Election 2023

By Charles Houston

No more candidate mailers clogging my mailbox. No more questionable ads on social media. No more candidate photos popping up when I use Google.

Rejoice

Yes, be happy those irritants are gone, but rejoicing at the election results is up to your opinion about the results. The most notable thing is that our Board of Supervisors will be basically unchanged, with the exception that Laura Tekrony replaces the retiring Tony Buffington. While they represent different political parties, they give similar, strong support to rural conservation.

Before I get into the election results, I’ll follow-up to something I wrote in an earlier Op-Ed.

Loudoun’s Future, Inc.

I had mentioned rumors that a western Loudoun PAC was being organized. (A Political Action Committee, as most of you know, gathers donations and then makes targeted contributions to political candidates.) The rumor was correct and the new PAC is called Loudoun’s Future. My friend John Lovegrove is its Chairman and in a recent phone call, he laid out the PAC’s objectives, “We want to protect Loudoun from sprawl and congestion caused by too much development, advocate for agriculture and our rural roads, protect the mountains and countryside.” he said.  

I accused him of reading from the PAC’s brochure. “Yep,” said John. “I confess. There’s one thing in the brochure that need emphasizing. The main one is data centers, and we’ll be involved in mitigating the issues they bring. For example, while we like data center tax revenue, they also irritate a lot of citizens for a lot of reasons. We want to help protect the quality of life in the entire county.”

Lovegrove went on, “One thing that distinguishes Loudoun’s Future is that we don’t just mail a check to a candidate and pat ourselves on the back. We are in it for the long haul, building good relationships with individual Supervisors and being a resource for them.”

I asked him what that meant.

“The Board is constantly dealing with controversial issues. We will do more than just gripe. We’ll propose solutions. We’ll advocate as needed but we are something of a think tank. Maybe a think tank that also advocates.”

Lovegrove saw my puzzled expression and elaborated. “We have a lot of firepower. Our members have had significant private sector experience for both large organizations and start-ups. Some of us have big-time consulting experience. Others are skilled at law, real estate, finance, conservation easements, the cyber world, community conservation and so on.”

I nodded.

He added one more thing, “It’s easy to complain about something, but we want to produce solutions, and spell out how to achieve them.”

The Board of Supervisors Races

You cannot ignore the power of incumbency. Money helps but does not guarantee success, and the quality of a candidate matters a great deal. Statisticians use a tool – regression analysis – to figure out what inputs are most closely tied to certain outputs. Here, they would try to determine whether money, incumbency or candidate quality matters most. I’d posit that this year, all those factors were about equal.    

Now to some individual races.

Chair: Phyllis Randall (D) had the closest race of any incumbent. She was probably hurt by the contretemps over her travels, Gary Katz (R) ran a surprising race, and Sam Kroiz (I) was a spoiler. Contrary to speculation, Randall won’t run for the House of Representatives, so she’ll be chair for another four years. That’s good.

Catoctin: Caleb Kershner (R) won handily over John Ellis (I.) Ellis had the backing of conservation voters, but Kershner is an excellent politician, if not a true-blue protector of our rural life. 

Little River: Long-time aide to Supervisors, Laura Tekrony (D,) won this new seat by seven points. I called Rich Ramus, Loudoun’s Future Executive Vice President, for his reaction. “We gave her a lot of money at the beginning to help jump-start her campaign.” Laura is well-liked, and that money certainly helped: A seven-point victory was only a 1,200-vote margin, so every vote counted.

Ashburn: Mike Turner (D) beat newcomer Tumay Harding (R) by 2,200 votes, a good margin. Turner is perhaps the hardest-working Supervisor and is full of ideas we like. 

Dulles: Incumbent Matt Letourneau (R) easily defeated Puja Khanna (D.) Khanna was very aggressive in asking for contributions and ended up with about the same war chest as Letourneau. Letourneau is a good candidate and more importantly, a very good Supervisor.

Algonkian: Incumbent Juli Briskman (D) gained fame and first won her seat due to a photograph of her flipping off President Trump’s motorcade. Challenger Debbie Rose (R) was a good candidate this year but was outspent by Briskman, who retained the seat. Conservation interests seemed to like Rose and gave pretty heavily to her, but that’s become a very Democratic district and the outcome was a disappointment to them.

Other districts: Kristen Umstattd (D, Leesburg) and Koran Saines (D, Sterling) were unopposed. Sylvia Glass (D, Broad Run) easily defeated her Republican opponent.

Other Races Worth Mentioning

While most of us focused on the Supervisors’ election, there was an interesting sea change on the School Board: All the winners are newcomers. The old, bad School Board is just a nightmarish memory. Let’s hope the new Board keeps Loudoun off the evening news.

Contrary to the big Democrat majority on the new School Board, all the constitutional officers are Republican. While there were some challengers, the incumbents’ success means that voters are satisfied with the jobs Gary Clemens, Bob Wertz, Sheriff Chapman et al are doing. The only incumbent to lose was the George Soros-backed Buta Biberaj, who spent over a million dollars on her race. Rejoice at that.

Charles Houston lives in Paeonian Springs and insists on voting only on Election Day, and in-person. He suggests visiting the Loudouns-Future.org website.