Whatever legislation that is passed by the Democratic majority will be front and center for attack ads when House of Delegates seats are up for reelection again in 2021. The concern over lasting control might temper some of the more progressive efforts hailed by the majority party’s newest members.

"Things will be incremental,” Stephen Farnsworth, a political science professor at Mary Washington University, said in a phone interview.

He noted Northam is much more of a centrist who was almost recruited by the Republican Party years before he won the governorship in 2017.

"Some of the folks who imagine this election has made Virginia the California of the East Coast will be disappointed,” Farnsworth said.

Virginia Democrats Set Sights on Equal Rights Amendment (Courthouse News Service)