The campaign of Beth Macy, who I’d been viewing as the frontrunner in the Sixth District congressional race, issued a statement on Thursday, following the release of new congressional district maps, telling us Macy “affirms that she is more committed than ever to running for Congress.”
“I was ready to take on Ben Cline when the district was ruby-red — long before redistricting reared its head,” said Macy, the bestselling author of Dopesick, which examined the opioid crisis through the lens of its impact on Southwest Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley.
“I was fully prepared to fight for Virginians before it was politically convenient to do so, and I’m still ready to fight for the people of my community,” Macy said.
ICYMI
Virginia Democrats revealed their proposed new congressional maps at a news conference at the State Capitol on Thursday.
Yes, yes, the maps need to get the final approval of both houses of the General Assembly, then Gov. Abigail Spanberger – ahead of a statewide referendum in April, that still needs the blessing of the Virginia Supreme Court.
Bank on it.
Important to my local readers: as we’ve been reporting, Staunton and Waynesboro would be moved from a 60 percent Republican congressional district into a leans-D district that includes Harrisonburg and Charlottesville, and runs down the east side of the Blue Ridge before crossing back over into Roanoke and Blacksburg.
The surprise in the reveal: the western half of Augusta County would move into another leans-D district, the Seventh, currently represented by Democrat Eugene Vindman, which runs all the way to the DC suburbs.
The Fishersville and Stuarts Draft areas would then move into the Ninth District, the only leans-R district, which is currently represented by MAGA Republican Morgan Griffith.
Sorry for y’all’s damn luck.
Back to the new Sixth: looks like we’re going to end up having a race for the Democratic Party nomination between Macy and former Fifth District Congressman Tom Perriello, who announced last fall that he was running for the Democratic nomination in the Fifth, but Perriello lives in the Charlottesville-Albemarle area, which will move into the Sixth.
ICYMI
“Folks across the Blue Ridge and the Valley know that I have been fighting for decades to increase wages and access to affordable healthcare for families,” Perriello said in a statement on Thursday. “From running nonprofits to running peace talks, I have always stood up to bullies, so that everybody gets a fair shot, and I refuse to let corruption and cowardice in this Congress stand. District lines may shift, but my values and commitments to working families in Virginia never will.”
Here we go.
Complicating matters in the new heavyweight battle in the Sixth: both Perriello and Macy have already earned the endorsements of Spanberger and U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine.
Perriello had also gotten endorsements from U.S. Sen. Mark Warner and Lt. Gov. Ghazala Hashmi.
Can you say, awkward?
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Chris Graham
