Republicans and Democrats are both targeting certain races for the House of Delegates this year, hoping to invest in retaining seats or in some cases flipping them to the other side.
Republicans and Democrats are both targeting House District 12. That’s a seat in the New River Valley, Republican incumbent Joseph Yost is defending his seat against Democratic challenger Chris Hurst. According to an analysis from the Virginia Public Access Project of political money, that race has attracted the most amount of campaign cash political parties and PACS — about a quarter of a million dollars, mostly to help the Republican defend his seat.
“Your bang for your buck is going to go a lot farther than it will in Northern Virginia for instance.”
That’s Geoff Skelley at the University of Virginia Center for Politics.
“So I think that to some degree the dollar amounts match the seats that are most competitive. But it's not always true. Some of that just comes down to the individual candidates.”
Skelley says some races could have been competitive but are not because the challenger wasn’t able to raise enough money. The Democrat running against Republican Delegate Jackson Miller in Northern Virginia, for example. Skelley says he hasn’t raised the amount of money expected. Quentin Kidd at Christopher Newport University says parties tend to invest in candidates that have already proven they can raise a lot of money.
“As it turns out, many of the races of districts that we thought might be really competitive have proven to be less so in part because the candidates themselves aren’t as good maybe as they need to be and they haven’t raised as much money as they need.”
The Republican Party has invested more money in more races than the Democrats, especially Northern Virginia incumbents like Jim LeMunyon and Tag Greason. Overall, Republican candidates are heading into Election Day with about twice as much cash on hand as Democrats.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
