After state Senator Ghazala Hashmi’s resounding Lt. Governor win last month, two candidates have emerged to take her Richmond-area seat.
Richmond Democrat Mike Jones first entered the House of Delegates in 2023, but he’s already eyeing out-going Senator Hashmi’s open seat in a special election set for January 6th.
He won a firehouse primary against fellow Democratic Delegate Debra Gardner by a wide margin Sunday. Monday morning, he said he’d pursue a similar message that helped him win in November: Affordability.
“People are out here struggling, and my goal is to find real world solutions right where they are,” Jones told Radio IQ after his firehouse win saw him get an estimated 70 percent of the vote.
On the Republican side, defense contractor John R. Thomas, who lost a race against Gardner last month, hopes concerns about Virginia’s constitutional amendments will help him win the day. Those amendments include mid-decade redistricting, protecting abortion access, enshrining protections for same-sex marriage and nixing the state’s ban on felon voting.
He’s against all four and if he wins, he could break the 21-19 Democratic majority that would allow them to pass.
“And then everything else, we gotta protect our second amendment rights, our freedom of speech," he told Radio IQ in an interview Monday morning. "We gotta protect our kids in schools, back the blue for everything on what they do.”
Notably Jones said he'd vote in support of the constitutional amendments after voting in favor of them in the House this year.
And Jones also addressed complaints lobbed by Gardner during the recent breakneck campaign. Jones' ex-wife alleged abuse in the past, but a Chesterfield County Judge dismissed those complaints after he played audio of interactions with his wife that told a different story.
"My opponent, who knew both sides of that story, only chose to tell the side that would help her career," Jones said. "But it didn't work."
Thomas, meanwhile, has an uphill battle of his own.
Gardner beat him on November 4th by nearly 40 points as every House district in Virginia shifted left, including deep-red parts of the state. And the Senate district he'll run in voted overwhelmingly for Democrats.
"We're doing more hands-on campaigning," Thomas said about what he'll do to change his fortunes next month. "We've got to let voters know how important these constitutional amendments are. It will hurt Virginians to have unfair representation."
Early voting starts December 22nd with election day set for January 6th. If Jones wins there will be another follow-up special election to fill his House seat though details on that race won't emerge until after this election.
