Schapiro: Abortion is key to pivotal Henrico Senate election

Jeff Schapiro The district of Sen. Siobhan Dunnavant, center, R-Henrico, shown

Jeff Schapiro

The district of Sen. Siobhan Dunnavant, center, R-Henrico, shown with Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, is a must-win for Democrats and Republicans in the November fight for control of the 40-member Senate, where Democrats hold a two-seat majority.

Del. Schuyler VanValkenburg, D-Henrico, sees abortion rights, which he supports, as part of a larger picture.

Week In Review

Nancy Russell is a reminder of what western Henrico County — the prosperous, leafy quilt of subdivisions, shopping centers and office parks abutting urban Richmond — is becoming: a national suburb.

Now retired from the financial services industry, Russell moved from Connecticut to Henrico 40 years ago and has since resettled in still-heavily rural Hanover County, just north of Richmond. Leaning right and largely white, Hanover is more accommodating of Russell's Republican politics.

Russell, nonetheless, is an example of what's becoming the rule in western Henrico: out-of-staters, drawn by high-paying jobs with global companies, lower taxes and highly rated public schools, who bring their diverse families and different attitudes to a once-reliably conservative pocket of metropolitan Richmond, pushing its preferences from red to purple to blue.

That shift, magnified by recent redistricting, threatens Siobhan Dunnavant's aspirations for a third four-year term in the Virginia Senate, to which she was first elected in 2015.

Back then, the district included an insurance policy for Republicans: a slice of southwestern Hanover. It was peeled away, giving a distinct Democratic cast to a new district whose profile — 61% white, 14% Black, 14% Asian, 7% Hispanic and 7% multi-racial — is not too far off from that of the state.

The reconfigured seat favored for governor in 2021 Democrat Terry McAuliffe over the winner, Republican Glenn Youngkin, 53% to 47%. In 2022's congressional election, Democrat Herb Jones — though clobbered by Republican incumbent Rob Wittman — won the Henrico portion of the Tidewater-heavy 1st District, 53% to 45%.

Dunnavant's district is a must-win for Democrats and Republicans in the November fight for control of the 40-member Senate, where Democrats hold a two-seat majority.

At least two other seats are essential to both parties: an open, toss-up district anchored in Loudoun County outside Washington, D.C., and one in the resort city of Virginia Beach that leans Democratic and was snatched from the GOP in a snap election in January in which abortion rights figured prominently.

Listening to Russell at a recent conference of Republican activists, operatives and candidates, abortion rights is one issue in Dunnavant's race with Schuyler VanValkenburg, a three-term delegate, that could mobilize against the incumbent two important audiences: the Democratic base and disaffected centrist Republicans, many of them women.

Russell initially didn't use the word "abortion" in asking a panel of three GOP legislators how to navigate the issue — amped by the U.S. Supreme Court's reversal in 2022 of Roe v. Wade and the current legal fight over a widely used abortion pill — in order to "save" Dunnavant, an OB-GYN who opposes abortion and says she has never performed one or recommended a patient terminate a pregnancy.

"There are a lot of women who are single-issue voters but would be Republicans if not for you-know-what," said Russell, the president of the Hanover County Republican Women's Club. She describes herself as "pro-life" but favors a Democrat-defeated proposal pushed by Dunnavant this year in behalf of Youngkin: unrestricted access to abortion up to 15 weeks with exceptions for rape, incest, to save the life of the woman, or fetal deformity. (Dunnavant also proposed a measure to ban most abortions after 22 to 24 weeks that was defeated in a Senate committee.)

Those lawmakers — a female delegate, Amanda Batten of James City County, and two male senators, David Suetterlein and Mark Obenshain of Roanoke County and Rockingham County, respectively — said Republicans should go on offense on abortion, depicting Democrats as uncompromising radicals. Though Obenshain conceded Democrats had effectively weaponized the issue in 2022, holding the U.S. Senate and losing — just barely — the House of Representatives.

