All 40 seats in the Virginia Senate are on the ballot this year. And, the next Senate will have a lot of new faces.
11 senators are retiring. Five won't be returning because they lost the primary. Three senators are in hotly competitive races and might lose in November. That means 40-50% of senators will be brand new to a chamber that doesn't usually see much turnover.
Senate Majority Leader Dick Saslaw says he believes it’s partly the result of handing over the power of redistricting to a commission.
"Everything came together at once with redistricting, and quite frankly we probably made a mistake," Saslaw says. "We probably should have kept redistricting to ourselves. And I'll take part of the blame for that."
He says the new maps forced out a lot of senators who would have otherwise stuck around.
Republican Senator Jill Vogel of Fauquier County says all that turnover has consequences.
"If you start with such a massive number of new people who really don't have that institutional knowledge, what ends up happening is that a lot more responsibility goes to staff," Vogel says. "And it isn't the case that I don't have confidence in the staff. But in some ways, it's really important that elected people drive the train and drive policy and drive it in an aggressive way."
Another quirk of this election cycle is the huge number of delegates seeking to move from the House to the Senate: five Democrats and four Republicans.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
