Even as the exhausted nation recovers from its two-year presidential campaign, candidates in a pocket of Northern Virginia are gearing up for a pair of special elections that may serve as barometers of partisan enthusiasm in the Trump 2.0 era.
The contests early next year in Loudoun County, for seats in overlapping districts in Virginia’s State Senate and House of Delegates, will not only determine which party holds majorities in the narrowly divided chambers. They will also be the first significant elections since voters returned President-elect Donald J. Trump to office.
Eight years ago, his surprise victory prompted a wave of Democratic energy, unleashing geysers of fund-raising and a zeal to vote that led the party to special-election victories even in deeply Republican districts.
But since Mr. Trump’s defeat of Vice President Kamala Harris, Democrats have focused more on protecting political turf at the state level than on engaging in flashy national demonstrations. Donations to liberal nonprofit groups have not matched the resistance anger that followed Mr. Trump’s first election. And ratings on the left-leaning cable channel MSNBC have dropped — with the hosts of the network’s flagship show having met with the president-elect.
The Loudoun County state legislative districts became vacant when Suhas Subramanyam, a Democratic state senator, resigned after winning an election to the U.S. House on Nov. 5. Kannan Srinivasan, a Democratic member of the Virginia House of Delegates, stepped down from that chamber after winning a Democratic caucus on Nov. 16 for the party’s nomination to replace Mr. Subramanyam.
Then JJ Singh, a first-time candidate, won a Democratic caucus on Nov. 23 to replace Mr. Srinivasan — the third time in November that his district’s voters were asked to go to the polls.
The districts are both heavily Democratic — Terry McAuliffe won more than 60 percent of the vote in each when he lost the 2021 election for governor. Still, party officials worry that a drop in enthusiasm could allow Republicans to snatch away key seats. Republicans have nominated Tumay Harding for the State Senate and Ram Venkatachalam for the State House. Each has emphasized school issues and a desire to end Democratic control of the legislative chambers.
Special elections tend to be low-turnout affairs that attract only the most motivated voters, a reality expected to be even more acute in the Jan. 7 elections, which will include early voting throughout the December and New Year’s holidays.
Democrats hold a 20-to-19 advantage in the Virginia Senate and a 50-to-49 majority in the state’s House of Delegates. Republican victories would give the state’s lieutenant governor, Winsome Earle-Sears, the tiebreaking vote in the State Senate and force a power-sharing agreement in the House of Delegates. The stakes for Virginia are high: Democrats are vying to advance state constitutional amendments on abortion rights, same-sex marriage and the restoration of voting rights for convicted felons.
Dan Helmer, the campaign chair for the Virginia House Democratic caucus, said the party was planning “a substantial six-figure budget” for both races — a far higher sum than usual for deep-blue seats.
“We saw how Loudoun shifted right,” Mr. Helmer said, referring to the presidential election. “We know that people are tired, and we know it’s going to take inspirational candidates like JJ Singh and Kannan Srinivasan to hold these seats.”
Mr. Singh, 44, is a former Obama administration official and aide to Senator Chris Coons of Delaware. In 2014, he was named one of the 50 most beautiful people in Washington by The Hill, a local news outlet.
If he wins, Mr. Singh will potentially be the first turban-wearing Sikh elected to a state legislature in the United States. Nimarta Kaur, a spokeswoman for the Sikh Coalition, said the organization was not aware of any other Sikh state legislators who wear turbans.
The two districts have some of the state’s largest populations of Asian Americans. The House district is 43 percent Asian American, and the Senate district is 30 percent.
Mr. Singh is campaigning on a platform of lowering highway tolls and tuition at Virginia’s public universities. He also backs standard Democratic priorities like the party’s proposed constitutional amendment enshrining abortion rights into Virginia law and measures aimed at curbing gun violence.
In a recent interview, Mr. Singh — who ran a six-day campaign for the Democratic nomination for the House seat — said he found voters in his district confused by the sheer number of elections and stunned by the continuing Trump transition.
“People are cycling through the various steps to get to acceptance. I think there’s anger, I think there’s sadness, I think some people are numb,” Mr. Singh said. “There’s some level of acceptance that Trump is going to be our president. And we want folks in Washington to do good things. But if they can’t, well, then we’ve got to solve it in Richmond.”
Virginia Republicans have made competing in Loudoun County a centerpiece of their electoral strategy. This year, Mr. Trump shaved eight percentage points off his 25-point margin of defeat in the county in 2020. When Gov. Glenn Youngkin won his 2021 election, he lost the county by 11 points.
John Whitbeck, a conservative political operative from Loudoun County and former chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia, said that G.O.P. officials had not yet determined whether to invest significant resources in their candidates, who were selected at party conventions last month.
During the special elections, Mr. Whitbeck said, the candidates are not likely to spend much time speaking to the concerns of swing voters who may have bounced between voting for Democrats and Republicans in recent contests. Instead, he said, the focus will be purely on the party bases.
“You don’t have time to communicate with crossover voters,” Mr. Whitbeck said. “If suddenly the Republican candidate is very close or even wins, you could say that this portends to building enthusiasm on the Republican side.”
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