Which Democratic candidate for Lieutenant Governor is the most electable?

Throughout modern Virginia elections, the race for Virginia Lieutenant Governor has a reputation as an auxiliary to the coinciding election for Governor. The 2013 Republican nominee for LG, arch-conservative E.W. Jackson, and the 2017 Republican nominee for LG, moderate-leaning State Senator Jill Vogel, are prime examples of how the election immediately under the spot on the ballot for Governor can cause chaos or relief for the candidate at the top of the ticket. 

While 2021 marked a historically low level of ticket-splitting between these two offices, an examination of the strengths and weaknesses of the top candidates for Lieutenant Governor in the upcoming primary can paint a better picture of what to expect from Virginia Democrats. For Democratic primaries in particular, the perceived electability of any given candidate ranks among voters’ top priorities when compared to their Republican primary voter counterparts– just ask Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden. Who ‘harms’ or ‘helps’ a statewide ticket can be a critical component to the decision made by Democratic primary voters on who they will choose at the ballot box. With that being said, what are the liabilities and strengths of each Democratic candidate for Lieutenant Governor this year in Virginia?

Six candidates have qualified for the June 17th primary, but only three have put together a campaign that could conceivably carry them to the nomination. Those three are former Mayor of Richmond Levar Stoney, State Senator Aaron Rouse of Virginia Beach, and State Senator Ghazala Hashmi of Chesterfield.

Conventional wisdom in the Commonwealth typically concludes that State Senator Aaron Rouse is the prohibitive favorite to win the nomination for Lieutenant Governor: Along with Levar Stoney, he has support from the African American community, but he also has high name recognition in the Hampton Roads area, and his time as a Virginia Tech football player may earn him votes amongst the Virginia Tech alumni community and rural voters. However, conventional wisdom also had Delegate Sam Rasoul as a prohibitive favorite in the 2021 Lieutenant Governor Democratic primary (who would go on to lose the nomination to Delegate Hala Ayala that year by 13 points), so it’s still worth examining the ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ of each candidate electorally.

Levar Stoney

Bio: Levar Stoney is a 44-year-old African American man and protégé of former Governor Terry McAuliffe (D). He served as the first African American Secretary of the Commonwealth from 2014-2016 under Governor Terry McAuliffe before being elected Mayor of Richmond in 2016 with 36% of the vote, after which he was re-elected with 38% of the vote in 2020.

Strengths:

1. Politicos in Virginia believe that Democratic Gubernatorial nominee Abigail Spanberger’s Achilles’ heel is her nonexistent standing with Black voters. As an African American, Stoney can provide support to Black turnout for the Democratic ticket this year where Spanberger may be lacking.
2. Stoney’s access to the McAuliffe fundraising contacts makes him a formidable candidate for being an ancillary spender to the ticket. Being able to wash out the competition with money spent on TV, mail, and digital can go a long way.
3. His experience in working with a previous Governor and serving in an executive role as Mayor of Richmond can give voters a sense of accreditation; that he is qualified to serve in what is essentially another role of working with a Governor.

Weaknesses:

1. His record as Mayor is mostly net-negative. While Stoney’s time as Mayor came with some successes including the Diamond District, a reduction in gun violence and poverty, and an increase in public school funding, the Republicans would have a full deck of attack ads to launch against Stoney in a general election. There is a long list of issues during his time as Mayor that Republicans can pin on him in a general election: the January 2025 water crisis, the frivolous employee severance packages, the FOIA whistleblower lawsuit, not to mention the backing of controversial development projects such as Navy Hill or the twice-defeated Casino proposal. His tenure made him a polarizing figure in the city, and likely the metropolitan area as a whole. After all, Stoney was only re-elected with a measly 38% of the vote as an incumbent, with white voters in the city throwing their support behind more progressive or moderate candidates.
2. In all likelihood, Stoney would do the worst amongst voters in the Richmond area compared to any Democratic candidate on the ballot, especially against the Republican nominee for Lieutenant Governor, John Reid, a Henrico County resident with strong grassroots support in the suburbs surrounding the city. This is to say that Stoney would struggle with “soft” Democratic voters with independent streaks, i.e. those who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and Glenn Youngkin in 2021 in the area.
3. He doesn’t bring any regional diversity to the ticket. Abigail Spanberger lives in Short Pump and has a well-oiled machine in the Richmond area of volunteers and donors. While he may mobilize Black voters in the Richmond area, it’d be a liability if the Democrats have an all-Richmond ticket, which may become a reality this year if Shannon Taylor wins the Democratic nomination for Attorney General. In 2021, Democrats nominated an all-NoVA ticket and paid the price.
4. Stoney has never run in a competitive race for the general election, only for a Democratic primary in a deep-blue city. That’s a major liability when Republicans in Virginia privately say that they want to run against Stoney. In speaking with one top Republican consultant in Virginia, who asked to remain anonymous for this piece, they said, “Stoney would be the preferred candidate to run against(…) he, I think, is the easiest to message against.” Virginia Republicans likely have a treasure trove of content to use against Stoney, who isn’t battle-tested and would have to be put on defense in a general more than any other candidate.

