.

When we look deeper into the numbers, here’s what we find:

Amendment 1: This was the most popular thing on the statewide ballot

As of Wednesday, there are still 35,502 early votes yet to be counted, plus provisional ballots (many of which are in yes-voting Democratic college towns) and whatever mail ballots still come in (these are typically less than 1% of the totals and are statistically insignificant). That’s my cautionary note that all these are unofficial numbers and will remain so until the Department of Elections certifies them next month.

Nonetheless, it’s clear that the “yes” vote on the reproductive health/abortion amendment was the most popular thing on the ballot. The current tallies show 2,181,695 votes for “yes.” For comparison, there were 2,168,802 votes for Democrat Mark Warner in the Senate race. If we assume (probably incorrectly) that every Warner supporter voted yes, that still leaves 12,893 voters who didn’t vote for Warner but voted yes. Another way to look at this: The Republican Senate candidate, Bert Mizusawa, received 1,373,583 votes while the “no” side on Amendment 1 took 1,315,441 votes. That means there were at least 58,142 Republican voters who didn’t vote no.

That may not seem like a lot in the context of an election where more than 3.5 million votes were cast, but when we look at the county level, things become more curious.

Let’s go back to Goochland County, where we started. John McGuire, the Republican incumbent in the 5th District congressional seat, led the balloting there with 9,542 votes — not surprising since that’s his home county. Democrat Tom Perriello took 7,693 votes.

Meanwhile, Amendment 1 passed in Goochland with 9,163 yes votes to 8,315 no votes. That means 1,227 people backed McGuire but did not support his position in opposition to Amendment 1. That’s 13.3% of his voters in his home county. Using the same math, 15.7% of Republican Ben Cline’s voters in Clarke County did not support his “no” position on Amendment 1. In Virginia Beach (which voted Democratic for Senate and House, then voted yes on all three amendments), it appears that almost 20% of those who backed Republican Jen Kiggans did not vote no on Amendment 1.

Another remarkable result came out of Lynchburg: The city that’s home to Liberty University voted narrowly in favor of Amendment 1.

Amendment 2: Virginians changed their mind on same-sex marriage

In 2006, Roanoke backed the ban on same-sex marriage: 54.4% of those casting ballots voted in favor of the constitutional amendment. This year, 66.21% voted to repeal that ban and guarantee the right to a same-sex marriage. Perhaps that shouldn’t be surprising. Roanoke is a solidly Democratic city. It also has a mayor in a same-sex marriage.

The election map on the marriage amendment looks much like a standard election map in Virginia, with Democratic localities voting yes and Republican localities voting no. On closer inspection, though, we see some interesting differences. Clarke, Goochland, Rappahannock and York counties voted for Republican candidates but in favor of Amendment 2. The tallies there were often very close — in Rappahannock the yes side took 50.53%, in Goochland 50.87%, Clarke 51.8%, making York look like a runaway at 52.63%. Still, they delivered split results.

In places that voted no, the no vote was often strong — but not quite as strong as two decades ago. In 2006, the loudest votes against same-sex marriage came out of Buchanan County; 89.9% there backed the ban then. This time, 84.79% rejected the amendment. Some places have clearly changed their minds more than others. In general, it’s metro areas and some rural areas adjacent to them that have seen the biggest switch. Many rural areas haven’t budged at all and some, mostly around Lynchburg, saw more opposition to the measure this year than in 2006.

This map illustrates the size of the shift in views from 2006 to 2026, as measured by the change in what percentage favored same-sex marriage each year:

You’ll notice that some localities shift views a lot, while others have not. The single biggest shift is in Manassas Park, which saw a shift of 31.57 percentage points toward allowing same-sex marriage. Manassas and Prince William County were both in the 20-percentage point range; so were Chesapeake, Danville, Harrisonburg and Staunton. In general, the biggest shifts were in the fastest-growing communities, which means those changes in attitude played an even bigger role in the election.

There is also a distinctive trend in some Southside localities. Danville gave large vote shares to Democratic candidates (68.4% to Warner in the Senate race, 64.66% to Tom Perriello in his House race). In most places, the “yes” side on Amendment 1 ran ahead of the Democratic candidates. Here, it ran below, although not that much, at 62.77%. Amendment 3 also ran stronger here, with 59.51% yes. But Amendment 2 failed, mustering just 48.36% of the vote. That was up from 26.0% two decades ago, but still not a majority. We see the same pattern in Charles City County, Emporia and Greensville County — yes to the Democrats, yes to Amendments 1 and 3 not but Amendment 2. These are the only localities with this voting pattern.

Amendment 3: A more predictable voting pattern

This map looks more like a traditional Democrat/Republican election map, in a strong Democratic year. There are some swing localities that went for this amendment, such as Chesapeake, Prince Edward County and Spotsylvania County.

Here’s something interesting: Amendment 2 and Amendment 3 got almost the same vote share statewide. The marriage amendment won with 57.39%, and the restoration of rights amendment won with 56.47%. Beneath the surface, though, there was a lot of ticket-splitting.

In much of Southwest Virginia, the no vote on Amendment 3 ran about 5 percentage points lower than Amendment 2. In some parts of the urban crescent, such as Fairfax County and Virginia Beach, the no side ran stronger on Amendment 3 than Amendment 2 by a few percentage points — meaning the support for restoration of rights there was a little weaker than the support for same-sex marriage. In eastern Southside, though, the support for restoration of rights was distinctly higher than the support for same-sex marriage. In Brunswick County, Amendment 2 passed with 50.09%, but Amendment 3 passed with 56.48%. In Suffolk, Amendment 2 passed with 54.14%, but Amendment 3 passed with 60.42%. And then there were Greensville County and Emporia, cited above, that voted no on Amendment 2 but yes on Amendment 3 (admittedly, barely).

Elections are a kind of personality test and referendums are interesting because they deal purely with an issue, with no complications about how you might feel about a particular candidate, good or bad. These results give us new clues into Virginia’s personality, how it’s changed over the years and how it differs from one part of the state to another.

You like election numbers? We’ll serve up even more this week in West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter that comes out on Friday afternoons. Sign up here:

The post Many Republicans opposed all three amendments, but the measures passed in some Republican localities anyway appeared first on Cardinal News.

Twenty years ago, voters in Goochland County went to the polls and voted for Republicans up and down the line — for U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives. They also voted in favor of an amendment to the state constitution that banned same-sex marriage.

This year, voters from Goochland again went to the polls and once again voted for Republicans for the Senate and the House — but then they did something else. They voted for two constitutional amendments that Republicans have generally opposed. They approved Amendment 2, which repealed the ban on same-sex marriage that Goochland voters had helped enact in 2006, and instead guaranteed the right to such a union. They also voted in favor of Amendment 1, which guarantees the right to an abortion and addresses other reproductive health matters. Only on Amendment 3, which automatically restores civil rights to convicted felons after their sentence is served, did Goochland voters stick with the standard Republican line and vote no.

Goochland was unusual, but not unique: Voters in Clarke County and Rappahannock County also backed the Republican candidates for Senate and House and then voted in favor of the same two amendments. Like Goochland, Clarke and Rappahanock had favored a ban on same-sex marriage in 2006; this year, a majority of voters in those counties voted to guarantee that as a constitutional right in Virginia.

Then there were four other counties that backed Republican candidates but still voted for Amendment 1 on abortion — and came reasonably close to approving Amendment 2 on same-sex marriage: Frederick County, Isle of Wight County, Orange County and Westmoreland County.

Finally, there were other localities that supported a Republican candidate for the U.S. House — even in a bad Republican year — but still supported one or more of the constitutional amendments. Lancaster County and York County backed Republican Rob Wittman for Congress, but then voted in favor of Amendments 1 and 2. Accomack County and Essex County backed Republican candidates for the House and then voted for Amendment 1. Chesapeake appears to be the only locality that backed a Republican candidate for the House and then voted for all three amendments.

Political campaigns are often won or lost around the margins; these localities were the ones at the margin of some fascinating trends Tuesday. We have seen in other states that when measures to guarantee abortion rights are on the ballot, they win support in some otherwise Republican-voting places. That was certainly the case in Virginia. The same-sex marriage amendment was fascinating in a different way: It gives us a chance to measure how much attitudes have changed in 20 years. There are likely many Virginians who voted for a ban on same-sex marriage in 2006 who in 2026 changed their minds and voted to guarantee that as a right. With a secret ballot, we can’t measure that exactly, but we can document which localities changed their minds, and by how much. Two decades ago, 57.1% of Virginians backed a constitutional ban; on Tuesday, 57.38% backed a constitutional right. In historical terms, that’s a pretty dramatic pivot.

When we look deeper into the numbers, here’s what we find:

Amendment 1: This was the most popular thing on the statewide ballot

As of Wednesday, there are still 35,502 early votes yet to be counted, plus provisional ballots (many of which are in yes-voting Democratic college towns) and whatever mail ballots still come in (these are typically less than 1% of the totals and are statistically insignificant). That’s my cautionary note that all these are unofficial numbers and will remain so until the Department of Elections certifies them next month.

Nonetheless, it’s clear that the “yes” vote on the reproductive health/abortion amendment was the most popular thing on the ballot. The current tallies show 2,181,695 votes for “yes.” For comparison, there were 2,168,802 votes for Democrat Mark Warner in the Senate race. If we assume (probably incorrectly) that every Warner supporter voted yes, that still leaves 12,893 voters who didn’t vote for Warner but voted yes. Another way to look at this: The Republican Senate candidate, Bert Mizusawa, received 1,373,583 votes while the “no” side on Amendment 1 took 1,315,441 votes. That means there were at least 58,142 Republican voters who didn’t vote no.

That may not seem like a lot in the context of an election where more than 3.5 million votes were cast, but when we look at the county level, things become more curious.

Let’s go back to Goochland County, where we started. John McGuire, the Republican incumbent in the 5th District congressional seat, led the balloting there with 9,542 votes — not surprising since that’s his home county. Democrat Tom Perriello took 7,693 votes.

Meanwhile, Amendment 1 passed in Goochland with 9,163 yes votes to 8,315 no votes. That means 1,227 people backed McGuire but did not support his position in opposition to Amendment 1. That’s 13.3% of his voters in his home county. Using the same math, 15.7% of Republican Ben Cline’s voters in Clarke County did not support his “no” position on Amendment 1. In Virginia Beach (which voted Democratic for Senate and House, then voted yes on all three amendments), it appears that almost 20% of those who backed Republican Jen Kiggans did not vote no on Amendment 1.

Another remarkable result came out of Lynchburg: The city that’s home to Liberty University voted narrowly in favor of Amendment 1.

Amendment 2: Virginians changed their mind on same-sex marriage

In 2006, Roanoke backed the ban on same-sex marriage: 54.4% of those casting ballots voted in favor of the constitutional amendment. This year, 66.21% voted to repeal that ban and guarantee the right to a same-sex marriage. Perhaps that shouldn’t be surprising. Roanoke is a solidly Democratic city. It also has a mayor in a same-sex marriage.

The election map on the marriage amendment looks much like a standard election map in Virginia, with Democratic localities voting yes and Republican localities voting no. On closer inspection, though, we see some interesting differences. Clarke, Goochland, Rappahannock and York counties voted for Republican candidates but in favor of Amendment 2. The tallies there were often very close — in Rappahannock the yes side took 50.53%, in Goochland 50.87%, Clarke 51.8%, making York look like a runaway at 52.63%. Still, they delivered split results.

In places that voted no, the no vote was often strong — but not quite as strong as two decades ago. In 2006, the loudest votes against same-sex marriage came out of Buchanan County; 89.9% there backed the ban then. This time, 84.79% rejected the amendment. Some places have clearly changed their minds more than others. In general, it’s metro areas and some rural areas adjacent to them that have seen the biggest switch. Many rural areas haven’t budged at all and some, mostly around Lynchburg, saw more opposition to the measure this year than in 2006.

This map illustrates the size of the shift in views from 2006 to 2026, as measured by the change in what percentage favored same-sex marriage each year:

You’ll notice that some localities shift views a lot, while others have not. The single biggest shift is in Manassas Park, which saw a shift of 31.57 percentage points toward allowing same-sex marriage. Manassas and Prince William County were both in the 20-percentage point range; so were Chesapeake, Danville, Harrisonburg and Staunton. In general, the biggest shifts were in the fastest-growing communities, which means those changes in attitude played an even bigger role in the election.

There is also a distinctive trend in some Southside localities. Danville gave large vote shares to Democratic candidates (68.4% to Warner in the Senate race, 64.66% to Tom Perriello in his House race). In most places, the “yes” side on Amendment 1 ran ahead of the Democratic candidates. Here, it ran below, although not that much, at 62.77%. Amendment 3 also ran stronger here, with 59.51% yes. But Amendment 2 failed, mustering just 48.36% of the vote. That was up from 26.0% two decades ago, but still not a majority. We see the same pattern in Charles City County, Emporia and Greensville County — yes to the Democrats, yes to Amendments 1 and 3 not but Amendment 2. These are the only localities with this voting pattern.

Amendment 3: A more predictable voting pattern

This map looks more like a traditional Democrat/Republican election map, in a strong Democratic year. There are some swing localities that went for this amendment, such as Chesapeake, Prince Edward County and Spotsylvania County.

Here’s something interesting: Amendment 2 and Amendment 3 got almost the same vote share statewide. The marriage amendment won with 57.39%, and the restoration of rights amendment won with 56.47%. Beneath the surface, though, there was a lot of ticket-splitting.

