Independent City Council Candidate Mason Butler announced he will be formally kicking off his campaign on Monday, Sept. 9.
Butler is one of a handful of underdog candidates, including independent Roy Byrd and Republican Celianna Gunderson, going up against the Democratic slate chosen in a primary in June.
While Alexandria and Arlington are widely known as Democratic strongholds in Northern Virginia, the real question is which locality’s Democratic leaders are better at kickball.
All will be revealed at 6 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 7, when the Alexandria Democratic Committee faces the Arlington Democrats at the Mount Vernon Recreation Center baseball field (2701 Commonwealth Avenue).
With an eye on becoming Virginia’s next lieutenant governor, Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney says he’ll be spending a lot of time in and around Alexandria before next year’s election day.
With just five months left in office, the 43-year-old two-term mayor of Virginia’s capital city says that his statewide strategy to “dominate the landscape” with his presence has worked in the past, and will work again.
With nine candidates running for nine spots, there’s no contest in the upcoming Alexandria School Board elections. Still, residents have a chance to meet the incumbents and newcomers in a series of meet-and-greets.
The first of these meet-and-greets with the public will be held by District A candidates on Saturday, Aug. 10 with School Board Chair Michelle Rief, Board Member Tim Beaty and Ryan Reyna.
Fresh from her primary win on June 18, Alexandria’s presumptive mayor says she is starting to form a transition team and will continue campaigning until the Nov. 5 election to get the Democratic slate of six candidates elected to Alexandria’s City Council.
City Council Member Alyia Gaskins took a few days off after defeating Vice Mayor Amy Jackson and retired real estate developer Steven Peterson on June 18. She and her husband and two kids went back home to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for four days.
There’s 138 days until the Nov. 5 election, and there are just enough candidates running for an uncontested School Board election.
There are two vacancies in this election cycle after School Board Members Abdel Elnoubi and Jacinta Greene won their Democratic nominations for City Council on June 18. Additionally, two Board Members are not running for reelection, former Board Chair Meagan Alderton in District C, and Tammy Ignacio in District B.
The Alexandria City Council incumbents have held onto their nominations in the Democratic primary.
While incumbents John Chapman, Sarah Bagley, Kirk McPike and Canek Aguirre have secured their spots as the Democratic candidates, along with newcomer School Board Member Abdel Elnoubi and School Board Member Jacinta Greene.
Alexandria City Council Member Alyia Gaskins defeated her two Democrat rivals on Tuesday, effectively becoming mayor-elect as she faces no opposition in November.
The win makes Gaskins the first Black woman to be mayor of the city.
Sarah Bagley says that Alexandria residents have invested time and energy into making her an effective member of the Alexandria City Council, and she says she’s running for reelection to honor that investment.
A lot has changed in the city since Bagley was first elected and then virtually sworn in in January 2022. Alexandria was on the tail end of the COVID-19 pandemic and has since gone through a crime surge, the introduction and the failure of the Potomac Yard arena deal, a number of key changes in departmental leadership (namely the police and fire chiefs) as well as the controversial upending of the city’s residential zoning policies.
Without the pandemic keeping James “Jimmy” Lewis and his campaign team from unleashing their ground game, he says that years of door-knocking experience will significantly improve his second Democratic primary bid for Alexandria’s City Council.
Lewis faces 10 opponents, including four incumbent Council Members, for the six Council seats in the June 18 Democrat primary. He placed eighth in the 2021 primary with 6,606 votes, and that was 730 votes behind Kevin Harris. Like Lewis, Harris is trying again this cycle to get in the top six spots to secure his nomination for the November election.
With the June 18 primary for Alexandria mayor and City Council around the corner, candidates have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars for what is anticipated to be a low-turnout election.
The only seats in contention for the Democrat primaries are Mayor and City Council, and there is also a single candidate running for Council in a Republican primary.
