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Located deep in Matoaca, Ivan Road is so far south in Chesterfield that some of its houses back up against the Appomattox River, the waterway that defines the county’s southern border.

It’s a street of handsome but unpretentious homes set on lush front yards. Mailboxes, flags and license plate frames indicate allegiances to various sports teams and military branches. Kids cruise the street on bicycles.

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Much has remained the same here since these homes were constructed two decades ago, but last Thursday, Ivan Road played host to a new face on the block: Republican Speaker of the House Kirk Cox.

Dressed casually in a blue polo shirt and khaki shorts, Cox knocks on the front door of a home as drops of rain begin to fall. The door opens. “I’m Kirk Cox. I’m your state delegate,” says Cox, introducing himself to the homeowner. “This is going to be a new area for me. I’m knocking on as many doors as I can.”

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Just three days earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed a Republican challenge to a lower court’s ruling that 11 Virginia legislative districts were racially gerrymandered. Now Cox, a 29-year veteran of the General Assembly, is contending with a new political reality: Because of the ruling, he represents a newly redrawn 66th District.

Previously, Cox’s district included Colonial Heights and most of the southern half of the county; today, it cuts through the middle of Chesterfield, running from the edge of Petersburg all the way to the Richmond line. It still includes Colonial Heights, but adds the areas north of Pocahontas State Park and a portion south of his previous district, including where Ivan Road is located.

The new district Cox now represents is decidedly more Democratic, according to Virginia Public Access Project, a nonpartisan group that tracks and analyzes campaign finance reports and other political data. According to the nonprofit, the new 66th District is now 32 points more Democratic than it was previously.

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Even for a political pro like Cox, this spread may be difficult to overcome when he runs for reelection this fall. Sheila Bynum-Coleman, his Democratic challenger, is a Chesterfield native who lost by fewer than 1,000 votes in Virginia’s 62nd District two years ago against Republican Del. Riley Ingram. Cox will also be competing against Independent candidate Linnard Harris.

More than any of the 25 districts impacted by the new legislative map, the 66th has seen the greatest amount of change. Amid a blue wave spurred by the election of President Donald Trump, it’s not only possible that Republicans might lose control of the House of Delegates and cost Cox his speakership this fall, but that Cox might lose his seat in the General Assembly altogether.

It’s a dramatic turn of events for Cox, who first won his seat in 1989 by defeating Democratic incumbent Del. John Dicks III by 5 points. Since then, he’s usually run unopposed in the district. After defeating Jay T. Leverett in 1991 by 35 points and Gregory Rasnake in 1995 by 64 points, Cox went unchallenged from 1997 through 2015.

Then in 2017, Democrat Katie Sponsler ran for the seat; Cox easily dispatched her in the old district by 27 points.

But times have changed, and so has Cox’s district. Now, perhaps more than at any other point in his career, Cox is in the fight of his political life.

Last week’s Supreme Court decision is only the latest in what has been a wild couple of years for Cox. After longtime Republican Speaker Bill Howell announced that he wouldn’t seek reelection in 2017, Cox’s colleagues swiftly moved to establish him as speaker-in-waiting. But that fall, Democrats fared so well at the polls that they nearly erased the 32-seat advantage Republicans held in the House of Delegates. When the race for Virginia’s 94th District yielded a tie, the Republican candidate’s name was drawn from a bowl as a tiebreaker.

The Republicans maintained control of the House with a 51-49 advantage, and Cox became speaker by the luck of the draw. On opening day of the 2018 General Assembly session, Cox was unanimously chosen to serve as speaker for the next two years.

During the 2019 legislative session, Cox was the lead Republican in the General Assembly when all three of Virginia’s top Democratic officials became embroiled in scandal, with both Gov. Ralph Northam and Attorney General Mark Herring contending with revelations that they’d worn blackface in the past and Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax accused of sexually assaulting two women.

And finally, there was last week’s Supreme Court decision, which threatens Cox’s majority in the House and has changed the political math in his own district. But does that mean Cox is in danger? Only time will tell, say political analysts.

“[The new district] puts Kirk Cox in a much more vulnerable position than he’s ever been, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to lose,” says Bob Holsworth, a longtime political analyst in Richmond.

Quentin Kidd, a political science professor at Christopher Newport University, agrees that Cox has a tough road ahead of him.

“On paper he’s a dead man walking, but I’m not willing to call him that, because I think he has a place in that district that goes beyond what’s on paper,” Kidd says. “Even though it’s a 30-plus point shift, I’m just not sure that he can’t, at the end of the day, overcome most of that.”

Holsworth and Kidd say Cox has many strengths as a candidate, including a record of bipartisan initiatives like Medicaid expansion and this year’s tuition hike freeze for four-year institutions. A strong, pragmatic and well-funded candidate, they say Cox won’t go down without a fight.

