If your allergies are going haywire, it must be almost primary season in Northern Virginia. And while there’s no big governor’s race at the top of the ticket, it’s still a consequential year: in November, voters will elect both chambers of the General Assembly in what is sure to be a close (and closely-watched) battle for the majority in the House of Delegates and state Senate.

For the vast majority of the 140 seats in the General Assembly, “the primary is really the election,” says David Ramadan, a former member of the House of Delegates, now a professor of practice at the Schar School of Public Policy at George Mason University. “Whoever wins the primary is the person who’s going to win the general, because those districts are now either Republican or Democrat.”

That is especially true in Northern Virginia’s reliably blue districts, where the June 20 primary will be the bigger election, with the Democratic candidates selected by voters this summer likely to win in the fall. There are also a handful of Republican nominating contests in the region, including in the few competitive or somewhat competitive areas that could prove key to the balance of power in the next legislature.

On top of that, there’s a political game of musical chairs going on. This year marks the first time politicians and voters will be operating under Virginia’s new legislative maps, drawn in 2021 as part of a contentious and dramatic redistricting process.

“It’s going to be quite interesting and there’s going to be quite a bit of a shake up,” says Ramadan. “The question is going to be how much or how well are the incumbents going to fare compared to the challengers?”

‘Old guard versus the new guard’

Plenty of incumbents — 44 in the House of Delegates and 19 in the state Senate, per the Virginia Public Access Project — were originally drawn together in the same districts in the final map. This coincided with — and in some cases prompted — a wave of retirements of many key senior members of the Northern Virginia delegation. That includes Senate Majority leader Dick Saslaw (D-Fairfax), Senate Finance committee chair Janet Howell and former Speaker of the House Eileen Filler-Corn. In all, almost a dozen NoVA legislators are not seeking re-election, leading to concerns that the delegation — and the General Assembly as a whole — will have overall less influence and less experience in legislative sausage-making in Richmond.

Ramadan says seniority usually equates to money, and the ability to get things done for the area the senior lawmaker represents. And he also says seniority can offer stability in a legislature that regularly changes hands between the political parties.

“This swing back and forth between Republicans and Democrats ends up affecting policy and governance, if it’s going to happen every two years or every four years,” he says. “That’s where seniority makes the difference as well, because regardless of who’s in control, there are relationships, and relationships are important.”

In the state senate, ten lawmakers are retiring, a more than twenty-year high, according to analysis from the Virginia Public Access Project. In the House, one in four delegates are either retiring or running for a new seat in the state senate, per VPAP, setting the stage for some highly competitive races.

Del. Elizabeth Guzman (D-Prince William), for example, chose to run against incumbent Sen. Jeremy McPike (D-Manassas) in the Democratic primary for Senate District 29, instead of facing fellow Democrat Del. Luke Torian in the new House District 24 contest. Guzman’s campaign has emphasized the historic nature of her election — she would be the first Latina elected to the state senate — and argued that she represents the “faces” and “values” of the district, which is 25% Hispanic or Latino and majority non-white. McPike has pointed to his existing record and a raft of endorsements from colleagues in the state senate, local unions, and local elected officials as evidence of his effectiveness as a legislator.

Other incumbents are facing significant primary challenges from newcomers. State Sen. George Barker (D-Alexandria), one of the most senior remaining senators and the co-chair of the Senate Finance and Appropriations committee, is in a contest with Stella Pekarsky, the chair of the Fairfax County school board, to represent a portion of western Fairfax County (the new Senate District 36). Pekarsky is running to Barker’s left, criticizing Barker for taking campaign donations from the energy industry and highlighting her work pushing back against conservative attacks on public schools.

Barker has broad institutional support from Democrats concerned about losing one of Northern Virginia’s remaining long-serving legislators. But he will have to introduce himself to most of the district’s voters, 93% of which are new after redistricting, per VPAP.

In another closely-watched primary, Sen. Chap Petersen (D-Fairfax) is facing a challenge from the left from Saddam Salim, a first-generation immigrant from Bangladesh who grew up in Fairfax and has been heavily involved in local Democratic Party organizations. Petersen is a centrist, self-described “pro-business” Democrat who has said he’ll continue to focus on small businesses, prescription drug affordability, and the environment. Petersen joined Republicans to press for pandemic school reopenings and to kill an assault weapons ban, and he opposes repealing the commonwealth’s right to work law on the grounds that it would harm small businesses.