Ghazala Hashmi

Bio: Ghazala Hashmi is a 60-year-old Indian-born Muslim woman serving in the Virginia Senate who has represented parts of Richmond City and Chesterfield County since 2019, and previously represented Powhatan County until 2024. In 2019, she beat then-moderate Republican Glen Sturtevant and flipped the deciding seat which gave Democrats a majority in the State Senate. In 2023, she won re-election in a district based in southern Chesterfield and Richmond. She was previously a professor and administrator at J. Sergeant Reynolds Community College and a professor at the University of Richmond.

Strengths:

1. While there has been much reflection on the Democrats’ strategic pitfalls in 2024 concerning messaging and outreach with Latino and young voters, there has been one demographic that also had a major rightward shift with no plausible explanation: Indian-American voters. When Loudoun County dropped all of its votes by 7:30 PM Eastern, every election observer knew in a moment that Trump won the Presidency. To this day, this very affluent, college-educated demographic that shifted heavily leftward in 2016 and 2020 has not had its rightward shift truly examined by psephologists. With Virginia having a large Indian-American and Muslim population, it may be helpful for Democrats to have those communities represented on the statewide ticket. Then again, Kamala Harris is half South Asian and still lost these voters in droves, so it may not be a guaranteed boost.
2. Some Republicans are scared of Hashmi’s ability to lay out progressive policy proposals effectively. In the words of the aforementioned Republican consultant that wants Democrats to run Levar Stoney: “If she gets the nomination, it’s an ‘oh shit’ moment. Because she can articulate the, I think, top of mind issues for Democrats right now from a woman’s perspective, and she’s actively tried to pass policy related to it.”
3. Hashmi is battle-tested, having run in a competitive race before. While she was viewed as a heavy favorite in the final stretch of her 2019 State Senate campaign, she still had to put in the work to get to that point of near-certainty.
4. Chesterfield is a pivotal county in winning Virginia. While the county is trending in the Democratic direction thanks to new housing and ideologically liberal out-of-state transplants moving in, it was narrowly won by each statewide Republican in 2021 after voting for Joe Biden in 2020. The county also features two competitive seats and one potentially competitive seat in the House of Delegates, and will, regardless, be at the forefront of the battle in the Richmond area this year. Between her previous district and her current one, Hashmi has represented approximately 69% of Chesterfield County voters. 

Weaknesses:

1. Like Stoney, Hashmi being another Richmonder on the statewide Democratic ticket doesn’t help with regional diversity that Virginia Democrats would likely get a boost from. She arguably is the worst option for regional diversity on the ticket: Spanberger has already represented a majority of Chesterfield County voters in her previous congressional district.
2. Hashmi has a record of being an electoral underperformer. She ran behind her old district’s presidential margin in the following year by 10 points, however, she was running against a strong Republican incumbent with a moderate streak. In 2023, she faced a Republican ‘paper candidate’ and ran behind her district’s 2024 presidential margin by 4 points, mainly underperforming with white voters in the Chester area.
3. Given Hashmi’s name, she would likely struggle in the rural areas of Virginia. As one Virginia Republican operative put it: “Her name alone is gonna tank her in Southwest [Virginia]. She’s too liberal, she looks liberal… she’s Muslim, her name, her views, she’d be a disaster for them.”

