fluvanna county – C-VILLE Weekly

Webb wanes: Democratic candidate comes up short in red district

President-elect Joe Biden swept to an easy victory in Virginia last week, carrying the state with 53.9 percent of the vote to Donald Trump’s 44.2 percent, according to data from the Virginia Department of Elections.

In the 5th Congressional District, Democrats weren’t so successful. Dr. Cameron Webb, UVA’s Director of Health Policy and Equity, fell to Bob Good, a Liberty University athletics administrator and Campbell County Supervisor. Observers around the country noted that Webb ran a sharp campaign while Good fumbled through multiple comical scandals, including a committing a potential campaign finance violation by auctioning off an AR-15 rifle at a rally. Heading into election night, FiveThirtyEight called the district a tossup.

Ultimately, however, Good earned 210,986 votes (52.4 percent) to Webb’s 190,313 (47.3 percent).

The huge, largely rural 5th District has voted for a Republican by a comfortable margin ever since it was drawn into its current form in the last round of redistricting. Four different Republican candidates have run in the 5th since 2012, carrying between 52.4 and 60.9 percent of the vote each time.

The map above shows the margin of victory for Cameron Webb and Bob Good in each of the 5th District’s localities.

Though Webb lost to Good by 5.1 percent, there’s evidence to suggest Webb’s campaign did swing some voters into his camp. Webb outperformed Biden, earning around 7,000 more votes than the president-elect in the 5th District.

Still, that wasn’t enough to overcome the challenges presented by the gerrymandered district.

Two years ago, Democrat Leslie Cockburn lost to Republican Denver Riggleman by 6.6 percent in the 5th. In 2020, Webb managed to flip two of the district’s 23 localities, turning Nelson County and Fluvanna County from one-point losses into one-point wins. Webb also expanded on Cockburn’s 2018 performance in Albemarle, the district’s largest locality, winning 68.2 percent of the vote, compared to Cockburn’s 64.6.

Overall, Webb improved on Cockburn’s 2018 vote share in 15 of 23 localities—but he didn’t improve by more than 3.6 percent in a single locality, and he lost ground in some places.

Webb wasn’t able to make serious inroads into the district’s most populous red localities. In Pittsylvania and Fauquier counties, the district’s two largest localities outside of Charlottesville-Albemarle, Webb won 32.2 percent and 42.1 percent of the vote, respectively. For comparison, in 2018 Cockburn won 30.8 percent in Pittsylvania and 42.4 percent in Fauquier.

“It has truly been an honor to run to represent this district in Congress,” Webb wrote in a statement conceding the race on Tuesday. “This campaign has been a battle of ideas about how to best serve the people of our district and I cannot give enough thanks to everyone who made it possible.”

“Tonight is a victory for the conservative values that founded and sustain this nation, for biblical principles, the sanctity of life, religious liberty, free market capitalism and the importance of faith and family,” Good wrote after his victory.

Democrat Mark Warner also ran ahead of Biden, winning re-election to the U.S. Senate with 55.9 percent of the vote. Two Virginia Dems who flipped red seats in 2018 hung on to their districts this time around. In the 2nd, Elaine Luria beat Republican Scott Taylor for the second time in two years, widening her margin of victory to 5.4 percent, and in the 7th, Abigail Spanberger beat Delegate Nick Freitas by about 8,000 votes.

Virginia Republicans have now lost four straight presidential elections, four straight senate races, and two straight governor’s races. (Not that we’re counting.) Last time Republicans won statewide office was in 2009, when Bob McDonnell was elected governor, and he wound up being charged with a felony and narrowly avoiding prison. This year, the party ran Freitas—last spotted losing to far-right Confederate enthusiast Corey Stewart in the 2018 senate primary—in a winnable congressional race. Republicans don’t have much time on their hands if they want to right the ship before the next governor’s race next November.

Further down the ballot, Virginians overwhelmingly voted to pass an amendment to the Virginia constitution that will reform the way the state draws U.S. congressional and state legislative districts. The amendment places the responsibility for drawing district lines with a bipartisan commission comprised of citizens and legislators of both parties, rather than allowing the majority party to draw lines however they prefer. Some House of Delegates Democrats opposed the measure, claiming that it wasn’t a strong enough reform, but the proposal passed with the support of 65.8 percent of voters.

In a perfect world, new lines will be drawn in time for the 2021 House of Delegates elections. It’s possible, though, that a census delayed by coronavirus could mean new data isn’t available until the 2022 congressional races.

Honorable discharge: Will toxic water be dumped in the James?

Environmental groups and concerned citizens worry that Dominion’s intentions to dump millions of gallons of wastewater per day into the James River won’t go swimmingly.

Alleging that the wastewater potentially being discharged from a Fluvanna County power station will contain coal ash and toxic metals, some are worried about the environmental impacts on the river in which many swim, fish and boat.

The Department of Environmental Quality has issued the permit, but is allowing comments from the public until December 14.

“I will certainly not swim in those waters,” Pat Calvert, a riverkeeper with the James River Association and longtime boater says, if the DEQ permanently allows Dominion’s proposed permit. It’s his job to keep the river clean, and he says it’s his intention to protect water quality and river integrity.

Calvert says millions of Virginians rely on the river for drinking water, recreation and economic value. Various levels of danger are associated with each chemical present in the coal ash wastewater—lead, arsenic, mercury, selenium, boron and thallium—that could be dumped and, though the DEQ will require the chemicals to be diluted and present below certain levels, he says most of the contaminants are heavy metals with varying levels of toxicity, radioactivity and potential for damage to water quality and human and aquatic health.

“Those who may ingest or be exposed to discharged wastewater could be affected by these substances, particularly while they are less diluted and in higher concentrations,” he says. “Fishing could be affected through the effect on the game fish and the forage.”

The wastewater in question will be discharged from the Bremo Power Station in Fluvanna. Last April, Dominion announced it would close its coal ash ponds at four sites, including one at Bremo, but critics say the power company basically closed the ponds by covering them up and allowing the pollution to continue indefinitely. Now the water needs to be removed.

A DEQ employee says he’s aware of the concerns, but says some people don’t understand exactly what his organization aims to permit.

“We’re not authorizing Dominion to dump coal ash into the James River,” says Brandon Kiracofe, the water permits and compliance manager for the DEQ’s Valley Regional Office. He says controlled discharged wastewater flowing from an outfall pipe will be diluted at high enough levels that none of the chemicals present in the water will be dangerous. The DEQ will monitor the water before it’s discharged, he says, to make sure levels of chemicals in the water don’t surpass the limits that are set.

Dominion spokesperson Dan Genest says as soon as the permit is issued, the company will start building two treatment facilities on the property, and all wastewater will be treated before it’s discharged.

“We commend them for caring about the James River,” he says about the activists trying to shut the project down. “But we all share the same goal—to make sure the discharges do not have any effect on the James River.”

Public comments can be e-mailed to Beverley Carver at beverley.carver@deq.virginia.gov.

Updated November 9: The original story misstated the e-mail address to which comments should be sent.