Live updates: Ghazala Hashmi declares victory in LG primary
Voters in Richmond delivered a stunning rebuke to former Mayor Levar Stoney on Tuesday night, and in the process lifted State Sen. Ghazala Hashmi to a sizable lead in a three-way primary contest for the Democratic Lieutenant Governor nomination.
Graham Moomaw
As of Tuesday evening, with 99% of the statewide vote counted, Hashmi led Stoney by a margin of 130,614 votes to 127,203 votes.
State Sen. Aaron Rouse was narrowly behind those two, with 126,172 votes.
"Tonight we've made history yet again, not just by winning this primary, but by declaring with one voice that Virginia is not going to be bullied or broken or dragged backwards by the chaos that's unfolding in Washington," Hashmi said at a watch party.
The numbers will fluctuate slightly in the overnight hours, which could bring major financial implications for the Stoney campaign. At the moment, he can request a recount, but he would be responsible for footing the bill.
If he can get to within 0.5% of Hashmi, the state would pay for a potential recount.
The race was won in Richmond, where Stoney served two terms as mayor, but where a pair of water crises were fresh in voters' minds as they trekked to the polls on Tuesday morning.
Inside the city, Hashmi won 58% of the vote to just 21% for Stoney. The 8th and 9th Districts, on Richmond's Southside, were the only two to back Stoney.
At his watch party, Stoney said the important thing is for the party to work to defeat the Republicans, who he described as complicit in carrying out Donald Trump's agenda.
"No matter what the results may say, remember that at the end of the day, silence is complicity. And all we're asking for is for people, this party, to stand up for the least of these— the forgotten, those left behind," he said. "I can guarantee you this, my fight will continue. No matter what happens, my fight will continue."
9:53 p.m. update
Richmond's two local races are now in the books as well.
Commonwealth's Attorney Colette McEachin cruised to reelection over Tom Barbour Jr., by a margin of 71% to 29%.
In the Sheriff's race, the incumbent was also the winner, with Antionette Irving defeating William Burnett 55% to 45%.
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9:44 p.m. update
Richmond's early vote has posted, and at the moment it appears State Senator Ghazala Hashmi will end the night with the lead in the Democratic primary for Lieutenant Governor over Levar Stoney and Aaron Rouse.
A recount appears all but certain at this point.
The early voting tallies in the city: Hashmi 4,167, Stoney 2,096, Rouse 947
The current tallies overall:
Hashmi 128,651
Stoney 126,298
Rouse 125,611
9:33 p.m. update
The finish line is now in sight. Aaron Rouse briefly took the lead when the early votes were entered from Tidewater, but his lead is less than 100 votes, and he has not shown an ability to be competitive in any of the remaining localities.
Ghazala Hashmi has 123,920 votes to 123,649 for Levar Stoney. That's about as close as it gets.
VPAP estimates we have about 14,000 votes remaining to count. Of those, 8,000 are in Richmond city.
See the latest election results in the Lieutenant Governor race from VPAP here
9:28 p.m. update
However the LG race shakes out, this race will stand as a compelling case for adopting ranked-choice voting. The bottom three candidates will end up with about 19% of the overall vote. If those voters had been allowed to reallocate their votes, it's very possible we'd be talking about a different outcome.
9:20 p.m. update
The Richmonder is on the ground at Ghazala Hashmi and Levar Stoney's watch parties tonight. We'll have live updates as soon as the candidates speak.
At the moment, all eyes are on the final untallied votes, with Richmond representing a substantial portion of those. Voters will get their say on whether Stoney's political career should continue after his eight-year stint as mayor.
9:06 p.m. update
Right now, ask 10 people and you'll get 10 different opinions.
- Yes, Ghazala Hashmi is beating Levar Stoney handily in Richmond city. BUT... almost all of the vote that's been counted so far is from the West End. When Districts 7, 8 and 9 start reporting, there's a chance they break for Stoney.
- A reminder that if the two candidates finish within one percentage point of each other, the losing candidate may request a recount. (The state only pays for the recount if the margin is within 0.5%.)
- If Hashmi wins, the easy narrative will be that Richmond rejected Stoney. But she put in the work in Northern Virginia, and ended up winning in Fairfax County, which allowed this race to stay competitive later into the night than many expected.
The count continues. We'll keep you posted.
8:40 p.m. update
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, still nothing to report from the local races. No locality in the state is counting its votes slower tonight than Richmond.
8:32 p.m. update
The eyes of the state turn to Richmond in the LG race.
- It looks like there wasn't enough turnout in Tidewater to lift Aaron Rouse into contention. There's at least 10,000 early votes still to be accounted for there, but Rouse is now down by more than that margin, and hasn't shown an ability to compete elsewhere.
