A Navy veteran is using the topic of gun violence prevention to try to swing a GOP senate district blue during a crucial election year for the General Assembly.
The site of the Virginia Beach mass shooting lies in the 8th Senate District, where the two candidates — Democrat Missy Cotter Smasal and Republican Sen. Bill DeSteph — are fighting over the airwaves on what to do about gun violence.
Cotter Smasal, 41, called DeSteph an “extremist” on the issue of guns in a new ad. DeSteph, 55, accused her of exploiting the May 31 mass shooting for political gain.
The battle over gun policy has taken center stage in an election year when the GOP is at risk of losing its majority in the General Assembly. Republicans have a 20-19 margin in the Senate and a 51-48 margin in the House, with one vacancy in each chamber. And a court-ordered new map made a number of House districts more Democratic-leaning.
Everytown for Gun Safety has given $161,000 to Cotter Smasal’s campaign — the most of any Democratic legislative candidate this year — with $100,000 covering a television ad featuring a woman who was in the building during the mass shooting and escaped without injury.
In the ad, Karen Havekost describes seeing the gunman in Building 2 and criticizes DeSteph for voting with the GOP majority to postpone the legislature’s special session on gun laws from July until after the election. Firearm bills were all sent to the state Crime Commission for study in the meantime.
DeSteph, who has a license to sell firearms and says he does a background check on everyone he sells to, defended himself in a response ad, saying he filed 27 pieces of legislation aimed at getting guns out of criminals’ hands and increasing mandatory minimum jail sentences.
The two-term senator, who previously served on the Virginia Beach City Council and in the House of Delegates, was endorsed this year by the Virginia Citizens Defense League, a pro-gun rights group.
He said at a recent Virginia Beach Taxpayer Alliance meeting that he wants to study the role mental health plays in mass shootings.
“We want to look across the country at every other jurisdiction that has had a mass shooting and we want to see what are the indicators, what are the issues, what are the catalysts that take the average normal person — otherwise a sane person — and flips that switch to where they want to go in and kill somebody,” he said.
But DeSteph, who also served in the Navy, said the biggest issue he’s hearing when he knocks on doors is the rising costs of health care, which he’s sought to address by signing on to legislation that allows small businesses to pool their resources for health care benefits. He also supports short-term, limited-duration insurance plans that don’t have to comply with the Affordable Care Act and are cheaper for individual customers.
Critics — including Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam, who vetoed the measure — have said these insurance plans increase premiums for others.
Both candidates are also focused on education. DeSteph touted the 5% raises the General Assembly included in this year’s budget for teachers and noted Virginia Beach schools have gotten more money from the state every year since fiscal 2013, even as the district’s student enrollment has declined.
Cotter Smasal likes to tell the story of the time she started a petition in 2017 to lock the front doors of all the city schools “so a gunman can’t just walk in,” she says in one campaign ad. Virginia Beach had started testing buzzer systems at three elementary schools in 2015, and by 2018, the school division had committed to adding buzzers to every school.
DeSteph owns residential and commercial properties around Hampton Roads. Cotter Smasal owned a Rita’s Italian Ice for 10 years before selling it last year to campaign full time.
The 8th District stretches along much of the city’s eastern half, from Fort Story at the north to Pungo and Sandbridge. Democratic U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine won the district last year, and Gov. Ralph Northam, also a Democrat, won there in 2017. But Republican President Donald Trump carried it in 2016.
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Marie Albiges, 757-247-4962, malbiges@dailypress.com
This article has been updated to reflect the Virginia Citizens Defense League is not the state branch of the NRA. The Virginia Shooting Sports Association is the state branch of the NRA.
