14th District House Race – Update #1

Let’s take a look at the upcoming 14th District House of Delegates race. We’re got Danville’s Danny Marshall, a long-time incumbent, facing Danville’s Vice-Mayor Gary Miller. There’s also comic relief in the race but we’ll get to that later…

Incumbent Danny Marshall is running for his 7th two-year term in the Hose and has fought off some good challengers as well as easily won some predictable victories. In 2013, he’s facing off against Gary Miller, a Danville cardiologist who’s also vice-mayor. Interestingly, Marshall is also being challenged from the right by Henry County’s Mary Martin who’s running as an independent.

Strengths & Weaknesses:

• Marshall: Marshall knows the ropes in Richmond and is a rather strong presence for Southside. He plays well to the conservative base but has no problem voting against the far-right members of his party as he did this year when he supported the transportation bill. Some Republicans cried out “TAX INCREASER!” and Marshall doesn’t seem to care. That independent streak that Marshall has is impressive to a lot of people. Campaign financing won’t be an issue at all for Marshall. he’s got plenty of money and could easily raise anything more that he’d need.
• Miller: Miller has a lot of local government experience which translated well into state government.  Miller has pretty much of the same name recognition that Marshall has inside the Danville area but he’s got to work on getting his message out to the rest of the district. While Miller is known as one of the more liberal members of Danville City Council, that’s really not saying much as local politics rarely dissolve into liberal/conservative issues.
• Martin: Martin was elected to one term on the Henry County School Board as an at-large representative in 2003, then was promptly sent packing by a 41%-59% in the 2007 election. Before declaring her independent candidacy,  Martin was rather active with the Republican party, but has isolated herself from them with this run for office. Martin is a self-appointed advocate for fairness in electric rates but has no results to show for this advocacy. She has very little name recognition in anywhere east of the Henry/Pittsylvania county line and probably won’t even at election day.

Let’s take a look at the Path To Victory for these candidates…

Path To Victory:

• Marshall: Marshall’s only serious challenge to re-election was back in 2007 when he faced Danville’s Adam Tomer. That campaign got hijacked by state and national money and became an embarrassment to everybody involved. Marshall learned how to win in tough times and he hasn’t been seriously challenged since. One of the lessons that he learned was to never be outspent in advertising and his bottomless campaign resources won’t ever let that happen. Marshall also is fortunate that he’s well-liked by most and the ones who say that they don’t like him usually have to resort to “because he’s Republican”. Considering that Gary Miller has been semi-silent up to now, Marshall’s strategy should be auto-pilot and attack with his own positive strengths.
• Miller: To have any chance of defeating a long-time incumbent, Miller’s got to get his message out to the voters. So far in the campaign, he hasn’t shown any positions on issues that are much different that Marshall’s. He’s ran a quiet campaign so far and that could be related to financial issues. Miller needs to start making a big push now and tell the voters why he’s a better selection than Marshall. Miller’s got to crank up the fundraising and campaign cash, because Marshall can outspend him without blinking.
• Martin: There’s no chance in hell of Mary Martin winning. Marshall would have to have a piano dropped on him and Miller would have to be caught outside in a bowling-ball shower. The only chance of Mary Martin breaking into competitiveness would be the Zombie Apocalypse, as brains would be in short supply.

Final Analysis:

Danny Marshall started off in the lead because of his experience and his likeability. Gary Miller has got to ramp it up quickly to make this race competitive. Mary Martin is comic relief and we’ll have fun with her candidacy over the next two months.

As of right now, we’re very tempted to put this race into the “SAFE” column but we’re not quite up to that threshold. That being said, SouthsideCentral has no problem in rating the 14th District Virginia House of Delegates as “Strongly Likely – Marshall” as of now.