At a virtual phone bank kickoff for Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D-Virginia) earlier this month, Del. Hala Ayala of Prince William County tried to get volunteers excited about the candidate.

“Let’s give her a round of applause,” Ayala urged, a “Jennifer Wexton for Congress” sign serving as her background. “Come on, y’all can get into this. We’re virtual but it is important that we have this energy.”

Over the last six months, Zoom has come to dominate many facets of our lives, from work to schooling. And it’s also forced its way into unlikely places, like re-election campaigns that in normal times would involve hand-shaking, baby-kissing and lots of face time with voters.

But that’s not an option for many candidates these days. Wexton, for one, is operating her re-election campaign almost entirely remotely from her Leesburg home. The former prosecutor and state lawmaker is fighting to keep her seat in Virginia’s 10th Congressional District, and she told WAMU/DCist that during a pandemic, there’s no other way to run.

“Most of the voters I talk to want to err on the side of caution when it comes to stopping the spread of this disease,” she said.

The district begins in the D.C. suburbs and stretches to the Shenandoah Valley. Two years ago, Wexton ended four decades of Republican control in her district by accusing her rival Barbara Comstock of being tied to President Donald Trump. This year, she has a similar message about her challenger Aliscia Andrews.

“I have pushed back against Donald Trump and a lot of his abuses. His attacks on the federal workforce, his attacks on the science community, his attacks on the rule of law and on facts,” Wexton said. “And I believe that she would just be a rubber stamp for Donald Trump and his reckless agenda.”

In substance and style, Andrews is Wexton’s foil. She served as a Marine and worked on border security with Customs and Border Protection. Loudoun County Sheriff Mike Chapman endorsed her, and in a video Andrews released last week, the two sit in front of a fireplace and speak — without masks on.

“I ultimately want to make sure that our law enforcement officers have  every tool in their tool belt to be successful,” Andrews says on tape.

The Andrews campaign did not respond to WAMU/DCist’s request for an interview. However, she has inspired a following in Northern Virginia, and on Sunday a handful of her supporters visited Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda to attend a prayer vigil for President Trump.

Vinson Palathingal, a 53-year-old IT entrepreneur from Fairfax County, cheered as the president’s black SUV rolled by in a surprise greeting to well-wishers.

“We saw him OK, it’s good,” Palathingal said.

The president’s case of COVID-19 has not changed Republican approaches to in-person campaigning in Virginia, and Palathingal said he was going forward with organizing a planned meet-and-greet for Andrews in Great Falls.

“She’s a family person, she talks about these basic things that we care about. She’s not a politician,” he said.

Palathingal said he was not concerned about health risks at his event, which will be outdoors.

“We know enough about the disease now to do whatever is necessary,” he said.

So far, Wexton’s approach does not appear to have dampened enthusiasm. She’s held only one drive-in rally in Winchester, and spoke to supporters as she cast her ballot on the first day of early voting, but she has still out-raised Andrew by a factor of nearly ten. Political scientist Quentin Kidd at Christopher Newport University says Andrews faces an uphill battle.

“It’s essentially a referendum election on the president. And so it’s hard for her, and it’s hard for many Republicans running in Congressional races around the country, to get out from under the shadow of the president,” he said.

One of Wexton’s volunteers is Paula Goldman, a 55-year-old attorney living in Herndon. She said she called 20 people on Sunday.

“I actually got quite a few people live,” Goldman said. “Most of the time that I’ve done phone banking it’s been almost entirely answering machines.”

Goldman said that was likely because people are sick of getting robocalls and they rarely answer. Still, her many failed calls made her cast fresh doubt on recent polls that show former Vice President Joe Biden ahead in Virginia and nationally. She worries that without traditional in-person campaigning, support for Democrats could be softer than she hopes.

“I do wonder whether polls which are conducted pretty much exclusively by phone are getting a different demographic than they used to,” Goldman said.

With one campaign remote and the other deploying door-knockers across Virginia, voters can expect to be targeted in person and online for the next four weeks. Still when the two rivals meet, as they did Monday night in a forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters, it is virtual.