“It’s really uncharted territory for the Democrats,” said Stephen Farnsworth, a political scientist at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg. A new crop of young liberals, backed by the electoral might of Northern Virginia and other urban areas, is pushing to build on the state’s rapid evolution from red to blue.
“Now there is a much clearer delineation between what it means to be a Democrat in Richmond and what it means to be a Republican in Richmond, exactly like the change that’s occurred in Washington over the last 40 years,” he said.
