Random drawing gives GOP control of Virginia House of Delegates
Republican Delegate David Yancey declared winner in race tied after disputed recount
♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPolitics.com editor
RICHMOND (CFP) — Republicans have retained control of the Virginia House of Delegates after a random drawing to settle a race in Newport News that remained tied after a disputed recount.
Va. Del. David Yancey, R-Newport News
Republican Delegate David Yancey will get to keep his seat after his name was drawn from a bowl by James Alcorn, chairman of the State Board of Elections, as Yancey’s Democratic challenger, Shelly Simonds, looked on.
With Yancey’s win, Republicans will hold 51 seats in the House of Delegates, to 49 for Democrats, although Democrats have gone to federal court to overturn another race in which their candidate lost narrowly in a recount.
Speaking to reporters after the January 4 drawing, Simonds refused to concede and said “all options are on the table,” including possible legal action to contest the outcome in District 94.
Yancey, who didn’t attend the drawing, issued a statement saluting Simonds on running a “great campaign.”
“The election is behind us, the outcome is clear, and my responsibility now is to begin the work I was re-elected to do,” he said.
Despite falling short of control, Democrats made an astonishing breakthrough in the November vote in Virginia, nearly overturning a 66-34 Republican House majority by flipping 15 seats and taking out 12 GOP incumbents, including many veteran lawmakers in the Washington, D.C. suburbs.
Democrats also carried all three statewide races, including a win by Governor-elect Ralph Northam, and only trail Republicans by one vote in the Senate, where the GOP holds a 21-19 majority. Northam takes office January 13.
The drawing to settle the contest in District 94 was the latest bizarre twist in the seesaw battle between Yancey and Simonds that has roiled Virginia politics for more than eight weeks.
Shelly Simonds
After the initial results were reported, Yancey held a 10-vote lead. Then, a December 19 recount overturned Yancey’s margin and showed Simonds ahead by one vote. But when a panel of judges met to certify the results the next day, they decided to count a ballot for Yancey in which the bubbles for both candidates had been filled in but the bubble for Simonds was crossed off.
With that ballot counted, Simond’s single vote lead became a tie, which, under Virginia law, had to be settled by drawing lots.
Simonds asked the judges who counted the disputed ballot to reconsider, but they refused, saying they had complied with state law in determining the intention of the voter who filled out the ballot, who had voted for the Republican candidates in all of the other races.
The unusual circumstances of the drawing drew a large crowd to the Patrick Henry Building in Richmond, despite a snow storm. Slips of paper with the names of both candidates were put inside film canisters and then placed in a large bowl and mixed, with Alcorn selecting the winner.
Alabama Democratic U.S. Senator Doug Jones sworn in
Jones is first Alabama Democrat to sit in the Senate since 1997
WASHINGTON (CFP) — Democrat Doug Jones has been officially sworn in as a U.S. senator, capping the remarkable and improbable political feat of capturing a Senate seat in one of the nation’s most Republican states.
U.S. Senator Doug Jones is sworn in. (Courtesy C-SPAN)
Jones, flanked by former Vice President Joe Biden, was sworn in on January 3 by Vice President Mike Pence, alongside Democrat Tina Smith, who assumed the Senate seat from Minnesota vacated by Al Franken. The ceremony was then re-enacted in the Old Senate Chamber, where Jones was accompanied by his family.
Jones assumed the seat once held by his mentor and former boss, the late U.S. Senator Howell Heflin, who was the last Democrat to represent the Yellowhammer State when he retired in 1997.
With Jones in the Senate, Republicans will hold a scant 51-49 advantage. With Pence available to break ties, Democrats need just two Republican votes to stop the majority from passing legislation.
Jones, 63, a former federal prosecutor from Birmingham, was given little chance to win the seat when a special election was called in April to pick a permanent replacement for Republican Jeff Sessions, who resigned to become U.S. attorney general.
But interest in Jones began picking up after the man picked to fill Session’s seat on a temporary basis, Luther Strange, was defeated in a Republican primary runoff by Roy Moore, the controversial former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. And then, a month before the December 12 election, the race was rocked by allegations that Moore had sexually pursued teenage girls when he was in his 30s.
Moore vehemently denied the charges. But GOP Senate leaders quickly disavowed him and tried to push him out of the race, to no avail. Alabama Republican U.S. Senator Richard Shelby was among Moore’s detractors, saying publicly that he would not vote for Moore.