In much of Southwest Virginia, the no vote on Amendment 3 ran about 5 percentage points lower than Amendment 2. In some parts of the urban crescent, such as Fairfax County and Virginia Beach, the no side ran stronger on Amendment 3 than Amendment 2 by a few percentage points — meaning the support for restoration of rights there was a little weaker than the support for same-sex marriage. In eastern Southside, though, the support for restoration of rights was distinctly higher than the support for same-sex marriage. In Brunswick County, Amendment 2 passed with 50.09%, but Amendment 3 passed with 56.48%. In Suffolk, Amendment 2 passed with 54.14%, but Amendment 3 passed with 60.42%. And then there were Greensville County and Emporia, cited above, that voted no on Amendment 2 but yes on Amendment 3 (admittedly, barely).

Elections are a kind of personality test and referendums are interesting because they deal purely with an issue, with no complications about how you might feel about a particular candidate, good or bad. These results give us new clues into Virginia’s personality, how it’s changed over the years and how it differs from one part of the state to another.

You like election numbers? We’ll serve up even more this week in West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter that comes out on Friday afternoons. Sign up here:

The post Many Republicans opposed all three amendments, but the measures passed in some Republican localities anyway appeared first on Cardinal News.

Twenty years ago, voters in Goochland County went to the polls and voted for Republicans up and down the line — for U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives. They also voted in favor of an amendment to the state constitution that banned same-sex marriage.

This year, voters from Goochland again went to the polls and once again voted for Republicans for the Senate and the House — but then they did something else. They voted for two constitutional amendments that Republicans have generally opposed. They approved Amendment 2, which repealed the ban on same-sex marriage that Goochland voters had helped enact in 2006, and instead guaranteed the right to such a union. They also voted in favor of Amendment 1, which guarantees the right to an abortion and addresses other reproductive health matters. Only on Amendment 3, which automatically restores civil rights to convicted felons after their sentence is served, did Goochland voters stick with the standard Republican line and vote no.

Goochland was unusual, but not unique: Voters in Clarke County and Rappahannock County also backed the Republican candidates for Senate and House and then voted in favor of the same two amendments. Like Goochland, Clarke and Rappahanock had favored a ban on same-sex marriage in 2006; this year, a majority of voters in those counties voted to guarantee that as a constitutional right in Virginia.

Then there were four other counties that backed Republican candidates but still voted for Amendment 1 on abortion — and came reasonably close to approving Amendment 2 on same-sex marriage: Frederick County, Isle of Wight County, Orange County and Westmoreland County.

Finally, there were other localities that supported a Republican candidate for the U.S. House — even in a bad Republican year — but still supported one or more of the constitutional amendments. Lancaster County and York County backed Republican Rob Wittman for Congress, but then voted in favor of Amendments 1 and 2. Accomack County and Essex County backed Republican candidates for the House and then voted for Amendment 1. Chesapeake appears to be the only locality that backed a Republican candidate for the House and then voted for all three amendments.

Political campaigns are often won or lost around the margins; these localities were the ones at the margin of some fascinating trends Tuesday. We have seen in other states that when measures to guarantee abortion rights are on the ballot, they win support in some otherwise Republican-voting places. That was certainly the case in Virginia. The same-sex marriage amendment was fascinating in a different way: It gives us a chance to measure how much attitudes have changed in 20 years. There are likely many Virginians who voted for a ban on same-sex marriage in 2006 who in 2026 changed their minds and voted to guarantee that as a right. With a secret ballot, we can’t measure that exactly, but we can document which localities changed their minds, and by how much. Two decades ago, 57.1% of Virginians backed a constitutional ban; on Tuesday, 57.38% backed a constitutional right. In historical terms, that’s a pretty dramatic pivot.

When we look deeper into the numbers, here’s what we find:

Amendment 1: This was the most popular thing on the statewide ballot

As of Wednesday, there are still 35,502 early votes yet to be counted, plus provisional ballots (many of which are in yes-voting Democratic college towns) and whatever mail ballots still come in (these are typically less than 1% of the totals and are statistically insignificant). That’s my cautionary note that all these are unofficial numbers and will remain so until the Department of Elections certifies them next month.

Nonetheless, it’s clear that the “yes” vote on the reproductive health/abortion amendment was the most popular thing on the ballot. The current tallies show 2,181,695 votes for “yes.” For comparison, there were 2,168,802 votes for Democrat Mark Warner in the Senate race. If we assume (probably incorrectly) that every Warner supporter voted yes, that still leaves 12,893 voters who didn’t vote for Warner but voted yes. Another way to look at this: The Republican Senate candidate, Bert Mizusawa, received 1,373,583 votes while the “no” side on Amendment 1 took 1,315,441 votes. That means there were at least 58,142 Republican voters who didn’t vote no.

That may not seem like a lot in the context of an election where more than 3.5 million votes were cast, but when we look at the county level, things become more curious.

Let’s go back to Goochland County, where we started. John McGuire, the Republican incumbent in the 5th District congressional seat, led the balloting there with 9,542 votes — not surprising since that’s his home county. Democrat Tom Perriello took 7,693 votes.

Meanwhile, Amendment 1 passed in Goochland with 9,163 yes votes to 8,315 no votes. That means 1,227 people backed McGuire but did not support his position in opposition to Amendment 1. That’s 13.3% of his voters in his home county. Using the same math, 15.7% of Republican Ben Cline’s voters in Clarke County did not support his “no” position on Amendment 1. In Virginia Beach (which voted Democratic for Senate and House, then voted yes on all three amendments), it appears that almost 20% of those who backed Republican Jen Kiggans did not vote no on Amendment 1.

Another remarkable result came out of Lynchburg: The city that’s home to Liberty University voted narrowly in favor of Amendment 1.

Amendment 2: Virginians changed their mind on same-sex marriage

In 2006, Roanoke backed the ban on same-sex marriage: 54.4% of those casting ballots voted in favor of the constitutional amendment. This year, 66.21% voted to repeal that ban and guarantee the right to a same-sex marriage. Perhaps that shouldn’t be surprising. Roanoke is a solidly Democratic city. It also has a mayor in a same-sex marriage.

The election map on the marriage amendment looks much like a standard election map in Virginia, with Democratic localities voting yes and Republican localities voting no. On closer inspection, though, we see some interesting differences. Clarke, Goochland, Rappahannock and York counties voted for Republican candidates but in favor of Amendment 2. The tallies there were often very close — in Rappahannock the yes side took 50.53%, in Goochland 50.87%, Clarke 51.8%, making York look like a runaway at 52.63%. Still, they delivered split results.

In places that voted no, the no vote was often strong — but not quite as strong as two decades ago. In 2006, the loudest votes against same-sex marriage came out of Buchanan County; 89.9% there backed the ban then. This time, 84.79% rejected the amendment. Some places have clearly changed their minds more than others. In general, it’s metro areas and some rural areas adjacent to them that have seen the biggest switch. Many rural areas haven’t budged at all and some, mostly around Lynchburg, saw more opposition to the measure this year than in 2006.

This map illustrates the size of the shift in views from 2006 to 2026, as measured by the change in what percentage favored same-sex marriage each year:

You’ll notice that some localities shift views a lot, while others have not. The single biggest shift is in Manassas Park, which saw a shift of 31.57 percentage points toward allowing same-sex marriage. Manassas and Prince William County were both in the 20-percentage point range; so were Chesapeake, Danville, Harrisonburg and Staunton. In general, the biggest shifts were in the fastest-growing communities, which means those changes in attitude played an even bigger role in the election.

There is also a distinctive trend in some Southside localities. Danville gave large vote shares to Democratic candidates (68.4% to Warner in the Senate race, 64.66% to Tom Perriello in his House race). In most places, the “yes” side on Amendment 1 ran ahead of the Democratic candidates. Here, it ran below, although not that much, at 62.77%. Amendment 3 also ran stronger here, with 59.51% yes. But Amendment 2 failed, mustering just 48.36% of the vote. That was up from 26.0% two decades ago, but still not a majority. We see the same pattern in Charles City County, Emporia and Greensville County — yes to the Democrats, yes to Amendments 1 and 3 not but Amendment 2. These are the only localities with this voting pattern.

Amendment 3: A more predictable voting pattern

This map looks more like a traditional Democrat/Republican election map, in a strong Democratic year. There are some swing localities that went for this amendment, such as Chesapeake, Prince Edward County and Spotsylvania County.

Here’s something interesting: Amendment 2 and Amendment 3 got almost the same vote share statewide. The marriage amendment won with 57.39%, and the restoration of rights amendment won with 56.47%. Beneath the surface, though, there was a lot of ticket-splitting.

In much of Southwest Virginia, the no vote on Amendment 3 ran about 5 percentage points lower than Amendment 2. In some parts of the urban crescent, such as Fairfax County and Virginia Beach, the no side ran stronger on Amendment 3 than Amendment 2 by a few percentage points — meaning the support for restoration of rights there was a little weaker than the support for same-sex marriage. In eastern Southside, though, the support for restoration of rights was distinctly higher than the support for same-sex marriage. In Brunswick County, Amendment 2 passed with 50.09%, but Amendment 3 passed with 56.48%. In Suffolk, Amendment 2 passed with 54.14%, but Amendment 3 passed with 60.42%. And then there were Greensville County and Emporia, cited above, that voted no on Amendment 2 but yes on Amendment 3 (admittedly, barely).

Elections are a kind of personality test and referendums are interesting because they deal purely with an issue, with no complications about how you might feel about a particular candidate, good or bad. These results give us new clues into Virginia’s personality, how it’s changed over the years and how it differs from one part of the state to another.

You like election numbers? We’ll serve up even more this week in West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter that comes out on Friday afternoons. Sign up here:

The post Many Republicans opposed all three amendments, but the measures passed in some Republican localities anyway appeared first on Cardinal News.

Twenty years ago, voters in Goochland County went to the polls and voted for Republicans up and down the line — for U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives. They also voted in favor of an amendment to the state constitution that banned same-sex marriage.

This year, voters from Goochland again went to the polls and once again voted for Republicans for the Senate and the House — but then they did something else. They voted for two constitutional amendments that Republicans have generally opposed. They approved Amendment 2, which repealed the ban on same-sex marriage that Goochland voters had helped enact in 2006, and instead guaranteed the right to such a union. They also voted in favor of Amendment 1, which guarantees the right to an abortion and addresses other reproductive health matters. Only on Amendment 3, which automatically restores civil rights to convicted felons after their sentence is served, did Goochland voters stick with the standard Republican line and vote no.

Goochland was unusual, but not unique: Voters in Clarke County and Rappahannock County also backed the Republican candidates for Senate and House and then voted in favor of the same two amendments. Like Goochland, Clarke and Rappahanock had favored a ban on same-sex marriage in 2006; this year, a majority of voters in those counties voted to guarantee that as a constitutional right in Virginia.

Then there were four other counties that backed Republican candidates but still voted for Amendment 1 on abortion — and came reasonably close to approving Amendment 2 on same-sex marriage: Frederick County, Isle of Wight County, Orange County and Westmoreland County.

Finally, there were other localities that supported a Republican candidate for the U.S. House — even in a bad Republican year — but still supported one or more of the constitutional amendments. Lancaster County and York County backed Republican Rob Wittman for Congress, but then voted in favor of Amendments 1 and 2. Accomack County and Essex County backed Republican candidates for the House and then voted for Amendment 1. Chesapeake appears to be the only locality that backed a Republican candidate for the House and then voted for all three amendments.

Political campaigns are often won or lost around the margins; these localities were the ones at the margin of some fascinating trends Tuesday. We have seen in other states that when measures to guarantee abortion rights are on the ballot, they win support in some otherwise Republican-voting places. That was certainly the case in Virginia. The same-sex marriage amendment was fascinating in a different way: It gives us a chance to measure how much attitudes have changed in 20 years. There are likely many Virginians who voted for a ban on same-sex marriage in 2006 who in 2026 changed their minds and voted to guarantee that as a right. With a secret ballot, we can’t measure that exactly, but we can document which localities changed their minds, and by how much. Two decades ago, 57.1% of Virginians backed a constitutional ban; on Tuesday, 57.38% backed a constitutional right. In historical terms, that’s a pretty dramatic pivot.

When we look deeper into the numbers, here’s what we find:

Amendment 1: This was the most popular thing on the statewide ballot

As of Wednesday, there are still 35,502 early votes yet to be counted, plus provisional ballots (many of which are in yes-voting Democratic college towns) and whatever mail ballots still come in (these are typically less than 1% of the totals and are statistically insignificant). That’s my cautionary note that all these are unofficial numbers and will remain so until the Department of Elections certifies them next month.

Nonetheless, it’s clear that the “yes” vote on the reproductive health/abortion amendment was the most popular thing on the ballot. The current tallies show 2,181,695 votes for “yes.” For comparison, there were 2,168,802 votes for Democrat Mark Warner in the Senate race. If we assume (probably incorrectly) that every Warner supporter voted yes, that still leaves 12,893 voters who didn’t vote for Warner but voted yes. Another way to look at this: The Republican Senate candidate, Bert Mizusawa, received 1,373,583 votes while the “no” side on Amendment 1 took 1,315,441 votes. That means there were at least 58,142 Republican voters who didn’t vote no.

That may not seem like a lot in the context of an election where more than 3.5 million votes were cast, but when we look at the county level, things become more curious.

Let’s go back to Goochland County, where we started. John McGuire, the Republican incumbent in the 5th District congressional seat, led the balloting there with 9,542 votes — not surprising since that’s his home county. Democrat Tom Perriello took 7,693 votes.

Meanwhile, Amendment 1 passed in Goochland with 9,163 yes votes to 8,315 no votes. That means 1,227 people backed McGuire but did not support his position in opposition to Amendment 1. That’s 13.3% of his voters in his home county. Using the same math, 15.7% of Republican Ben Cline’s voters in Clarke County did not support his “no” position on Amendment 1. In Virginia Beach (which voted Democratic for Senate and House, then voted yes on all three amendments), it appears that almost 20% of those who backed Republican Jen Kiggans did not vote no on Amendment 1.

Another remarkable result came out of Lynchburg: The city that’s home to Liberty University voted narrowly in favor of Amendment 1.

