The Charlottesville Democratic Committee
We do have representation in Congress, and as constituents we can visit Rep. John McGuire at his nearest local office, Lynchburg. Kristin Szakos is helping organize a trip next Wednesday, others are encouraged to keep the pressure on by organizing trips too! For more information about trips there, contact kszakos@gmail.com.
Susan Stecker is outgoing DPVA chair; Ken Martin is incoming DNC chair.
Virginia
Susan Swecker, chair of the Democratic Party of Virginia (DPVA) Central Committee, is resigning before her current term expires (after serving for 10 years), so there will be an election to fill out the rest of her term. There’s about a year left to go before the next reorganization of the DPVA Central Committee and election of DPVA’s officers.
The DPVA Steering Committee will be meeting soon to set the rules for electing the next chair. Cville Dems will not be voting in this state leadership election. Members of the DPVA Central Committee will vote to fill the chair’s seat at its March 22, 2025 regular quarterly meeting.
The proposed rules for this election indicate that candidates for chair will need to submit paperwork to DPVA by March 8. At this time, there are no “official” candidates to succeed Swecker as chair and finish the rest of her term — but that could change very soon. There are rumors about who may run, see this Blue Virginia article.
National
Ken Martin won election as the new Democratic National Committee (DNC) head, replacing current chair Jaime Harrison. Martin, currently the chair of the Minnesota Democratic Party, won the race with 112 more votes more than the second place candidate, Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wikler.
Martin offered little on his plans to confront President Donald Trump, saying his “war room” will combat misinformation and that the party will also conduct a review to learn why Democrats lost ground with Latino, female, young, working-class, and other voter demographics last November.
78% of 100 college presidents surveyed agreed with the statement “Donald Trump is going to war with higher education”; that’s a chilling prospect for the nation, and will have huge impacts on Charlottesville generally as well as UVA and PVCC specifically.
The Chronicle is holding a free online interview with its lead Higher Ed reporter on Thursday, February 20, 1pm titled “Donald Trump and Higher Ed: What’s Next?” to tackle questions like “What will become of various streams of federal funding for higher ed? Will Immigration and Customs Enforcement show up on campuses? Will the Department of Education be shuttered…how would that impact colleges?”
You can register to watch the interview on the Chronicle website.
Welcome, Cville Democrats, veterans and newbies! Join us as we continue to energize and make plans for 2025 and the important elections ahead of us!
We’ll be having a Full Committee meeting on Tuesday, March 25, at 6:30pm at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center.
Three special elections were held on Jan. 7 for two VA Senate seats and one House of Delegates seat. In all three cases the party that previously held the seats retained them, so the Dems retained overall control of both chambers.
In Loudoun County, Democrat Kannan Srinivasan defeated Republican Tumay Harding in the VA-32 Senate race to succeed Suhas Subramanyam, the Dem elected to the U.S. House in November… and Democrat JJ Singh beat Republican Ram Venkatachalam to win Srinivasan’s vacated VA-26 House of Delegates seat.
In the 3rd race, to fill the VA-10 Senate seat that John McGuire vacated to primary Bob Good and then win the VA-05 House of Representatives race, Democrat Jack Trammell lost to Republican Luther Cifers.
Gov. Youngkin still presides as a Republican governor; more on the November 2025 gubernatorial race soon!
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