MR. KOJO NNAMDIFrom WAMU 88.5 at American University in Washington, welcome to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show," connecting your neighborhood with the world. Later in the broadcast, the shadow world of the global arms trade, but first, sorting out the political arms race in Virginia. Just a few dozen votes may end up tipping the balance of power in Virginia even further into Republican favor. The GOP is poised to take over the Virginia Senate with Republican challenger Bryce Reeves leading a Democratic Virginia senator, Edward Houck, by just 86 votes.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIIf Reeves maintains that lead after provincial ballots are counted today, Republicans will control both chambers of the Virginia General Assembly and the governor's mansion. But Richmond wasn't the only place on the line in Virginia's elections yesterday. This hour, we'll also be exploring the results from critical county races throughout the Washington region. Joining us to analyze these results is Michael Pope. He covers Virginia politics for WAMU 88.5 and for the Connection Newspapers.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIHis latest book "Hidden History of Alexandria, D.C." was published earlier this year. Michael, good to see you again.

MR. MICHAEL POPEThanks for having me.

NNAMDIAnd we've got to get to "Hidden History of Alexandria, D.C." at some point in the near future. Also joining us by phone is Bob Gibson. He is the executive director of the Thomas C. Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership at the University of Virginia. He covered Virginia politics as a reporter and a columnist for the Charlottesville Daily Progress for more than 30 years. Bob Gibson, how are you doing?

MR. BOB GIBSONVery well. Always good to join you, Kojo.

NNAMDIAlways good to hear you, Bob. You, too, can join this conversation. If you have questions or comments about yesterday's results in the Commonwealth of Virginia, call us at 800-433-8850. That's 800-433-8850. Or send us a tweet, @kojoshow. Gov. Bob McDonnell is already declaring victory for the Republican Party. And if Bryce Reeves does, in fact, hold on to his razor-thin lead, the GOP will have complete control over Virginia's government for just the second time since the Civil War.

NNAMDII'll start with you, Bob Gibson. What's your early read on what happened yesterday?

GIBSONWell, the Republicans gained six seats in the House of Delegates because they controlled the redistricting there, and the Democrats controlled the redistricting in the Virginia Senate. And they lost only two seats, one of them by only 86 votes. Apparently, that will be contested in the recount most likely. And recounts these days usually don't make up 86 votes, so there's a great chance that we will have a 20-20 Senate with a Republican lieutenant governor, Bill Bolling, who's running for governor, being the tiebreaker, with a lot of the spotlight on how he does.

NNAMDIYour early read, Michael Pope?

POPEWell, the Republicans certainly were interested in picking up more seats than they did last night with these -- certainly one, and potentially two seats. When I was speaking to Republicans last night about not doing as well as they had anticipated, many of them were complimentary of the Democrats for drawing the maps in a way that they were able to hold off some of these challenges to the incumbent Democrats and the Democratic-controlled seats. So the redistricting really did have a big influence in the election cycle this year.

NNAMDIIt would seem that there's too much at stake for the Democrats to give up Houck's seat without doing everything they can to fight against it. You mentioned a likely recount, Bob. What's the process for recounts in Virginia? How long could a challenge to the results play out here?

GIBSONWell, it's a court-ordered process that is automatic when the vote is this close, and the state will pay for the recount. And lawyers for both sides will contest every possible ballot that can be contested. But the recent history of recounts, again, is that 86 votes is a pretty tall order to change from one column to another. So, I think, over the next four weeks or so, we will see this court-ordered process unfold and very likely a dozen votes change, but less likely 86 votes.

NNAMDIMichael Pope, Republicans had targeted, as you pointed out, several incumbent Democratic senators in Northern Virginia. What did you make out of what happened in some of those races?

POPEWell, the Republicans were not successful in picking up the Northern Virginia seats, specifically the one that was targeted the most in the late days of the election, was the Barker-Baker race, the famous one-letter race. George Barker was able to fend off the Republican challenger in that race, Miller Baker, 53 to 47 percent. Interestingly enough, in the late days of that election, there were lots of television commercials.

POPEViewers, certainly where I was living, were seeing them on all the news channels, even some of the other channels. One of the commercials featured Gov. Bob McDonnell and Miller Baker together. Obviously, that was not successful. Other targeted races in Northern Virginia were the Barbara Favola-Caren Merrick seat. This was an open seat created by the retirement of Mary Margaret Whipple.

POPEBarbara Favola is a county board member. She was successful and is now headed to the Senate. The other one was incumbent Toddy Puller, a veteran lawmaker, in the Mount Vernon area. And she was running against former Republican Party chairman Jeff Frederick, a very controversial person in his own right, and Puller was able to pull it off and beat Frederick back.

