RICHMOND, Va. — What started as an underdog campaign against one of the most powerful men in Washington ended on Tuesday night with the decisive election victory to the U.S. House of Representatives. Republican Dave Brat won the seat in Virginia’s 7th District and succeeds former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who he defeated in the June primaries. Voters elected the Randolph-Macon College economics professor with 61 percent of the vote. Brat’s Democratic opponent and fellow R-MC professor Jack Trammell received 37 percent of the vote, while Libertarian James Carr came in third place with 2 percent.
Brat celebrates election win in Short Pump
Cheers erupted from around 100 supporters at Brat’s election party at the Hilton Hotel in Short Pump after a campaign member took the stage at 8 p.m. to announce Brat’s win. While giving his victory speech surrounded by his family, Brat promised to continue to focus on the issues he campaigned on.
“As your representative, I will work every day to restore trust in American institutions, American principles and American values,” said Brat. While his win on Tuesday had been expected, his surprising primary win this summer against Eric Cantor had stunned the political establishment.
“I think his connection with his constituency made a huge difference,” supporter Mike Berry said. “I think Eric unfortunately spent maybe a little too much time in Washington.”
Since the primaries and his foray into politics from academia, Brat has worked to establish himself as a trustworthy politician in touch with his constituents. Before his win was announced on Tuesday, supporter Anne Hayes said her trust in Brat spurred her vote.
“He’s so qualified … he’s qualified in economics,” Hayes said. “He’s a people person and a warm person.”
Brat said that the first goal of his campaign was to unify the Republican party. During the election, his campaign was extended to unite people from across the political spectrum behind the same principles.
“Free markets, equal treatment under the law, fiscal responsibility, adherence to the constitution, peace through a strong balance and faith in God,” Brat said. “Those principles are the key to addressing our future.”
Brat also promised to reduce partisan arguments and to put citizens back in control of the U.S. government.
“You have entrusted me with your seat,” Brat said. “This campaign should give us all hope. It puts the people back in charge of the government.”
His father, Paul Brat, said he has managed to get in touch with his son every week during the campaign. Paul Brat said during the primaries nobody paid much attention to his son. After winning the primary, Dave Brat branched out and used resources within the Richmond community to help run his campaign.
“He had hundreds and hundreds of volunteers making phone calls and knocking on doors for him,” Paul Brat said. “(This) is what a representative government is all about.”
On Tuesday, Brat won the election to carry out the remainder of Cantor’s term as well as to begin a full two-year term in January.
Trammell and supporters look into the future
Election night at the Hilton Garden Inn in Richmond was full of anticipation for supporters of Jack Trammell before the final results came in. Randy Salzman, a colleague of Trammell who has worked on books with him, said that Trammell would have deserved to win.
“If Jack wins, it will be a return to intelligent American Politics,” Salzman said at the beginning of the night. “Mr. Brat is so far in the right, he’s an ideologue, Jack on the other hand understands nuance and complexity and that’s what we need today.”
Salzman also said, “I think we got to have middle thinkers, the last time the country was so polarized was right before the Civil War.”
As the night unfolded, supporters awaited the result of the election and were disappointed to hear that Brat won the race. Trammell gave his concession speech at around 10 p.m., thanking his supporters and promising to keep going in the future.
“My opponent’s formula is not what I had in mind or solving, I think really what we need is someone who’s more in the middle, not afraid to reach across the aisle and tackle some of these issues we have with education and economy,” Trammell said. “My recipe would have been significantly different.”
Trammell went on to say that, “Redrawing districts is critical to democracy and making the ballot box mean more than it means now. I think that’s got to be a transparent process and a bipartisan one.”
Gregory Nowotarski, a volunteer for Trammell’s campaign and a VCU student, said that Trammell is very personal and that’s why he enjoyed working on his campaign. “First time I met him, I didn’t recognize him and we got to talking and he didn’t seem like a politician, but was just more down to earth,” Nowotarski said. Trammell and Nowotarski shared a fist bump at the end of the night, thanking each other for the election campaign they ran.