"Democrats did a very good job casting Republicans on abortion after Dobbs," said Obenshain, referring to the Mississippi case in which the Supreme Court scuttled its 1973 decision that the Constitution guaranteed a woman's right to have an abortion.

Dunnavant, who's been walking the new district, said she hasn't "heard much" from voters about abortion rights — an issue on which, fresh statewide polling indicates, Republicans are out of sync with the majority of Virginians. A survey in late March by The Washington Post shows that 41% say abortion laws should be less strict, while 34% — including nearly four in 10 Republicans — believe they should remain the same.

Under Virginia law, abortion is unrestricted in the first two trimesters. Abortion is permitted in the third trimester if the woman's health is imperiled.

As a doctor — and a member of a vast political family that holds sway in Henrico and Virginia Beach, producing legislators, a Cabinet secretary, a sheriff and a prosecutor — Dunnavant would seem an emblem of suburban sensibilities. As Russell put it, perhaps somewhat hyperbolically, "She's delivered half the children in western Henrico."

But as Henrico's steady blue-ing indicates — and, beginning in 2016, it accelerated in response to Donald Trump — this Richmond suburb apparently senses a Democratic future.

Dunnavant is publicly confident she can blunt it, despite her hostility to abortion rights; resistance to measures that could strip firearms, if only temporarily, from Virginians deemed dangerous by the courts; and her preference for sharply limiting — from 45 days to two weeks — early voting that Democrats enthusiastically use to get a jump on Republicans.

And as the lines separating local, state and national politics blur, VanValkenburg — an upstate New York ex-pat and government teacher in the district's newest high school who's been a Henrico educator for 18 years — sees abortion rights, which he supports, as part of a larger picture.

VanValkenburg, who moved to take on Dunnavant after his own redistricting reform scheme lumped him in the same House of Delegates district with a senior Democratic incumbent who has since been elected to the Senate, suggests abortion is of a piece; that it should be viewed with Republican attacks on voting rights, LGBTQ rights, the right to health care and the party's well-to-the-right support of corporate tax cuts.

All of which means a distinctly local, nationalized campaign is unfolding in Richmond's backyard.

2/21/1958: Sam D. Ukrop, 33-year-old owner of Ukrop's Supermarket on Mechanicsville Pike, has opened a 3,000-square-foot department store adjacent to the market.

Ukrop's store on Hull Street circa 1963.

Ukrop's store on Buford Road circa 1963. James E. Ukrop, son of the founders, convinces his father to allow him to open a second store, on Midlothian Turnpike near Buford Road in Chesterfield County.

May 11, 1965: New Shopping Center This new shopping center at Walmsley boulevard and State Rt. 10 is scheduled to open tomorrow. The 25,000-sauare-foot center was developed by Joe Ukrop, who will operate a supermarket in the center. Other tenants include Jewel Laundry and Dry Cleaners and a barber shop, operated by Smith & Nelson. Robert M. Dunville & Brothers, Inc., was the general contractor. The supermarket will be Ukrop's third in the Richmond area.

James E. Ukrop, 34. published caption Feb. 6, 1972: James Ukrop Serves as General Manager of Local Concern Company Will Open Another Richmond Area Store in the Summer (new store is in the Dumbarton Square Shopping Center at Hilliard and Staples Mill roads -- the company's first location on the north side of the James River.)

11/21/1981: Final touches are being made at Ukrop's Supermarkets 12th Richmond area store in the Gayton Crossing Shopping Center expansion in western Henrico County. The $1.2 million, 32,000-square-foot store will open Dec. 8, company officials say. The architect was David Dunville and the contractor was Robert M. Dunville & Bros. Inc. the store will include a delicatessen and a Dot's Pastry Shoppe. About 120 people will be employed.

Ukrop's Super Market

1984: A display of stock is set up in the new Ukrop's store on West Cary Street by (from left): Store Manager Jim Blackwell, Assistant Store Manager Bill Calson and Grocery manager Billy Piece.