- At the moment, Ghazala Hashmi leads Levar Stoney by less than 200 votes.
- Richmond has barely counted a third of its vote. The vote we have seen is largely from the West End, where Hashmi is winning big over Stoney.
- But — in the two 9th District sites that have reported, Stoney took more votes than Hashmi.
Bottom line : The LG race is very much still up in the air at this hour.
8:19 p.m. update
It's not the night's biggest race, but the Attorney General race between Jay Jones and Henrico's Shannon Taylor is astoundingly close. With about three-quarters of the vote in, they are in a near dead-heat. Jones has 50.25% of the vote to Taylor's 49.75%.
8:10 p.m. update
No updates yet on the two local races (Commonwealth's Attorney and Sheriff) as we just haven't seen enough votes out of the city.
Richmond will be one of the last localities to report, which could allow it to tip the LG vote. Levar Stoney, Ghazala Hashmi and Aaron Rouse are now separated by just 2.6 percentage points.
8:03 p.m. update
Fairfax County was seen as a key indicator entering the night in the LG race, as one of the biggest sources of votes and an area where Stoney spent significant time.
We're expecting about 54,000 votes when the dust settles, and we've seen 30,071 so far, representing a good portion of the county geographically.
The numbers: Stoney 26%, Hashmi 23%, Rouse 21%.
Buckle up. It's going to be a nail biter of a night.
7:52 p.m. update
We've seen about 80% of Chesterfield County's vote, including the early vote, and while Ghazala Hashmi is the leader in the LG race in the county, it is only by a 44% to 36% margin over Levar Stoney, numbers Stoney is likely to be pleased with given that is Hashmi's home turf.
Chesterfield's vote was split between the wealthier western portion of the county, which broke for Hashmi, and the eastern portion of the county, which favored Stoney.
7:27 p.m. update
Of Richmond's 72 precincts, the first one has reported.
At the Church of the Holy Comforter voting site, on Monument Avenue, Ghazala Hashmi was a runaway winner, logging 162 votes to 39 for Aaron Rouse and 19 for Levar Stoney.
Colette McEachin outpaced Tom Barbour about 2-to-1 in Commonwealth's Attorney voting at the site, while Sheriff Antoinette Irving took a slim early lead over challenger William Burnett.
Early voting on track to exceed in-person voting
As of midday, it appeared that more voters were choosing to vote early, rather than cast their ballot on Election Day itself.
Early voting was the most popular method in the 2020 COVID election, but in-person voting returned to the top spot in 2021.
Last year, a bipartisan push saw about 50% of voters return to using early voting, and that trend appears to be continuing into 2025.
During the 2021 Democrat primaries, about 124,000 early votes were cast, while this time around the number was about 196,000, despite projections of lower overall turnout.
The voters speak
Richmond's two water crises appeared to be top of mind for voters in Manchester on Tuesday morning.
IT worker John Lutz said the water crisis was one factor that swayed him towards supporting Ghazala Hashmi, a state senator whose district is primarily in Chesterfield County.
"I respected him as mayor," said Lutz. "But some of the things that have come out recently with the water crisis and all that other stuff has kind of made me sway away from him."
In Shockoe Bottom, voter Lamar Townsend said for him, the water crisis illustrated the importance of having "the right people with the right intent in local levels, as a government."
For other voters, it was the first opportunity to make a stand at the ballot box against the policies of Donald Trump's administration.
In recent elections, Virginia traditionally has voted for governors of the opposite political party as the one that won the White House.
Ebony Jones, a social worker from Manchester, said she's had Hispanic clients quit jobs because they were afraid of being deported.
"What's going on right now is against their rights," she said.
Early numbers compiled by political analyst Chaz Nuttycombe showed higher turnout among Richmond-area voters than those in other areas of the state.
Original story
Tuesday's primary elections for the Democratic party offered Richmond voters their first opportunity to weigh in at the ballot box on Levar Stoney's eight years as the city's mayor.
Stoney was running in a crowded field for the Lieutenant Governor nomination, the winner of which will run alongside gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger in November.
The Republican ticket was previously set at the statewide level, with all candidates running unopposed, so no primary was needed in Richmond.
Inside Richmond city limits, voters are choosing whether to retain Commonwealth's Attorney and Sheriff incumbents or replace them, in a pair of rematch elections from 2021.
Graham Moomaw
Victoria A. Ifatusin
Michael Phillips, Victoria A. Ifatusin and Graham Moomaw contributed to this report. Email news@richmonder.org with feedback or comments.