Aaron Rouse

Bio: Aaron Rouse is a 41-year-old African American man who has served in the Virginia Senate since 2023. Before the State Senate, Rouse served as a safety for the Virginia Tech Football team from 2003 to 2007 and played four seasons in the NFL, including the Green Bay Packers, New York Giants, and Arizona Cardinals, and later in the UFL for the Omaha Nighthawks and Virginia Destroyers. Rouse is a Virginia Beach native who started a nonprofit and served on the Virginia Beach City Council from 2019 to 2022, after which he was elected to the Virginia Senate in a January 2023 special election. In that special election, Rouse flipped Congresswoman Jen Kiggans’ State Senate seat in Virginia Beach, which Democrats narrowly lost in the 2019 State Senate election.

Strengths:

1. Rouse has the same demographic advantage as Stoney, as he is a Black candidate who can act as a balancing force for a statewide ticket led by a white woman from suburban Henrico County. Especially in the gubernatorial years, turnout among Black voters tends to plummet, even in years friendly to Democrats (see: 2017).
2. Like Hashmi, Rouse has also run in a competitive race and flipped a Republican-held Senate seat. However, his race was in a much more Republican-leaning district than Hashmi’s, so his victory in that special election is arguably more impressive than her first win against Sturtevant in 2019.
3. Rouse’s background as a Virginia Tech football player is a net-positive on several fronts; he can draw support from independent and perhaps even some conservative-leaning voters in Virginia Tech’s enormous alumni network, and can assist in addressing Democrats’ problem with young male voters that have drifted more conservative during the 2020s. Also of importance:  Blacksburg is home to the second-closest House of Delegates race in 2023, HD-41. Having a Hokie football player on the ticket could boost turnout with Democratic-leaning students in the town, which was very much dominated by the Youngkin campaign in 2021 and saw a modest shift to the right in 2024.
4. Rouse also ran in a competitive at-large local race in Virginia Beach, which is also imperative to Democrats’ path to victory this year. The Hampton Roads area swung hard to the right in 2021 thanks to Glenn Youngkin, Winsome Sears, and Jason Miyares’ roots in the area. Giving Hampton Roads a voice is a huge boost to Democrats’ path to victory this November, and Rouse has represented the most competitive part of the region, and the largest locality in population. He may arguably be the best addition for the ticket in terms of regional diversity. As the GOP operative who believes Hashmi would be a net-negative for the Democrats put it: “I think who helps [Spanberger] the best I think is Rouse, and I think that’s a regional thing, because he’s from [Virginia Beach]. He’s a [Virginia Tech] guy, he’s a football player, he’s a good-looking dude, he’s got some rockstar potential there, some killer ads just done properly.”

Weaknesses:

1. Perhaps the easiest attack against Aaron Rouse that Republicans can levy against him is that he’s climbing the political ladder with few legislative accomplishments. Rouse was only on the Virginia Beach City council for four years and has served in the Senate for two years. The merits of this detraction, however, may very well prove to be moot– just ask Josh Hawley after these attacks fell flat against him in the 2018 US Senate race in Missouri.
2. Like Hashmi, Rouse has also run behind his district’s presidential margins, albeit at a smaller rate between his two elections. In 2023, he ran 4 points behind Kamala Harris’s 2024 margin in his district, similar to Ghazala Hashmi’s performance. In the January 2023 special election though, he ran behind Harris by 6 points in a highly contested race.

Conclusion

Voters in the upcoming Democratic primary have multiple candidates to consider for Abigail Spanberger’s junior ticketmate. The strengths of each candidate and what they bring to the ticket when it comes to demographic and home turf advantages will depend largely on who emerges victorious in the upcoming primary for Attorney General: Former Delegate Jay Jones or Henrico County Commonwealth’s Attorney Shannon Taylor. Various combinations between these two contests can either be a net-positive or a net-negative for Virginia Democrats in the general election. We’ll be watching to see how voters roll the dice on June 17th.