Virginia, electorally, is an odd place. Populated by Beltway bureaucrats close to Washington D.C., but still rural in many areas, the state is often a sea of red with highly concentrated blue islands.

One only has to look at the breakdown in voting during the last gubernatorial election – won by Glenn Youngkin over Terry McAuliffe – to see just how this plays out. In that 2021 contest, counties with bigger cities are heavily blue, while the rest of the state runs red. And since the election of Youngkin, the state has been in flux. In November 2023, the entire state legislature was up for grabs – and it did not go well for Republicans, as Democrats ended up with narrow majorities in both houses.

But now, it’s 2024. The stakes are changing yet again, and instead of state races, the focus in Virginia is on the congressional ones, and the Senate primary. Not to mention the current state of the presidential polls in Virginia. Remember, Joe Biden won Virginia by ten points in 2020. It wasn’t close. So what do things look like now?

BRAND NEW POLL

Trump is TIED with Biden in Virginia.

Virginia, Minnesota and New Hampshire are now dead even.

That makes 10 swing states, and counting.pic.twitter.com/DWKepFCEgH

— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) June 6, 2024

Ohhhhh boy. Now, this is a Fox News poll, so let’s look at a semi-recent poll from Roanoke College that says… the same thing.

I feel like I’ve been saying for a long time that it’s too early to put stock in polls. But maybe, with less than five months before the election, it’s… not? And if Virginia is truly in play for Donald Trump, then hell might be close to freezing over. But the last thing we need to do is get cocky or overconfident. We should leave that to Team Biden, who doesn’t believe that he sucks NEARLY as bad as the polls say he does. And with a boot-licking press on the White House’s side, we are supposed to TOTALLY IGNORE Biden when he just stops moving like a broken wind-up toy. These, we are now being told ad nauseum by the White House (dutifully parroted by the press) are “cheap fakes” – allegedly edited real videos that make Biden look bad. Except that we can STILL SEE HIM.

24 hours ago, Karine Jean-Pierre called any video showing Biden's senility a "cheap fake."

Today, he did this. This video is not altered in any way. https://t.co/xDAojvKiRz

— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) June 18, 2024

I want to believe that Virginia is in play for Trump. I really do. But I also want to get the Senate back and build a solid majority in the House. The executive branch can only go so far without the legislative branch, and we have mighty big issues at stake. So, what happened in the Virginia primaries?

First, let’s get to some good news. Hung Cao, who ran for a House seat in 2022, is now the Republican candidate for Senate. We covered Cao and his impressive résumé back in 2022, and it was a real shame that he didn’t win VA-10 at the time. But he is back, and will be challenging Tim Kaine (who, once upon a time, was Hillary Clinton’s vice presidential pick).

Cao, a refugee from Vietnam, arrived in the United States at age 4 and attended the U.S. Naval Academy. He served 25 years in Navy Special Operations and was deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia before turning his attention to politics, he said in a campaign video.

“Tomorrow, we begin our campaign to save the country that saved my life,” Cao said in a statement after the race was called. “I spent twenty-five years in the Navy, while Tim Kaine spent thirty years in elected office. The taxpayers signed the front of our paychecks for the same amount of time. The difference is this: Tim Kaine got rich, and I got scars.”

He noted that the timing of the win coincides with a Biden administration policy that would give about half a million immigrants who are married to American citizens a pathway to citizenship for them and their children, which Cao called “amnesty.”

“President Trump and I will win in November, we will secure the border, we will protect Social Security, and we will save America,” he said. “I spent twenty-five years fighting for this country, and I’m not done.”

Cao had Trump’s endorsement and walked away with the nomination easily. But Trump’s endorsement wasn’t always a guarantee of a win. Take the case of Representative Bob Good, who didn’t get the Trump endorsement after being a part of the ouster of Kevin McCarthy.

In the solidly red 5th District in Central Virginia, Republican Rep. Bob Good is fighting for his political life after having angered both former President Donald Trump and the GOP’s more traditional party establishment. Last October, Good joined seven other House Republicans in backing the motion to vacate that ousted then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy, which has prompted outside groups to target Good, who chairs the hard-right House Freedom Caucus. But a more costly move for Good likely came back in May 2023, when he endorsed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s presidential bid instead of Trump’s. While Good tried to keep Trump in his corner by joining many other Republicans in defending the former president outside his New York trial in mid-May, Trump endorsed Good’s primary challenger, state Sen. John McGuire. As a result, Good stands a real chance of becoming the first House incumbent this cycle to lose renomination to a non-incumbent.

Now, we can argue all day about whether ousting McCarthy changed anything in the House at all – I think the evidence proves that nothing much changed. Bob Good needed to make his case directly to his constituents. As of midnight in Virginia, Good is currently trailing McGuire by just over 300 votes. At the moment, the race is too close to call.

Now to the Democrats. Representative Abigail Spanberger, who barely won her race in VA-7 four years ago, and managed to hang on two years ago, is retiring (apparently to run for governor in 2025). The Democrat nominee running for VA-7 has a familiar name – and face.

Decision Desk HQ projects Eugene Vindman wins the Democratic primary for Virginia's 7th Congressional District.#DecisionMade: 7:51pm ET

Follow live results coverage: https://t.co/XphOXUfIwE pic.twitter.com/GOUykWn2SL

— Decision Desk HQ (@DecisionDeskHQ) June 19, 2024

Your eyes do not deceive you – that is Alexander Vindman‘s twin brother Eugene. The Vindman brothers gained quite a lot of notoriety during the first Trump impeachment, as our readers will remember. Could this Vindman really end up in the House, with Trump back in the White House? It’s entirely possible.

If nothing else, Virginia is promising to be a wild and unpredictable ride for both sides of the aisle in November. Hold on tight, everyone – absolutely nothing is written in stone right now. But if Donald Trump ekes out a win in Virginia on Election Day, then Joe Biden is finished. That this is even a topic of discussion should be setting off all the alarms in the Biden campaign, and if it isn’t? Well, denial isn’t just a river in Egypt.

Featured image: original Victory Girls art by Darleen Click