Some residents of Richmond and Chesterfield will vote on Tuesday to fill seats in the Virginia Senate and House of Delegates.

The Senate seat in District 15 is being vacated by Ghazala Hashmi, who was elected Lieutenant Governor during November's elections.

The House seat in District 77 is being vacated by Mike Jones, who is running for the Senate seat.

Voting will take place on Tuesday, Jan. 6 at the traditional election day precincts.

While there is some overlap, there are also many precincts that will only be participating in one of the two elections.

Who is eligible to vote?

Registered voters who live in the impacted districts are eligible to cast a ballot in this election.

If in doubt, the state has a website that allows people to look up their district by typing in their address. It can be found here.

The candidates

The Senate race will be between Democrat Mike Jones and Republican John Thomas.

Jones is a local pastor who served on Richmond's City Council before winning the House seat in 2023. He received 71% of the vote last November to win re-election.

Thomas works in the grocery industry, and was previously a government contractor. He ran for a House seat in November, but was defeated by incumbent Democrat Debra Gardner. Thomas received 31% of the vote in that race.

The House race will be between Democrat Charlie Schmidt and Republican Richard Stonage.

Schmidt is a former ACLU attorney who is running for state office for the first time.

Stonage is a licensed professional engineer. He ran for the seat in November's general election, and lost with 29% of the vote received.

What's at stake

In the Virginia Senate, the party makeup currently sits at 20 Democrats, 19 Republicans.

Even if Republicans were able to flip the Richmond-area Senate seat, Hashmi would break ties as the Lieutenant Governor. However, there are some areas where a true majority is required in the Senate, including constitutional amendments and appropriations bills. Hashmi would not be able to vote as a tiebreaker in those cases.

Virginia's House of Delegates will contain 63 Democrats and 36 Republicans in the upcoming General Assembly, pending Tuesday's results.

Off-cycle elections such as these are often low-turnout events, with each candidate working to get its supporters to head to the polls outside of the regular election cycle.

Contact Michael Phillips at mphillips@richmonder.org.