Incumbent claims victory in hotly contested 82nd House District. Is a recount possible?

PETERSBURG — Has the blue wave in the 82nd House District been stemmed by a late-coming red tide? We will have to wait and see.

A race that many political watchers had deemed the biggest toss-up in the entire commonwealth certainly is living up to its expectations. Republican incumbent Kim Taylor, who trailed Democratic challenger Kimberly Pope Adams for most of Election Night, surged ahead by 173 votes just before midnight, leaving the outcome of the election possibly contingent on the results of provisional ballots that have until Monday to be counted.

As of late Tuesday night, Taylor had 14,141 votes to Adams' 13,968. Percentage-wise, that translates to 50.2% to 49.7% — a difference of 0.5%. That difference is right at the threshold for a state-financed recount.

Taylor put out a statement claiming victory, saying she was "proud" of her record in Richmond.

"Our fight started two years ago, and tonight it continues," she said.

As of early Wednesday morning, Adams had not yet conceded the race.

Big lead chipped away

Adams came strong out of the gate Tuesday night, surging to a big lead thanks mostly to her 5,400-vote margin of victory in traditionally Democratic Petersburg. That appeared to more than offset the victories Taylor scored in the rural portions of the 70-mile wide district from Dinwiddie to Surry County.

All eyes then turned to Prince George County, a reliably Republican staple.. The question became, would that reliability be enough to bring Taylor all the way back?

It apparently did.

As the county precincts trickled in, Adams' districtwide lead began to shrink from some 2,000 votes all the way down to 576. Then more results came in that pushed Taylor slightly ahead. By the time the clock struck midnight, Taylor had managed to garner almost 70% of the Prince George vote, pulling ahead of Adams by the political equivalent of a whisker.

The results are unofficial and will remain so until each electoral board within the district certifies them. That's where the provisional ballots come into play.

In Virginia, provisional ballots are cast by voters whose qualifications are in question. It allows them to still vote in the election, but the determination is done separately from the regular ballots. Depending upon how the ballots were cast, the separate count could take anytime from the day after to the following Monday.

It was not immediately clear how many provisional ballots were cast across the district.

Early signs indicated photo-finish

Regardless of the outcome, the race lived up to its pre-election billing. The nonpartisan Virginia Public Access Project had rated Taylor-Adams as the most competitive of all 100 House races based on previous voting by its constituents' core.

Both Democrats and Republicans poured political and financial capital into the race because it was seen as one of the ones that would factor into who controls the House for the next two years. The GOP holds a slim majority, but there were at least six open races in addition to the ones such as the 82nd where the incumbent had been deemed vulnerable by the opposition.

Taylor, an auto-repair shop business owner, had just completed her first term in Richmond. Two years ago, she rode conservative rural support to victory over six-year incumbent Del. Lashrecse Aird of Petersburg.

Adams, an auditor at Virginia State University and a first-time political candidate, was attempting to capitalize on Virginia Democrats' push to protect reproductive rights from conservative scissors. Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, Virginia is the only southern state that has not adopted GOP-backed restrictions.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, was pushing a ban on abortions at 15 weeks in Virginia, something state Democrats vehemently opposed. Therefore, much of the campaign advertising across the commonwealth focused on Democrats' calls to protect reproductive rights.

Overall for the election, Adams outraised Taylor $2.7 million to $2.4 million, and had more than four times the amount of cash in the campaign coffers by the deadline for candidates to file their last pre-election financial reports.

The 82^nd House District stretches from eastern Dinwiddie County to Surry County, and includes Petersburg and most of Prince George County. The nonpartisan Virginia Public Access Project ranked it as the most competitive of all the House races based upon past party performances.

It was redrawn to expand from the city of Petersburg and its immediate rural environs to a 70-mile trek from eastern Dinwiddie to Hog's Island in Surry County that many experts had given Democrats a 0.5% support margin.

In order to win, each candidate had to rely on cutting enough of a swath into the other's core of voters to make a difference. In the case of the 82nd, that meant Petersburg and Surry for Taylor, and Dinwiddie and Prince George for Adams.

Two years ago when Taylor defeated Democrat Lashrecse Aird in the then-63rd House District, she built up enough support in the conservative rural areas to overcome the anticipated thrashing she would get in regularly blue Petersburg. That was a different district, however in that Petersburg was the geographic and political center of the district that included rural ares such as Dinwiddie, Prince George and southern Chesterfield County. The new 82nd erased Chesterfield from the equation and stretched the district almost 70 miles wide from eastern Dinwiddie to Hog's Island in Surry.

While her numbers faded in Petersburg, Taylor did manage to squeak by Adams in Democratic-leaning Surry County. With everything but the provisionals counted, Taylor led Adams there by only 18 votes.

In Virginia, the candidate behind when the final count is done can ask for a recount. If the margin is at or less than 0.5%, the state will pay for that recount.

As for Aird, she completed her political comeback Tuesday, easily defeating Republican Eric Ditri to capture the 13th Senate District that encompasses most of the Tri-City area.

Bill Atkinson (he/him/his) is an award-winning journalist who covers breaking news, government and politics. Reach him at batkinson@progress-index.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @BAtkinson_PI.

This article originally appeared on The Progress-Index: Taylor claims victory in 82nd; race still too close to call