Amendment 2: Virginians changed their mind on same-sex marriage

In 2006, Roanoke backed the ban on same-sex marriage: 54.4% of those casting ballots voted in favor of the constitutional amendment. This year, 66.21% voted to repeal that ban and guarantee the right to a same-sex marriage. Perhaps that shouldn’t be surprising. Roanoke is a solidly Democratic city. It also has a mayor in a same-sex marriage.

The election map on the marriage amendment looks much like a standard election map in Virginia, with Democratic localities voting yes and Republican localities voting no. On closer inspection, though, we see some interesting differences. Clarke, Goochland, Rappahannock and York counties voted for Republican candidates but in favor of Amendment 2. The tallies there were often very close — in Rappahannock the yes side took 50.53%, in Goochland 50.87%, Clarke 51.8%, making York look like a runaway at 52.63%. Still, they delivered split results.

In places that voted no, the no vote was often strong — but not quite as strong as two decades ago. In 2006, the loudest votes against same-sex marriage came out of Buchanan County; 89.9% there backed the ban then. This time, 84.79% rejected the amendment. Some places have clearly changed their minds more than others. In general, it’s metro areas and some rural areas adjacent to them that have seen the biggest switch. Many rural areas haven’t budged at all and some, mostly around Lynchburg, saw more opposition to the measure this year than in 2006.

This map illustrates the size of the shift in views from 2006 to 2026, as measured by the change in what percentage favored same-sex marriage each year:

You’ll notice that some localities shift views a lot, while others have not. The single biggest shift is in Manassas Park, which saw a shift of 31.57 percentage points toward allowing same-sex marriage. Manassas and Prince William County were both in the 20-percentage point range; so were Chesapeake, Danville, Harrisonburg and Staunton. In general, the biggest shifts were in the fastest-growing communities, which means those changes in attitude played an even bigger role in the election.

There is also a distinctive trend in some Southside localities. Danville gave large vote shares to Democratic candidates (68.4% to Warner in the Senate race, 64.66% to Tom Perriello in his House race). In most places, the “yes” side on Amendment 1 ran ahead of the Democratic candidates. Here, it ran below, although not that much, at 62.77%. Amendment 3 also ran stronger here, with 59.51% yes. But Amendment 2 failed, mustering just 48.36% of the vote. That was up from 26.0% two decades ago, but still not a majority. We see the same pattern in Charles City County, Emporia and Greensville County — yes to the Democrats, yes to Amendments 1 and 3 not but Amendment 2. These are the only localities with this voting pattern.

Amendment 3: A more predictable voting pattern

This map looks more like a traditional Democrat/Republican election map, in a strong Democratic year. There are some swing localities that went for this amendment, such as Chesapeake, Prince Edward County and Spotsylvania County.

Here’s something interesting: Amendment 2 and Amendment 3 got almost the same vote share statewide. The marriage amendment won with 57.39%, and the restoration of rights amendment won with 56.47%. Beneath the surface, though, there was a lot of ticket-splitting.

In much of Southwest Virginia, the no vote on Amendment 3 ran about 5 percentage points lower than Amendment 2. In some parts of the urban crescent, such as Fairfax County and Virginia Beach, the no side ran stronger on Amendment 3 than Amendment 2 by a few percentage points — meaning the support for restoration of rights there was a little weaker than the support for same-sex marriage. In eastern Southside, though, the support for restoration of rights was distinctly higher than the support for same-sex marriage. In Brunswick County, Amendment 2 passed with 50.09%, but Amendment 3 passed with 56.48%. In Suffolk, Amendment 2 passed with 54.14%, but Amendment 3 passed with 60.42%. And then there were Greensville County and Emporia, cited above, that voted no on Amendment 2 but yes on Amendment 3 (admittedly, barely).

Elections are a kind of personality test and referendums are interesting because they deal purely with an issue, with no complications about how you might feel about a particular candidate, good or bad. These results give us new clues into Virginia’s personality, how it’s changed over the years and how it differs from one part of the state to another.

You like election numbers? We’ll serve up even more this week in West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter that comes out on Friday afternoons. Sign up here:

The post Many Republicans opposed all three amendments, but the measures passed in some Republican localities anyway appeared first on Cardinal News.

Rep. John McGuire was out beside a road in Charlottesville early Wednesday morning, waving at commuters from behind a giant sign that read: “THANK YOU!”

The Republican congressman from the 5th District had what was, in political terms, a near-death experience: Running in a district that had been considered predictably Republican, he trailed much of the night as the returns came in, only to pull ahead at the end for what appears to be a victory.

The operative word there is “appears.” The major news organizations that “call” elections, such as The Associated Press, have yet to declare McGuire the winner over Democrat Tom Perriello. Those calls have no legal force — only the Virginia Department of Elections declares winners, and that won’t happen until next month when the paperwork is certified — but they do have a psychological impact.

Meanwhile, Perriello, in a statement emailed just after midnight Wednesday morning, said the race is “too close to call” and is waiting for a final accounting of provisional ballots in the district. Neither he nor his campaign responded to messages on Wednesday, but Perriello did post a message on social media: “I’m so appreciative of the incredible support we have received as we await the final results of our election. I’m filled with nothing but gratitude for all of the election officials and observers who are putting in overtime to make sure that every vote is counted across the 5th.”

So what’s the deal here? Has McGuire won? Is there a realistic shot that late ballots put Perriello over the top? Let’s look at the math — and history.

McGuire’s lead looks insurmountable

The Virginia Department of Elections says that with all the available ballots counted, the tally is:

John McGuire (R): 181,260 or 50.19%
Tom Perriello (D): 173,416 or 48.01%
Cooke Harvey (I): 5,791 or 1.60%

There are three important things to take note of here:

That’s a lead of 7,844 votes (this figure will become important shortly, just hang on).

That margin of 2.18 percentage points is well outside recount territory. Virginia law allows recounts if the margin is 1 percentage point or less — but the apparent loser has to pay unless the margin is within half a percentage point.

The figures do not include two types of ballots — provisional ballots and properly postmarked mail ballots that can be counted if they arrive by noon on Friday. (The theory is the same as with your tax return; you don’t need to get it to the IRS by April 15, you just need to mail it by then.)

Let’s dispense with the post-election mail ballots first. The number of these is always so small as to be statistically insignificant — a fraction of a percent, although when we’re talking about close elections, these fractions matter. Reality check: In the 2024 elections, there were just 1,931 post-election mail ballots in the 5th District. This year produced a similar number, and if they all went for Perriello, that still wouldn’t come close to erasing McGuire’s lead. In all of Virginia’s 11 congressional districts two years ago, only two districts had anywhere close to 7,844 post-election mail ballots: the 8th and 11th, both in Northern Virginia, where voters are more likely to cast mail ballots. In this year’s early voting, most congressional districts in Virginia cast more mail ballots than the 5th did. It’s not impossible that there will be some big mail dump of post-election ballots, but there is nothing in our history to suggest this is a realistic possibility.

As for provisional ballots, these are generally ballots cast by people who registered on Election Day and whose paperwork still has to be checked on. These are typically college students. Two years ago, there were 10,532 provisional ballots cast in the 5th District. However, contrary to some public perception, these provisional ballots are not overwhelmingly Democratic. In Democratic districts, they are. Generally, though, they reflect the overall leanings of that district. Two years ago, 56.3% of the provisional ballots cast in the 5th District race went to … McGuire. He got a 1,393-vote margin out of the provisionals that year.

That’s because two years ago the single biggest source of provisional ballots in the 5th District was Lynchburg — and the single biggest source of those Lynchburg provisionals is Third Ward Second Precinct, which is located at Liberty University. Even without the provisionals, this is a precinct that on Tuesday gave McGuire 94.05% of its votes.

NBC News reports there are approximately 8,500 votes yet to be accounted for, presumably provisionals. That seems a plausible number, given that the turnout this year was somewhere south of a presidential year. NBC News also does the math and reports that Perriello would need 98.2% of those votes to win. That seems unlikely, to put it mildly.

It’s unclear whether NBC’s math accounts for a lot of those provisionals coming out of the Liberty precinct. We know that the Liberty precinct this year had 1,236 same-day registrations. Based on experience, virtually all those votes will go to McGuire. Meanwhile, Charlottesville has 1,854 provisionals. Even if all the Liberty provisionals went to McGuire and all the Charlottesville provisionals went to Perriello, that still doesn’t reduce McGuire’s lead enough for Perriello.

There will be other provisionals in the district, but Charlottesville and Lynchburg are the two biggest metro areas. We never know what we don’t know, but it strains credulity to believe there are enough provisionals out there to make a difference.

The constitutional amendments do not appear to have made a difference

A lot of people — yours truly included — had wondered before the election if the constitutional amendments would make a difference in the 5th District race. In other words, would a big “no” vote on the amendments in rural counties have the effect of boosting McGuire?

It doesn’t look like it. While the amendments no doubt brought out some voters who wouldn’t have voted, and while it’s entirely possible that those “no” voters backed McGuire, it’s not evident from the numbers that this happened.

In most of the district’s localities, McGuire polled more votes than the “no” vote, which suggests that he was the one driving the turnout with some drop-off later on the ballot. There were some exceptions: In Lynchburg, the “no” vote on Amendment 1 outran McGuire by 857 votes. In Danville, the “no” ran 386 better than McGuire. However, in Mecklenburg County, McGuire ran 638 votes higher than the “no” vote. In Powhatan County, McGuire ran 1,469 votes ahead of “no.”

I suppose you could argue that without the amendments, those would have been the only votes McGuire would have received, but that doesn’t seem a realistic argument to me.

Instead, it looks to me that the 5th District is simply a hard district for a Democrat to win. Perriello ran a masterful campaign but simply ran out of places to squeeze votes out of. It’s a big drop-off to go from blue Albemarle County, where Perriello won 71.14% of the vote, to red Louisa County next door, where he took 41.53%. And there’s definitely a drop when you go from Lynchburg, which Perriello managed to carry with 51.24% of the vote, to Campbell County, where he took just 28.72%, and to Appomattox County, where he took just 26.57%.

Mathematically speaking, McGuire won because there are are strongly Republican counties around Lynchburg where he ran up margins that helped make up for Perriello’s margins in Albemarle, Charlottesville and Danville. In Campbell County, McGuire won by 9,733 votes. In Bedford County, which is mostly in the 9th District next door, McGuire took a margin of 6,547 votes out of the portion in the 5th. Those two counties alone gave him a margin of 16,280 votes; that was enough to wipe out Perriello’s 15,422-vote margin in Charlottesville. That margin will likely grow when the provisionals are counted but not by the amount Perriello needs.

Perriello is right: We need to count all the votes, but the math I see says McGuire will be going back to Washington for a second term.

The post Why the math favors incumbent GOP Rep. John McGuire as the 5th District race awaits the final ballots appeared first on Cardinal News.

Rep. John McGuire was out beside a road in Charlottesville early Wednesday morning, waving at commuters from behind a giant sign that read: “THANK YOU!”

The Republican congressman from the 5th District had what was, in political terms, a near-death experience: Running in a district that had been considered predictably Republican, he trailed much of the night as the returns came in, only to pull ahead at the end for what appears to be a victory.

The operative word there is “appears.” The major news organizations that “call” elections, such as The Associated Press, have yet to declare McGuire the winner over Democrat Tom Perriello. Those calls have no legal force — only the Virginia Department of Elections declares winners, and that won’t happen until next month when the paperwork is certified — but they do have a psychological impact.

Meanwhile, Perriello, in a statement emailed just after midnight Wednesday morning, said the race is “too close to call” and is waiting for a final accounting of provisional ballots in the district. Neither he nor his campaign responded to messages on Wednesday, but Perriello did post a message on social media: “I’m so appreciative of the incredible support we have received as we await the final results of our election. I’m filled with nothing but gratitude for all of the election officials and observers who are putting in overtime to make sure that every vote is counted across the 5th.”

So what’s the deal here? Has McGuire won? Is there a realistic shot that late ballots put Perriello over the top? Let’s look at the math — and history.

McGuire’s lead looks insurmountable

The Virginia Department of Elections says that with all the available ballots counted, the tally is:

John McGuire (R): 181,260 or 50.19%
Tom Perriello (D): 173,416 or 48.01%
Cooke Harvey (I): 5,791 or 1.60%

There are three important things to take note of here:

That’s a lead of 7,844 votes (this figure will become important shortly, just hang on).

That margin of 2.18 percentage points is well outside recount territory. Virginia law allows recounts if the margin is 1 percentage point or less — but the apparent loser has to pay unless the margin is within half a percentage point.

The figures do not include two types of ballots — provisional ballots and properly postmarked mail ballots that can be counted if they arrive by noon on Friday. (The theory is the same as with your tax return; you don’t need to get it to the IRS by April 15, you just need to mail it by then.)

Let’s dispense with the post-election mail ballots first. The number of these is always so small as to be statistically insignificant — a fraction of a percent, although when we’re talking about close elections, these fractions matter. Reality check: In the 2024 elections, there were just 1,931 post-election mail ballots in the 5th District. This year produced a similar number, and if they all went for Perriello, that still wouldn’t come close to erasing McGuire’s lead. In all of Virginia’s 11 congressional districts two years ago, only two districts had anywhere close to 7,844 post-election mail ballots: the 8th and 11th, both in Northern Virginia, where voters are more likely to cast mail ballots. In this year’s early voting, most congressional districts in Virginia cast more mail ballots than the 5th did. It’s not impossible that there will be some big mail dump of post-election ballots, but there is nothing in our history to suggest this is a realistic possibility.

As for provisional ballots, these are generally ballots cast by people who registered on Election Day and whose paperwork still has to be checked on. These are typically college students. Two years ago, there were 10,532 provisional ballots cast in the 5th District. However, contrary to some public perception, these provisional ballots are not overwhelmingly Democratic. In Democratic districts, they are. Generally, though, they reflect the overall leanings of that district. Two years ago, 56.3% of the provisional ballots cast in the 5th District race went to … McGuire. He got a 1,393-vote margin out of the provisionals that year.