Randolph-Macon College cheers for one of their own
Most of the students and faculty at Randolph-Macon College’s viewing party in Ashland expected Dave Brat’s clear win in the 7th District over Jack Trammell. But Young Democrats, Young Republicans, and the Political Science Student Association joined together on Tuesday night to celebrate the success of one of their own professors.
Members of the three student political organizations and about 30 other students and faculty drifted in and out during the three-hour election party at the Birdsong Cafe. Young Democrat Vice President Kelsey Wilkinson is registered to vote in the 7th District and aware of its Republican leanings. Prior to the election result announcement, Wilkinson said she predicted the votes would go to Brat, but remained hopeful for Trammell until the results were in.
Benny Ashton, Treasurer for the Young Democrats, resigned himself to a Republican win after working outside a polling station on Tuesday. “We were doing okay in the morning, but started to see the results tip pretty heavily towards Brat,” said Ashton.
Jacob Stech, a member of the College Republicans, expected Brat to win. “I’m not surprised that Brat won because this district seems to lean right a lot,” said Stech. Another member of the College Republicans, Lauren Keiser, echoed that idea. “I did some volunteering at headquarters for Brat and they wanted him to win by around 60 percent,” said Keiser. “It sounds like they accomplished their goal.”
The campus atmosphere on Tuesday was calm compared to the on-campus debate between Brat and Trammell just a week prior to Election Day. Students from both sides appreciated the rise in political awareness and increased participation in student political organizations.
Sarah Maxwell, president of the Political Science Student Association, said the role of her organization was to engage students in the elections regardless of their party affiliation. Her organization’s membership went from 12 to 38 students after it held its first event.
“Our mission on campus is to be a bipartisan organization for anyone who’s interested in political science, because sometimes students, when you’re a freshman or just coming in, you’re intimidated by having to identify yourself as a Republican or a Democrat, or if you’re unregistered as an independent,” said Maxwell. “Our real purpose is to provide the opportunity to get involved and get interested without having to polarize yourself either way.”
Olivia Vandeveer, the secretary of the PSSA, added that interest on campus in the 7th District race exceeded that of the 2012 presidential election.
“Even though its an off-presidential year, more people have been paying a lot more attention, people are becoming more politically aware and learning things and asking questions about things they wouldn’t normally care about, or didn’t previously show interest in with the presidential election,” said Vandeveer. “I think that’s really cool because it’s not typical of that with midterm elections for people to show that much interest.”
Richard Meagher, assistant professor of political science at R-MC, also observed the mood on campus from the debate to Election Day.
“Today I think there was less of a buzz on campus than there was for the debate. There was a little bit of a hangover after the debate. This was everything coming on campus and the college making sure everything was immaculate and well-appointed,” Meagher said. “After that there was a sigh of relief and maybe a little dissipation of the energy around it.”
Meagher said the writing was on the wall for Brat winning over Trammell, which explains the calmer campus mood on Election Night.
“It was a little more subdued. The energy got up a little bit tonight, and there were some people who came in and raised the energy level towards the end, but I think the energy was more about the debate than the election itself,” said Meagher, who thought that no matter who won, this election has been positive for the college.
“Dave Brat is going to be in Congress and he still has his connection to the college and I’m sure the college would hope to take advantage of that,” he said.
“Our department wants to take advantage of the fact that students are much more aware and active and thinking about politics more generally,” added Meagher. “It’s at least implanted a seed in them that the institution, and ourselves in the political science department, can kind of awaken and can kind of work on.”
This story was reported by Maya Earls and Grant Wilging from Short Pump in Henrico County; Lorrie Hare and Abeed Rahman from Richmond; Ali Mislowsky, Shakola Walker and Victoria Zawitkowski from Ashland in Hanover County. These student reporters are part of the “iPadJournos” mobile and social media journalism project, a cooperation between WTVR.com and VCU’s Richard T. Robertson School of Media and Culture.
