First things first: incumbent Representative Scott Taylor is set to thrash his primary opponent, Mary Jones of James City County. She has raised [1] roughly $28,000 so far, has no natural base of support (except maybe her neighbors in JCC), and draws essentially the same twelve people to every event she holds across the district. Taylor, meanwhile, boasts nearly $1.5 million in funds raised, has Virginia Beach (and the roughly 60% of the 2nd District it accounts for) in his pocket, and enjoys the natural advantages that come with being an incumbent.
Jones is running her campaign based on essentially nothing but saying, “Scott Taylor doesn’t support President Trump’s agenda.” Unfortunately for Jones and her unscrupulous consultants, facts and numbers are very stubborn things. Indeed, Taylor has voted in line with the President’s agenda [2] to the tune of 98.4% of the time.
With Jones being relegated to irrelevance after running a race with no money and even less of a message, Taylor will likely face a rematch against his opponent from 2016: Newport News and 3rd District resident, Shaun Brown. As far as the six Democrats in the primary go, Brown is running away with the money. This time it’s just not via the wire fraud and theft of government property in the amount of $400,000 that she was indicted for [3]. She’s posted over $700,000 [4] in fundraising so far, which is fairly impressive considering the DNC will bolster that when the time comes, while only one other opponent is reporting anything at all (Virginia Beach school teacher Karen Mallard with $21,870).
The rest of the Democrats in the field are mostly unknown individuals seeking office for the first time. David Nygaard, a jeweler and former Republican, may be the only one with any kind of name recognition due to having been in business in Virginia Beach for some time.
By way of review, Congressman Taylor faces a primary opponent with no cash and a message that’s about as compelling and informative as watching paint dry, and the Democratic front-runner is from another district and was indicted last year for stealing money from a program intended to provide food to low-income children at school. I’ll be the first to admit that 2016 taught us an election ain’t over ’til it’s over. But from the looks of it, if you’re reading this, live in the 2nd District, and you don’t like Congressman Taylor for some reason, you might be better off declaring your candidacy and running yourself, as it stands right now.