2 Bellwether House Races Go Opposite Ways

In two big House races seen as bellwethers for how the midterms may play out, the results are split. Both are out of Virginia. Democrats scored a significant win with the victory of Rep. Abigail Spanberger, who won a close race over Prince William County Supervisor Yesli Vega per the AP. But Republicans notched a big victory of their own when Rep. Elaine Luria—a member of the Jan. 6 panel—lost to GOP State Sen. Jen Kiggans. Another Democratic congresswoman in Virginia, Jennifer Wexton, won her race for re-election. All three incumbents were elected to Congress in 2018 as part of a blue wave, and all were top targets of the GOP in this election cycle, per the AP.

• Spanberger campaigned on abortion rights, running ads that highlighted comments from Vega that expressed doubt about whether women could become pregnant from rape. Vega raised millions and brought in high-profile GOP surrogates. She highlighted her life story as a daughter of Salvadoran immigrants, and would have become Virginia’s first Latina member of Congress if elected.
• Luria has called Kiggans an election denier. Kiggans has acknowledged that Joe Biden is president but has remained silent on whether she believes he was fairly elected.
• Wexton, a former prosecutor and state legislator, had been favored in her re-election bid against Republican Hung Cao. Wexton has won more than 56% of the vote in her last two elections. But Republicans had high hopes for Cao, a retired Navy captain and Vietnamese immigrant, in a district with high percentages of Asian Americans and military families.

(Read more Abigail Spanberger stories.)