Republican Former Senator Amanda Chase and Democratic former Delegate Ibraheem Samirah are back on ballots in 2024.
Both hope to return to their respective chambers after losing primaries and facing opposition from their own parties.
“I don't agree with everything the leadership in the Republican party has pushed down on Republicans and the people of Virginia,” Chase told Radio IQ.
The controversial official moved into out-going state Senator John McGuire’s district to run for his rural central Virginia seat. A self-proclaimed “Trump in heels” who was censured by the Senate for comments in the wake of Trump’s 2020 loss, Chase lost a tough primary in 2023. She’ll go up against four other Republicans in a mass meeting set for mid-December, a process she’s said will disenfranchise voters.
Once a gubernatorial hopeful, Chase said she was currently focused on the senate race, but if any quote “shenanigans” took place, she wouldn’t close the door to challenging Lt. Governor Winsome Earle-Sears for the top of the GOP next year.
“I’m not gonna sit by idle. I’m not going away,” she said.
At 27, Samirah was the youngest member of the General Assembly when he entered the House of Delegates in 2019. He told Radio IQ that win was a result of generational change in politics, and his primary loss in 2021 was the result of that same generational change not taking root.
“There’s a dire need to bring about this type of change because we’re losing a lot of our base as a result of that lack of ability to change to meet the times,” Samirah told Radio IQ.
Samirah will also face a crowded field in a Northern Virginia firehouse primary Saturday. But after coming in second in a separate firehouse primary for a senate seat last week, he thinks he might have the momentum to pull it off. But if he doesn’t, he said he’ll go back to being a dentist until that generational change happens.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