That’s because two years ago the single biggest source of provisional ballots in the 5th District was Lynchburg — and the single biggest source of those Lynchburg provisionals is Third Ward Second Precinct, which is located at Liberty University. Even without the provisionals, this is a precinct that on Tuesday gave McGuire 94.05% of its votes.

NBC News reports there are approximately 8,500 votes yet to be accounted for, presumably provisionals. That seems a plausible number, given that the turnout this year was somewhere south of a presidential year. NBC News also does the math and reports that Perriello would need 98.2% of those votes to win. That seems unlikely, to put it mildly.

It’s unclear whether NBC’s math accounts for a lot of those provisionals coming out of the Liberty precinct. We know that the Liberty precinct this year had 1,236 same-day registrations. Based on experience, virtually all those votes will go to McGuire. Meanwhile, Charlottesville has 1,854 provisionals. Even if all the Liberty provisionals went to McGuire and all the Charlottesville provisionals went to Perriello, that still doesn’t reduce McGuire’s lead enough for Perriello.

There will be other provisionals in the district, but Charlottesville and Lynchburg are the two biggest metro areas. We never know what we don’t know, but it strains credulity to believe there are enough provisionals out there to make a difference.

The constitutional amendments do not appear to have made a difference

A lot of people — yours truly included — had wondered before the election if the constitutional amendments would make a difference in the 5th District race. In other words, would a big “no” vote on the amendments in rural counties have the effect of boosting McGuire?

It doesn’t look like it. While the amendments no doubt brought out some voters who wouldn’t have voted, and while it’s entirely possible that those “no” voters backed McGuire, it’s not evident from the numbers that this happened.

In most of the district’s localities, McGuire polled more votes than the “no” vote, which suggests that he was the one driving the turnout with some drop-off later on the ballot. There were some exceptions: In Lynchburg, the “no” vote on Amendment 1 outran McGuire by 857 votes. In Danville, the “no” ran 386 better than McGuire. However, in Mecklenburg County, McGuire ran 638 votes higher than the “no” vote. In Powhatan County, McGuire ran 1,469 votes ahead of “no.”

I suppose you could argue that without the amendments, those would have been the only votes McGuire would have received, but that doesn’t seem a realistic argument to me.

Instead, it looks to me that the 5th District is simply a hard district for a Democrat to win. Perriello ran a masterful campaign but simply ran out of places to squeeze votes out of. It’s a big drop-off to go from blue Albemarle County, where Perriello won 71.14% of the vote, to red Louisa County next door, where he took 41.53%. And there’s definitely a drop when you go from Lynchburg, which Perriello managed to carry with 51.24% of the vote, to Campbell County, where he took just 28.72%, and to Appomattox County, where he took just 26.57%.

Mathematically speaking, McGuire won because there are are strongly Republican counties around Lynchburg where he ran up margins that helped make up for Perriello’s margins in Albemarle, Charlottesville and Danville. In Campbell County, McGuire won by 9,733 votes. In Bedford County, which is mostly in the 9th District next door, McGuire took a margin of 6,547 votes out of the portion in the 5th. Those two counties alone gave him a margin of 16,280 votes; that was enough to wipe out Perriello’s 15,422-vote margin in Charlottesville. That margin will likely grow when the provisionals are counted but not by the amount Perriello needs.

Perriello is right: We need to count all the votes, but the math I see says McGuire will be going back to Washington for a second term.

I’ll be looking at more numbers from this year’s election in West of the Capital, our weekly political newslettr that goes out on Friday afternoons. Sign up here:

The post Why the math favors incumbent GOP Rep. John McGuire as the 5th District race awaits the final ballots appeared first on Cardinal News.

Rep. John McGuire was out beside a road in Charlottesville early Wednesday morning, waving at commuters from behind a giant sign that read: “THANK YOU!”

The Republican congressman from the 5th District had what was, in political terms, a near-death experience: Running in a district that had been considered predictably Republican, he trailed much of the night as the returns came in, only to pull ahead at the end for what appears to be a victory.

The operative word there is “appears.” The major news organizations that “call” elections, such as The Associated Press, have yet to declare McGuire the winner over Democrat Tom Perriello. Those calls have no legal force — only the Virginia Department of Elections declares winners, and that won’t happen until next month when the paperwork is certified — but they do have a psychological impact.

Meanwhile, Perriello, in a statement emailed just after midnight Wednesday morning, said the race is “too close to call” and is waiting for a final accounting of provisional ballots in the district. Neither he nor his campaign responded to messages on Wednesday, but Perriello did post a message on social media: “I’m so appreciative of the incredible support we have received as we await the final results of our election. I’m filled with nothing but gratitude for all of the election officials and observers who are putting in overtime to make sure that every vote is counted across the 5th.”

So what’s the deal here? Has McGuire won? Is there a realistic shot that late ballots put Perriello over the top? Let’s look at the math — and history.

McGuire’s lead looks insurmountable

The Virginia Department of Elections says that with all the available ballots counted, the tally is:

John McGuire (R): 181,260 or 50.19%
Tom Perriello (D): 173,416 or 48.01%
Cooke Harvey (I): 5,791 or 1.60%

There are three important things to take note of here:

That’s a lead of 7,844 votes (this figure will become important shortly, just hang on).

That margin of 2.18 percentage points is well outside recount territory. Virginia law allows recounts if the margin is 1 percentage point or less — but the apparent loser has to pay unless the margin is within half a percentage point.

The figures do not include two types of ballots — provisional ballots and properly postmarked mail ballots that can be counted if they arrive by noon on Friday. (The theory is the same as with your tax return; you don’t need to get it to the IRS by April 15, you just need to mail it by then.)

Let’s dispense with the post-election mail ballots first. The number of these is always so small as to be statistically insignificant — a fraction of a percent, although when we’re talking about close elections, these fractions matter. Reality check: In the 2024 elections, there were just 1,931 post-election mail ballots in the 5th District. This year produced a similar number, and if they all went for Perriello, that still wouldn’t come close to erasing McGuire’s lead. In all of Virginia’s 11 congressional districts two years ago, only two districts had anywhere close to 7,844 post-election mail ballots: the 8th and 11th, both in Northern Virginia, where voters are more likely to cast mail ballots. In this year’s early voting, most congressional districts in Virginia cast more mail ballots than the 5th did. It’s not impossible that there will be some big mail dump of post-election ballots, but there is nothing in our history to suggest this is a realistic possibility.

As for provisional ballots, these are generally ballots cast by people who registered on Election Day and whose paperwork still has to be checked on. These are typically college students. Two years ago, there were 10,532 provisional ballots cast in the 5th District. However, contrary to some public perception, these provisional ballots are not overwhelmingly Democratic. In Democratic districts, they are. Generally, though, they reflect the overall leanings of that district. Two years ago, 56.3% of the provisional ballots cast in the 5th District race went to … McGuire. He got a 1,393-vote margin out of the provisionals that year.

That’s because two years ago the single biggest source of provisional ballots in the 5th District was Lynchburg — and the single biggest source of those Lynchburg provisionals is Third Ward Second Precinct, which is located at Liberty University. Even without the provisionals, this is a precinct that on Tuesday gave McGuire 94.05% of its votes.

NBC News reports there are approximately 8,500 votes yet to be accounted for, presumably provisionals. That seems a plausible number, given that the turnout this year was somewhere south of a presidential year. NBC News also does the math and reports that Perriello would need 98.2% of those votes to win. That seems unlikely, to put it mildly.

It’s unclear whether NBC’s math accounts for a lot of those provisionals coming out of the Liberty precinct. We know that the Liberty precinct this year had 1,236 same-day registrations. Based on experience, virtually all those votes will go to McGuire. Meanwhile, Charlottesville has 1,854 provisionals. Even if all the Liberty provisionals went to McGuire and all the Charlottesville provisionals went to Perriello, that still doesn’t reduce McGuire’s lead enough for Perriello.

There will be other provisionals in the district, but Charlottesville and Lynchburg are the two biggest metro areas. We never know what we don’t know, but it strains credulity to believe there are enough provisionals out there to make a difference.

The constitutional amendments do not appear to have made a difference

A lot of people — yours truly included — had wondered before the election if the constitutional amendments would make a difference in the 5th District race. In other words, would a big “no” vote on the amendments in rural counties have the effect of boosting McGuire?

It doesn’t look like it. While the amendments no doubt brought out some voters who wouldn’t have voted, and while it’s entirely possible that those “no” voters backed McGuire, it’s not evident from the numbers that this happened.

In most of the district’s localities, McGuire polled more votes than the “no” vote, which suggests that he was the one driving the turnout with some drop-off later on the ballot. There were some exceptions: In Lynchburg, the “no” vote on Amendment 1 outran McGuire by 857 votes. In Danville, the “no” ran 386 better than McGuire. However, in Mecklenburg County, McGuire ran 638 votes higher than the “no” vote. In Powhatan County, McGuire ran 1,469 votes ahead of “no.”

I suppose you could argue that without the amendments, those would have been the only votes McGuire would have received, but that doesn’t seem a realistic argument to me.

Instead, it looks to me that the 5th District is simply a hard district for a Democrat to win. Perriello ran a masterful campaign but simply ran out of places to squeeze votes out of. It’s a big drop-off to go from blue Albemarle County, where Perriello won 71.14% of the vote, to red Louisa County next door, where he took 41.53%. And there’s definitely a drop when you go from Lynchburg, which Perriello managed to carry with 51.24% of the vote, to Campbell County, where he took just 28.72%, and to Appomattox County, where he took just 26.57%.

Mathematically speaking, McGuire won because there are are strongly Republican counties around Lynchburg where he ran up margins that helped make up for Perriello’s margins in Albemarle, Charlottesville and Danville. In Campbell County, McGuire won by 9,733 votes. In Bedford County, which is mostly in the 9th District next door, McGuire took a margin of 6,547 votes out of the portion in the 5th. Those two counties alone gave him a margin of 16,280 votes; that was enough to wipe out Perriello’s 15,422-vote margin in Charlottesville. That margin will likely grow when the provisionals are counted but not by the amount Perriello needs.

Perriello is right: We need to count all the votes, but the math I see says McGuire will be going back to Washington for a second term.

I’ll be looking at more numbers from this year’s election in West of the Capital, our weekly political newslettr that goes out on Friday afternoons. Sign up here:

The post Why the math favors incumbent GOP Rep. John McGuire as the 5th District race awaits the final ballots appeared first on Cardinal News.

Rep. John McGuire was out beside a road in Charlottesville early Wednesday morning, waving at commuters from behind a giant sign that read: “THANK YOU!”

The Republican congressman from the 5th District had what was, in political terms, a near-death experience: Running in a district that had been considered predictably Republican, he trailed much of the night as the returns came in, only to pull ahead at the end for what appears to be a victory.

The operative word there is “appears.” The major news organizations that “call” elections, such as The Associated Press, have yet to declare McGuire the winner over Democrat Tom Perriello. Those calls have no legal force — only the Virginia Department of Elections declares winners, and that won’t happen until next month when the paperwork is certified — but they do have a psychological impact.

Meanwhile, Perriello, in a statement emailed just after midnight Wednesday morning, said the race is “too close to call” and is waiting for a final accounting of provisional ballots in the district. Neither he nor his campaign responded to messages on Wednesday, but Perriello did post a message on social media: “I’m so appreciative of the incredible support we have received as we await the final results of our election. I’m filled with nothing but gratitude for all of the election officials and observers who are putting in overtime to make sure that every vote is counted across the 5th.”

So what’s the deal here? Has McGuire won? Is there a realistic shot that late ballots put Perriello over the top? Let’s look at the math — and history.

McGuire’s lead looks insurmountable

The Virginia Department of Elections says that with all the available ballots counted, the tally is:

John McGuire (R): 181,260 or 50.19%
Tom Perriello (D): 173,416 or 48.01%
Cooke Harvey (I): 5,791 or 1.60%

There are three important things to take note of here:

That’s a lead of 7,844 votes (this figure will become important shortly, just hang on).

That margin of 2.18 percentage points is well outside recount territory. Virginia law allows recounts if the margin is 1 percentage point or less — but the apparent loser has to pay unless the margin is within half a percentage point.

The figures do not include two types of ballots — provisional ballots and properly postmarked mail ballots that can be counted if they arrive by noon on Friday. (The theory is the same as with your tax return; you don’t need to get it to the IRS by April 15, you just need to mail it by then.)

Let’s dispense with the post-election mail ballots first. The number of these is always so small as to be statistically insignificant — a fraction of a percent, although when we’re talking about close elections, these fractions matter. Reality check: In the 2024 elections, there were just 1,931 post-election mail ballots in the 5th District. This year produced a similar number, and if they all went for Perriello, that still wouldn’t come close to erasing McGuire’s lead. In all of Virginia’s 11 congressional districts two years ago, only two districts had anywhere close to 7,844 post-election mail ballots: the 8th and 11th, both in Northern Virginia, where voters are more likely to cast mail ballots. In this year’s early voting, most congressional districts in Virginia cast more mail ballots than the 5th did. It’s not impossible that there will be some big mail dump of post-election ballots, but there is nothing in our history to suggest this is a realistic possibility.

As for provisional ballots, these are generally ballots cast by people who registered on Election Day and whose paperwork still has to be checked on. These are typically college students. Two years ago, there were 10,532 provisional ballots cast in the 5th District. However, contrary to some public perception, these provisional ballots are not overwhelmingly Democratic. In Democratic districts, they are. Generally, though, they reflect the overall leanings of that district. Two years ago, 56.3% of the provisional ballots cast in the 5th District race went to … McGuire. He got a 1,393-vote margin out of the provisionals that year.

