Election 2019: In rural Virginia, Democrats climb a steep hill trying to flip GOP seats
SHENANDOAH VALLEY, Va. — Beneath a cloudy October sky, the Clifford Sorghum Festival has it all for rural Virginians: a vintage press extracting juice from a hip-high pile of sorghum canes, a bluegrass band wailing away, raffles to win a hog or a quilt, and in quiet conversations around the church yard, a political candidate seeking to make her mark.
Christian Worth, 49, is a rarity in these parts, a Democrat running for a seat in a district where rock-ribbed Republicans have dominated for generations.
She is one of 10 Democrats running in the strongly Republican districts along the Blue Ridge Mountain spine of Virginia, from West Virginia to the North Carolina border. They have banded together in an unusual coalition, calling themselves the “Rural Ground Game,” convinced that the party can recover areas that were once Democratic but that too willingly ceded to Republicans over the past decades.
Short of big-money donors, they have pooled resources to share one consultant, who provides individual field plans for each race, coordinates schedules and exchanges policy ideas. The candidates have a polished joint presentation for when they seek funds and volunteers from around the state, including a late-September visit to the deeply blue Arlington County. They also have a candidates-only conference call every Monday at 9 p.m. in which they trade tips on everything from policy to yard signs.
The Nov. 5 contest is shaping up to be a pivotal state election. Democrats believe they are within striking distance of winning control of the legislature. All 140 seats in the General Assembly are on the ballot; Republicans are defending a 20-19 edge in the Senate and a 51-48 advantage in the House of Delegates, with one vacancy in each chamber.
But in this mountainous portion of the commonwealth, where cellphone signals do not always penetrate and the lack of universal broadband vexes residents, the Democrats have a steep climb.
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