Broadly speaking, Ramadan sees the crop of primary challenges as a function of ideological and generational differences within the parties, pushing them away from the centrism that has long defined politics in Richmond (elsewhere in Virginia, Republican incumbents are facing primary challenges from the right). Redistricting, he believes, emboldened those challenges by making incumbents more vulnerable, but the ideological disagreements were there all along.

“There’s the old guard versus the new guard,” he says.

Big contests for open seats

The reconfiguration of legislative districts has also left several open seats, with no current lawmaker in the mix to fill them — offering further opportunities for fresh political talent, Ramadan says.

He notes the primaries also feature a large number of candidates of color on the ballot, including in the eastern Loudoun County area that Ramadan used to represent, which has a large South Asian population.

“That’s very interesting, to see a higher participation by minorities and minorities who are representative of a big number of the people that live in those districts,” Ramadan says.

But whether those new faces end up having staying power is another matter, Ramadan says. In some recent cases, he notes, candidates have swept to victory in one cycle, only to be unseated in the next.

In some cases, open seats have pitted well-known faces against each other. One particularly high-profile primary contest is happening in Senate District 33, which includes parts of Prince William and Fairfax counties. There, former lieutenant governor candidate Hala Ayala is competing against Jennifer Carroll Foy, a public defender who previously ran for the Democratic nomination for governor. Both women previously served in the Virginia House of Delegates.

Ramadan says the contest is unusual in that neither candidate is an obvious outsider.

Ayala and Carroll Foy have highlighted similar aspects of their personal biographies: childhoods in families that struggled to make ends meet, and then a rise into public-sector jobs and eventually public service. Both flipped red districts blue in their House races in 2017, and both highlight the 2018 passage of Medicaid expansion as a proud moment. The issues and priorities they highlight on their websites share plenty of similarities.

But there are some notable differences, including in the realm of endorsements. Carroll Foy, for instance, has touted that she has the backing of local labor unions, and she’s also won endorsements from a laundry list of local officials from Fairfax and Prince William counties, including Fairfax Board of Supervisors Chair Jeff McKay and Prince William County supervisors at-large chair Ann Wheeler. Ayala, meanwhile, has backing from former Virginia governors Ralph Northam and Terry McAuliffe.

But at the end of the day, primaries — even high-profile ones like this contest — come down to grassroots organizing, says Ramadan.

“It’s the candidate’s organization, the money they are able to fundraise. It’s the boots on the ground of a candidate person and his or her operation,” he says.

Expensive campaigns

The primary between Carroll Foy and Ayala is significant for another reason — money. Together, the two candidates have raked in more than a million dollars in campaign funding, a large sum for a state legislative seat.

The 33rd District is far from the only expensive primary contest this year: McPike and Guzman, in the 29th, are also approaching a million dollars raised in total (McPike is notably ahead, with nearly $750,000). In the 36th, Barker has raised roughly double what Pekarsky has: nearly $500,000 compared to almost $220,000.

Voters trying to distinguish between candidates may also look at who’s given to a campaign for more clues as to the types of organizations supporting them. (You can check the Virginia Public Access Project’s campaign finance site for information on candidates you’re considering.)

One key fundraising dynamic in Virginia elections these days is a money battle between Dominion Energy, the major power company, and Clean Virginia, an organization that endorses and offers large donations to candidates based on clean energy policy platforms –and a pledge to not take campaign contributions from Dominion. In 2023 alone, Clean Virginia has contributed more than $1.4 million to mostly Democratic candidates, including half a dozen six-figure contributions. This year, Dominion Energy has given just over $1 million directly to campaigns, with a little less than half going to Democratic candidates, and no contribution topping six figures.

For Democratic challengers or simply political newcomers without ready connections to donors, Ramadan notes, Clean Virginia’s contributions can represent “a huge difference to the viability of a challenger.” (So far, Clean Virginia has only endorsed one Republican candidate.)

Pekarsky’s challenge to Barker, for instance, is partially powered by a $113,000 contribution from Clean Virginia. In the Senate District 33 race, Ayala’s top donor for the last campaign reporting period was Dominion Energy; Carroll Foy’s was Clean Virginia.

This story has been updated to include the end date of the early in-person voting period.