Key Player in Virginia Casino Fight Loses Primary Race

Proponents of a gambling casino in Richmond, Virginia, are facing ace fewer barricade today after a tell senator who has been trying to mental block the externalise missed his primary race.

Sen. Joe Morrissey (D), who succeeded inwards block a 2022 referendum and is trying to come so again this year, was ousted in Tuesday’s Democratic primary by former commonwealth assign Lashrecse Aird. The red was resounding, with Aird taking to a greater extent than 69% of the ballot inward the two-way race, according to unofficial results from the VA Department of Elections.

Morrissey has said he hopes to catch linguistic communication inserted into the say budget to preclude Richmond from putting a young cassino bar on the ballot inward November. He says it is unjust for the metropolis to have a endorsement seize with teeth at the Malus pumila after voters at that place narrowly rejected a similar casino proposition in 2021.

Budget negotiations in the General Assembly have in effect been on hold for weeks as lawmakers focused on their primary election campaigns, but now that Tuesday’s votes have got been decided, they are expected to take up inwards earnest.

Morrissey’s gambling casino effort is hardly a exchange direction inwards the ongoing budget negotiations, but the senator has said he believes on that point is sufficient funding to include speech to block a young referendum inward this year’s budget.

Photos of Joe Morrissey’s grant to Lashrecse Aird. @RTDNEWS pic.twitter.com/jGY6VLLn3j

— Mike Kropf (@mikekropfphoto) June 21, 2023

Budget Questions

It’s an clear interrogation whether the VA General Assembly testament approve a new budget before the financial twelvemonth ends on June 30. The commonwealth is in the middle of a two-year budget cycle, signification lawmakers technically don’t hold to enact a new budget before the deadline.

Virginia’s Republican-controlled House of Delegates and its Democratic-majority Senate feature been shared out on an regalia of higher-profile issues, such as taxation cuts sought-after(a) past Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R). Still, they are facing pressure level to act as on a variety of proposals with two-party support.

Senate Minority Leader Tommy Norment (R-James City) told the Virginia Mercury that he expected negotiations would regard a “reinvigoration” starting this week.

“I consider that the impasse on the budget has been to a greater extent because of primaries, political considerations,” Norment told the publication earlier this month. “And that some of the leaders have got been distracted.”

Reduced Political Capital

While Morrissey will dish up out the difference of his term for this year, his loss may melt off his political working capital inward the Statehouse and relieve oneself it tougher to enact his priorities.

Although parts of capital of Virginia are inwards Morrissey’s district, he would rather view a unexampled cassino built inwards Petersburg, another metropolis he represents most 25 miles to the south. A meditate by the VA Joint Legislature Audit and Review Commission concluded that both cities could profitably back up a casino, but for each one would make out better.

The Cordish Companies, which has pitched a casino inwards Petersburg, has said it won’t run forrard if it has to compete with ane in Richmond.

The Richmond City Council earliest this month approved a unexampled assess to seem on the November ballot that would authorize a proposed $500 one thousand thousand casino on the city’s south face led by Black-focused media conglomerate Urban One. The evaluate is similar to ace voters rejected by a 51% to 49% security deposit inward 2021.

One tonality difference is Urban One at present has a new partner in Winston S. Churchill Downs after the Kentucky Derby arranger acquired assets from Peninsula Pacific Entertainment.

Campaign Fodder

Morrissey sought to capitalise on his funding for the gambling casino inwards the campaign.

Everyone knows that if Aird were successful inward existence the 13th Senate Democratic nominee, she would abandon the defend to present the cassino to Petersburg and helping hand it on a silver platter to Richmond,” Morrissey said this month, according to the Progress Index paper in Petersburg.

Aird called the bursting charge “laughable” and said she supports a Petersburg casino, but has questions nearly some specifics inwards the Cordish proposal, according to the newspaper. She said Morrisseey’s unsuccessful person to untroubled budget language blocking a new Richmond voting represented a legislative failure.

“There was no opportunity for a gambling casino certify during my time inwards office. There hold been II during his time inwards office,” Aird said, according to the Progress Index. “He non only when supported a Richmond casino initially but and then when the clearest chance to secure a gambling casino for Petersburg Campaign existed, he failed. Joe Morrissey failed because he was willing to compromise on the most of import aspect of securing a casino – jobs for workers, good, high-paying jobs for workers that would for the most part affect Petersburg Campaign workers – as component part of his business deal with Cordish.”

Aird also said Morrissey’s gambling casino attack was an travail to deflect from his views on issues such as abortion that were out of stair with the bulk of Democrats.

Morrissey’s resounding licking suggests the race hinged to a greater extent on social issues and earliest personal controversies than on the gambling casino fight. Aird won livelihood from an unco heights identification number of legislators and members of the state’s congressional delegation, and she dramatically outspent Morrissey, according to the Associated Press.

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