Sen. Suhas Subrahmanyam, of suburban Loudoun County, Virginia, narrowly won the Democratic primary for his Northern Virginia congressional district on Tuesday after perhaps the ugliest primary contest so far of the 2024 election season, according to the Associated Press.
Subrahmanyam's victory over 11 other Democratic candidates in the election to replace retiring Democratic Rep. Jennifer Wexton will be a relief to national Democrats who have been watching with anxiety as the race's other leading contender, state Rep. Dan Helmer, faced calls to withdraw amid sexual harassment allegations.
The district had been drifting away from the Republican Party since 2018, when Wexton flipped the district to her party after nearly four decades of Republican control. Neither party considered Virginia's 10th District part of a battleground in the 2024 election until an anonymous Democratic official in the district came forward through her lawyer to accuse Helmer of groping her and then making sexually lewd comments to her.
Helmer refused to drop out of the race and denounced the “baseless accusations” made “by people who supported my opponent a week before the election.”
Subrahmanyam has tried to stay out of the fray by relying on his name recognition, his record as a state senator and the endorsement of Wexton, who announced his retirement last year after being diagnosed with progressive supranuclear palsy, a rare neurological disorder with no effective treatment.
But in a primary marked by name-calling and late-game attacks, he had to dismiss reports that he had improperly put a state senator's staff on his campaign payroll — a charge he maintains is completely false.
A House Republican leadership aide said Republican National Congressional Committee officials would evaluate the district if Helmer became the Democratic candidate. A Subrahmanyam victory could keep the district out of the running this fall.
He will face Republican Mike Clancy, a lawyer and business executive.