5/22/1985: Another Ukrop's opens The 16th Ukrop's Supermarket in the Richmond metropolitan area opened yesterday at the Stony Point Shopping Center in South Richmond. The $3.3 million store is the first retailer to open in the shopping center, while other spaces still are under construction. The Ukrop's store , which will employ about 120 people on a fulltime and part-time basis, is managed by Russell Wood, who transferred from the company's Chippenham North Shopping Center store.

1985: Carol Beth Spivey (left), cameraman Stephen Berry and Patty Papazian.

1986: Drawing was to show the Ukrop's Super market store which was to be the anchor of the Laburnum Park shopping center.

Vickie Griffith discusses "Valued Customer Card" program with a Ukrop's customer.

11/6/1987: Ukrop's lands in East End The 19th and largest store in the Ukrop's Super Markets Inc. chain, and the company's first store in the eastern Richmond area, is getting ready to open Tuesday at Laburnum Park Shopping Center on Laburnum near Interstate 64 in Henrico County. The 43,500-square-foot grocery is the anchor tenant in the 130,000-square-foot center being developed and managed by S.L. Nusbaum Realty Co. Other tenants are a Rite Aid drugstore, Radio Shack, Merribee crafts and needlework, a video store, Contempo fashions, Sit 'N' Sleep retail store, an Italian restaurant and a Curles Neck ice cream store.

James E. "Jim" Ukrop, left, and brother Robert S. "Bobby" Ukrop at Ukrop's 50th anniversary charity program. 6/29/1987

1987: James Ukrop watches brother Robert make point.

12-18-1987: Dick Hollander (l), Bobby Ukrop announce The Diamond's name at December meeting.

From left, Joseph (Joe) Ukrop, Jacquelin B. Ukrop (Joe's wife) and son Robert S. Ukrop published 6/18/1987, no origin date available

Feb. 23, 1988: Shopping mobility David Baber, a shopper at the Patterson Avenue store of Ukrop's Super Markets Inc., uses a motorized cart designed for handicapped customers. Ukrop's, with 19 sotres, purchased 25 of the carts from an Arkansas company last year and is the first grocery chain in Virginia to use the electric-powered vehicles.

1988: IN THE BAG — Coy Bryson, representing Ukrop's, bags groceries in the state grocery bagger's competition. Five finalists, Bryson among them, competed yesterday at the Marriott.

James E. Ukrop with founders of Ben & Jerry ice cream company. From left: Jerry Greenfield, James E. "Jim" Ukrop, Ben Cohen

Rich Hedrick, Jim Ukrop and Bob Ukrop of H.U. Development Associates look over the plans for CentreCourt at the site of their office park on Route 10, Chesterfield County. Published caption July 16, 1989

March 20, 1990: PRECAUTION -- Ukrop's posted an apology to customers where its soup kettles usually sit. Throughout the area, soup bars like this one were closed yesterday because tainted syringes were found in soup in three Chesterfield stores last week.

1990: Jerome Thomas loads groceries at a service conscious Ukrop's supermarket. Ukrop's Super Markets Inc., with more than 4,100 employees, moved onto the "Top 50" list for the fist time.

1990: Roy Harris greets a customer at Ukrops, where he works as a courtesy clerk.

July 22, 1990: MUSIC MAKERS -- Since they began two years ago under the direction of Harry Jones, the Ukrop's Singers has grown from 10 to 48 members. The group is made up of Ukrop employees and others who perform a variety of musical selections at nursing homes, Richmond Braves baseball games, the State Fair of Virginia and other local events throughout the year.

3/7/1991: NEWEST STORE -- Ukrop's, which commands the area's largest market share at 30.2 percent, opened its 22nd store last week in the Hanover Square Shopping Center in Mechanicsville. The company has plans for opening other new stores soon.

3/7/1991: "MAKING A STATEMENT" -- With some larger displays and warehouse-type shelving, the new Ukrop's 58,000-square-foot store in Mechanicsville's Hanover Square Shopping Center tries a new tactic inthe company's battle against competitors who push low prices.

