In a race that boiled down to a game of chance, Republican Del. David Yancey held onto his 94th District seat in the House of Delegates Thursday after an election official drew his name from a bowl to break a tie in the race, leaving Republicans with a one-seat majority in the House of Delegates.
But with Democrat Shelly Simonds refusing to concede, the race may not be over. The 94th District seat could still be open on Jan. 10, the first day of the legislative session.
“This race could not have been any closer and when I return to the House of Delegates I want all residents of Newport News to know I am ready to serve as their Delegate and look forward to hearing how I can improve the lives of all,” Yancey said in a statement issued by the House Republican Caucus.
“Shelly Simonds ran a great campaign and I thank her for her service on the Newport News School Board. I look forward to her continued involvement in issues that matter to the people of the 94th. The election is behind us, the outcome is clear, and my responsibility now is to begin the work I was re-elected to do.”
After the drawing, Simonds called it a “sad day” for people who don’t have access to health care, one of the issues she and several other Democrats ran on this election season. When she arrived Thursday with her husband and daughter, she said it “seems crazy” that a draw would decide the winner.
Yancey did not attend the drawing on Wednesday. He told the Daily Press that he was checking in with VDOT and Dominion Power about the snowstorm. His legislative aide, Gretchen Heal, said he couldn’t drive to Richmond Wednesday night and thought it would be unsafe to drive through heavy snow in Newport News Thursday morning.
“I feel that this race was really the tail end of the blue wave coming through Virginia, and people better get ready, because we are going to continue to fight, we are going to continue to vote, we are going to continue to participate,” Simonds said in a news conference after the drawing.
“We are going to have more excellent women candidates coming forward in the next two years to run to continue to put pressure on, because it would’ve been a great thing for Virginia to have power-sharing right now.”
The immediate result of Thursday’s drawing, assuming Yancey is seated on Jan. 10, is that Republicans can narrowly retain control of the House of Delegates with a 51-49 majority. That would have been lost for the first time in 17 years had Simonds won. That majority allows them to choose a speaker of the House and to appoint committees, both of which can greatly affect the kind of policies that pass or fail.
Their majority was whittled down from 66-34 after the November elections, which many political pundits have described as a “blue wave” and a rebuke of President Donald Trump.
There is still a legal challenge in the 28th District, set for a hearing on Friday. Any change in that election could also affect the House. Right now, Republican Bob Thomas is the official winner following a recount there.
This is the second election Simonds has lost to Yancey. She ran against him in 2015, when he won with 57 percent of the vote. That year, 14,196 people voted, about 9,000 fewer than this election.
Yancey had chiefly run on a platform to improve transportation — specifically, get the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel widened — and economic development. Simonds said she would push for expanding Medicaid and for more state funding for public schools. Both sent several negative mailers out about the other.
Simonds said she has not decided what next step, if any, she will take. While state law says that the loser of a tiebreaker can request a recount, there are no specific rules for the situation in the 94th District — namely, a tiebreaker resulting from a recount.
Simonds and Republican leadership have both said that they haven’t received an official opinion on whether this can happen.
Del. M. Kirkland Cox, R-Colonial Heights, who is the apparent choice for speaker of the House — the most powerful position in that chamber — said Simonds is allowed to request a recount, based on his own reading of the law. If that happens, no one will be seated in the 94th District, based on what the General Assembly has done historically with pending recounts, he said.
He said he wants Simonds to settle the matter.
“It was a hard-fought election, unprecedented in many ways, and now it’s time to get to work,” Cox said in a prepared statement. “State law does allow for a recount; we all agree it would be better for the Commonwealth and people of the 94th district if we put this election behind us and begin the work of government.”
House Majority Leader Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah, told reporters that Republicans will “find ourselves working with the other side more than we ever have.” Then, he said he hopes the divide can be repaired after Democrats “poisoned the well” by accusing Republicans of stealing the election in the 94th District.
On Wednesday afternoon, Simonds had asked Yancey to enter a pact to not challenge the result of the drawing. Yancey declined.
Cox said he hopes Simonds will stick by her original word. Simonds said her proposal was dependent on Yancey agreeing to it, too.
In an interview with the Daily Press, Yancey said that more action from Simonds will “deny citizens representation at the beginning of the session,” specifically citing the letter she sent. When asked if he was backing away from his statement Wednesday, which said he should be afforded the right to due process if he lost, he said, “I think where we’re at is that I won the draw today and that my focus is going to Richmond and doing my job that I was elected to do.” Parker Slaybaugh, spokesman for House Republicans, said another recount would be an additional burden on the city, which will pay about $16,700 for the Dec.19 one.
More than 100 people — press, public officials and employees, and representatives from both parties — gathered to watch the drawing.
After Board of Elections Chairman James Alcorn explained the process, the candidates’ names were placed in film containers, and the containers placed in a ceramic bowl created by artist Steven Glass and kept at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
Alcorn drew the winner, then Vice Chairwoman Clara Belle Wheeler drew the second canister to prove that both names had been placed in the bowl.
Yancey had initially retained his seat by winning the November election by 10 votes.
Simonds requested a recount and, in a stunning turn of events, unofficially won by a single vote on Dec. 19 — a count that came down to the very last of the district’s 24 precincts. But the next day, a three-judge panel tasked with certifying recount results reviewed one ballot and called it a vote for Yancey, tying the race.
Last week, Simonds filed motions asking those three judges to reconsider their decision to review the ballot, which delayed the original tiebreaker scheduled last week. The judges had reviewed a letter from a recount official chosen by Yancey’s team who said he thought that a ballot his team had deemed invalid should have gone to Yancey.
Simonds argued that this wasn’t the proper process. She cited recount rules that say recount officials who can’t agree on a ballot during the recount must separate that one from the rest, and allow the judges to decide. That didn’t happen.
The House Democratic Caucus sent out press releases that called Yancey “the Grinch who stole the election” because of that letter.
Republican attorneys argued that all rules were followed, and that the law says a written statement is enough to question a ballot — there’s no time constraint.
The judges agreed, and denied Simonds’ motion on Wednesday.