BOTH ALEXANDRIA AND ARLINGTON held Democratic Party primaries for local mayoral & city council and county board positions last month. In Alexandria, two term Mayor Justin Wilson retired rather than seek reelection and two prominent city council members ran to replace him. The other four incumbent city council members ran for reelection, leaving two seats open. In Arlington, County Board Chair Libby Garvey also retired, making the only primary there open. And on the edges of NoVA, VA-07 and VA-10 had both Congressional reps vacate, creating rare open primaries in Democrat leaning districts. While voter turnout was slightly above average, Virginia locals should expect more of the same.
Readers can visit the Virginia Elections website for full results.
Starting with the results from Alexandria, the mayor's race was won decisively by current city council member Alyia Gaskins over current Vice Mayor Amy Jackson and real estate developer Steven Peterson. Gaskins won with just under 60% of the vote, and was seen outgoing Mayor Justin Wilson's heir apparent with similar but not identical politics shared between them. Gaskins win could be interpreted as a preference for the status quo among voters, given Jackson’s opposition to some of the policies of Mayor Wilson. Although Gaskins could be seen as a progressive by comparison to her competitors, the local left shouldn’t expect any large shift in local organizing terrain or city policies.
The results for the city council were more chaotic and unpredictable with 11 candidates running for the 6 seats. The winners from 1st to 6th were: John Chapman, Sarah Bagley, Kirk McPike, Abdel Elnoubi, Canek Aguirre, and Jacinta Greene. This group consists of the other 4 incumbent city council members and the only two school board members that ran, those being Elnoubi and Greene. These results match up with the highest fundraisers in the race except for Greene, who raised the least with less than $14k. The highest fundraiser, Jesse O'Connell, raised over $100k only to come in 8th place and came up 952 votes fewer than Greene. Greene narrowly pinched out a seat, beating 7th place candidate Charlotte Scherer with 319 votes. Kevin Harris and Jimmy Lewis both ran previously but actually did worse this time around, coming in 9th and 10th places respectively. In last place is Jonathan Huskey. He was ill prepared as a candidate, a likely result of his late entry into the race. Of note, Elnoubi and Greene both publicly supported a ceasefire resolution introduction into the city council. Canek was the only incumbent to both privately and publicly support a ceasefire. Chapman never supported a ceasefire privately but came out in favor of one once he was forced to make a public statement. Although voters shouldn't expect much change in position, this is the most diverse the city council Alexandria has ever elected, assuming these candidates win their general election races (likely).
With 19,165 ballots cast, voter turnout was registered at about 16.50%. That might seem low to those unfamiliar with VA politics, but all primaries have really low turnout, so turnout over 10% can be considered high for a race like this. Given these margins, there is a real possibility of future success for a socialist candidate to run and win in 2027 (Alexandria elections are every 3 years for some reason). These results show that the win number is not particularly high, and big cash hauls are not a necessity to win. The challenge will always remain running against incumbents, but only time will tell how many run for reelection next time.
Over in Arlington, just one of the five county board seats was up and the incumbent, board chair, Libby Garvey, chose not to run for re-election. Arlington has permanently adopted Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) in their local elections, allowing voters to rank up to 3 candidates. (Why only 3? I have no idea. Ideally there should be no limit to ranking candidates when using RCV).
Looking at the first round results, former 2023 candidate JD Spain came in 1st place with 32.11% of the votes. His 2023 campaign was rather lackluster and did poorly as a result, but he appeared to learn his lesson this time around. In 2nd place was another candidate from 2023, Natalie Roy. On the first round, she received 28.48% of the vote. Roy did out fundraise Spain by about $15k, but both raised over six figures. In 3rd place is Tenley Peterson with 23.54% of the vote. 4th and 5th place were James DeVita, a former State Senate candidate, and Julie Farnam respectively with 9.60% and 6.27% of the vote.
Going through the RCV tabulations, 38% of Farnam's voters went to Roy and the rest were split between the other 3 candidates. DeVita was eliminated next and 52% of his voters went to Roy, and the rest split to Peterson and Spain. At this point Roy had pulled ahead of Spain after this round of RCV. However, once Peterson was eliminated 62% of her voters went to Spain, leading to his final round victory at 55% of the vote, with Roy at 45%. Spain was successful in consolidating the progressive vote while Roy failed to cohere moderate and conservative votes to bolster his 1st round deficit. With just a single race on the primary ballot, turnout was 12.65% of registered voters. That's just above average and I suspect having the two prior candidates had more people familiar with them than the other candidates and may have helped boost turnout.
Can a socialist run and win this office? Regardless of year, this will always be an uphill fight. Cash was very much a deciding factor in the race and areas like northern Arlington will always remain opposed to us. Northern Arlington’s mean ideology and voting patterns are similar to DC’s upper-income strongholds west of the park, but even more hostile to a left-wing message: Voters here are even more conservative in primaries than the Democrats in McLean, home of Langley and McMansions. Organized labor was less of a force here compared to Alexandria, but any serious push will require their involvement to win. While Metro DC DSA members are divided on the benefits of RCV, Arlington has it now and it would be a good opportunity to see how that affects running a DSA endorsed candidate.
Finally, a quick overview of the primaries in open congressional districts on the outer parts of NoVA, VA-07 and VA-10.
In VA-07, Rep. Spanberger vacated the seat to prepare a run for governor next year. The district is anchored in Woodbridge and Fredericksburg along with their nearby suburbs and exurbs as well as a few mostly white rural counties. Eugene Vindman, a resist lib darling, easily won with just under 50% of the vote. His closest opponents all split the vote amongst themselves in their home county in Prince William. Vindman received huge sums of outside spending from VoteVets, which was rumored to also be funneling and spending money for AIPAC, which never directly spent in this primary (or the other open seat, for that matter).
In VA-10, Rep. Wexton retired after being diagnosed with Progressive Supra-nuclear Palsy, type-p (PSP-P), which was originally thought to be Parkinson's. Wexton ultimately endorsed State Senator Suhas Subramanyam, who won with just over 30% of the vote in a close race: He beat State Rep. Dan Helmer who came in 2nd with just under 27% of the vote. Helmer was accused of sexual harassment during his first run for the congressional district in 2018, and many of his opponents called for him to drop out. Helmer was similarly supported by VoteVets and he touted his Washington Post endorsement on the campaign trail. It's hard to say what caused Wexton to endorse Subramanyam, or at least single it down to one reason, but it is likely that she ultimately wanted the Loudoun County based district to have a representative from Loudoun, where she is also from, rather than any of the neighboring counties.
In 3rd place, Atif Qarni got about 10.5% of the vote, which was a bit of surprise. He wasn't far ahead of the 4th place and 5th place candidates, Eileen Filler-Corn and State Senator Jennifer Boysko, with 9.3% and 9.1% of the vote respectively. Eileen was once thought to be a front runner and was the first to announce her candidacy with the support of Democratic Majority for Israel. Throughout the race, she was criticized for living outside the district, her removal from party leadership in the state house in 2021, and her lobbying activities following her speakership. (Boysko also lives outside the district, but before redistricting represented some of the district in the State Senate.) Subramanyam’s win and good chances in the general election means that next year his state senate district in Loudoun will have a special election. It is highly unlikely that he'll resign early from the State Senate as Democrats only have a one seat majority.
In both races, Northern Virginia residents should expect more of the same. Vindman is an explicit Zionist and so could be expected to tack slightly more conservative, but Virginians could expect a bit more of a progressive character from Subramanyam. Regardless both candidates read as a normal Democrats, and so socialists and progressive organizers in the district shouldn’t expect any wide change in organizing terrain at the federal level.
