In a packed VA-10 race for Congress, opportunity knocks

Jennifer Boysko didn't have the most money ahead of Tuesday's Democratic primary, but she had a plan: Hit every door she could.

(Ryan Bacic/The Fairfax Machine)

House No. 1 didn’t answer her, and House No. 2 didn’t either, so by the time Jennifer Boysko rang the bell at House No. 3 in Lovettsville she was due. A stout, white-and-cream dog lumbered to the door, followed by his owner, a woman in her 70s. 

“He’s 16 years old,” the woman said, greeting Boysko. 

“Oh, he’s beautiful,” Boysko said, and then she explained what she would keep explaining that day, as the sun blazed down in the farm country of northern Loudoun County. That she was running for Congress in a Democratic primary on Tuesday. That she was a state senator who had represented more of Virginia’s 10th District than anyone. That she would be the seventh of 12 candidates on your ballot.

Right away at House No. 3, one aspect of the race stood out more.

“You’re the first person I’ve met,” the woman said.

“Oh, good,” said Boysko, because it was just what she’d been hoping to hear.

After Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D) announced in September that she wouldn’t seek reelection, Democrats circled the 10th District, a mashup that includes southwestern Fairfax, much of Prince William and all of Loudoun. Candidates have raised and spent millions of dollars, knowing their primary’s winner will be the favorite in November.

Boysko, whose state Senate district now spans McNair to McLean, had only the fifth-most money in the VA-10 field. But she had a plan her team believed in: identify potential primary voters and talk to more of them, person-to-person, than anyone else. She covered the core areas her team had set out for her early, and they decided to go further. Here, with six days to go in Lovettsville, a Loudoun County hamlet of 2,700, she saw neatly gridded neighborhoods she could walk and win.

Door-to-door hustle can “absolutely” swing a primary, where voters are more persuadable than in a general election, said Jeremy Mayer, an associate professor at George Mason’s Schar School of Policy and Government. Door-knocking costs less than yard signs, less than Boysko’s digital ads and mailers, and far less than TV.

“If the candidate has the time and the will, that can be extremely effective,” Mayer said.

It worked with the dog owner at House No. 3, who quickly pledged Boysko her support. The question was how many would follow.

‘Can I count on your vote?’

Boysko and five volunteers had met up at Lovettsville’s town square shortly after 2 p.m., near a chiropractor, a chicken-wing shop and an Italian restaurant advertising “Pizza, Pasta & More.” Boysko, who lives in Herndon, usually handled all the door-knocking solo — she likes the connections she can form, likes hearing from voters herself about what matters to them — but she had spent that morning making phone calls and, for the past few days, had woken up exhausted.

The group split up 200 houses of possible primary voters and split down streets with names like Black Forest, Eisentown and Hammond. Behind each door was an opportunity to learn about the year’s electorate and to tell Boysko’s story.

Folks have been “fired up” about abortion rights, so she shared about her fight for a constitutional amendment protecting them. The mom at House No. 6, a fellow Jennifer, asked Boysko about gun control, so Boysko explained a bill she’d crafted to make gun owners lock them up, away from children. The mom asked about the shortage of rural health-care providers, and Boysko connected with that from growing up in the Deep South, where she acquired her twang.

“Can I count on your vote?” Boysko asked after their five-minute conversation.

“Yes, I think so,” House No. 6 Jennifer said. “Your values sound like they align with our house.”

(Ryan Bacic/The Machine)

Math is murky on the campaign trail. It’s no sure thing that a voter will follow through with what they tell the politician at their door; sometimes, GMU’s Mayer noted, they’re just being polite. But Boysko has reason to believe them. In her first campaign, she recalled between houses, she had challenged six-term incumbent Tom Rust (R-Fairfax) for a House of Delegates seat. Rust hugely outspent her, and polls showed her behind, but the many doors she hit seemed 50/50. She lost by 32 votes.

“I learned that I can connect with people, that field matters, that money isn’t the only important thing,” Boysko said. 

She’s comfortable being “the underdog.” Her parents separated when she was a kid, and she watched her mom struggle, then put herself through school while working. Now 57, Boysko said she knows the feeling of not having everything you need but still getting through.

Once recently during the VA-10 primary she got back in her black Prius after canvassing and its temperature read 109 degrees. Another time, on the south side of Dulles, she got caught in a flash storm that soaked her pants and shoes so badly she had to go home and change.

Boysko’s fitness-tracking ring tells her these days she should take a break. Her husband, Glenn, has been taking care of their grocery shopping, their cooking and their three cats. Boysko is trying not to fall behind on bills, trying to ground herself through meditation, trying to stay connected to her mom, her two daughters and others she cares about.

At House No. 8, a pregnant mom was short on bandwidth also, standing in the driveway looking for where her two kids had scampered off to. Boysko pointed them out.

“I won’t keep you,” she told their mom, so she streamlined her pitch and handed over her business card. Like always, it included Boysko’s personal cell phone number.

‘Leave everything on the field’

The pandemic has fostered remote work in some parts of the 10th District more than others. On weekdays, Boysko gets a lot of stay-at-home moms, a lot of people who are busy and more silence. At some houses in Lovettsville she left messages through Ring cameras, at others just a flyer. She asked many variations on the same question.

“Hi, is Susanna home?”

“Hi, is your mom home?”

“Hi, Ashley?”

Each interaction requires a candidate to calibrate. The woman at House No. 13 whispered out her window over the garage that she was taking a test. A man with a shaved head at House No. 15 called the right “bats--- crazy” but said he doesn’t vote, just his wife, who wasn’t around.

Boysko passed one house that wasn’t on her list where a couple was sitting in their driveway, watching their three girls scooter around and draw with colorful chalks. They didn’t know about the primary, but she told them how she’d negotiated the state budget and “got $2.5 billion for kids for schools.”

“I’m going to leave everything on the field,” Boysko had said, but by 4:30, she was overheated and all turned around in Lovettsville’s grid. She picked up an alkaline water at the Lovettsville Cooperative Market and drank it in the shade by the parking lot. Then she got into her car, tagged with stickers that read “KAINE 2024” and “There is no Planet B” and overdue for maintenance, and she tracked down a stretch of houses she’d missed. Her volunteers had already hit them.

By her campaign manager’s estimate, the day’s outreach sent them past 20,000 doors reached in all.

“The response has just been great,” said one volunteer, Jeemin Shin, the mother of Del. Irene Shin (D). “It’s been really great,” Boysko agreed. No other candidates, they thought, seemed to have come out this way.

“If we could have a volunteer out here, we could get ’em all,” Shin said. “I’m serious, Jennifer.” She offered to pick up the rest of Boysko’s list, since Boysko was “beat” and had to get moving.

She had a meet-and-greet in Sterling that evening, and extended conversations would make it run long. Somewhere in there she needed to freshen up and eat and be “respectful,” as Boysko put it, “of the fact that I’m a human being.” At the end of the night, she’d hold a call with volunteers to brief them on their progress, as six days to go turned to five.

Only after that could Boysko get back to her own house in Herndon, the last one of the day — the one where, long after that beating sun went down, she wouldn’t even have to knock.