Angela Lynn is known in Albemarle County government and politics circles. Can that serve as a foundation for the Democrat to pull an upset in the 25th District House of Delegates race this fall?
“This is a race I can win,” said Lynn, 60, of White Hall, who serves on the Albemarle County Social Services Advisory Board and the Albemarle County Public Recreation Facilities Authority.
Lynn’s background also includes stints as a public-school teacher and work in intergovernmental and external affairs for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Lynn’s huband, Nick, is a graduate of the Air Force Academy and a retired fighter pilot who now works in commercial aviation. The couple has five children.
Her focus as a candidate is on three areas – education, job creation and preservation of natural resources. She has been busy since launching her campaign in February meeting with voters across the 25th District, which stretches from the suburbs of Charlottesville in eastern Albemarle County, hopscotching Waynesboro into eastern Augusta County and including a section of eastern and central Rockingham County in the shadow of Harrisonburg.
It’s a far-flung district, to say the least, and looking at the district on a map has Lynn adding to her legislative agenda.
“The first thing I would do in office is vote for a change to the way we handle redistricting in Virginia,” Lynn said. “I know a lot of people think, if you had that advantage, you’d want to keep it, but that’s not correct. That’s the exact opposite of why I’m running. I’m running to open the process up so more people can get involved in the process and be able to challenge incumbents to ensure that the people who represent us in Richmond do so in a system that is based on fairness and equity.”
Steve Landes, a Republican, has represented the 25th in Richmond since 1996, but he hasn’t faced a challenge since the district’s lines were redrawn in 2011 to include an additional five Democratic-leaning precincts in Albemarle.
Each of the nine precincts in the district in Albemarle gave a majority of their votes in the 2013 gubernatorial election to Democratic nominee Terry McAuliffe, who ended up receiving 60.0 percent of the votes cast in the Albemarle precincts in the final accounting.
Augusta and Rockingham are two of the most Republican-leaning counties in the Commonwealth, each giving more than 70 percent of their votes in the 2013 gubernatorial cycle to Republican nominee Ken Cuccinelli.
But taken all together, the district split was 60/40 Republican. That might qualify the 25th for inclusion on your favorite political scientist’s Safe Republican list, but it’s hard to imagine that Landes won’t take the challenge from a well-connected, serious Democrat like Lynn lightly, with recent Virginia political history (House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s 2014 primary upset, U.S. Sen. Mark Warner’s near-upset loss last fall) as the guide to that end.
“There hasn’t been a real challenger to Steve for a long time, and no one from Albemarle has challenged Steve,” Lynn said. “I wanted to be sure that people in Albemarle had somebody in Richmond who represents their interests, and I think there are people in Augusta County and Rockingham County who want the same.”
It could be an expensive proposition. Landes, as a veteran legislator, has a healthy campaign warchest to draw from. According to the Virginia Public Access Project, Landes had $62,495 in campaign cash on hand as of Dec. 31, 2014, and spent more than $325,000 combined in the 2011 and 2013 cycles, both of which saw him running for re-election unopposed.
Lynn signaled that she isn’t going to try to fight the flow of cash by trying to build up her own stash of campaign dollars.
“I am a true grassroots candidate,” Lynn said. “I don’t have big-money interests backing me. I don’t have PACs, Super PACs or huge utility companies, or any of those entities, backing me. So I am really a very different kind of candidate. I’ve had to be very creative in trying to drum up support. I can’t outspend my opponent. I just can’t.”
Lynn plans to wear her grassroots credentials as a badge of honor in her campaign.
“If people really want to continue to elect people who have deep pockets, that can be a problem in the future,” Lynn said. “How does this play out in the end? Do you sort of become beholden to serving the people who fund your campaign, the big-money people, or do you serve the people who vote you into office? That’s a key difference between me and my opponent. I’m doing this to represent the 25th District and the people of Virginia. I have no reason to be beholden to big money.”
– Story by Chris Graham
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