That’s because two years ago the single biggest source of provisional ballots in the 5th District was Lynchburg — and the single biggest source of those Lynchburg provisionals is Third Ward Second Precinct, which is located at Liberty University. Even without the provisionals, this is a precinct that on Tuesday gave McGuire 94.05% of its votes.

NBC News reports there are approximately 8,500 votes yet to be accounted for, presumably provisionals. That seems a plausible number, given that the turnout this year was somewhere south of a presidential year. NBC News also does the math and reports that Perriello would need 98.2% of those votes to win. That seems unlikely, to put it mildly.

It’s unclear whether NBC’s math accounts for a lot of those provisionals coming out of the Liberty precinct. We know that the Liberty precinct this year had 1,236 same-day registrations. Based on experience, virtually all those votes will go to McGuire. Meanwhile, Charlottesville has 1,854 provisionals. Even if all the Liberty provisionals went to McGuire and all the Charlottesville provisionals went to Perriello, that still doesn’t reduce McGuire’s lead enough for Perriello.

There will be other provisionals in the district, but Charlottesville and Lynchburg are the two biggest metro areas. We never know what we don’t know, but it strains credulity to believe there are enough provisionals out there to make a difference.

The constitutional amendments do not appear to have made a difference

A lot of people — yours truly included — had wondered before the election if the constitutional amendments would make a difference in the 5th District race. In other words, would a big “no” vote on the amendments in rural counties have the effect of boosting McGuire?

It doesn’t look like it. While the amendments no doubt brought out some voters who wouldn’t have voted, and while it’s entirely possible that those “no” voters backed McGuire, it’s not evident from the numbers that this happened.

In most of the district’s localities, McGuire polled more votes than the “no” vote, which suggests that he was the one driving the turnout with some drop-off later on the ballot. There were some exceptions: In Lynchburg, the “no” vote on Amendment 1 outran McGuire by 857 votes. In Danville, the “no” ran 386 better than McGuire. However, in Mecklenburg County, McGuire ran 638 votes higher than the “no” vote. In Powhatan County, McGuire ran 1,469 votes ahead of “no.”

I suppose you could argue that without the amendments, those would have been the only votes McGuire would have received, but that doesn’t seem a realistic argument to me.

Instead, it looks to me that the 5th District is simply a hard district for a Democrat to win. Perriello ran a masterful campaign but simply ran out of places to squeeze votes out of. It’s a big drop-off to go from blue Albemarle County, where Perriello won 71.14% of the vote, to red Louisa County next door, where he took 41.53%. And there’s definitely a drop when you go from Lynchburg, which Perriello managed to carry with 51.24% of the vote, to Campbell County, where he took just 28.72%, and to Appomattox County, where he took just 26.57%.

Mathematically speaking, McGuire won because there are are strongly Republican counties around Lynchburg where he ran up margins that helped make up for Perriello’s margins in Albemarle, Charlottesville and Danville. In Campbell County, McGuire won by 9,733 votes. In Bedford County, which is mostly in the 9th District next door, McGuire took a margin of 6,547 votes out of the portion in the 5th. Those two counties alone gave him a margin of 16,280 votes; that was enough to wipe out Perriello’s 15,422-vote margin in Charlottesville. That margin will likely grow when the provisionals are counted but not by the amount Perriello needs.

Perriello is right: We need to count all the votes, but the math I see says McGuire will be going back to Washington for a second term.

I’ll be looking at more numbers from this year’s election in West of the Capital, our weekly political newslettr that goes out on Friday afternoons. Sign up here:

The post Why the math favors incumbent GOP Rep. John McGuire as the 5th District race awaits the final ballots appeared first on Cardinal News.

Appalachian Power Co. is asking state regulators for permission to charge customers for costs associated with developing a site for a potential small modular nuclear reactor at the company’s Joshua Falls property in Campbell County.

If the request is approved, the average residential customer using 1,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity per month would see a monthly bill increase of $1.98, or about 2%, from October 2027 through September 2028.

That would enable the power company to recover $20.6 million in the first of the six years that it anticipates financing the project. The company said in its application that it anticipates site development will cost approximately $100 million; a state law passed in 2024 caps the amount that the utility could recover from customers at $125 million total. 

APCo said in a statement to Cardinal News that its application to the State Corporation Commission “represents the next step in responsibly advancing early development work at our Joshua Falls site.”

“These activities, including site studies and permitting efforts, are designed to reduce risk and inform future decisions while remaining subject to SCC oversight and consistent with state law,” APCo said.

APCo said it also is seeking federal funding from the U.S. Department of Energy to reduce how much customers will pay.

Small modular reactors, or SMRs, are designed to provide 24/7 power while being smaller than traditional nuclear reactors — for example, rated at 300 megawatts of power generation compared to around 1,000 for a larger reactor such as those at Dominion Energy’s North Anna nuclear plant.

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

The cost recovery for which APCo seeks permission is associated not with actually building the SMR but rather with developing the Joshua Falls site, off the James River a few miles outside Lynchburg, to potentially build a reactor there.

Site development work includes analyzing the property for its suitability for an SMR, applying for permitting and licensing from the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, conducting public outreach, including meeting with landowners, local governments and elected officials, and holding an open house informational session last year in Lynchburg.

APCo first announced its intent to explore developing an SMR at Joshua Falls in November 2024. If the company receives all necessary permitting and approvals, the SMR likely would not come online until the mid- to late 2030s, the company has said.

It’s possible that APCo’s 540,000 customers end up paying site development costs for an SMR that is never built, a point raised by staff of the State Corporation Commission during a separate but related regulatory proceeding last year.

Joshua Falls is the location of a popular boat ramp on the James River, and a company official said in written testimony to the commission that the ramp’s future was among the “earliest and most prominent local concerns” associated with the project. APCo has created a website, JFBoatRamp.com, specifically for updates about the ramp.

Across the river in Amherst County, a Charlotte, North Carolina-based company called Geenex Power is proposing to develop an SMR on a cattle farm property. That project was announced in October, and Geenex has said it chose the location in part because of its proximity to APCo’s Joshua Falls electric substation and related grid infrastructure, which Geenex said could handle the SMR’s power output.

The post Appalachian Power asks to charge customers for nuclear reactor site development appeared first on Cardinal News.

Voters across Virginia rejected efforts this election cycle to raise sales taxes in their communities to pay for school construction.

Forty-seven cities and counties had referendums on the ballot this year to implement an additional 1% sales tax dedicated specifically to school construction and renovation projects. Voters in 32 communities rejected the measure.

The measure passed in 30%, or 14, of the localities where it was on the ballot.

In the city of Martinsville, the contest remains too close to call. 

There, the referendum was leaning toward approval according to Tuesday night’s preliminary results from the state Department of Elections — but with a razor-thin margin of five votes.

Registrar Sara Workman said Wednesday that there are still 40 provisional ballots to be counted and an unknown number of mail-in ballots, postmarked on Election Day, to tally. Provisional ballots are set to be counted Monday, she said.

If a referendum passes or fails by less than 50 votes, voters can file a petition for a recount as long as they collect at least 50 signatures, according to Virginia law.

Martinsville stands to gain more than $2 million a year in revenue from the sales tax if it is approved, according to projections provided by the Virginia Municipal League based on data from the Virginia Department of Taxation. 

The measure passed, according to preliminary results, in four localities in Southwest and Southside Virginia — Prince Edward County and the cities of Buena Vista, Lexington and Radford — mirroring a trend across the state of the measure passing in more cities than counties.

It failed in Alleghany, Floyd, Franklin, Giles, Grayson, Nottoway, Pulaski, Smyth and Wythe counties. 

Franklin County Superintendent Kevin Siers was “disappointed, not surprised” by the results, he said by phone Wednesday. The measure failed there with more than 64% of voters against it. 

“We knew it was going to be an uphill fight to get the referendum through. Nobody wants to be out promoting an additional tax. That’s a hard sell, even in a good environment,” he said. “It’s just something that we weren’t able to push through this election cycle.”

He believes having the referendum on the ballot with three constitutional amendments — all of which failed in Franklin County with two-thirds or more of the vote — didn’t help the school division’s cause.

“There was a large-scale campaign in the county to ‘vote no on everything,’ and I think that probably cost us some support that we might have been able to eke out otherwise. I don’t know if that may have made a difference for the referendum passing or not, but it certainly didn’t help,” Siers said.

Siers and other county officials spent weeks hosting a series of town halls and speaking to groups across the county this fall to raise awareness about the needs of school facilities.

“We are still sitting on $102 million of capital needs and no funding stream to address them,” he said. “So we will have to evaluate how we can replace the failing HVAC systems, how we can replace the roofs that are leaking, how we can upgrade our security measures that are in place at our schools that are also quickly becoming outdated and obsolete.”

Revenue from the additional 1% sales tax could have brought in more than $7 million annually in Franklin County, according to projections, in part thanks to tourists and visitors to Smith Mountain Lake and the recreation areas around it.

Now, future school division leaders and county officials will have to decide how to fund future capital needs. Siers is set to retire at the end of this school year, and county Administrator Steven Sandy is stepping down at the end of the month.

“There are just so many needs, and our funding in Franklin County to address them is so limited, that I’m afraid we’re going to have to make some very tough decisions about the future of some of our school buildings if we can’t find a way to fund the upkeep of them,” Siers said.

The sentiment was similar in Wythe County, where school officials hoped bipartisan support by both the local Democratic and Republican parties would convince voters to approve the measure. 

In a statement posted to Facebook, Wythe County Public Schools Superintendent Russell Street said the school system still has $72 million in renovations to pay for.

“The school board and county will need to reassess priorities and consider possible next steps,” Street said. “Thank you to everyone who learned about the proposal, shared feedback, asked questions and participated in the election. I enjoyed meeting and speaking with all of the groups and community members over the last few months.”

He said the school division would complete a six-year comprehensive plan in the coming months and included a link to student and parent surveys that could help inform it.

Whether either locality will reconsider a dedicated sales tax is unknown at this time, but it is a possibility. Legislation passed this year gives cities and counties the authority to leverage these taxes at any time.

“Just because some localities don’t think it’s a good idea this year doesn’t preclude it from being something to be considered in the future,” Jeremy Bennett, director of intergovernmental affairs for the Virginia Association of Counties, who helped lobby for the policy, said by phone Wednesday.

The effort wasn’t approved the first time it was pitched in Pittsylvania County, which was one of the first localities to be given the authority to implement the tax, Bennett noted. A referendum was narrowly defeated in November 2021 by a 23-vote margin and then passed in 2022. Now, the tax brings in about $3.8 million each year for schools in Pittsylvania County.

He noted that other communities, such as Washington County, are already discussing or have approved holding a special election next year after local officials have had more time to raise awareness about the issue. 

The mood Wednesday was more upbeat in Buena Vista, where the referendum was approved with more than 61% of the vote.

“The passage of the 1% sales tax referendum is a powerful reflection of our community’s belief in Buena Vista City Public Schools and its commitment to our students,” Superintendent Heather Ault said in an email. 

“Our schools are at the heart of our city. Behind this vote are people who care deeply about our students and recognize the important role our schools play in the strength and future of Buena Vista City. This dedicated funding provides a critical path forward for addressing our school facilities needs and creating learning environments that support our students for generations to come.”

In Rappahannock County, one of the few small rural counties that passed the referendum, Superintendent Shannon Grimsley echoed Ault’s sentiment.

“This is a monumental and historic investment in our schools, and we are beyond grateful to our community for taking this step in improving our 1950s infrastructure,” she said via email.

There, the sales tax is projected to send about $1.2 million annually to the schools, which serve fewer than 800 students in grades K-12. In September, local officials shared that the county’s two school buildings need about $5.9 million in repairs and upgrades, according to reporting by the Rappahannock News.

“For a small, rural school division like ours, maintaining a safe, functional and welcoming learning environment presents unique financial challenges. This new funding opportunity offers a meaningful path toward addressing our long-term capital needs while helping to reduce our reliance on traditional borrowing and local property taxes,” Grimsley said in a letter to the community Wednesday.

Staff writer Julianna Stephenson contributed information to this report.

The post Voters reject increasing sales tax for school construction in majority of localities where it was on the ballot appeared first on Cardinal News.

It took Topher Moore, a Gretna 13-year-old, nine hours to finish trick-or-treating on Saturday. People kept stopping to talk to him, said his mother, Manda Arnold-Moore.

“Someone was like, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s our local celebrity,’” Arnold-Moore said. 

That’s because Topher is a quarterfinalist in the Stan Lee Foundation’s Super Kid contest. It’s a nationwide online competition that recognizes “everyday heroic kids” — children who are kind, courageous and creative in their daily lives. 

Arnold-Moore said she heard about the contest at a comic-con, a convention for comic book fans, over the summer. 

Topher is on the autism spectrum and has “a deep love” for superheroes and their worlds, she said, so the Gretna Middle School seventh grader and his mother attend lots of local comic-cons. 

“It was kind of just like a whim, like one of those random competition things,” Arnold-Moore said. “I thought, ‘Might as well.’ So I applied to it, not thinking, and then he got through the first round, and then the second round, and then the top five, and then it just kept going. I was like, ‘Oh wow, we’re really doing this.’”

The competition is based on votes, and the winner will be animated into a comic book character in the Stan Lee universe, win a trip to the 2027 Comic Con in Los Angeles and $25,000. 

Voting closes Thursday, and you can vote for Topher online here. 

When Topher started to move up in the competition, his mother said she was shocked — in a good way. 

“How did you feel, Toph?” she said she asked her son. 

“I felt like you did,” he said. 

Topher is hoping to win, although he’s nervous about being on a plane for the first time, he said. 

He already has ideas for the character he’d like to be animated into, a superhero he created named Blue Justice.

“The storyline is going to be this mad scientist named Professor Scarface who makes a robotic version of me,” Topher said. 