Almost alone among Republicans, President Donald Trump stood by Moore, telling his supporters that letting a “liberal” like Jones into the Senate would harm his agenda. But Republican defections, coupled with a strong turnout by African American voters, put Jones over the top by 22,000 votes.
Jones is one of only five Democrats representing Southern states in the Senate, joining U.S. Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine of Virginia, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, and Bill Nelson of Florida. The other 23 Southern senators are Republicans.
Jones will now serve the remainder of Sessions term, which comes up for election again in 2020.
Control of Virginia House of Delegates may be decided by drawing lots
Judges overrule recount decision, leading to tie in race that will determine which party is in charge
RICHMOND (CFP) — A slip of paper drawn from a bowl on December 27 may determine whether Republicans keep control of the Virginia House of Delegates by a single vote or have to share control with Democrats, after a three-judge panel decided that a race in Newport News between Republican Delegate David Yancey and his Democratic challenger, Shelly Simonds, was a tie.
With Republicans having a 50-49 advantage in the 99 House races already decided, the outcome of the race between Yancey and Simonds will decide if Republicans keep or share control of the chamber. And because state law requires ties to be broken by drawing lots, a critical issue of legislative control may be, literally, left up to chance.
A December 19 recount gave Simonds a one-vote victory over Yancey, out of nearly 24,000 votes cast. But the panel of judges who met to certify the results the next day decided that a ballot in which the bubbles for both candidates were filled in, but the bubble for Simonds was then crossed off, should be counted as a vote for Yancey because the voter chose Republicans in the other races on the ballot. (See ballot below)
During the recount, that ballot had been discounted on the grounds that the voter had overvoted, or chosen both candidates. Once the judges put it in Yancey’s column, Simonds’s one-vote win became a tie.
Shelly Simonds
However, Simonds is now considering legal action in the wake of the judges’ decision to reexamine a single ballot at Yancey’s request, even after Republican leaders conceded the race when the outcome of the recount was announced.
“If we were going to be pulling out individual ballots, you can believe me, we would have had a few that we would have wanted the judges to look at as well,” Simonds said in an interview with MSNBC.
As things now stand, with all recounts complete, Republicans have won 50 seats in the 100-member chamber, and Democrats 49, with the District 94 seat still to be decided. However, Democrats have gone to federal court seeking a new election in District 28 in Fredericksburg, where the GOP candidate had an 73-vote lead after a recount, on the grounds that 147 voters may have cast ballots in the wrong election. A hearing in that case has been set for January 5.
State elections officials have indicated that to settle the tie, they will likely employ the procedure used to decide the order of candidates’ names on the ballot, in which pieces of paper are put in canisters that are then drawn from a glass bowl. The drawing has been scheduled for 11 a.m. on December 27 at the Patrick Henry Building in Richmond.
Heading into the November election, Republicans held a commanding 66-34 lead in the House of Delegates. But Democrats, riding a surge of suburban support, flipped 16 seats and took out 13 Republican incumbents to threaten 18 years of GOP control.
Republicans hold a narrow 21-19 lead in the Virginia Senate, whose members come up for election in 2019.
Disputed ballot in District 94
House Ethics Committee expands probe into Texas U.S. Rep. Blake Farenthold
Committee looking into whether Farenthold lied, used government resources in his political campaigns
♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPolitics.com editor
WASHINGTON (CFP) — The House Ethics Committee is investigating whether U.S. Rep. Blake Farenthold of Texas used government resources in his congressional campaigns and lied to the committee during an ongoing investigation into sexual harassment claims by a former staffer.
Meanwhile, CNN is reporting that a former staffer has told House investigators that she was pressured to perform campaign-related tasks during regular work hours in Farenthold’s congressional office, activity that is not allowed under House rules.
U.S. Rep. Blake Farenthold, R-Texas
The latest charges are likely to increase pressure on Farenthold, who has already announced that he won’t seek re-election in 2018 after revelations that he used $84,000 of government money to settle a lawsuit by a former staffer who alleged that she was fired after complaining about sexually suggestive comments made to her by the congressman and another male staffer.
