Lawmakers will be back in Richmond this week, which will allow Democrats to go behind closed doors and fight over who is leading their party in the House of Delegates.
House Democratic Leader David Toscano led his party to a historic victory last year, picking up more than a dozen seats from Republicans — almost enough to take control. Now he’s facing opposition from within his caucus from a restive group of insurgent progressives who want new leadership. Toscano says it's hard to make the case for new leadership.
“There’s a lot of people I think who believe that we ought to stay the course, and the leadership we have in place right now seems to be doing a good job and we’ll integrate new people and new energy into the caucus as a whole.”
Leaders of the opposition declined to be interviewed for this story or didn’t respond to repeated inquiries. But Quentin Kidd at Christopher Newport University says there’s a sense among some Democrats that Toscano is too quick to give up on seats where Republicans have an overwhelming edge.
“And right now they feel like the leadership is much more cautious, much more interested in being more mainstream than not, and much less interested in being aggressive from a progressive end.”
The test for that opposition will be if they have the votes to force a leadership election — and the votes to elect a new leader.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.