Professor Scarface and the robotic Blue Justice are evil, and the real Blue Justice has to fight them, he said. 

Even if he doesn’t win, the experience has been a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” Arnold-Moore said. She and Topher have met so many people — both locally and across the country — through the competition. 

Gretna Middle School has encouraged students to vote for Topher, and his mother said she’s spoken with the parents of other finalists, who live in different places across the country. 

“Sometimes they’re like, ‘My kid didn’t make it, so I’m voting for your kid,’” she said. 

“That’s so cool,” Topher said with a smile. 

All of the attention is what prolonged his Halloween trick-or-treating, to the point where his feet hurt afterwards, Topher said, though it was worth it because of the amount of candy he accumulated.

Dressed as Spider-Noir, a black-and-white version of Spider-Man from an alternate universe, Topher trick-or-treated with a group of his friends, who were dressed as other characters from the Spiderverse. 

Topher and his mother are no strangers to making superhero costumes. They buy some pieces and make others for his comic-con outfits. Topher has been Red Hood from the DC Universe, Batman from the 1999 Batman Beyond television series, and Metal Sonic and Bowser Junior from the Super Mario franchise. 

But Spider-Man is Topher’s favorite superhero, and he prefers the Tobey Maguire character, although he and his friends went to the movie theater on opening night to see the new Tom Holland movie. 

He likes to talk to other kids about superheroes, Arnold-Moore said, and when picking him up from his summer program, she’d find him reading comic books to younger kids. 

“The little kids just kind of flocked to him, and he’d just be out on the playground with a circle full of kids in front of him, just reading away,” she said. “They were like, ‘It’s reading time with Toph, just give us five more minutes.’”

Topher is also an advocate against bullying, which he’s had personal experience with, his mother said. 

“Bullying, historically, has led to bad things,” Topher said. “Not for me, but in history in general.”

His middle school and his elementary school went “above and beyond” to handle any incidents, Arnold-Moore said, and Topher has a good group of friends who stick together. 

“He does a good job of speaking up for some of his friends who are quieter,” she said.

These are all reasons why Topher is a good fit for the Super Kid competition, she said. 

Topher said he loves representing Gretna in the competition. He loves that the Pittsylvania County town goes all out for Halloween and has all of his favorite foods, including a Dairy Queen with the full menu. 

He hopes that the small town gets more recognition as “the best place on earth,” he said.

The post Gretna middle schooler is finalist in national Stan Lee competition appeared first on Cardinal News.

Communities in Southwest and Southside Virginia are being told that data centers will pay property taxes for decades. Given the incredible growth of AI use, that is a reasonable assumption. Caution is in order, however, because the technology business has a long history of sudden change and obsolescence. The companies’ own financial statements may give the buildings decades, but they write off the most expensive part, the servers and chips inside, in five or six years.

The public is finally getting more information about the data centers proposed in Cardinal’s region. That, along with Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s Executive Order 22, offers some protection on the front end. What is missing is the back end. What happens when these centers go quiet or change hands?

Southwest Virginia’s long experience with the coal industry has something to teach here. Let’s start with the companies’ own books.

At Standard & Poor’s I learned to read the notes in an annual report before I believed a press release. I checked the “useful life” the largest firms assign to the servers, chips and networking gear that fill their data centers.

Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and Oracle all write off that equipment in equal annual amounts over its estimated useful life. Here is what their most recent annual reports show.

From the companies’ annual reports (10-K filings).

All five have lengthened at least some of those lives in recent years. Longer lives lower each year’s depreciation expense, in Meta’s case by billions of dollars. Only Amazon moved the other way for part of its fleet, because AI hardware was changing too fast.

Some analysts think even six years is generous. The investor Michael Burry contends that the real economic life of AI chips is closer to two or three years and that the industry will understate depreciation by about $176 billion from 2026 through 2028. Nvidia’s Jensen Huang insists his chips are durable.

Whoever is right, nobody in that argument is talking about 30 or 40 years.

These are accounting estimates, not expiration dates. A server does not quit the day it is fully depreciated, and a data center does not close when its equipment has been written off.

But the estimates still matter to a county. The building may stand for decades. Alphabet depreciates its buildings over as long as 40 years. The equipment inside, which draws the power and makes up much of what a Virginia locality taxes, is written off in five or six years.

So a county counting on decades of revenue is really counting on repeated rounds of reinvestment. Each round is a fresh corporate decision about whether to refill that building in Pittsylvania or Russell County or to put the new chips somewhere cheaper, unless a legal agreement requires the same site to be used.

Cheaper may not mean Virginia. The economics of this industry are changing fast. In January 2025 the Chinese firm DeepSeek released an AI model it said was built with a fraction of the computing power American firms use. Data center and power stocks fell sharply.

Elon Musk, whose SpaceX has absorbed his AI company, says that within two or three years the cheapest place to run AI will be in orbit. You don’t have to believe him to see the point. The industry itself does not know where its computing power will be in 2035.

The promises to Virginia counties are being made now. Stack Infrastructure’s campus at the Berry Hill megasite in Pittsylvania County is pitched as a 15-year buildout of 21 buildings paying up to $48 million a year in property taxes once complete.

In Russell County, Oasis Digital Properties wants three or four data centers on the old Moss No. 3 coal mine and still has to find companies to occupy them. The county’s industrial development authority cites a nondisclosure agreement and turned down a public records request from Cardinal News.

In Roanoke County, the buyer at Wood Haven Technology Park was a company called Clearview Dynamics. Google was not confirmed as its parent until Oct. 16, after the regional authority backed out of its nondisclosure agreement.

Notice who signs the papers. It is often a subsidiary or a limited liability company formed for the purpose. There is nothing improper in that, but a project can be sold before the first building goes up unless a binding agreement is in place.

Southwest Virginia has seen this before. The 1977 federal strip mine law made coal operators responsible for reclaiming the land, but it let regulators accept self-bonds, promises backed only by the company’s own balance sheet.

When Alpha Natural Resources, Arch Coal and Peabody Energy went bankrupt in 2015 and 2016, they held about $2 billion in reclamation obligations covered by nothing but their signatures, according to the Government Accountability Office. Blackjewel LLC collapsed in 2019 and left permits scattered across Southwest Virginia, Kentucky and West Virginia.

Nobody doubted who was responsible for that land. The trouble was that nobody had made sure the money would be there.

The nuclear industry faced a bigger version of the problem and handled it better, with two different tools. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires every plant to build a decommissioning trust fund during its working life and report at least every two years on whether it is adequate.

Separately, from 1983 to 2014, utilities paid a tenth of a cent on every kilowatt-hour of nuclear power into a federal fund for spent fuel disposal, which grew to tens of billions of dollars. One tool ties assurance to each plant. The other pools a small charge across the industry.

Virginia can do both. Every customer above 25 megawatts could pay a small charge per kilowatt-hour into a pooled fund that covers stranded grid costs, site cleanup and the commitments a county relied on when a project fails and its own bond falls short.

The money is already being collected. The budget Spanberger signed in June taxes data center electricity at 1.1 cents a kilowatt-hour through June 2028. None of it is set aside for long-term assurance, though. Up to $600 million a year goes to the general fund, and anything above that is set aside for pro-rata refunds to the operators.

The 2027 General Assembly could dedicate part of that tax to a trust with a share for host counties, require third-party financial security on every large project and reopen the file whenever a project is sold.

Where state law allows it, counties should make real financial security a condition of approval. That means a surety bond, a letter of credit or cash in escrow, not a promise that depends on the health of whoever owns the project. They could review the amount on the five- or six-year cycle the companies themselves use and ask who stands behind it and what happens if the project changes hands or closes.

If the answer is a promise from an affiliate, the county has been offered a self-bond under another name. The coalfields can tell you what those are worth.

Jim Branscome’s recent book is “Annihilating the Hillbilly Redux: Appalachia’s Struggle Against America’s Institutions.”

The post Appalachian author: Who pays when Virginia’s data centers go quiet or get sold to another firm? 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:

Local:

DSA candidate Jackie McDonnough stuns Anne Holton, wins Richmond school board seat. — The Richmonder.

Chase City battery storage site clears hurdle. — The Mecklenburg Sun.

Economy:

Dominion-NextEra accept some proposed protections in merger case, rejects rate and staffing freeze. — Virginia Mercury.

Culture:

New book looks at Julia Tyler, wife of one of Virginia’s most controversial presidents. — WHRO.

Environment:

Virginia offering to plant trees across the state — for free. — WHRO.

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 Headlines from across Virginia: DSA candidate Jackie McDonnough stuns Anne Holton, wins Richmond school board seat; more … appeared first on Cardinal News.

Another political season has ended with Tuesday’s elections, the results and analysis of which you can read about elsewhere in Cardinal News. But the next winter snow season hasn’t really gotten going yet.

A week from now, you can cast your ballots in an entirely different kind of poll, one that could return a $25 gift card to you and considerable admiration of your prognostication prowess.

The fifth Cardinal Weather snowfall prediction contest — and 18^th contest counting the entire Weather Journal era in The Roanoke Times — will start taking entries when my next weekly weather articles post on the Cardinal News website at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 11. Entries will continue being taken until Sunday evening, Nov. 29, at midnight.

Current weather: A vigorous storm system to our west will sweep in the likelihood of rain showers overnight Wednesday through Friday, probably ¼ to ¾ of an inch for most, but locally more. Temperatures will remain near or slightly above seasonal norms with 60s-lower 70s highs and 30s-40s lows into the weekend. We are waiting to see if this storm system represents the start of more frequent and still much-needed rainfall typical of El Niño cool seasons, and if expanding warmth in the stratosphere above the North Pole might help push a more wintry batch of cold air southward later this month or in early December.

I will go over the details of entry next week. Generally, there will be a list of 8 to 10 locations around Cardinal News’ Southwest and Southside Virginia coverage area, you’ll guess the Dec. 1 to March 31 snowfall for three of them, and email those to me. Fewest number of inches missed off the totals of the best two predictions wins.

So be thinking now if you want to go low, high, or somewhere in the middle with your numbers. We discussed a couple weeks ago how all of those are viable scenarios, and perhaps varying among them across our region, with a strong El Niño winter.

Seasonal tradition

This contest is something many people in the Roanoke and New River valleys, who have been playing since the latter days of the George W. Bush administration, have told me they look forward to almost as much as Thanksgiving turkey and Christmas lights.

In the last few years, we’ve been getting progressively more entries from other parts of Southwest and Southside Virginia. Still, Roanoke Valley entries have been 15 of 19 total contest winners (counting a three-way tie) and three of the last four since it moved to Cardinal News. New River Valley folks enter the contest frequently as well, but only one, a Radford woman in 2019, has managed to win during the three-way tie.

I would love to see a person from the NRV, or a Lynchburg or Wytheville or Danville or Galax or Abingdon entry, or someone from anywhere between the Cumberland Gap and Cumberland County and north to Interstate 64, break through as the winner this year.

The only non-Roanoke Valley winner in the Cardinal News era of the contest was from Sterling. The rest of Virginia — indeed, the rest of the world within reach of e-mail — is eligible to enter and win the contest also.

But do you want outsiders outguessing you on your own winter? The more entries we get from Cardinal News country, the better the chances the title stays in our backyard.

Youth movement

Also: Let your kids enter.

There was a period of time in my Roanoke Times days when the corporate interests took over the contest and limited entry to those 18 and over. That degraded the spirit of the contest.

When I moved the weather column to Cardinal News in 2022 and launched the contest anew, back to its more informal roots, restoring youth eligibility was a key priority.

A sixth grader won my first snowfall contest back in 2009; three years later, a seventh grader won. Three years ago, five eighth graders at Salem’s Andrew Lewis Middle School dominated the contest.

Parents, send in your kids’ guesses — I let whole families enter on one email. Don’t be surprised if they beat you.

Teachers, let your whole class guess and send in a spreadsheet.

There was a time when either Douglas Bleecker’s students at Lord Botetourt High School or his own children at home seemed to figure into the final standings every year.

If I get 200 entries, we’ll boost the monetary amount of the prize.

The first contest I ran got 211 entries in the fall of 2008. The number almost reached 1,000 by the mid 2010s but floated downward afterward as The Roanoke Times’ circulation downsized and then much of its content went behind a paywall.

At Cardinal News, with expanding readership and no paywall, we haven’t hit 200 yet, but this might be the year.

Incredibly, considering the numbers of people entering, the snowfall contest has had a repeat champion (Jamie Phillips, 2009-10 and 2010-11), and mother and son winners (Janice Weaver in 2016-17, Brad Weaver in 2024-25, with Janice Weaver nearly winning the 2023-24 contest).

New formats

The contest has had to change format over the years. The 2008-09 contest was only guessing Roanoke’s snow total and first 1-inch snowfall. Blacksburg was added the next year, and the contest pretty much held the same format through 2022.

Moving to Cardinal News, with its much wider coverage area, just those two locations weren’t sufficient. So we have posted up to 10 sites to choose from across our area, so everybody has at least one somewhat close to you.

The National Weather Service’s four major climate stations in our region — Roanoke, Blacksburg, Lynchburg and Danville — are included. The rest come from official volunteer co-op stations in other localities. Unfortunately, two of those that I have used, at Lexington and Appomattox, are no longer in service. So each year I have to change these up a little, and haven’t quite decided how many or which stations will appear in the contest this year.

I’ve also had to eliminate the first snowfall date portion of the contest, as the difference in how primary climate stations (midnight to midnight) and volunteer co-op sites (7 a.m. to 7 a.m.) register measurement dates just made this too confusing. The same snowfall one evening could go down as Dec. 10 at Danville but Dec. 11 at Martinsville.

The most popular topic

I could point to a lot of reasons this contest has had resonance over the years, but I think it boils down to just plain fun, and that snowfall is, beyond a shadow of doubt, the weather topic that consistently draws the most interest in all my weather postings in print and online over nearly a quarter century of writing about regional weather.

