Alexandria Mayor-elect Alyia Gaskins says voters made the right decision in electing Democrats to City Council on Election Day, and that the city is committed to promoting its progressive values under the shadow of a Republican Trump administration in the White House.
“I can’t predict what the next four years will look like under such unpredictable leadership,” Gaskins told ALXnow. “What I can say is that I’m confident Alexandria elected the right people to lead us through.”
Gaskins said that the city’s “overwhelmingly progressive” Council will deliver for residents.
“Last night, our city overwhelmingly voted for progressive counsel that is committed to delivering on progressive values that commitment has not changed and is now more important than ever,” she said.
Another Trump presidency will change how Alexandria works on social issues, housing challenges and more, recently reelected Democratic City Council Member Kirk McPike told ALXnow.
By day, McPike is chief of staff to California Democratic Congressman Mark Takano, and was in the U.S. Capitol during the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.
McPike spoke to ALXnow before polls closed, and said that Republican President-elect Donald Trump defeating Democratic Vice President will change how Alexandria works as a city. He also said that it will impact his full-time job.
“It’ll change everything about what I do,” McPike said. “It’ll change how we work as a city. It’ll change a lot about my job in Congress, having an adversarial administration.”
Trump won nationally, but lost Virginia and Alexandria. In the city, Trump received just 15,122 in-person votes, while Harris got 58,433 in-person votes. Absentee and provisional ballots in the city are still being processed and a final tally was not available by the time ALXnow published this story.
McPike said that the city will keep pushing on social issues, housing challenges and climate change.
“Here in Alexandria, we will continue to push for the progress on not just the social issues that sort of define the difference between two parties, but on our housing challenges, to continue our work to address our carbon emissions and the impacts of climate change on our residents,” McPike said.
Last month, Council unanimously approved McPike’s resolution declaring Alexandria as a safe haven for the LGBTQ+ community. Trump and his running mate, Vice President-elect JD Vance, were highly critical of LGBTQ+ in the final days of their successful campaign.
In the meantime, Alexandria City Public Schools has ignored years of recommended policies restricting transgender services from the administration of Virginia’s Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin.
McPike said that even though the city won’t have an ally in the White House, there are still allies in the Virginia General Assembly.
“I think we’re going to get the governorship back either way next year,” McPike said. “But it’ll be tougher. It’ll be harder. We won’t have that support from national efforts to sort of amplify the things that we’re doing on housing, but we’ll play the hand that we’re dealt as well as we possibly can for the people who need us here.”
Tenants and Workers United (TWU) Executive Director Evelin Urrutia said her organization will need to redouble its efforts to enshrine local laws protecting immigrant communities.
Regardless of the outcome of the presidential election, we knew we would have to continue fighting for the needs of our families. Now, we must redouble our efforts to ensure that local elected officials and government agencies do everything in their power to keep families together and protect our immigrant communities. TWU will remain a core pillar of information and support for our local immigrant communities, regardless of immigration status, and we remain in the fight to advance social justice and racial equity, just like we have been doing for over 38 years.
Axios speculates that Alexandria could become a hotbed for Trump administration staff during his administration.
“The next generation of Trump staff will gravitate toward Alexandria and the surrounding Virginia ‘burbs,” wrote Axios writer Anna Spiegel.
During Trump’s last administration, protestors demonstrated weekly outside the home of Chad Wolf, then-Acting Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Vice President-elect JD Vance is also an Alexandria resident, and lives in Del Ray.
Gaskins and City Council will be sworn in on Jan. 2 at the Rachel M. Schlesinger Concert Hall and Arts Center at Northern Virginia Community College’s Alexandria campus.
