Rep. Don Beyer’s three challengers in the 8th District want less — or no — federal involvement in public education.
“The government should stay out of it. I don’t think it’s their business,” said Shelly Arnoldi, the Libertarian candidate, in a Sept. 28 forum presented by a coalition of local League of Women Voters organizations.
Arnoldi was joined by Republican Tony Sabio and independent Tim Sharman. Beyer (D-8), who is seeking his seventh two-year term, skipped the event.
Sharman said he largely agreed with Arnoldi in keeping the federal government out of local education policy.
“The role of the federal government in education has a pretty disastrous history,” he said.
Sabio did not rule out a federal role in public education but said he wanted policy decisions controlled at the local and state levels.
“If you put anything in [the hands of] the federal government, it’s going to create a huge bureaucracy,” Sabio said.
Education was just one of the topics in the quick-paced, hour-long forum.
All three candidates said they supported term limits for members of Congress. Sabio and Arnoldi offered no specific limitations; Sharman said he backs a limit of three two-year terms for representatives and two six-year terms for senators.
Suggesting that both political parties have failed, Sharman said voters should enforce their own form of term limits by ousting incumbents.
“I would love to see an entire overhaul,” he said. “Let’s throw out all of the bums — it’s all broken.”
Sharman did acknowledge Beyer’s long service, and said he didn’t want to attack the incumbent directly because “he isn’t here to defend himself.”
In fact, the trio of challengers didn’t throw too many punches in the direction of the missing incumbent, although both Sabio and Arnoldi said Beyer has become too entrenched and distanced from his constituents.
“He’s not accessible,” Arnoldi said, while Sabio said that if he was elected, he would continue to hand out his direct phone number as he is doing on the campaign trail.
Candidates were quizzed on their views on the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act and the broader SAVE America Act sought by President Donald Trump (R) but currently bottlenecked in the U.S. Senate.
Sabio contended provisions of the acts were supported by large swaths of the voting public. “It’s a 90/10 issue,” he said, saying he supports changes to federal law on voting “in some form.”
Sabio said Trump’s opponents were putting up “more roadblocks to not go with something common sense” on voting.
His suggestion: Create a single federal identification to be carried by the public.
“That will stop every issue that’s out there” related to voting fraud, Sabio predicted.
Arnoldi and Sharman were less enamored of getting the federal government more deeply involved in making and enforcing voting rules.
“I am not a supporter,” Sharman said, voicing concern that some of the rules changes would place undue burdens on legitimate voters.
“It’s a difficult one,” Sharman said, acknowledging it was not a cut-and-dried issue to him.
Arnoldi suggested the SAVE Act and SAVE America Act legislation was too broad in scope.
“There were things built in that made it complicated,” she said.
Despite those qualms, Arnoldi said the nation needed a back-to-basics approach to voting.
“We should have same-day, one-day voting like we used to have,” she said. “No mail-in, no dropbox, no 45-day early voting … the only people that should be allowed to mail in their ballots are the military who are serving overseas.”
Asked later in the forum whether they believed former President Joe Biden (D) had won the 2020 presidential race, candidates said this:
- Sharman: “Yes”
- Sabio: “Yes, he did”
- Arnoldi: “I think there were shenanigans — I don’t think it was transparent and I can’t really answer”
Virginia’s 8th Congressional District includes all of the cities of Alexandria and Falls Church and Arlington County, plus the easternmost portion of Fairfax County. The district is a Democratic stronghold; Beyer won the seat in 2014 upon the retirement of Rep. Jim Moran (D) and has held it without serious challenge since. In August, he won about two-thirds of the vote in a five-way Democratic primary.
Despite a missing candidate, forum moderator Katherine Ingmanson said the hour-long debate would prove helpful to voters in making up their minds.
“This is what American democracy looks like at its best,” said Ingmanson, a director of the League of Women Voters of the Fairfax Area.
Early voting is underway through Oct. 31 for the Nov. 3 election. Aside from Beyer’s seat, the ballot includes the seat of Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and three state constitutional amendments.
