By: Ellie Simmers | Editor-in-Chief
Tuesday night, Democrats swept elections across the country, taking control of both the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate.
Locally, the highly watched and discussed Lynchburg City Council election resulted in the three Democratic candidates winning the at-large seats on the council.
Nat Marshall, Christina Delzingaro and Dave Henderson all earned over 12,000 votes each, with a more than 4,000-vote gap between the third and fourth place candidates as of midnight.
At the time of publication, Virginia’s District Five race is still too close to be called, according to the AP.
While incumbent John McGuire has declared victory with 50.2% of the vote, Democratic challenger Tom Perriello put out a statement Tuesday night, which says, in part, “We must ensure all of the thousands of votes left to count, including those of our brave men and women in uniform serving overseas, are counted and every voice is heard.”
Perriello currently has 48% of the vote.
In the state of Virginia as a whole, Mark Warner was re-elected as the senior senator for his fourth term, defeating his Republican challenger, Bert Mizusawa, with 61% of the votes.
The three constitutional amendments on the ballot in Virginia all passed.
The first amendment, which would enshrine abortion rights and reproductive healthcare decisions in the Virginia constitution, passed with 62%.
The second proposed amendment, which would remove Virginia’s 2006 constitutional ban on same-sex marriage and explicitly protect interracial and same-sex marriage, passed with 57%.
The third amendment, which would restore voting rights after someone convicted of a felony has served their sentence, passed with 56%.
Two House seats were flipped in Virginia, with Democrat Shannon Taylor defeating Republican Rob Wittman in a close race in District One and Elaine Luria unseating her Republican opponent, Jen Kiggans, in District Two.
Outside of the Commonwealth, there were many highly watched races across the country Tuesday night.
In Texas, Democrat challenger James Talarico won a seat in the Senate, earning over a million more votes than his opponent, Ken Paxton, the incumbent.
Additionally, Gina Hinojosa defeated longtime Texas governor Greg Abbott, making history as the state’s first Latina to be elected governor.
Abdul El-Sayed unseated Republican Mike Rogers in a closely watched race, with El-Sayed becoming the first Muslim senator in United States history.
In Georgia, Keisha Lance Bottoms won her election, becoming the first Black female governor in United States history and the first Democrat to win the office in decades.
In response to the election results, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has announced that he will not run for minority leadership of the House following Democrats taking control of Congress.
On Tuesday night, President Donald Trump said he was willing to accept the results of the midterm elections.
“We’ll, you know, look forward to working with them,” he said in a phone interview with The New York Times. “We’ll probably work something out.”
public relations major from Broadway, Va. She is an avid reader, enjoys thrifting, writing, and keeping up with politics. After graduation, Ellie hopes to attend graduate school and earn her degree in Library Science
