The Demographic Revolution in Virginia

The husband and I spent part of yesterday morning at the Executive Mansion in Richmond where a celebratory air reigned in the wake of last week's Virginia elections and where the governor said it was time to be bold and move Virginia forward with the passage of progressive legislation long blocked by Republican control of the General Assembly.  It was part of a mindset that embraces Virginia's demographic changes and a much more diverse population that is increasingly highly educated and is powering Virginia to new levels of wealth not seen since before the Civil War when Virginia ranked among the wealthiest states,  In sharp contrast to this embrace of change and diversity, nothing is more frightening to the Republican Party of Virginia and its base that educated and non-white voters - two groups in particular who find Donald Trump and today's GOP's agenda of division repulsive. Nowhere is this sharp contrast more pronounced than in Virginia's booming suburban areas where those new to the state or who fled rural areas of the state - causing a significant brain drain and driving up the average age of residents in rural regions - have settled.  A lengthy piece in the New York Times looks at the demographic revolution in Virginia that is also occurring in some other Southern states  and even Texas.   The take away is that until the Virginia GOP ceases to be a party of tacit white supremacists and right wing Christian zealots, ts future prospects in Virginia are bleak.  Here are article highlights:

Once the heart of the confederacy, Virginia is now the land of Indian grocery stores, Korean churches and Diwali festivals. The state population has boomed — up by 38 percent since 1990, with the biggest growth in densely settled suburban areas like South Riding. One in 10 people eligible to vote in the state were born outside the United States, up from one in 28 in 1990. It is also significantly less white. In 1990, the census tracts that make up Mr. Katkuri’s Senate district were home to about 35,000 people — 91 percent of them white. Today, its population of 225,000 is just 64 percent white.

“It’s a totally different world,” said Charles Poland, 85, a retired history professor whose family has lived in Loudoun County for four generations. His family farm is now dotted with subdivisions filled with four and five-bedroom homes that sell for $750,000. The family legacy is a road named Poland. “If my parents came back today, they wouldn’t recognize the place. The changes came like a tidal wave.”

It’s not just Virginia. From Atlanta to Houston, this pattern is repeating itself — a new kind of suburbanization that is sweeping through politics. The densely populated inner ring suburbs are turning blue, while the mostly white exurban outer ring is redder than ever. Elections are won and lost along that suburban line, and in some places — like Atlanta, Denver, and Riverside County, Calif. — Democrats have begun to breach Republicans’ firewalls.

Democrats took control of the House and elevated Nancy Pelosi to speaker in 2018 because of victories in these fast-changing parts of America, and both parties are preparing for battle over these voters in 2020.

“What was interesting about 2018 was not just that Democrats succeeded in places where they didn’t in 2006, but also that they did as well in places that 10 years ago we never would have considered competitive,” said Amy Walter, national editor of The Cook Political Report, which provides analysis of elections and races.

In Virginia, the political pendulum has swung several times in the statehouse over the past decade. Large swaths of Virginia are still very conservative and Mr. Trump is popular in those places. In 2016, he won 93 of Virginia’s 133 counties, but it wasn’t enough to take the state.

The influx of immigrants and their U.S.-born children, the spread of high-density suburbia and the growth of higher education all tilt the field toward the Democrats. Still, that doesn’t give them a lock on the state, said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.

As Virginia’s population has grown it has also gotten wealthier. Households earning at least $150,000 have grown at three times the rate of the population over all.

But when he got his citizenship in March and started talking with his friends about whom to vote for in the first election of his life, he realized it had to be Democrats. Mr. Trump helped him decide.  “The way he speaks, you get the feeling that you are separate,” Mr. Katkuri said. “This is not what we signed up for in America.”

Of the 10 metro areas that had the largest South Asian growth, five are in the South, said Ms. Sridaran, who was born in Atlanta, after her father took a teaching job at Morehouse School of Medicine in the early 1980s.  One of them was Richmond.

In Centreville on Thursday — smack in the middle of House District 40, where the nonwhite population has jumped by more than fivefold since 1990, driven by immigrants from South Korea — several people said Mr. Trump was the reason they voted this week.

“People are just sick and appalled at this president,” said Dr. Charles Huh, a gastroenterologist, as he waited for takeout at the food court in Lotte Plaza Market, a Korean grocery store. “He’s the best thing Republicans have done for Democrats in a long time.”

“It is literally a new day in Virginia,” he said, a table of snacks set up in the back. He explained that demographic changes meant the people in the room were now in a position to help shape policy. “Come to Richmond,” he said. “This is really our chance.”

Thank goodness it is a new day in Virginia and, for the LGBT community the next legislative session will see passage of non-discrimination protections long blocked by Virginia Republicans.   A more welcoming state may, in fact further accelerate the demographic changes that have brought Virginia to this point.