In its quest to regain the majority, the Senate Republican Caucus is expanding its playing field once again after Del. Dave Nutter announced his intention to forego another term in the House of Delegates to challenge incumbent Sen. John Edwards* in the Roanoke-based 21st Senate District.
Despite Sen. Edwards’ unpopularity with Roanoke-area conservatives, the district was believed to be too Democratic to attract a known challenger. (Sen. Edwards won his last contested race in 1999 with almost 59 percent of the votes cast.) The odds seemed so high that (reportedly) Sen. Ralph Smith–the former mayor of Roanoke–opted to move into Bill Stanley’s 19th District rather than return to Roanoke to face a potentially futile contest for the 21st District seat.
As part of its ongoing effort to challenge Sen. Edwards, the Roanoke Tea Party recently announced that it would be promoting a candidate of its own for the GOP nomination, Roanoke insurance agent Tripp Godsey. After seeing polling conducted by the Senate Republican Caucus, Del. Nutter decided to jump into the race last weekend.
Acknowledging that the race is certainly a risk, Del. Nutter appeared ready for the challenge when speaking with a reporter from the Roanoke Times:
“Life is about risk sometimes”…. “It will be a very competitive race, there’s no doubt about it.”
How much of a challenge is the key question. VPAP rates the new 21st District as 0.2 percent more Republican than the old, but Dwayne Yancey of the Roanoke Times’ “Blue Ridge Caucus” breaks down the race and discovers that the district is surprisingly…well-balanced:
Roanoke accounts for only 44 percent of the voting strength in that district. So redistricting has diminished Edwards’ base.* Interestingly, the New River Valley portion of the district accounts for . . . hmm, exactly 44 percent of the votes in that district, the same share as Roanoke city!
* That means the remainder is in the section of (mostly rural) Roanoke County needed to connect Roanoke with the New River.
…If Nutter got the same percentage of the vote in NRV that Edwards does in Roanoke city, then the advantage would seem to go to Nutter — on the theory that the natural Republican base of Roanoke County would kick in on his behalf.
If, however, we think Edwards will run better in Roanoke city than Nutter does in NRV, well, there’s still that sliver of GOP-leaning Roanoke County to think about. So then the question is…what percentage would Nutter have to achieve in NRV to win?
…In any case, this is a different year, different candidates, all the rest. Still, both Edwards and Nutter have shown that in the past they can top 60 percent on their home turf. How will do they do against each other?
For those concerned about which party controls the state Senate after this November’s elections, Dwayne Yancey’s blog post is well worth reading.
Whether Del. Nutter becomes Senator Nutter, one thing is abundantly clear: by fielding challengers against Roscoe Reynolds, Phil Puckett and now John Edwards, the Senate Republican Caucus believes the road to the majority runs through Southside and Southwestern Virginia–and if the Republican nominees can succeed against these Democrat incumbents, their constituents hope that being the majority-makers could help the region regain some clout within the Senate that has been lost to population growth in northern and eastern portions of the Commonwealth.
*Not to be confused with this John Edwards, who is also unpopular with conservatives.
