In November, Virginia state senator Jen Kiggans, a Republican, unseated U.S. representative Elaine Luria, a Democrat, triggering a special election for Kiggans’s state senate seat.
On Tuesday, Democrat Aaron Rouse, who played football at Virginia Tech and in the NFL before serving on the Virginia Beach city council, won the vacant senate seat by less than one percentage point — 348 votes out of more than 38,000 ballots cast.
In 2019, Kiggans first won the state senate seat by less than one percentage point, but as a result of redistricting, the senate district became more Democratic. “In the midterms, Kiggans beat ex-Rep. Elaine Luria narrowly, but not in the precincts that make up the new senate seat,” David Weigel reports at Semafor. “Luria won them by around 4 points, and the abortion issue helped close the gap.”
Before Rouse’s victory, Democrats already held a 21–19 majority in the state senate, but one conservative Democrat in the chamber gave Republicans some hope that they might advance some of their conservative legislative priorities this year. With a 22–18 Democratic majority, those hopes are mostly dashed until the November 2023 Virginia legislative elections.