8/25, 1991: LEADING THE PACK -- After customers told Ukrop's Super Markets Inc. that they wanted more ready-to-eat, prepared food, company officials added cafe menus and selections.

Ukrop's "Valued Customer" card

1992: Westpark Ukrop's Cafe

Gregory Mehfoud pushes a cart in the Tot Spot in the new Ukrop's in Short Pump. At right, Ukrop's employee Karen Huddleston reads to other children. At left, Marissa Halpert enters the Tot Spot after her mother dropped her off.

Claus Larsen takes chicken out of the fryer at the Stony Point Ukrop's store.

View from the Ukrop's Cafe' eating area at the new Ukrop's in Short Pump.

The Italian Pasta and Panini bar in the new Ukrop's at Short Pump. A girl in a grocery cart (right) smells a carnation. Greeters at the new store handed out carnations to shoppers entering the new store on its opening day.

The natural foods section in the new Ukrop's at Short Pump.

Shoppers in checkout line at the Westpark Ukrop's.

New Ukrop's grand opening drew a crowd in Fredericksburg.

Farmers Market Bank opened November 4 at the Ukrop's in Chesterfield. 11/3/97

Ukrop's supermarket under construction at 11361 Midlothian Turnpike.

New Ukrop's opens in Fredericksburg.

Ukrop's employee Dennis Forbes hands pizza of to a customer at the Village Shopping Center location

Ukrop's employee John Maderia loads goods into a customer's vehicle at the Village Shopping Center location.

Ukrop's employee Lowell Stansberry takes groceries out for a customer at the Village Shopping Center location.

Joe Bugas, 3, gets a close look at a fresh Virginia oyster held by Shirley Estes, an employee of the Virginia Marine Products Board at Ukrop's on Pump Road. The board is sponsoring 'Meet a Waterman' demonstrations in Ukrop's stores. At left rear is Joe's mom, Tracy Bugas, of Rockville.

ShaBrenda Bennett shops the reduced-price meat cooler at the Ashland Ukrop's store just after they opened at 8am Wednesday, May 6, 1998 in order to make ends meet for the family budget.

Ukrop's Carytown store that will be expanding into the area to the right of the sign. Photo taken Wednesday, July 21, 1999.

Shoppers at the Ukrop's store on W. Cary St. flooded the checkout counter Tuesday, Mar. 9, 1999, after snow began falling in the Richmond area.

Ukrop's Fresh Express store at 10th and Main Streets will be closing. Photo taken Monday, February 22, 1999.

Shoppers at the Ukrop's store across from Short Pump Elementary School queue up at the checkout lines Wednesday morning, Sept. 15, 1999 in anticipation of the arrival of Hurricane Floyd.

Ukrop's cashier Jennifer Hadley (lower right) assists a customer at the store's Carytown location Saturday, as the weatherman sent shoppers scurrying after calling for snow.

Ukrop's cashier Anna Cloninger places a milk jug into a bag for a customer at the store's Carytown location, Saturday. The store was doing a brisk business, partly because of weather forecasts calling for snow.

While the rest of the store was doing brisk business, ice scrapers hang largely ignored by shoppers Saturday at Carytown Ukrop's.

Ukrop's at 3522 W. Cary St. was temporarily closed Saturday afternoon 09/30/2000.

James E. Ukrop is the chairman of Ukrop's/First Market Bank in Richmond.

Customer card for Ukrop's.

Gareth Jones, 16, left, and Mary Norris, 17, bag groceries at Ukrop's in Chesterfield County.

Ukrop's store at Harbour Point Shopping Center on Hull St. Rd. is testing a new ordering system for its deli departments. Customers can avoid line by placing their order at these new kiosks.

Exterior of the Ukrop's store on Midlothian Tpke. near Chesterfield Towne Center.

Birchard Holden is 81-years old and working at Ukrop's 20 hours a week.