NNAMDIYour take on those races, Bob Gibson?

GIBSONWell, I think the Republicans had counted on those races being closer. The race in which Mary Margaret Whipple's successor, Barbara Favola, won, she won 58 percent, 42 percent for Caren Merrick, a Republican. That was not as close a race as Republicans had counted on. Same with the Jeff Frederick loss to Toddy Puller, that was not a very close race. And they had counted on it being close.

GIBSONAnd 53-47 for Barker and Baker was a bigger margin than Republicans had expected. Northern Virginia went very heavily for Democrats in most areas where there were expected to be very, very close Senate races. And there were six pick-ups in the House of Delegates, but those were downstate pick-ups mostly for the Republicans.

NNAMDIIf you're looking to join this conversation, call us at 800-433-8850. If you have questions or comments of the results of elections in the Commonwealth of Virginia yesterday, you can also send us email to kojo@wamu.org or go to our website, kojoshow.org. Join the conversation there. Bob Gibson, what do we know about the candidates who won seats yesterday or were on the verge of winning? Is the new Republican caucus going to look or behave differently with new personnel on board?

GIBSONYes, I think it will somewhat. There's not a lot of changes coming on board. You know, Bill Stanley is an incumbent who had to move about 10 or 12 miles to run against and beat an incumbent Democratic senator, Roscoe Reynolds, in south side Virginia. That was pick-up number one before Bryce Reeves' 86 vote pick-up became pick-up number two and a tie Senate, giving the margin to the Republicans.

GIBSONBut the Republicans generally tend to be more conservative than they have been in past years. So I think we're going to see a Republican-controlled Senate by the narrowest of margins, 20-20 with a Republican lieutenant governor, that will be slightly at least more conservative than its predecessors and slightly more conservative than the preceding Republican-controlled state Senate.

NNAMDIMichael Pope, where do you think this leaves Gov. Bob McDonnell? On the one hand, he's got an opportunity to move his agenda, to move things through Richmond, particularly his conservative priorities. On the other, he's also got a nationwide profile to manage because people are still talking about him being vice presidential material in next year's election. So will he act more conservative, or is he likely to act more moderate?

POPEYou know, when you talk to Republicans about their taking the state Senate last night at their victory party in Fairfax County, many of them were eager to blame Obama for unhappiness among voters and say part of the reason for the victory is the success of Gov. McDonnell. So that's sort of a twofold argument. One is McDonnell is so successful that people are going Republican, and Obama is so unpopular that people are moving away from the Democrats. This will all play out in a very interesting way in the upcoming cycle for congressional redistricting because...

NNAMDIYou talked with former Sen. George Allen last night, didn't you?

POPEI did, yes. George Allen was at the Fairfax County Republican event, and that, in fact, was his take. Gov. Allen said that McDonnell is such a successful governor and Obama is so unlike, and his policies are so unlike, that in Gov. Allen's words, we need to get government out of our business. And so he was making the case for low taxes and less government.

NNAMDIBob Gibson, you've seen enough of these off-year elections in Virginia to have some perspective here. What should the results of yesterday's races say to the Democrats and, in particular, Barack Obama about the map he's looking at in Virginia in 2012?

GIBSONWell, Virginia is still a very closed state, Democrats and Republicans each very evenly matched if you take the state as a whole. Of course, Northern Virginia leans more D, and the downstate leans more R, especially in rural areas, most particularly in rural areas. But the overall message is that Virginia is very much in play on a statewide basis and that Obama and the Democrats, if they appeal to the independents in the middle, can be very competitive.

GIBSONThe Republicans are a little bit more conservative than they've been in past years. Gov. McDonnell is a very popular governor. He is carrying, I think, the highest approval rating of any governor in the nation right now, but he has dropped a lot of his former conservative social causes and adopted a more business-friendly approach. So it will be interesting to see whether Dick Black and new state senators are going to push a social agenda that they haven't -- been unable to get through the Virginia Senate, which was under Democratic control until this election.

NNAMDIMichael Pope, allow me to ask you to speculate a little bit. What happens in the presidential race -- getting back to that for a second -- and the Senate race if McDonnell is on the ballot as a vice presidential candidate?

POPEIf McDonnell is on the ballot, well, the topic of the presidential race was certainly on the minds of many Republicans last night when they were going through these election returns. In fact, Delegate Tim Hugo said to the gathered masses there that Virginia is Barack Obama's -- Virginia is the canary in Barack Obama's coalmine...

NNAMDIYeah. I heard that.

