Three special elections featuring Indian Americans, to take place Jan. 7, in Virginia

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RICHMOND – Voters in Loudoun County and a slice of central Virginia will go to the polls Tuesday to choose two state senators and a member of the House of Delegates on the eve of the General Assembly session that kicks off Wednesday.

The elections will fill vacancies created when state Sens. John J. McGuire III (R-Goochland) and Suhas Subramanyam (D-Loudoun) won election to Congress on Nov. 5 and a sitting delegate from Loudoun resigned to run for Subramanyam’s seat in Richmond.

Republicans could wrest control of the state House and Senate from Democrats by flipping the two Loudoun County seats, but political insiders from both parties consider that a long shot given the overlapping, solid-blue territory they occupy in Northern Virginia.

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Likewise, political observers give Democrats little chance of expanding their narrow margin in the Senate by picking up the seat McGuire has vacated, in a red, largely rural swath stretching from Richmond’s western suburbs to Lynchburg.

But as low-turnout contests conducted outside the traditional political calendar, special elections can yield surprises. Republican gains in either chamber could be pivotal for term-limited Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) and his agenda in his final year in office.

Democrats, who have controlled the Senate since Youngkin took office in January 2022, have had little trouble rebuffing the governor’s priorities since they won control of the House in 2023.

With a narrow 21-to-19 majority in the Senate before Subramanyam’s exit, Democrats will lose effective control if they do not hold that seat, since Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears presides over the chamber and has the power to break most tie votes.

Democrats have a 51-to-49 margin in the House until the resignation of Del. Kannan Srinivasan (D-Loudoun) takes effect Tuesday. The party probably would be forced into a power-sharing agreement with Republicans if the seat went red.

Early in-person voting, which began Dec. 11 for the Loudoun races and Dec. 27 in the central Virginia contest, concludes Saturday at 5 p.m. Polls will be open Tuesday from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m.

In the Loudoun Senate race, Srinivasan faces Tumay Harding, a former teacher and vocal critic of Loudoun’s school system.

Srinivasan won his House seat in November 2023 and is looking to move up to the Senate. A business analyst and the first Indian immigrant elected to the House of Delegates, he touts his legislative work in areas ranging from mental health and fentanyl to consumer protection and courthouse efficiency.

Srinivasan got involved in politics after being struck by a truck while in graduate school and denied Medicaid coverage, according to his campaign website. He was later appointed to serve on the state Medicaid board by former Democratic governors Terry McAuliffe and Ralph Northam.

Harding, the daughter of Turkish-Uzbek immigrants, ran unsuccessfully for a seat on the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors last year. She has worked as a teacher in the Prince William County and Loudoun County public school systems and as a cargo company executive, according to her campaign website. She vows to stop “far-left madness” in Richmond, referring specifically to transgender sports and bathroom policies.

The Senate rivals have sharply different stances on abortion, with Srinivasan promising to be “a brick wall against extremist attempts to restrict reproductive freedom,” and Harding declaring that life begins at conception and promising to defend Virginia’s ban on most late-term abortions.

Democrat JJ Singh and Republican Ram Venkatachalam are competing for the House seat that Srinivasan is giving up. Singh is president of Retreat Hotels and Resorts and a former economic policy adviser to Sen. Chris Coons (D-Delaware). Venkatachalam ran unsuccessfully in 2023 for the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors.

Singh, the son of Indian immigrants, grew up in Northern Virginia, graduated from the University of Virginia and, according to his campaign biography, was the first turbaned Sikh to serve in the Peace Corps. He worked at the White House Office of Management and Budget during the Obama administration and serves on Loudoun’s Economic Development Advisory Commission.

Singh’s stated priorities include amending the state constitution to protect abortion rights, tightening gun-control laws, combating climate change through a “clean economy,” and lowering costs on items including groceries, education and tolls.

Venkatachalam emigrated from India after earning undergraduate and master’s degrees in computer science, according to a biography on the local GOP website. An IT consultant for Deloitte, he has served on his local homeowners association and was chairman of the county’s transit advisory panel.

He vows to focus on “lower taxes, economic opportunity, public safety, and quality public education for every child” and to avoid “getting wrapped up in divisive social issues and national agendas.”

In the central Virginia seat that McGuire vacated, the Republican nominee is Luther Cifers, president of YakAttack, which makes products for kayak fishing. He faces Democrat Jack Trammell, who in 2014 unsuccessfully ran against fellow Randolph-Macon College professor Dave Brat (R) in Virginia’s 7th Congressional District.

Cifers is a political newcomer who had long considered himself a Republican but had never attended a local GOP party meeting before seeking the nomination. He grew up in the district in Amelia County, where he was home-schooled from the fourth grade on, and later moved to Farmville, where YakAttack is headquartered.

“I’m very conservative, but I’m not very divisive,” he said in an interview with The Washington Post, in which he vowed to focus on affordable housing and K-12 education.

Trammell – now a professor at Mount St. Mary’s University in Maryland and the chairman of its sociology, criminal justice and human services department – lives on a small farm in Louisa County. He is the author of more than 20 books.

Priorities listed on his campaign website include promoting “Rural Entrepreneurialism, from wild flower farms to wineries,” expanding career and technical education, adding abortion rights to the state constitution, tightening state laws on guns and campaign contributions, cracking down on drugs and violent criminals, and improving roads, broadband and emergency services in rural areas.

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