Ukrop's store on Midlothian is soon to be remodeled. Chesterfield Crossing Shopping Center

Ukrop's employee Jim Jones walks Barbara Anderson to her car before loading her groceries into it Wednesday morning at the Ukrop's Super Market on Patterson Ave and Gaskins Rd., which is set to close its doors January 28 after 30 years of operation. Jones has been working at the Patterson Ukrop's for five and a half years, treating customers and colleagues to his smiles and good humor.

Franklin Pond, 90, wheels Ann Marie Reutti's groceries at the Ukrop's at Virginia Center Commons. Pond is among the million-plus workers in America who are over 75 years old.

Courtesy clerks and cashiers, representing all 29 Ukrop's stores, compete in the Ukrop's Best Bagger Finals at the John Rolfe Ridgefield store. The winner, Nathan Hutzell, received a cash prize and the chance to represent Ukrop's in the state contest in Bristol, VA . The state winner will advance to the national competition taking place Feburary 2008 in Las Vegas.

Ukrop's CEO and former UR basketball player Bobby Ukrop has been selected as one of the most influential Richmonders in sports. Here, Ukrop makes a basket at the Robbins Center at University of Richmond.

Ukrop's store at Grace and Harrison streets Tues. April 15,2008.

Richmond building inspector John Whealton checks the structure of the Ukrop's store in Carytown after a car drove into the natural foods section.

Wade Charmichael, senior category manager of produce for Ukrop's, smells a cantaloupe at the Carytown Ukrop's. He relies more on looking at the melon as a way to judge its goodness, but says that smellers should smell fruit, if they think it helps determine the fruit's goodness.

The Ukrops is now open at White Oak Village, in Eastern Henrico County

Ukrops deli lead Valerie Williamson makes a 3' sub at the Ukrops store in the Short Pump Crossing.

Ukrops food service manager Pat Collawn assembles a shrimp tray at the Ukrops store in the Short Pump Crossing.

Ukrop's store at Grace and Harrison streets Tues. April 15,2008.

Robert S. "Bobby" Ukrop (left) takes Rick Herring on a tour of his stores on Friday, December 18, 2009. Herring is the president of Ahold's Giant-Carlisle division, which is buying the Ukrop's chain. Here, the two visit the Stratford Hills location.

James King (left), of Ukrop's, helps Deedee Redford, of Varina, load her groceries at the Ukrop's at the Shops at White Oak Village, in Richmond, on Thursday, December 17, 2009. "I don't shop anywhere else," said Redford, who said she's been shopping at Ukrop's for about 20 years.

Austin Wilson of Richmond picked up some Christmas cookies at the Carytown Ukrop's.

Ukrop's in Mechanicsville

Welcome sign at the new Ukrop Park in Chesterfield County.

Denise Konrad chats on a cell phone while waiting for her deli order at the Carytown Ukrop's.

Robert S. "Bobby" Ukrop took Rick Herring on a tour of his stores on Friday, December 18, 2009. Herring is the president of Ahold's Giant-Carlisle division, which is buying the Ukrop's chain. During the tour, many greeted, thanked, congratulated and hugged Ukrop. Here, Jane Lawrence hugs him at the Stony Point store.

Robert S. "Bobby" Ukrop takes Rick Herring (not seen) on a tour of his stores on Friday, December 18, 2009. Herring is the president of Ahold's Giant-Carlisle division, which is buying the Ukrop's chain. Here, Ukrop takes a phone call at the Stony Point location while retrieving an out-of-place loaf of bread.

Robert S. "Bobby" Ukrop (center) took Rick Herring on a tour of his stores on Friday, December 18, 2009. Herring is the president of Ahold's Giant-Carlisle division, which is buying the Ukrop's chain. Here, Ukrop takes a moment to help a customer at the Stony Point store by getting him a basket.

"Grandma really likes that they bring stuff out to your car," said Katy Palmer (center), of Highland Springs, about how she likes the customer service of Ukrop's. Here, Bryan Smith, of Ukrop's, helps Palmer unload her groceries as her grandmother Macie Palmer stands nearby outside the Ukrop's at the Shops at White Oak Village, in Richmond, on Thursday, December 17, 2009.