Republican Wittman Wins Virginia House Seat in Special Election
By Greg Giroux, CQ Staff
Virginia Republican Rob Wittman will soon be a member of the U.S. House, following his easy win in a special election Tuesday. Wittman’s victory in Virginia’s Republican-leaning 1st District will fill the vacancy that has existed since October, when four-term Republican Rep. Jo Ann Davis died of breast cancer.
Wittman, a longtime officeholder in eastern Virginia and a member of the state House of Delegates, had 63 percent of the vote with about three-fourths of all votes counted to defeat Democrat Philip Forgit, an Iraq war veteran and former teacher who took 35 percent. Independent Lucky Narain, a member of the Army Reserves, took 2 percent.
The hastily scheduled contest, held in the midst of the busy December holiday season, forced the candidates’ campaigns to focus heavily on boosting the expected low voter turnout.
Wittman moved out to a big lead in early returns reported by state election authorities shortly after the polls closed at 7 p.m. Eastern time. Wittman’s vote share in those returns rivaled the 63 percent vote share that Davis amassed in winning a fourth House term in November 2006.
The abbreviated special election campaign — the candidates were selected in nominating conventions just one month ago — posed more challenges for Forgit than for Wittman, who had the advantage of a strong Republican-voting base in a district that stretches from the Tidewater region in southeastern Virginia to suburbs of Washington, D.C., in the district’s north. President Bush took 60 percent of the district’s vote in 2004; George Allen, the Republican Senate incumbent who ran in 2006, and Jerry W. Kilgore, the party’s 2005 nominee for governor, both ran ahead in the 1st even as they lost statewide.
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