In a December 21 news release, the chair and ranking member of the House Ethics Committee — U.S. Reps. Susan Brooks, R-Indiana, and Ted Deutch, D-Florida — announced that their probe of Farenthold had expanded from the original sexual harassment allegations to include allegations that staff resources may have been used on his campaigns, that he or “any person acting on his behalf” may have required staff members to work on his campaigns, and that he “may have made false statements or omissions in testimony to the committee.”
The statement did not give any details to indicate why the probe had expanded.
In response to the Ethics Committee’s statement, Farenthold’s office released a statement to Texas and national media noting that he had previously been cleared of sexual harassment charges by the Office of Congressional Ethics and pledging his full cooperation with the committee’s expanded probe.
CNN reported that former Farenthold staffer Elizabeth Peace told Ethics Committee lawyers that she was pressured to work on Farenthold’s 2016 campaign during regular office hours in her Capitol office, using House-issued computers and her work e-mail account. The network cited a source familiar with Peace’s conversation with the lawyers; she refused comment to CNN, although she did acknowledge talking to committee staff.
Under House rules, congressional staffers are only allowed to work on campaigns on their own time, and they are not allowed to use House resources, such as office space, computers, or email accounts,, to do political work.
In 2014, Farenthold’s former communications director, Lauren Greene, sued for gender discrimination, sexual harassment and creating a hostile work environment, alleging that she was fired after complaining about sexually suggestive comments made to her by the congressman and another male staffer. The Office of Congressional Ethics investigated and cleared Farenthold, and he reached a mediated out-of-court settlement with Greene in 2015.
The revelation that $84,000 in taxpayer dollars had been used to pay Greene’s settlement in early December led Farenthold to abandon his 2018 re-election campaign in Texas’s 27th District, which sprawls across the Gulf Coast between Corpus Christi and Houston.
In a statement posted to Facebook on December 14, Farenthold insisted that the sexual harassment charges made against him by Greene were false, but he conceded that a lax management style in his Washington office created a “decidedly unprofessional” work environment — a situation he blamed on his lack of political experience after being elected in 2010.
“I had no idea how to run a congressional office and, as a result, I allowed a workplace culture to take root in my office that was too permissive and decidedly unprofessional,” Fahrenthold said. “It accommodated destructive gossip, offhand comments, off-color jokes and behavior that in general that was less than professional.”
“And I allowed the personal stress of the job to manifest itself in angry outbursts and, too often, a failure to treat people with the respect that they deserved,” he said. “Clearly, that was wrong. It is not how I was raised, it’s not who I am, and for that situation, I am profoundly sorry,” he said.
Democrats, GOP will likely tie for control of Virginia House of Delegates
Democrat wins recount by a single vote to give party parity
RICHMOND (CFP) — By the margin of a single vote in a single race, Virginia Democrats are poised to do what was unthinkable before November’s House of Delegates election — gain enough seats to share control with Republicans come January.
Virginia Delegate-elect Shelly Simonds
A December 19 recount in District 94 in Newport News gave Democrat Shelly Simonds a one-vote victory over Republican Delegate David Yancey, out of nearly 24,000 votes cast. Before the recount, Yancy had a 10-vote lead.
Simonds’s win means Democrats and Republicans both have 49 seats in the 100-seat chamber, with recounts pending in two other races. The Democrat has a 336-vote lead in one of those races, while the Republican leads by 82 votes in the other, making a 50-50 tie the most likely scenario.
Heading into the November election, Republicans held a commanding 66-34 lead in the House of Delegates. But Democrats, riding a surge of suburban support, flipped 16 seats and took out 13 Republican incumbents to end 18 years of GOP control.
While the recount result in District 94 still has to be certified by a judicial panel, GOP House leaders issued a statement conceding both Simonds’s victory and their loss of control.
“As we have said for the last six weeks, we are committed to leading and governing alongside our colleagues,” the GOP leaders said. “We stand ready to establish a bipartisan framework under which the House can operate efficiently and effectively over the next two years.”
Governor-elect Ralph Northam took to Twitter to congratulate Simonds, observing that her one-vote win proves “(e)very vote matters.”
Democrats have filed a federal lawsuit seeking a new election in District 28 in Fredericksburg, where the GOP candidate has an 82-vote lead pending a recount. If successful, Democrats would have a shot at winning an outright majority in the election rerun.
Republicans hold a narrow 21-19 lead in the Virginia Senate. Democrats carried all three statewide posts in November, led by Northam’s 9-point win in the governor’s race.
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