What Republicans Can Learn From Last Night's Results in Alexandria

Wednesday, May 06, 2009

As mentioned earlier, last night a Republican and a Republican-endorsed independent won two of six seats on the Alexandria, Va., City Council, the first ones elected to the city's governing board since 2000.

The city-council race was actually the fourth recent contest in which Northern Virginia Republicans overperformed, in a region that went heavily for Barack Obama last fall.

On January 13, there was a special state-house election in Alexandria because the incumbent, Brian Moran, was resigning his seat to run full-time for governor. The Democrat, Charnielle Herring, beat Republican Joe Murray by 16 votes out of 2600. A recount delayed Herring's seating for two weeks.

Then, about two weeks later, there was a special election for chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, because the incumbent had been elected to Congress. Again, the Republican came close — within 1,206 votes out of 102,000 cast.

Six weeks later, there was yet another special election, this one to replace the Braddock District Supervisor, who had resigned her post once she won the Fairfax County special election. In this one, Republican John Cook won by 89 votes out of about 12,400 cast, capturing a seat had been Democratic for more than 25 years.

I spoke with Michael Ginsberg, chairman of the Eighth Congressional District Republican Committee, which includes Arlington, Alexandria, Falls Church, and Fairfax, about what lessons can be learned from last night's results and the recent trend.

"We ran people with good, local roots, and they've been very active in this community for a long time," Ginsberg said. "You don't come in third (out of 10 candidates, as Republican Frank Fannon did) unless you've got strong support from independents, and working the polls yesterday, I saw Democrats who said they were going to vote for Fannon."

Beyond strong candidates, the local GOP has been sending absentee ballots to every "hard R" (Republican) on their list. Fannon had 625 absentee votes, 45 more than any other candidate.

There are also some interesting signals about the upcoming gubernatorial primary and general election. Ginsberg worked a polling place yesterday, and said he saw a supporter of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe handing out literature — but not one for the candidate with the local roots, Moran. "I don't know to what extent the Moran people were working the polls for this election, but this result, coupled with the race for his state House seat, should be reason for some concern on his part."

Ginsberg said there are other signs of a locally energized GOP grassroots, including the fact that every polling place in Alexandria had at least one GOP volunteer handing out literature, every shift, throughout a throughly miserable rainy day. Ginsberg said he expects the same on future races, including statewide elections later this year.

"People are fired up this morning — last night, they saw victory is possible," he concluded.

05/06 10:13 AM Share