Snow elicits strong passions for and against it and generates much discussion, and of course, it’s incredibly difficult to forecast with anything resembling pinpoint accuracy, over a day or two let alone an entire season.

How our winters are perceived often boil down to how two or three weather setups play out with razor-thin margins dividing ice or rain from snow, or a near-blizzard from a sunny but cold afternoon.

When we open the gates on winter prognostication next week, dive in and see if you can join this list of past champions.

Snowfall prediction contest winners

(Roanoke Times)

2008-09   Austin Broyles, Lord Botetourt High School
2009-10 Jamie Phillips, SW Roanoke County
2010-11 Jamie Phillips, SW Roanoke County
2011-12 Casey Preuss, Faith Christian School
2012-13 Merle Spencer, Patrick/Henry county border
2013-14 Charles Cornwall, Cave Spring (originally from Buffalo, NY)
2014-15 Erinn Hokanson, Roanoke
2015-16 Bryan Soukup, Roanoke
2016-17 Janice Weaver, SW Roanoke County
2017-18 Gwen Bower, SW Roanoke County
2018-19 Gary Tegenkamp, Roanoke; Shannon Mills of Radford; Christine Hosey, Hot Springs.
2019-20 Patricia Walters, Salem
2020-21: No contest
2021-22: Nathan Sanford, Roanoke

(Contest shifts to Cardinal News)

2022-23: Hasan Shamim, Sterling
2023-24: Tavia Ruley, Andrew Lewis Middle School (Salem)
2024-25: Brad Weaver, Roanoke
2025-26: Bob Kolinski, Roanoke

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.  

To submit a photo, send it to weather@cardinalnews.org or tweet it to @CardinalNewsVa or @KevinMyattWx. Please identify the location and date of the photo with each submission.

Sign up for his weekly newsletter:

The post Almost time to start guessing how much snow we’ll get this winter appeared first on Cardinal News.

Another political season has ended with Tuesday’s elections, the results and analysis of which you can read about elsewhere in Cardinal News. But the next winter snow season hasn’t really gotten going yet.

A week from now, you can cast your ballots in an entirely different kind of poll, one that could return a $25 gift card to you and considerable admiration of your prognostication prowess.

The fifth Cardinal Weather snowfall prediction contest — and 18^th contest counting the entire Weather Journal era in The Roanoke Times — will start taking entries when my next weekly weather articles post on the Cardinal News website at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 11. Entries will continue being taken until Sunday evening, Nov. 29, at midnight.

Current weather: A vigorous storm system to our west will sweep in the likelihood of rain showers overnight Wednesday through Friday, probably ¼ to ¾ of an inch for most, but locally more. Temperatures will remain near or slightly above seasonal norms with 60s-lower 70s highs and 30s-40s lows into the weekend. We are waiting to see if this storm system represents the start of more frequent and still much-needed rainfall typical of El Niño cool seasons, and if expanding warmth in the stratosphere above the North Pole might help push a more wintry batch of cold air southward later this month or in early December.

I will go over the details of entry next week. Generally, there will be a list of 8 to 10 locations around Cardinal News’ Southwest and Southside Virginia coverage area, you’ll guess the Dec. 1 to March 31 snowfall for three of them, and email those to me. Fewest number of inches missed off the totals of the best two predictions wins.

So be thinking now if you want to go low, high, or somewhere in the middle with your numbers. We discussed a couple weeks ago how all of those are viable scenarios, and perhaps varying among them across our region, with a strong El Niño winter.

Seasonal tradition

This contest is something many people in the Roanoke and New River valleys, who have been playing since the latter days of the George W. Bush administration, have told me they look forward to almost as much as Thanksgiving turkey and Christmas lights.

In the last few years, we’ve been getting progressively more entries from other parts of Southwest and Southside Virginia. Still, Roanoke Valley entries have been 15 of 19 total contest winners (counting a three-way tie) and three of the last four since it moved to Cardinal News. New River Valley folks enter the contest frequently as well, but only one, a Radford woman in 2019, has managed to win during the three-way tie.

I would love to see a person from the NRV, or a Lynchburg or Wytheville or Danville or Galax or Abingdon entry, or someone from anywhere between the Cumberland Gap and Cumberland County and north to Interstate 64, break through as the winner this year.

The only non-Roanoke Valley winner in the Cardinal News era of the contest was from Sterling. The rest of Virginia — indeed, the rest of the world within reach of e-mail — is eligible to enter and win the contest also.

But do you want outsiders outguessing you on your own winter? The more entries we get from Cardinal News country, the better the chances the title stays in our backyard.

Youth movement

Also: Let your kids enter.

There was a period of time in my Roanoke Times days when the corporate interests took over the contest and limited entry to those 18 and over. That degraded the spirit of the contest.

When I moved the weather column to Cardinal News in 2022 and launched the contest anew, back to its more informal roots, restoring youth eligibility was a key priority.

A sixth grader won my first snowfall contest back in 2009; three years later, a seventh grader won. Three years ago, five eighth graders at Salem’s Andrew Lewis Middle School dominated the contest.

Parents, send in your kids’ guesses — I let whole families enter on one email. Don’t be surprised if they beat you.

Teachers, let your whole class guess and send in a spreadsheet.

There was a time when either Douglas Bleecker’s students at Lord Botetourt High School or his own children at home seemed to figure into the final standings every year.

If I get 200 entries, we’ll boost the monetary amount of the prize.

The first contest I ran got 211 entries in the fall of 2008. The number almost reached 1,000 by the mid 2010s but floated downward afterward as The Roanoke Times’ circulation downsized and then much of its content went behind a paywall.

At Cardinal News, with expanding readership and no paywall, we haven’t hit 200 yet, but this might be the year.

Incredibly, considering the numbers of people entering, the snowfall contest has had a repeat champion (Jamie Phillips, 2009-10 and 2010-11), and mother and son winners (Janice Weaver in 2016-17, Brad Weaver in 2024-25, with Janice Weaver nearly winning the 2023-24 contest).

New formats

The contest has had to change format over the years. The 2008-09 contest was only guessing Roanoke’s snow total and first 1-inch snowfall. Blacksburg was added the next year, and the contest pretty much held the same format through 2022.

Moving to Cardinal News, with its much wider coverage area, just those two locations weren’t sufficient. So we have posted up to 10 sites to choose from across our area, so everybody has at least one somewhat close to you.

The National Weather Service’s four major climate stations in our region — Roanoke, Blacksburg, Lynchburg and Danville — are included. The rest come from official volunteer co-op stations in other localities. Unfortunately, two of those that I have used, at Lexington and Appomattox, are no longer in service. So each year I have to change these up a little, and haven’t quite decided how many or which stations will appear in the contest this year.

I’ve also had to eliminate the first snowfall date portion of the contest, as the difference in how primary climate stations (midnight to midnight) and volunteer co-op sites (7 a.m. to 7 a.m.) register measurement dates just made this too confusing. The same snowfall one evening could go down as Dec. 10 at Danville but Dec. 11 at Martinsville.

The most popular topic

I could point to a lot of reasons this contest has had resonance over the years, but I think it boils down to just plain fun, and that snowfall is, beyond a shadow of doubt, the weather topic that consistently draws the most interest in all my weather postings in print and online over nearly a quarter century of writing about regional weather.

Snow elicits strong passions for and against it and generates much discussion, and of course, it’s incredibly difficult to forecast with anything resembling pinpoint accuracy, over a day or two let alone an entire season.

How our winters are perceived often boil down to how two or three weather setups play out with razor-thin margins dividing ice or rain from snow, or a near-blizzard from a sunny but cold afternoon.

When we open the gates on winter prognostication next week, dive in and see if you can join this list of past champions.

Snowfall prediction contest winners

(Roanoke Times)

2008-09   Austin Broyles, Lord Botetourt High School
2009-10 Jamie Phillips, SW Roanoke County
2010-11 Jamie Phillips, SW Roanoke County
2011-12 Casey Preuss, Faith Christian School
2012-13 Merle Spencer, Patrick/Henry county border
2013-14 Charles Cornwall, Cave Spring (originally from Buffalo, NY)
2014-15 Erinn Hokanson, Roanoke
2015-16 Bryan Soukup, Roanoke
2016-17 Janice Weaver, SW Roanoke County
2017-18 Gwen Bower, SW Roanoke County
2018-19 Gary Tegenkamp, Roanoke; Shannon Mills of Radford; Christine Hosey, Hot Springs.
2019-20 Patricia Walters, Salem
2020-21: No contest
2021-22: Nathan Sanford, Roanoke

(Contest shifts to Cardinal News)

2022-23: Hasan Shamim, Sterling
2023-24: Tavia Ruley, Andrew Lewis Middle School (Salem)
2024-25: Brad Weaver, Roanoke
2025-26: Bob Kolinski, Roanoke

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.  

To submit a photo, send it to weather@cardinalnews.org or tweet it to @CardinalNewsVa or @KevinMyattWx. Please identify the location and date of the photo with each submission.

Sign up for his weekly newsletter:

The post Almost time to start guessing how much snow we’ll get this winter appeared first on Cardinal News.

Another political season has ended with Tuesday’s elections, the results and analysis of which you can read about elsewhere in Cardinal News. But the next winter snow season hasn’t really gotten going yet.

A week from now, you can cast your ballots in an entirely different kind of poll, one that could return a $25 gift card to you and considerable admiration of your prognostication prowess.

The fifth Cardinal Weather snowfall prediction contest — and 18^th contest counting the entire Weather Journal era in The Roanoke Times — will start taking entries when my next weekly weather articles post on the Cardinal News website at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 11. Entries will continue being taken until Sunday evening, Nov. 29, at midnight.

Current weather: A vigorous storm system to our west will sweep in the likelihood of rain showers overnight Wednesday through Friday, probably ¼ to ¾ of an inch for most, but locally more. Temperatures will remain near or slightly above seasonal norms with 60s-lower 70s highs and 30s-40s lows into the weekend. We are waiting to see if this storm system represents the start of more frequent and still much-needed rainfall typical of El Niño cool seasons, and if expanding warmth in the stratosphere above the North Pole might help push a more wintry batch of cold air southward later this month or in early December.

I will go over the details of entry next week. Generally, there will be a list of 8 to 10 locations around Cardinal News’ Southwest and Southside Virginia coverage area, you’ll guess the Dec. 1 to March 31 snowfall for three of them, and email those to me. Fewest number of inches missed off the totals of the best two predictions wins.

So be thinking now if you want to go low, high, or somewhere in the middle with your numbers. We discussed a couple weeks ago how all of those are viable scenarios, and perhaps varying among them across our region, with a strong El Niño winter.

Seasonal tradition

This contest is something many people in the Roanoke and New River valleys, who have been playing since the latter days of the George W. Bush administration, have told me they look forward to almost as much as Thanksgiving turkey and Christmas lights.

In the last few years, we’ve been getting progressively more entries from other parts of Southwest and Southside Virginia. Still, Roanoke Valley entries have been 15 of 19 total contest winners (counting a three-way tie) and three of the last four since it moved to Cardinal News. New River Valley folks enter the contest frequently as well, but only one, a Radford woman in 2019, has managed to win during the three-way tie.

I would love to see a person from the NRV, or a Lynchburg or Wytheville or Danville or Galax or Abingdon entry, or someone from anywhere between the Cumberland Gap and Cumberland County and north to Interstate 64, break through as the winner this year.

The only non-Roanoke Valley winner in the Cardinal News era of the contest was from Sterling. The rest of Virginia — indeed, the rest of the world within reach of e-mail — is eligible to enter and win the contest also.

But do you want outsiders outguessing you on your own winter? The more entries we get from Cardinal News country, the better the chances the title stays in our backyard.

Youth movement

Also: Let your kids enter.

There was a period of time in my Roanoke Times days when the corporate interests took over the contest and limited entry to those 18 and over. That degraded the spirit of the contest.

When I moved the weather column to Cardinal News in 2022 and launched the contest anew, back to its more informal roots, restoring youth eligibility was a key priority.

A sixth grader won my first snowfall contest back in 2009; three years later, a seventh grader won. Three years ago, five eighth graders at Salem’s Andrew Lewis Middle School dominated the contest.

Parents, send in your kids’ guesses — I let whole families enter on one email. Don’t be surprised if they beat you.

Teachers, let your whole class guess and send in a spreadsheet.

There was a time when either Douglas Bleecker’s students at Lord Botetourt High School or his own children at home seemed to figure into the final standings every year.

If I get 200 entries, we’ll boost the monetary amount of the prize.

The first contest I ran got 211 entries in the fall of 2008. The number almost reached 1,000 by the mid 2010s but floated downward afterward as The Roanoke Times’ circulation downsized and then much of its content went behind a paywall.

At Cardinal News, with expanding readership and no paywall, we haven’t hit 200 yet, but this might be the year.

Incredibly, considering the numbers of people entering, the snowfall contest has had a repeat champion (Jamie Phillips, 2009-10 and 2010-11), and mother and son winners (Janice Weaver in 2016-17, Brad Weaver in 2024-25, with Janice Weaver nearly winning the 2023-24 contest).

New formats

The contest has had to change format over the years. The 2008-09 contest was only guessing Roanoke’s snow total and first 1-inch snowfall. Blacksburg was added the next year, and the contest pretty much held the same format through 2022.

Moving to Cardinal News, with its much wider coverage area, just those two locations weren’t sufficient. So we have posted up to 10 sites to choose from across our area, so everybody has at least one somewhat close to you.

The National Weather Service’s four major climate stations in our region — Roanoke, Blacksburg, Lynchburg and Danville — are included. The rest come from official volunteer co-op stations in other localities. Unfortunately, two of those that I have used, at Lexington and Appomattox, are no longer in service. So each year I have to change these up a little, and haven’t quite decided how many or which stations will appear in the contest this year.