POPE...which I thought was clever to turn a phrase, and certainly, the Republicans are feeling like they've got momentum going into 2012. As to whether or not he would make a good vice presidential candidate, I will leave to that to others to speculate, I suppose.

NNAMDIHere is Joy in Arlington, Va. Joy, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

JOYGood morning. You may all be aware that for 30 years there's been a ban on mining uranium in Virginia. And in the last couple of years, there's been a renewed effort by a consortium of local investors with a Canadian mining and development company to get that ban lifted. And lots of cash has been spread around. How does yesterday's election results affect the chances of Virginia keeping that ban and keeping the protections on public health and safety?

NNAMDIBob Gibson?

GIBSONWell, uranium mining and the moratorium on it is likely to be one of the biggest issues in the General Assembly session that starts on January the 11th, and it's not a straight-party line issue by any means. There are Republicans for and against and Democrats for and against lifting the ban on uranium mining. So it will be a hard-fought issue. But it's really almost premature to talk about how it might go because there's a National Academy of Sciences report that's due out the beginning of December that the state has been waiting for to see what the facts are on how uranium mining might affect water and other precious resources in the state.

GIBSONSo it's very much up in the air what is going to happen with the uranium mining. It might need a year's delay to sort the process out. But I think the election, in response to Joy's question, makes it a little bit more likely, perhaps, that uranium mining moratorium will be lifted.

NNAMDIThank you very much for your call, Joy. You, too, can call us at 800-433-8850 if you have questions or comments on yesterday's election results in Virginia. We're talking with Michael Pope. He covers Virginia politics for WAMU 88.5 and for the Connection Newspapers. His latest book is called "Hidden History of Alexandria, D.C." It was published earlier this year. Bob Gibson is the executive director of the Thomas C. Sorensen Institute for political leadership at the University of Virginia, covered Virginia politics as a reporter and a columnist for the Charlottesville Daily Progress for more than 30 years.

NNAMDIMichael, coming through the statewide results, what were the other races that you were following closely yesterday? Or what were some of the results that really surprised you?

POPEWell, it was surprising that the Republicans did not do nearly as well as they had anticipated. Certainly, this Baker-Barker race, I think, lots of people were surprised by because in the late part of the election there were two races that the Democrats were very focused on. One of them was the Baker-Barker race. The other race, interestingly, was the Ed Houck-Bryce Reeves race that lots of Democrats were very concerned about that race.

POPEThe Roscoe Reynolds-Bill Stanley was also mentioned, but it was sort of down on the line. So I would imagine that that race in 20th Senate District between Roscoe Reynolds and Bill Stanley was probably the biggest surprise of the evening.

NNAMDIWhat about you, Bob, any particular surprises, any races that you were looking at in particular?

GIBSONWell, a lot of Republicans were very confident that they would pick up more than 20 seats in the Virginia Senate in the last month or so. And they've spent many millions of dollars to try to ensure that result. Now, they won 20 seats, apparently, if this 86-vote Reeves margin holds up over Houck. But I think there were a lot of surprises and that Republicans -- they expected races to go their way in some Northern Virginia districts that did not go their way.

GIBSONAnd in the far southwest, Phil Puckett, who once ran statewide for lieutenant governor in Virginia in a four-way Democratic Party primary, survived a very strong challenge from a Republican. That was a bit of a surprise to some people who had expected the southwest to continue its Republican trend for stronger Republican election results in Southwestern Virginia. So I don't think there were a lot of surprises.

GIBSONI think people did expect as many six House seats to switch to the Republicans because they control the redistricting there. The power of the redistricting knife was very much in evidence yesterday.

NNAMDII'll come back to that in a second, but first you, Michael Pope.

POPEYeah, I'd like to talk about potential future surprises. We're talking about this 86-vote margin here in the 17th district. The maximum here is that the candidate going into the recount almost always is successful in the end. However -- here's something to keep in mind -- in the redistricting process, many voters were sent to new precincts. And so, all over the commonwealth yesterday, you had voters showing up with what they thought was their polling place only to find out it was at a different location.

POPEMany of those voters cast provisional ballots that are being counted this morning, so 86 votes is a high threshold to go over. However, it's important to remember that once these provisional ballots are accounted, these numbers are going to change all over the state, and potentially even in the 17th Senate District.

NNAMDIAnd then there's this email we got from Beth. "Is anyone looking into the impact of those mysteriously incorrect voter cards sent out by Fairfax election officials? Apparently, thousands received cards with the wrong precinct. Were Democratic areas targeted? With the Republican claiming to have won by 86 votes, we need to know more about this so-called mistake," says Beth. "It's very Florida 2000," she says. Know anything about that, Bob Gibson?

