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Sen. Louise Lucas is photographed with members of the Moms Demand Action booth at Pride in the ‘Peake in Chesapeake, Va., on Sunday, June 11, 2023. Photo by Kristen Zeis
It’s been decades since two Hampton Roads Democratic state senators, Louise Lucas and Lionell Spruill, were out of the public eye.
Lucas launched her political career in Virginia by winning a Portsmouth City Council seat in 1984. Spruill, a Chesapeake native, first won a seat in the Virginia General Assembly in 1994.
Both legislative stalwarts rose from poor backgrounds to become ambitious, long-standing powerbrokers in southeastern Virginia. On June 20, one will be out of a job.
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Empty coal cars sit on the tracks outside of Grundy, Virginia. Photo by Mason Adams
Southwest Virginia once voted reliably Democratic, and its transition to clean-sweep Republican within a generation demonstrates the partisan realignment that Trump accelerated, and which the 2020 election looks set to entrench for another generation.
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