A special election will be held on January 7, 2025, to fill three vacancies in the Virginia General Assembly.
Two of these vacancies affect my home districts. In the 32nd District of the Virginia Senate, former Virginia Senator Suhas Subramanyam (D-32nd) resigned after being elected to represent Virginia’s 10th District in the U.S. House of Representatives. In the 26th District of the Virginia House of Delegates, former Virginia Delegate Kannan Srinivasan (D-26th) resigned from the Virginia House of Delegates to seek election to represent the aforementioned 32nd District in the Virginia Senate.
The third vacancy affects the 10th District in the Virginia Senate. There, former Virginia Senator John McGuire (R-10th) resigned after being elected to represent Virginia’s 5th District in the U.S. House of Representatives.
There are forty seats in the Senate. Senators serve four-year terms with no term limits. Currently, the Democratic Party holds a 20-18 majority and there are two vacant seats. There are one hundred seats in the House of Delegates. Delegates serve two-year terms with no term limits. Currently, the Democratic Party holds a 50-49 majority and there is one vacant seat.
Senate, 32nd District
Tumay Harding (R) and former Virginia Delegate Kannan Srinivasan (D-26th) stand as candidates for the open 32nd District seat in the Virginia Senate.
The 32nd District encompasses most of eastern Loudoun County. It runs along the Fairfax County border between Route 7 in the north and the Prince William County border in the south. The western edge of the district roughly follows Belmont Ridge Road (in the northern half) and Lenah Road (in the south). Communities in the district include Brambleton, South Riding, Stone Ridge, eastern Ashburn, and southern Sterling.
Former Virginia Senator Suhas Subramanyam (D-32nd) was elected in 2023 and served less than one year of his four-year term; he resigned after winning the November general election for Virginia’s 10th District in the U.S. House of Representatives. The winner of this special election will complete the remainder of the term.
Tumay Harding (R)
Tumay Harding stands as the Republican Party nominee for this open seat.
Harding holds a bachelor’s degree in English literature and a master’s degree in curriculum development from George Mason University. She worked as a sales executive in the freight industry, a small business owner, and a teacher in the Prince William County Public Schools and Loudoun County Public Schools. During the COVID-19 pandemic’s remote learning era, Harding, like many Loudoun County parents, became an activist in response to some of the poisonous, racist ideas the schools were teaching. Harding unsuccessfully sought election to represent the Ashburn District on the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors in 2023. She is now an advocate for school choice and serves on the board of the Middleburg Community Charter School.
If elected, Harding promises to “fight to improve education and keep our children safe, slash taxes and eliminate red tape, and fix our broken energy policy.”
As is often the case, there is relatively little detail about what Harding plans to do if elected—she offers a list of key issues and brief position statements, but that’s about it. But at least she is on the right side of most of those issues. She acknowledges the right to life and promises to advance policies that support it. She supports self-defense rights and supports law enforcement. She supports right-to-work—that is, workers’ free association and contract rights—and wants to reduce taxes, including a repeal of the car tax. She wants to invest in “clean” energy, including hydroelectric and nuclear power, but avoid the premature shift away from fossil fuels that is driving up energy costs.
Harding’s primary focus is education. Her children lived through the chaotic, embarrassing saga of Loudoun County Public Schools’ self-immolation. She wants to pass a “Parent’s Bill of Rights” that would require schools share information with parents and permit their involvement in their children’s education. She calls for improved law-enforcement school-resource officer (SRO) programs. She wants to prohibit the most destructive, postmodern nonsense around gender, especially as it relates to student privacy in bathrooms and safety on sports teams. Harding says she wants our schools geared toward “academic excellence,” not “politics or divisive concepts.”
Imagine that.
Kannan Srinivasan (D)
Former Virginia Delegate Kannan Srinivasan (D-26th) stands as the Democratic Party nominee for this open seat.
Srinivasan holds a bachelor’s degree in commerce from Vivekanada College at the University of Madras in Mylapore, India, and a master’s degree in accounting from Old Dominion University. He is a financial and business professional who was manager and director in several departments at Asurion and now serves as Vice President for Finance, Planning, and Analysis in the José Andrés restaurant group. He unsuccessfully sought election as Loudoun County Treasurer in 2019 and served as chair of the Virginia Board of Medical Assistance Services. Srinivasan was elected to represent the 26th District in the Virginia House of Delegates in 2023; he served less than one year of his two-year term before resigning to seek election to the Virginia Senate.
In the House, Srinivasan says he has been an advocate “for the health, safety, and well-being of Loudoun County residents” who “pursues policies that uplift all Virginia families.” His record says otherwise.
He denies the right to life—the first and more essential human right—and has worked to block even small, innocuous limitations on abortion. Like so many modern Democrats, he uses euphemisms like “reproductive freedom” and “bodily autonomy” to describe these crimes against humanity. He has attempted to undermine self-defense rights and supports useless, nonsensical firearms restrictions. He says he wants to “safeguard elections,” but opposes efforts to protect their integrity with policies like positive voter ID—a feature of elections in practically every free republic except the United States.
Srinivasan is proud to have advocated for a “historic $2.5 billion increase in state funding for public education,” as if dumping billions more dollars into some of the best funded schools in the world will somehow fix them. He claims he wants to reduce our energy bills, but he is a dogmatic believer in “climate change” who fights against the most effective and affordable means of energy production. He says he supports workers and businesses but wants to repeal right-to-work laws—meaning he wants to violate workers’ free association and contract rights and force businesses to let the union cartels extort them until they slide into bankruptcy.
