Bravest Democrat of the Year: Elaine Luria

In an interview this month, I asked
Luria whether she thought her service on the January 6 committee made a major difference
in her losing race. She paused for a moment before she said, flatly, “It
made a difference to me.” She went on to point out that she had run 17
different TV ads during the campaign, which gave her an opportunity to talk
about a wide range of issues. But, she stressed, “closing with that [January
6] ad to me was important because this is really the most important work that
I’ve ever been part of. And I think it’s the thing that will endure.”

Luria, it must be stressed, was not
running a kamikaze campaign or mounting a symbolic candidacy. Under the new map
created by redistricting, Joe Biden carried Virginia’s 2nd district by two percentage points in 2020. But turnout was dampened in 2022 because there was
no presidential or even statewide races on the ballot. Luria’s race in theory
was winnable, even though Kiggans, the GOP nominee, was a former Navy
helicopter pilot who managed to avoid coming across as a right-wing extremist.
So Luria’s choice to emphasize her service on the January 6 committee was
built around her faith in the patriotism of most voters in this Navy-dominated
district. Ben Tribbett, a political consultant who worked for Luria, explained,
“Since she was on the January 6 committee, which was a risk that she
decided to take, it would have been a colossal mistake to run away from
it.”

One of the more perplexing
questions coming out of the 2022 midterms was the overall role of the January 6
committee in shaping the Democrats’ better-than-expected showing on November 8.
The question on exit polls about the state of democracy was
so vaguely framed that more Republicans than Democrats said that political freedom
was “very threatened.” But it is telling that virtually every major
election denier running for governor, from Kari Lake in Arizona to Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania, went down to
ignominious defeat. Postelection polling by Impact Research found that 60
percent of Democrats in contested House districts cited protecting democracy as
a major motivation for voting. Kyle Kondik, who charts House races for Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia,
recognized the irony in Luria’s race. “It is clear,” he said,
“that January 6 messaging helped the Democrats nationally. But maybe not
in Luria’s district.”