Articles by Lisa Lyons Wright

On June 10, 2014, 55 percent of 65,000 voters from more than 700,000 residents in the seventh district of Virginia cast ballots in an open primary with one question. By an 11-point margin, they soundly rejected their 13-year incumbent, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Cantor had handily defeated previous primary opponents. However, nearly twenty thousand more constituents voted than in the 2012 primary. Those new primary voters overwhelmingly supported Cantor’s opponent, Dave Brat, a professo...