GIBSONNo, I don't. But I know that redistricting makes a mess of the map in terms of voters not knowing what district they're living in because the community of interests is sort of thrown out the window in favor of partisanship when they draw the lines. So it is not surprising that many voters who weren't paying attention went to a polling place they had expected to vote and found that they were in a new district. And, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if the number of provisional ballots is higher as a result of that.

NNAMDIHaving said that, Bob, what sense do you have for how congressional redistricting is going to play out now that Republicans have this much control over the process?

GIBSONWell, I think, because the Senate is 20-20 with the Republican tiebreaker in Bill Bolling, the lieutenant governor, that they will largely exceed to the House plan, which has been drawn by all the Republicans in the congressional district. So the House Republican redistricting plan is very likely to be now one that will see the light of day. Had the Democrats retained full control of the Senate, it appeared more likely that we would end up in the court, so, perhaps, some judges drawing some new district lines. But I think the lines the congressmen drew for themselves are likely to stand.

NNAMDIOn to Frank in Winchester, Va. Frank, you are on the air. Go ahead, please.

FRANKHi, yeah. Thank you. I tuned a little late. So if you already discussed it, you know, I appreciate you repeating it. I'm a registered independent. I live in Western Prince William, and they just saw a Gainesville supervisor position changed over from an incumbent Democrat to a new Republican. Do you know anything about that? And what made this historically Democratic seat swing Republican?

NNAMDIAny idea about that, Bob Gibson?

GIBSONNo. I had not heard about that local race. I have investigated some local races in Northern Virginia, but not that one.

GIBSONOkay. Thank you.

NNAMDIOkay. I'm afraid we can't help you on that one, Frank. We got an email from John, who says, "I do not dislike Gov. McDonnell. However, I don't know exactly what he's done. I believe his popularity has more to do with the fact that he hasn't screwed up or overreached as some of his Republican counterparts have in Wisconsin and Ohio. Additionally, I think the results bode just as ill for Republicans in Virginia.

NNAMDI"They had the enthusiasm on their side. They had low voter turnout on their side. They had a sluggish economy on their side. They had President Obama's lower approval ratings on their side. And they probably had money on their side. Yet they only picked up two Senate seats and six House seats in conservative's areas downstate. With all of those advantages, it's not a good showing.

NNAMDI"What do they expect to happen in a full-fledged presidential election, with Democrats and President Obama fully engaged?" I know that we had Brian Moran here on the Politics Hour this past Friday, and we talked to him about grumblings from some Democrats this year, that he wasn't doing a good enough job recruiting candidates, that he wasn't putting himself out there enough. I guess Brian Moran, at this point, Michael Pope, will say, I didn't do that badly.

POPEI think lots of Democrats are patting themselves on the back for holding off what could have been a huge Republican advance. If you look at state Senate District 31, for example, the Favola-Merrick race, the map was drawn to give that seat a 10-point Republican advantage. Now, on it's face, that would seem like the Republican would have a huge advantage going into the election. However, the new district, even with that 10-point swing, still voted for Bob McDonnell only 44 percent. And so that actually speaks to the earlier, very heavy Democratic way the map was drawn.

POPEBut even in the new map, the Democratically-controlled redistricting process drew the maps in a way that really spread out these -- maximized, essentially, the Democratic votes in Northern Virginia in a way that lots of Democrats, I think, are now very happy with. Another thing on recruiting candidates, Sen. Dick Saslaw was sitting at the money -- at the center of all this money and power, moving it around Virginia, supporting certain candidates.

POPEEven in the primaries, there was a lot of unhappiness about that during the primary season because Saslaw was supporting candidates like Favola, who was engaged in a very tense primary campaign against an opponent. And now, people are looking back and saying that Dick Saslaw was -- did the right thing by supporting candidates like Favola, who was eventually successful.

NNAMDIAnd I'm afraid that's about all the time we have. Michael Pope, thank you for joining us.

POPEThank you.

NNAMDIMichael Pope covered Virginia politics for WAMU and for the Connection Newspapers. His latest book, "Hidden History of Alexandria, D.C.," was published earlier this year. Bob Gibson, thank you for joining us.

GIBSONThank you, Kojo.

NNAMDIBob is the executive director of the Thomas C. Sorenson Institute for Political Leadership at the University of Virginia. He covered Virginia politics as a reporter and a columnist for the Charlottesville Daily Progress for more than 30 years. We're going to take a short break. When we come back, the shadow world of the global arms trade. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.