Out in the Vienna area, a special election for House of Delegates is percolating, now that Del. Mark Keam (D) has decided to join the Biden administration and resigned.
As we reported this week, Democrats already have held their nominating election and have a candidate in place for the early-January special election.
Republicans, however, are still getting it together, so to speak. As of yet, no GOP contenders have announced plans to run.
The district, which used to swing between parties when such swingers ruled Fairfax County (so to speak…), has like most of the rest of Fairfax sashayed more into the Democratic fold. Keam never had much trouble holding onto the seats.
But special elections can produce weird results, especially special elections held in wintertime. So it would behoove Republicans to find a credible candidate to at least make a run.
If the Fairfax GOP can’t do that, what chance does it have to scare up candidates for the vast number of local races on the November 2023 ballot? Board of Supervisors, School Board, constitutional offices and all state Senate and House of Delegates seats will be up for grabs.
I’ll be fine with being proved wrong, as I so often am, but it seems that if Republicans can’t get it together for this special election, they’re about to cede 2023 to Fairfax Democrats.
C’mon, GOP. Are you “Republi-cans” or are you “Republi-can’ts”? We should know in a few weeks’ time.
‘THANK YOU FOR YOUR COMMENTS. NOW POUND SAND’: Well, that’s not exactly how Arlington officials responded, back this month in 1941, to a request from planning officials in the District of Columbia to not allow high-rise development along the Virginia side of the Potomac shoreline.
But according to our coverage lo those 81 autumns ago, the county government wasn’t planning on letting those objections from across the river stop them from capitalizing on the potential for development and the moolah it would bring.
Of course, in 1941 in the local area, the concept of “high-rise” development was about 6 stories. But by the time the 1960s started rolling around, it would be double and triple that, and keep going upward – at least until the buildings started posing a potential threat to aircraft at National Airport, at which point limits were put in place.
In any case, the Arlington government’s desire to start seeing high-rise developments in areas like Rosslyn back in 1941 was going to have to wait. Just seven weeks after this article appeared, some uninvited Japanese visitors paid a visit to the island of Oahu, and peacetime activities like office-building development were put on hold for a couple of years.
– Scott McCaffrey