Disappointing all-around.
Conclusion
This is pretty much a no-brainer.
Former Virginia Delegate Kannan Srinivasan (D-26th) is a doctrinaire modern Democrat. His policy positions lie on a spectrum between “useless” and “harmful.” He is wrong on economics, wrong on energy, wrong about elections, and wrong about human rights—especially the right to life.
I would like to see a lot more detail from Tumay Harding about what legislation she plans to write and what initiatives she plans to prioritize if we send her to the Virginia Senate, but, if nothing else, she is on the right side of the key issues. And, given her history with Loudoun County Public Schools, I expect her to be a strong, consistent advocate for serious education reform. I am not optimistic she’ll be able to get much done when there’s so much inertia and indifference in the rest of the legislature, but still. . . .
Vote Tumay Harding for the 32nd District in the Senate of Virginia.
House of Delegates, 26th District
JJ Singh (D) and Ram Venkatachalam (R) stand as candidates for the open 26th District seat in the Virginia House of Delegates.
The 26th District encompasses an area running from the far southeast corner of Loudoun County straight north to Croson Lane in Brambleton. Its western edge roughly follows Northstar Boulevard (in the south) and Evergreen Mills Road (in the north), and its eastern border runs roughly through the middle of South Riding and along the western property line of Dulles Airport. Communities in the district include Brambleton, Stone Ridge, and the western half of South Riding.
Former Virginia Delegate Kannan Srinivasan (D-26th) was elected in 2023 and served less than one year of his two-year term; he resigned to seek election to represent the 32nd District in the Virginia Senate. The winner of this special election will complete the remainder of the term.
JJ Singh (D)
JJ Singh (D) stands as the Democratic Party nominee for this open seat.
Singh holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Virginia and master’s degrees in business administration and public administration from Harvard University. He served in Bolivia for the U.S. Peace Corps, and his private-sector experience includes working as an underwriter for Ascendus, a director at LNWA & Arbor Management, and president of Retreat Hotels & Resorts. He also served as a credit analyst in the White House Office of Management and Budget during President Barack Obama’s (D) administration, an economic policy advisor for Senator Chris Coons (D-DE), and a member of the Loudoun County Economic Development Advisory Commission.
If elected, Singh promises to “fight to make childcare more affordable, preserve our high-quality schools, and reduce our skyrocketing tuition and fees for college students.” How he will do this remains a mystery. He says he will “fight for strong gun safety legislation,” but here, too, offers no details—and this sort of phraseology is often used by Democrats as a euphemism for trampling on innocent citizens’ self-defense rights. He says, “fundamental rights and freedoms are being attacked across the county [sic],” but the “fundamental right” he’s talking about in that paragraph is abortion. This is backwards thinking. Abortion is not a “right;” it tramples a right—the first and most fundamental of them.
It’s not that complicated. The three human rights are life, liberty, and property—in that order.
Ram Venkatachalam (R)
Ram Venkatachalam (R) stands as the Republican Party nominee for this open seat.
Venkatachalam holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Annamalai University in Chidambaram, India, and a master’s degree in computer science from Southern Polytechnic State University in Georgia. He has worked as a consultant for companies including Hewlett-Packard, Fannie Mae, Booz Allen Hamilton, and Deloitte. He served on the Brambleton Homeowners’ Association board and the Board of Trustees of the Science Museum of Virginia. He unsuccessfully sought election to represent the Blue Ridge District on the Loudoun County School Board in 2019 and its successor, the Little River District, on the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors in 2023. He also served on the Loudoun County Transit Advisory Board.
If elected, Venkatachalam promises to “vote to repeal the car tax and bad energy policy,” “get politics out of the classroom,” and “remove any barriers that prevent law enforcement from keeping us safe.” Like so many other candidates for office—including his opponent—he offers little detail about the specific policies he wants to enact or how he might get them adopted by the General Assembly. His website does not provide any information about his views on the right to life or self-defense rights, but he seems to have the right ideas about economics and energy—get rid of redundant taxes and stupid, anti-energy restrictions. On education he supports parents’ rights and protecting women’s sports. He wants to reduce crime by supporting law enforcement and prohibiting localities from interfering with immigration enforcement.
It would be nice to know where he stands on other issues, especially the three fundamental human rights. Your guess is as good as mine.
Conclusion
JJ Singh and Ram Venkatachalam have both failed to provide a sufficient explanation of their views and policy proposals, which is disappointing.
But when one candidate openly opposes the fundamental human rights—life, liberty, and property—it’s almost always best to vote against them, even if their opponent is not sufficiently supportive of them. There’s an old saying, often falsely attributed to Mark Twain: “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.”
Vote Ram Venkatachalam for the 26th District in the Virginia House of Delegates.
Other Recommendation
Virginia Senate
- 10th District: Former Virginia Senator John McGuire (R-10th) resigned after being elected to represent Virginia’s 5th District in the U.S. House of Representatives. Luther Cifers (R) and Jack Trammell (D) stand as candidates to complete his term. I recommend voting for Luther Cifers.
Ed. Note, January 2, 2025: When I organized and began writing this endorsement, former Virginia Senator John McGuire (R-10th) had not yet resigned, and I didn’t notice the new vacancy before publishing the article. I apologize for the oversight. I have added a recommendation for the Virginia Senate’s 10th District and added information about the vacancy to the introduction.