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Politics & Government

More Election Reflections

The November elections will shake things up in the coming year.

 

The Nov. 8 election results will lead to significant changes on the Loudoun County and School Board, each of which will return only a few incumbents. Both boards will be dominated by candidates who ran as Republicans, or with Republican Party endorsements. The Republicans also made significant gains in the Virginia General Assembly.

Here are a few more reflections about these election results and what we can expect to see as consequences of the voters’ decisions.

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Social Issues

During the campaign, Republican candidates at all levels of government – state, county, and even the supposedly non-partisan School Board – developed a common message and showed remarkable discipline in sticking to it.

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For the most part, they emphasized jobs, transportation solutions and fiscal discipline as prime areas of focus. Based on their campaign themes, we can expect more scrutiny of the School Board budget – by both the Board of Supervisors and School Board – and more skepticism about technology expenditures for schools. The Supervisors should be expected to continue to support the .

On the other hand, I don’t expect to see the Board of Supervisors initiate new land use regulations designed to protect the environment, although the county will have to conform to new state and federal mandates.

Republican candidates managed to avoid controversy by remaining mostly quiet about divisive social issues that might have cost them votes from moderates and independents.

Thus, I found it telling (but not surprising) that Senator-elect Dick Black, quoted in Leesburg Today at a victory party on election night, cited transportation, the “right to life” and Second Amendment rights as key areas on which he intends to focus.

When he served in the House of Delegates, Black made a name for himself pursuing a conservative agenda on such hot-button social issues as abortion, pornography and gay rights. These are obviously issues he feels passionate about, and I expect that he will continue to focus on these and other social issues.

It will be interesting to watch the General Assembly as a whole in the coming year, to see how much the Republicans collectively address highly charged social issues. With a Republican Governor, control of the House of Delegates, and the tie-breaking vote in the Senate, the temptation will be overwhelming for social conservatives to overreach and make changes that alienate moderate Virginians.

Illegal Signs

Loudoun County might as well throw out its zoning regulations pertaining to temporary political signs. The Democratic Party can hardly be blamed if it joins many Republicans in ignoring the sign regulations in the future, based on the Republican victories in every race in the county with the exception of two Virginia Senate seats.

, I cited three main reasons for the sign regulations – safety, aesthetics and to create a level playing field for candidates.

The first two reasons are still compelling. The need for safety along the highways needs no further justification. And the long stretches of highways in Loudoun County that were relatively sign-free were much more attractive than those in Fairfax County that were littered with unsightly signs.

But when only one party follows the rules, for the most part, then loses nearly every race, it is obvious that the playing field has become severely tilted. I don’t know how we can expect candidates to follow the rules in the future when all three candidates for Sheriff, the incumbent Commonwealth’s Attorney, and even the Chairman of the Board of Supervisors, who voted in favor of the current sign regulations, openly ignored the rules.

Do I believe so many Republican candidates won because they posted illegal signs? Not really. But David Ramadan, who won his race for Delegate by only 50 votes out of more than 10,000 cast, was one of the worst offenders. In that race, the extra name recognition he gained might have made the difference between winning and losing. And the candidates who ignored the rules must have thought there were good reasons for doing so, or they wouldn’t have spent so much money making the signs, and so much time and energy mounting them.

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