Democrat Ghazala Hashmi wins Virginia lieutenant governor's race

WASHINGTON (AP) - Democrat Ghazala Hashmi won the lieutenant governor’s race in Virginia on Tuesday, defeating Republican John Reid. She is the first Muslim woman elected to statewide office in the country.

Democrat Ghazala Hashmi secured 1,272,699 votes while Republican John Reid got 1,043,090 votes.

Hashmi is currently a state senator representing a district south of Richmond. Prior to that, she worked as a college professor in Virginia. She entered politics in 2019 by flipping a Republican-held state Senate seat and went to on to win a crowded Democratic primary for lieutenant governor in June.

As lieutenant governor, she will preside over the state Senate and be able to break ties in the chamber. The role could be crucial because with her seat vacant, Democrats will have a narrow 20-19 advantage with Hashmi leaving the Senate.

A Richmond-area state senator who helped flip the chamber in 2019, Hashmi campaigned on promises to stand up to the Trump administration.

Virginia is one of 17 states where lieutenant governors are elected separately from governors, though it’s been 20 years since different parties won the offices.

Lieutenant governors – including current Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears – have used the position as a springboard for gubernatorial campaigns in a state where governors are barred from serving consecutive terms.

Hashmi defeated five primary challengers in June, narrowly winning the nomination with 28% of the vote.

She’s since campaigned with the others on the Democratic ticket, gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger and candidate for attorney general Jay Jones. After news of Jones’ violent text messages broke, she condemned the messages but like most other Democrats stopped short of telling him to drop out.

She largely ignored her opponent’s regular attacks and accusations that she was ducking debates with him. The two never met in a face-to-face moderated debate, prompting Reid to debate an AI representation of her in October.

Elected in 2019 to the state senate, Hashmi defeated a Republican incumbent and helped flip the chamber, becoming the chamber’s first Muslim and Indian American in the process.

In that first campaign, she cited the first Trump administration’s Muslim ban as a motivator to run for office.

Reid made cultural issues around education and transgender students central to his campaign, playing off Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s success on a parents’ rights platform. He also announced a plan to help laid-off federal workers and promised to preserve Virginia’s so-called Right to Work law prohibiting workplaces from requiring their employees to join their union. While Reid has supported President Donald Trump, he never received Trump’s endorsement.