by Andrew Kerley and Brandon Jarvis
RICHMOND, Va. — State Sen. Ghazala Hashmi, D-Chesterfield, declared victory in the Democratic primary for lieutenant governor Tuesday night shortly after 10 p.m.
The Associated Press had not called the race as of 11 p.m., and former Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney, who was trailing by less than one percentage point, had not conceded.
“Here in Virginia, we’re choosing something different,” Hashmi said to cheers from her supporters at her election night event in Richmond’s Fan District. “We’re choosing courage, we’re choosing progress and we’re choosing to lead.”
Hashmi — the only woman in the race — ran a campaign touting her legislative record on education, as well as abortion and health care access.
She became the first Muslim and South Asian woman elected to the Virginia Senate in 2019 when she defeated Republican Sen. Glen Sturtevant, with the slogan “Ghazala Hashmi is an American name.”
Pushing back on President Donald Trump was a key talking point for Hashmi and the rest of the Democratic primary candidates — she continued to do so in her victory speech.
“Virginia is not going to be bullied or broken or dragged backwards by the chaos that’s unfolding in Washington,” Hashmi said Tuesday night.
Hashmi gave a speech to more than 10,000 people at the anti-Trump “No Kings” protest in Richmond on Saturday. In that speech, Hashmi decried Trump’s cuts to the federal workforce and said he wants to purge them for disloyalty.
“He doesn’t want public servants. He wants courtiers,” Hashmi said. “He doesn’t want a government of laws. He wants a palace of yes men.”
Hashmi has also advocated for student protesters’ free speech rights. She convened a Senate meeting to examine pro-Palestinian protests that occurred on college campuses in Virginia last year.
Democratic Party of Virginia Chair Lamont Bagby congratulated Hashmi in a statement shortly before 11 p.m.
“Ghazala leads with compassion and a tireless drive to make our commonwealth a better place,” Bagby said. “She’s exactly the kind of strong, effective leader we need as our next lieutenant governor.”
Democratic gubernatorial nominee Abigail Spanberger also gave Hashmi her congratulations.
“I’m looking forward to hitting the ground running this week and over the next five months with our entire Democratic ticket as we span Virginia — listening to the challenges facing our communities and winning Virginians’ trust that our administration will address them. And come January, we will work together to build a stronger Virginia for everyone who calls our Commonwealth home,” she wrote.
The race for the Democratic nomination was mostly uneventful, with few major policy disagreements and limited drama until the final weeks.
In addition to Hashmi and Stoney, state Sen. Aaron Rouse, Prince William School Board Chair Babur Lateef, former federal prosecutor Victor Salgado, and attorney Alex Bastani were seeking the nomination.
Overall, the six candidates in the field agreed on most issues in the race. The main point of contention was support for a casino. Both Rouse and Hashmi accepted money from developers who want to build a casino in Tysons Corner. Salgado, a candidate who was unable to gain any real traction or keep up with fundraising, repeatedly mentioned their support from casino developers throughout the race.
“Unfortunately, we have Senator Hashmi and Senator Rouse, who are financing their campaigns with big casino money and skill gaming money,” Salgado said during a debate. “It’s no surprise, of course, that they would vote to bring none other than Steve Wynn, Donald Trump’s good friend, into Northern Virginia to build a casino that nobody asked for, and that Tysons and that northern Virginians don’t want.”
Rouse has been a sponsor of skill games legislation in the past, and both he and Hashmi voted in favor of allowing Fairfax County to hold a referendum on bringing a casino to Tysons Corner. That legislation failed to advance out of the House of Delegates earlier this year.
Hashmi and Rouse did not directly address the attack from Salgado, but defended their records on labor and economic opportunity.
“Any time I take a look at a bill or an item of legislation, it is through the lens of working families,” Hashmi said during the forum.
Rouse also pointed to his time on the Virginia Beach City Council, and said he disliked state lawmakers dictating local decisions.
“I never liked Richmond telling us what to do, so I supported legislation giving the localities the option to decide to put on a referendum to decide whether or not they want a casino,” he said during the forum.
The only other point of public contention between the candidates happened between Rouse and Stoney.
During an event with Black leaders in Richmond in the final week of the race, Rouse said he worked to provide clean drinking water for Virginia Beach while serving on City Council. The crowd audibly murmured at the veiled shot at Stoney, who was mayor of Richmond until six days before the city’s water system malfunctioned, leading to a widespread outage lasting days and impacting multiple localities.
It became known as “the water crisis” to Richmonders, who place the blame on Stoney for failing to provide adequate maintenance and oversight during his eight years as mayor.
After the crowd reacted to Rouse’s statement, he followed up with: “Yeah, I said it.”
Two days before that, after a campaign event in Northern Virginia, Stoney, who was elected mayor in 2016, said he wished Dwight Jones, Richmond’s mayor before Stoney, had done the work to replace the broken part in the water treatment plant.
“This came out in the administration before me, and we were the ones that finally got it done,” he said about procuring the part that needed to be replaced. “Now, do we wish that the prior administration would have gotten it done so we didn’t have to deal with it? Obviously, we wish that would have occurred, but we actually were the ones who procured the project and started to work on the project.”
The broken part still had not been replaced by Jan. 6, 2025, when the water treatment plant shut down, causing the crisis.
“The city is extremely old and (it is) difficult, in eight years, to fix systemic problems,” Jones said in a statement to the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “It’s unfortunate that someone would blame a predecessor because you get what you get, and you deal with what you have to deal with.”
In a statement to the Richmond Times-Dispatch after his event Monday, Rouse said: “My opponent let his city down and now is trying to blame Reverend Jones. Virginians know better and deserve better.”
Jones endorsed Rouse in the primary.
But in the end, Democrats chose Hashmi — setting up a November showdown with the Republican nominee John Reid, where she’ll look to make history again.
“Now we don’t have time for small plans or soft voices, we need spines of steel,” Hashmi said. “We’re facing a pivotal moment in our history, and while the MAGA-driven Republican ticket might try to take our state backwards, I’m running, and you’re running with me, with the unshakable belief in what Virginia can be.