Democrats Win Back State Senate Seat in Northern Virginia

Last night, Democratic delegate David Marsden narrowly defeated Republican Steve Hunt Tuesday in a special election to fill the state Senate seat in Fairfax County, a district that had been in Republican hands for nearly two decades.

Marsden won by just 317 votes (out of 23,569 cast), allowing Democrats to maintain a 22-18 majority in the Virginia state senate. The Washington Post reported:

Marsden's victory over Republican Stephen M. "Steve" Hunt, a former Fairfax County School Board member, also expands the control of Virginia Democrats in the Senate chamber and makes compromise less likely heading into redistricting next year.

…"We knew we were badly behind in the beginning, but we kept knocking on doors, and we kept our eyes on the finish line," said Marsden, who added that it was his moderate image that showed voters he would go to Richmond "not to fight but to work in a bipartisan way."

After conceding, Hunt praised Democrats for waging an "incredible get-out-the-vote campaign" and targeting absentee voters, who historically have swung for Republicans.

"It shows a certain degree of tactical capability on their party and we ran a very, very close race," Hunt said.

…"This is a tremendous win for Democrats in a district that has been largely Republican in the past," [Rex Simmons, the newly-elected chairman of the Fairfax County Democratic Committee,] said. "This will give us a state senator for every inch of Fairfax County."

The 37th district has had a Republican state senator since 1992.