I’ve also had to eliminate the first snowfall date portion of the contest, as the difference in how primary climate stations (midnight to midnight) and volunteer co-op sites (7 a.m. to 7 a.m.) register measurement dates just made this too confusing. The same snowfall one evening could go down as Dec. 10 at Danville but Dec. 11 at Martinsville.

The most popular topic

I could point to a lot of reasons this contest has had resonance over the years, but I think it boils down to just plain fun, and that snowfall is, beyond a shadow of doubt, the weather topic that consistently draws the most interest in all my weather postings in print and online over nearly a quarter century of writing about regional weather.

Snow elicits strong passions for and against it and generates much discussion, and of course, it’s incredibly difficult to forecast with anything resembling pinpoint accuracy, over a day or two let alone an entire season.

How our winters are perceived often boil down to how two or three weather setups play out with razor-thin margins dividing ice or rain from snow, or a near-blizzard from a sunny but cold afternoon.

When we open the gates on winter prognostication next week, dive in and see if you can join this list of past champions.

Snowfall prediction contest winners

(Roanoke Times)

2008-09   Austin Broyles, Lord Botetourt High School
2009-10 Jamie Phillips, SW Roanoke County
2010-11 Jamie Phillips, SW Roanoke County
2011-12 Casey Preuss, Faith Christian School
2012-13 Merle Spencer, Patrick/Henry county border
2013-14 Charles Cornwall, Cave Spring (originally from Buffalo, NY)
2014-15 Erinn Hokanson, Roanoke
2015-16 Bryan Soukup, Roanoke
2016-17 Janice Weaver, SW Roanoke County
2017-18 Gwen Bower, SW Roanoke County
2018-19 Gary Tegenkamp, Roanoke; Shannon Mills of Radford; Christine Hosey, Hot Springs.
2019-20 Patricia Walters, Salem
2020-21: No contest
2021-22: Nathan Sanford, Roanoke

(Contest shifts to Cardinal News)

2022-23: Hasan Shamim, Sterling
2023-24: Tavia Ruley, Andrew Lewis Middle School (Salem)
2024-25: Brad Weaver, Roanoke
2025-26: Bob Kolinski, Roanoke

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.  

To submit a photo, send it to weather@cardinalnews.org or tweet it to @CardinalNewsVa or @KevinMyattWx. Please identify the location and date of the photo with each submission.

Sign up for his weekly newsletter:

The post Almost time to start guessing how much snow we’ll get this winter appeared first on Cardinal News.

Another political season has ended with Tuesday’s elections, the results and analysis of which you can read about elsewhere in Cardinal News. But the next winter snow season hasn’t really gotten going yet.

A week from now, you can cast your ballots in an entirely different kind of poll, one that could return a $25 gift card to you and considerable admiration of your prognostication prowess.

The fifth Cardinal Weather snowfall prediction contest — and 18^th contest counting the entire Weather Journal era in The Roanoke Times — will start taking entries when my next weekly weather articles post on the Cardinal News website at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 11. Entries will continue being taken until Sunday evening, Nov. 29, at midnight.

Current weather: A vigorous storm system to our west will sweep in the likelihood of rain showers overnight Wednesday through Friday, probably ¼ to ¾ of an inch for most, but locally more. Temperatures will remain near or slightly above seasonal norms with 60s-lower 70s highs and 30s-40s lows into the weekend. We are waiting to see if this storm system represents the start of more frequent and still much-needed rainfall typical of El Niño cool seasons, and if expanding warmth in the stratosphere above the North Pole might help push a more wintry batch of cold air southward later this month or in early December.

I will go over the details of entry next week. Generally, there will be a list of 8 to 10 locations around Cardinal News’ Southwest and Southside Virginia coverage area, you’ll guess the Dec. 1 to March 31 snowfall for three of them, and email those to me. Fewest number of inches missed off the totals of the best two predictions wins.

So be thinking now if you want to go low, high, or somewhere in the middle with your numbers. We discussed a couple weeks ago how all of those are viable scenarios, and perhaps varying among them across our region, with a strong El Niño winter.

Seasonal tradition

This contest is something many people in the Roanoke and New River valleys, who have been playing since the latter days of the George W. Bush administration, have told me they look forward to almost as much as Thanksgiving turkey and Christmas lights.

In the last few years, we’ve been getting progressively more entries from other parts of Southwest and Southside Virginia. Still, Roanoke Valley entries have been 15 of 19 total contest winners (counting a three-way tie) and three of the last four since it moved to Cardinal News. New River Valley folks enter the contest frequently as well, but only one, a Radford woman in 2019, has managed to win during the three-way tie.

I would love to see a person from the NRV, or a Lynchburg or Wytheville or Danville or Galax or Abingdon entry, or someone from anywhere between the Cumberland Gap and Cumberland County and north to Interstate 64, break through as the winner this year.

The only non-Roanoke Valley winner in the Cardinal News era of the contest was from Sterling. The rest of Virginia — indeed, the rest of the world within reach of e-mail — is eligible to enter and win the contest also.

But do you want outsiders outguessing you on your own winter? The more entries we get from Cardinal News country, the better the chances the title stays in our backyard.

Youth movement

Also: Let your kids enter.

There was a period of time in my Roanoke Times days when the corporate interests took over the contest and limited entry to those 18 and over. That degraded the spirit of the contest.

When I moved the weather column to Cardinal News in 2022 and launched the contest anew, back to its more informal roots, restoring youth eligibility was a key priority.

A sixth grader won my first snowfall contest back in 2009; three years later, a seventh grader won. Three years ago, five eighth graders at Salem’s Andrew Lewis Middle School dominated the contest.

Parents, send in your kids’ guesses — I let whole families enter on one email. Don’t be surprised if they beat you.

Teachers, let your whole class guess and send in a spreadsheet.

There was a time when either Douglas Bleecker’s students at Lord Botetourt High School or his own children at home seemed to figure into the final standings every year.

If I get 200 entries, we’ll boost the monetary amount of the prize.

The first contest I ran got 211 entries in the fall of 2008. The number almost reached 1,000 by the mid 2010s but floated downward afterward as The Roanoke Times’ circulation downsized and then much of its content went behind a paywall.

At Cardinal News, with expanding readership and no paywall, we haven’t hit 200 yet, but this might be the year.

Incredibly, considering the numbers of people entering, the snowfall contest has had a repeat champion (Jamie Phillips, 2009-10 and 2010-11), and mother and son winners (Janice Weaver in 2016-17, Brad Weaver in 2024-25, with Janice Weaver nearly winning the 2023-24 contest).

New formats

The contest has had to change format over the years. The 2008-09 contest was only guessing Roanoke’s snow total and first 1-inch snowfall. Blacksburg was added the next year, and the contest pretty much held the same format through 2022.

Moving to Cardinal News, with its much wider coverage area, just those two locations weren’t sufficient. So we have posted up to 10 sites to choose from across our area, so everybody has at least one somewhat close to you.

The National Weather Service’s four major climate stations in our region — Roanoke, Blacksburg, Lynchburg and Danville — are included. The rest come from official volunteer co-op stations in other localities. Unfortunately, two of those that I have used, at Lexington and Appomattox, are no longer in service. So each year I have to change these up a little, and haven’t quite decided how many or which stations will appear in the contest this year.

I’ve also had to eliminate the first snowfall date portion of the contest, as the difference in how primary climate stations (midnight to midnight) and volunteer co-op sites (7 a.m. to 7 a.m.) register measurement dates just made this too confusing. The same snowfall one evening could go down as Dec. 10 at Danville but Dec. 11 at Martinsville.

The most popular topic

I could point to a lot of reasons this contest has had resonance over the years, but I think it boils down to just plain fun, and that snowfall is, beyond a shadow of doubt, the weather topic that consistently draws the most interest in all my weather postings in print and online over nearly a quarter century of writing about regional weather.

Snow elicits strong passions for and against it and generates much discussion, and of course, it’s incredibly difficult to forecast with anything resembling pinpoint accuracy, over a day or two let alone an entire season.

How our winters are perceived often boil down to how two or three weather setups play out with razor-thin margins dividing ice or rain from snow, or a near-blizzard from a sunny but cold afternoon.

When we open the gates on winter prognostication next week, dive in and see if you can join this list of past champions.

Snowfall prediction contest winners

(Roanoke Times)

2008-09   Austin Broyles, Lord Botetourt High School
2009-10 Jamie Phillips, SW Roanoke County
2010-11 Jamie Phillips, SW Roanoke County
2011-12 Casey Preuss, Faith Christian School
2012-13 Merle Spencer, Patrick/Henry county border
2013-14 Charles Cornwall, Cave Spring (originally from Buffalo, NY)
2014-15 Erinn Hokanson, Roanoke
2015-16 Bryan Soukup, Roanoke
2016-17 Janice Weaver, SW Roanoke County
2017-18 Gwen Bower, SW Roanoke County
2018-19 Gary Tegenkamp, Roanoke; Shannon Mills of Radford; Christine Hosey, Hot Springs.
2019-20 Patricia Walters, Salem
2020-21: No contest
2021-22: Nathan Sanford, Roanoke

(Contest shifts to Cardinal News)

2022-23: Hasan Shamim, Sterling
2023-24: Tavia Ruley, Andrew Lewis Middle School (Salem)
2024-25: Brad Weaver, Roanoke
2025-26: Bob Kolinski, Roanoke

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.  

To submit a photo, send it to weather@cardinalnews.org or tweet it to @CardinalNewsVa or @KevinMyattWx. Please identify the location and date of the photo with each submission.

Sign up for his weekly newsletter:

The post Almost time to start guessing how much snow we’ll get this winter appeared first on Cardinal News.

Virginia’s noble goal of becoming the nation’s top state for talent depends on a strong commitment to every institution of higher education that prepares our future workforce. Public universities, community colleges and nonprofit private colleges work together as an essential ecosystem, expanding opportunities for students and strengthening the economy by producing the nurses, cybersecurity professionals, teachers, entrepreneurs and civic leaders Virginia needs. Employers depend on this talent development, and students need affordable pathways to success. As a former Virginia secretary of education and a board member of both a public and a private university, strong higher ed partnerships are essential to economic growth.

To meet these talent objectives, Virginia’s nonprofit private colleges are indispensable state partners by awarding one-third of all undergraduate degrees and nearly 40% of nursing degrees in the state. Traditional liberal arts programs develop communication, critical thinking and sound judgment, skills that are AI-proof and increasingly important to employers as AI transforms the workplace. Together, specialized preparation and a broad education equip graduates with the skills to adapt as jobs evolve over their careers. 

Nonprofit private colleges serve the entire state, from Tidewater to Southwest Virginia, where public four-year institutions have a limited presence. With over 100,000 students, they also expand access for students from underserved communities, including those who are the first in their families to attend college. Virginia’s private nonprofit colleges provide important access to higher education. In 2024–25, 53% of their undergraduate students received federal Pell Grants. This federal assistance, institutional scholarships and Virginia’s Tuition Assistance Grant make these educational opportunities more affordable.

Unfortunately, new federal student borrowing caps and the elimination of Grad PLUS loans for new borrowers risk weakening Virginia’s healthcare workforce, in particular, by making advanced professional education harder to finance. Families now face financing gaps that colleges cannot easily absorb. Virginia’s nonprofit private institutions report substantial borrowing shortfalls, enrollment delays and concerns about the viability of graduate programs. When students are priced out of essential programs like nursing, Virginia’s workforce suffers, leaving our communities without the urgent care they need.

What can be done to preserve affordability and essential workforce pipelines? One way is for Virginia to help students succeed at colleges with existing educational capacity, such as our private colleges. Consider this basic economic fact. If Virginia residents currently attending nonprofit private colleges shifted to public institutions, the state’s cost of supporting them could more than double. Preserving that private school capacity by providing additional funding tools is sound fiscal policy, and the state will continue to see a significant return on investment per degree. 

Private colleges cannot sustain this partnership alone. Replacing lost federal student financing with institutional aid strains budgets that support faculty, facilities, technology and student services. Without enhanced state support, Virginia risks fewer graduates, diminished programs and weaker workforce pipelines. The commonwealth can protect its higher education capacity and strengthen student affordability through two targeted investments:

First, in the 2027 General Assembly Session, lawmakers should support the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia’s proposal to raise Tuition Assistance Grant awards to $5,450 for eligible undergraduate and graduate students. I hope Gov. Spanberger will lead this conversation in her December budget amendments. Such a measured investment would improve affordability for students, preserve access to higher education and affirm that Virginia values residents pursuing degrees at nonprofit private institutions.

Second, the commonwealth should launch a pilot grant program helping nonprofit private colleges preserve and maintain campuses that drive local economic activity. Right now, improvements rely almost entirely on private philanthropy, debt or tuition revenue. Kudos to Del. Rodney Willett, D-Henrico County, for launching the discussion with 2026’s HB 522. His proposal would match private funds dollar for dollar, supporting millions in essential improvements and local investment. Six states, including Maryland and Pennsylvania, offer similar programs. A competitive grant program, with legal safeguards and oversight by SCHEV, the Department of Historic Resources and the Department of General Services, would ensure accountability for costs, outcomes and return on investment. I urge the Spanberger administration to support this targeted pilot.

Virginia’s nonprofit private colleges perform a public good. Investing in essential maintenance at nonprofit private colleges protects Virginia’s investment in students. It eases budget pressures, helps preserve financial aid and academic programs, keeps classrooms and laboratories ready for learning, and avoids costlier replacement needs. A modest investment now can help more students graduate, strengthen the state workforce and save taxpayers money. As former Gov. Douglas Wilder often said, “If the thing is right, the time is always right.” These investments are right, and now is the time to secure Virginia’s future success.

James W. Dyke Jr. served as Virginia’s secretary of education from 1990 to 1993. 

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