In western Chesterfield, in the dead of summer, the heat is on.

Freshman Delegate Mark Earley Jr. (R), son of former Virginia Attorney General Mark Earley, is gearing up for his first re-election campaign in HD-73, a mostly suburban/exurban community south of the James River. The district covers the southern part of Midlothian and Westchester and the residential communities of Woodlake and Brandermill along the Hull Street corridor.

Democrats are targeting HD-73 as a part of its strategy to expand the Democratic majority in the Virginia House of Delegates. The bullseye is in plain view– HD-73 had the largest swing to the left on the presidential level from 2020 to 2024 compared to any other district in the House of Delegates, having voted for Donald Trump by 7 points in 2020 and Kamala Harris by 1 point in 2024.

Leslie Mehta, an attorney who ran (and lost) last year against Representative Rob Wittman for VA-01, has stepped in to challenge Earley. In the US House results last year within HD-73, which are entirely within VA-01, Mehta lost the district by 5 points. Still, on the House of Delegates level, this district’s been racing to the left, in part thanks to an influx of out-of-state liberal-leaning voters becoming renters in newly-built housing over the last decade. In our House of Delegates forecast this year, Earley is a slight favorite: he’s currently up by 1.6% with a 59% chance to win.

House of Delegates election results in District 73

Year	Result	Swing	Trend
2017	GOP +16.7	N/A (uncontested in 2015)	N/A (uncontested in 2015)
2019	GOP +15.2*	DEM +1.5	DEM +1.1
2021	GOP +16.8	GOP +1.6	DEM +5.5
2023	GOP +9.0	DEM +7.8	DEM +3.0

*an independent who ran in part of HD-73 in 2019 is counted as a Republican

While it may sound like light sabotage to field a losing candidate from a larger race the following year, it belies a compelling rationale; Mehta’s name was already on a ballot in 2024, which could indicate that voters in Wittman’s district who overlap geographically with HD-73 will have already heard of her, and those who voted for her are likely to vote for her again. While the incumbent tends to have more clout when it comes to name recognition, a high-powered challenger in the right environment can account for such advantages.

The other reasons are slightly less parasocial. One factor to consider is that larger races have more reach, not merely in terms of land and voters, but in money to spend and high-powered contacts. Mehta is not starting from scratch here– she likely had a rolodex of strategists and managers from her run for the House of Representatives to carry over to this race, and together they have run a formidable campaign in an otherwise Republican-leaning district. 

While last year’s effort showed that she did not have the pockets to outfox a champion fundraiser and entrenched incumbent like Wittman, she’s no slouch in the fundraising arena compared to Earley. Wittman outspent Mehta by $1.5 million in 2024, but now it’s Mehta in the catbird seat. She outraised Earley by $18,228 according to Q2 filings, a far cry from 2023 when Earley outraised his Democratic opponent twentyfold and coasted to a 9-point victory.

Earley came to represent this seat after Republican Roxann Robinson chose not to seek re-election in 2023. Robinson represented parts of the district at present when it was the old District 27 from 2010 onward, having won the nomination in a four-way special primary and went on to clobber her opponent, Democrat William Paul Brown, in a 45 point blowout in the general. From then on, Robinson was dominant as the population swelled. In her first election, fewer than 6,000 people in the district cast a ballot in a race that didn’t even raise $150,000 across both candidates.

By the time of her final winning election, almost 37,000 turned out to vote in a race that raised over $2,300,000. Robinson did win, but towards the end of her reign, the challengers had made substantial gains. After winning 2 races uncontested (2011 and 2013) and winning 2 others by double digits (2010 and 2015), the salad days of a secured incumbency had begun to wane by 2017 as the district rode the blue wave.

If there was ever a candidate to which “money isn’t everything” actually applies, it would be Roxann Robinson. Democrats hemorrhaged money attempting to oust her and flip the district, first by backing Larry Barnett in 2017 and 2019. Barnett would lose by 317 votes in both contests combined. Rather than front Barnett for a third straight nailbiter in 2021, the cup instead spilleth over for former social worker and General Assembly liaison Debra Gardner. Gardner received endorsements from nearly every Democrat of note (including former President Obama and then-President Biden), and six-figure donations from the House Democratic Caucus and the Democratic Party of Virginia. Still, Democrats came up short in the third of three consecutive competitive contests, having outraised Robinson in two of them. After the district was redrawn and Robinson retired in February 2023, there was little effort by Democrats to recruit a strong opponent against Earley, who had narrowly lost a much bluer district in 2021.

This year, HD-73 is positioned to be one of our top races to watch for the Virginia House of Delegates this year. With the money race heating up, shifting attitudes about local issues like development and infrastructure, and the continued push leftward, this year’s HD-73 contest is rated as among the most competitive. 

We reached out to both the Earley and Mehta campaigns to ask them about themselves and top issues in the district, but we did not receive a response from either campaign. 

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