Home Builders Association of Virginia
Representing Virginia's Residential Construction and Land Development Industry
In what the Washington Post called the “…most consequential legislative elections in a generation…” , Virginians went to the polls on Tuesday to vote for their representative to the Virginia General Assembly. All 140 seats of the General Assembly were on the ballot – 100 members of the House of Delegates and 40 members of the State Senate. There were also numerous local City Council and Board of Supervisor races around the Commonwealth.


For a quick look at who won, who lost, and which seats flipped, please click here .

Given the narrow Republican majorities in both the House of Delegates (51-48) and Senate of Virginia (20-19) leading into the 2019 election, both parties spent unprecedented resources in several key contests to determine control of the General Assembly. Several national figures such as Vice President Mike Pence, former Vice President Joe Biden, Senator Kamala Harris, Senator Amy Klobuchar, Mayor Peter Buttigieg, and others visited Virginia to energize their party’s respective bases ahead of this election.

The 2019 General Election was also impacted by a U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year which upheld a lower court ruling that found the House of Delegates district lines had been racially gerrymandered. The new court drawn map made several Republican districts lean Democratic. As a result, Republicans had to spend significant resources to protect incumbent legislators such as Speaker Kirk Cox (R-Colonial Heights), Delegate Chris Jones (R-Suffolk), Delegate Chris Stolle (R-Virginia Beach), and Delegate David Yancey (R-Newport News).

Over the last eight months, there has been a lot of discussion about what this election would mean for Republicans and Democrats. With only a handful of states hosting elections this year ( FiveThirtyEight: “Everything You Need To Know About The 2019 Elections” ), the spotlight has been on Virginia’s 2019 legislative races as somewhat of a barometer for the upcoming 2020 Presidential Election. Given Virginia’s “battleground” status in federal elections, pundits and politicos have been hoping to glean insight from our elections to see if Republicans or Democrats will have the upper hand come November, 2020. 

Elected officials from both sides of the aisle have also been extremely vocal about what’s at stake on the state level. Following the significant Democratic victory during the 2017 legislative races, Republicans have held slim majorities in both the House of Delegates and the State Senate. As a result, the 2019 elections have been viewed by Virginia Democrats as an opportunity to take control of one or both chambers. UVA’s Sabato’s Crystal Ball writes :

  • While Democrats have won four of the state’s last five gubernatorial races, none of those Democratic governors enjoyed a free hand in the legislature, as Republicans have controlled the state’s House of Delegates since the 1999 election, a victory achieved during the governorship of Jim Gilmore (R) and thus prior to that of Mark Warner, the Democrat elected in 2001 to begin the Democrats’ current stretch of gubernatorial success. Tim Kaine (D) followed Warner in 2005 and later joined him in the U.S. Senate, with Terry McAuliffe (D) elected in 2013 and Ralph Northam (D) in 2017. The only GOP governor in this recent stretch has been Bob McDonnell, who was elected in 2009. Democrats have held the state Senate for part of the past two decades, but a Democratic governor confronted by an at least partially Republican legislature has been the most common alignment in recent history.

As reported by the Virginia Public Access Project, “for much of the last quarter century, one party has controlled Virginia’s executive branch while another controlled one or both chambers of the legislative branch. That will change next year when Democrats, who currently occupy the Executive Mansion, gain control of the House of Delegates and State Senate.” For a visual of who has controlled the Executive Branch and Legislative Branch since 1994, please click here.

What does this mean for the housing industry?

Housing issues are not partisan issues – the growing demand for new single-family and multi-family housing stock at all price points has a significant impact on economic development, community redevelopment, health outcomes, education outcomes, workforce development, transportation, various other policy priorities in the Commonwealth. 

As HBAV wrote in the Washington Post this summer , we need to re-think our approach to local zoning and land-use, incentivize the production of new and affordable single-family and multi-family housing stock, and work in partnership with local government, state government, and other stakeholders to identify and eliminate local and state impediments to housing production and affordable housing.
 
Legislators on both sides of aisle have been strong supporters of our industry - we look forward to working with our new Delegates and Senators, as well as the legislators that will be returning to the General Assembly, on the dire housing issues that our Commonwealth faces.


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