Episode 37: What happened to Virginia’s progressive moment?

Tuesday, June 8, was the Democratic primary for statewide offices, and the results were fairly unexceptional. Former Governor Terry McAuliffe handily won the nomination for governor, State Delegate Hala Ayala won the nomination for Lieutenant Governor, and incumbent Attorney General Mark Herring beat out a primary challenger; meanwhile outspoken delegates Lee Carter, Mark Levine, and Ibrahim Samirah failed to win their bids for re-nomination.

All in all, a fairly clean sweep for the Democratic establishment as many progressive candidates lost out to their more moderate, corporate-friendly challengers. So what happened to Virginia’s progressive moment? Has the state already reached a new equilibrium in the post-Trump era?

To answer that question, we spoke with Richmond-based journalist Peter Galuszka, as well as Brennan Gilmore, Executive Director of Clean Virginia, an organization dedicated to fighting corruption in Virginia's government.