It’s often said of Virginia’s voting schedule that, regardless of the year or the weather, it’s always election season. One month after the November races that decided the composition of the House of Delegates and chose the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Attorney General for the next four years, the Virginia State Senate’s 15th District held its primary on Sunday. The winner of the primary will appear on the ballot for the January 6th special election.
Voters in the 15th district faced a choice between two Democrats, Debra Gardner and Mike Jones, who represent House Districts 76 and 77, respectively. The neighboring districts both contain parts of Chesterfield County, with Jones representing parts of Richmond City as well, and both districts have a solid bloc of Democrat voters. Harris won here by double digits in both districts— 27.2% in HD-76, and 50.6% in HD-77. Jones and Gardner actually overperformed Harris’ margins a month ago, with both winning re-election by 57% and 37.5% over their respective challengers.
Needless to say, both candidates represent solidly blue portions of the larger SD-15, which encompasses parts of southeastern Chesterfield County and some precincts in the Southside of Richmond. In 2023, Ghazala Hashmi won the election by 24.7% in a seat that was largely foreign to her.
While Gardner tried to rally support in the short month between the House of Delegates general election and the firehouse primary, ultimately it was Jones who prevailed by a reported 2-to-1 result. Jones will appear on the January 6th special election ballot.
Joining Jones on the ballot will be Gardner’s former opponent in HD-76, John Thomas, who notched the Republican nomination a few days ago. News of Thomas’ candidacy on Friday follows last month’s announcement that former GOP candidate Hayden Fisher, who ran against Hashmi in 2023, would not be in the running.
Neither Jones nor Gardner had much turnaround time following their re-election to the lower chamber, and HD-77 will invariably hold another election to decide who will replace Mike Jones if he is elected to the State Senate. With the composition of this district, we can tell you for certain that Mike Jones is going to be the next State Senator from the 15th come January.