“He’s not someone to take this for granted. He’s not at all complacent about any election. He’s going to be out there knocking on doors, talking to people. He’s going to be acting as if he’s the candidate who’s 10 points behind,” Holsworth says. “If Kirk Cox loses, it won’t be because of his deficiencies as a candidate. It will be because he couldn’t overcome the nature of the district.”

For his part, Cox says that while the Supreme Court ruling was disappointing, two-thirds of his district remain the same, and he believes he’ll be reelected.

“We feel really confident,” said Cox at his district headquarters in Colonial Heights last week. “We have a great message. Most people, when you knock on their door, Republican or Democrat, like it when you’re cutting their taxes, and I think they like what we’re doing in higher education and K-12.”

As speaker, he says he’s proud of what this session yielded.

“Considering all the chaos that was caused by all the Democratic scandals, I thought we had a great session,” said Cox, counting tax cuts for individuals and a 5% pay raise for Virginia’s teachers as examples. “The accomplishments were great. It was one of the best sessions I’ve felt we’ve had.”

Bynum-Coleman, a real estate agent, says she’s running for the 66th District seat to better fund education, increase access to affordable health care, enact criminal justice reform and curb gun violence.

She first ran for office in 2015, she says, out of frustration while trying to address issues with her son’s Individualized Education Program, a document created for each child who is eligible for special education. She claims she was shuttled between the School Board and Del. Riley Ingram, who was her representative in the General Assembly at the time.

“When I first started this, I was just a mad mom, and I was upset that Del. Riley Ingram wouldn’t meet with me for 15 minutes,” said Bynum-Coleman, reached by phone last week.

With a small campaign staff made up of family members and volunteers, Bynum-Coleman mounted an unsuccessful campaign in 2015 that saw her get trounced by 19 points in Ingram’s 62nd District.

The following August, one of Bynum-Coleman’s daughters was shot in the shoulder while leaving a party in Richmond. Her daughter lived, but Bynum-Coleman says police couldn’t determine who the shooter was.

“That really was painful,” Bynum-Coleman said. “She survived, but the fact that the police could not determine who shot her bothered me in such a way that I can’t even find words to express it.”

That exasperation led her to run again, this time in a much more organized fashion. In 2017, she lost by 3.5 points, just 820 votes shy of winning. Bynum-Coleman credits that experience with showing her how to run a proper campaign. Now, after being redistricted into Cox’s district, she’s geared up for a fight.

“I felt like I had to [run in 2019], because there were so many [unaddressed] issues that I saw in our community,” she said. “I’ve talked to thousands of people. I’ve learned a lot about the needs of the people in our community.”

On the issues, Bynum-Coleman and Cox differ greatly: She supports universal background checks on guns; he called Northam’s request for a gun-focused special session of the General Assembly after the Virginia Beach mass shooting “hasty and suspect.” She supports the Equal Rights Amendment; during Cox’s tenure as speaker, Republicans in the House of Delegates have killed efforts to pass it. And where she is in favor of abortion rights, Cox is anti-abortion, saying earlier this year he would “never stop fighting for the promise of life as long as I am a member of the House of Delegates.”

Holsworth and Kidd say Bynum-Coleman is a contender, especially if she can energize voters as the Democrats have in Virginia for the past two election cycles.

“Sheila Bynum-Coleman certainly ran a very aggressive campaign with almost no money against Riley Ingram, who she almost beat last time,” Holsworth says. “It was an impressive campaign, very grassroots-oriented. She’s very likely to have some very strong grassroots support by the Democratic Party.”

Especially if Bynum-Coleman is adequately funded, Holsworth says this could be a race to watch.

“If the Democratic Party puts substantial sums of money – and I by that, I’m talking about half a million or more – in the Bynum-Coleman campaign, this could become a competitive race,” he says.

Of course, the political headwinds of 2019 will also factor into this election. While dislike of President Trump energized Democratic voters in 2017 and 2018, it’s unclear if the recent scandals involving Virginia’s top Democrats will affect turnout.

“Donald Trump is the best thing that’s happened to Virginia Democrats in a long time,” Kidd says. “He so enrages voters who weren’t really engaged until 2016, and that is suburban and rural suburban voters who prior to 2016 weren’t really voting.”

Holsworth concurs.

“We have to see where that plays out in 2019,” he says. “The fact that some of the Democratic Party statewide leaders were mired for months in a scandal, does that dampen and mute the Democratic enthusiasm? We don’t know that.”

Kidd says there are some reports suggesting that the presidential election of 2020 may see the highest turnout since the election of President John F. Kennedy in 1960, and that this could have an impact this fall.

“If there is this emerging turnout boom coming in 2020, we may see some of that in 2019 in Virginia,” Kidd says. “That turnout boom is probably caused by more energized Democrats than by energized Republicans.”

Whatever the political climate, Kidd and Holsworth say Cox is a force to be reckoned with.

“He’s a pretty seasoned politician, very sharp, very smart, knows what he’s doing,” Holsworth says. “You can’t count Kirk Cox out.” ¦

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