From Ballot Access News:
On April 8, Arlington County, Virginia, held a special election to fill a vacant seat on the County Board. Independent candidate John Vihstadt won with an absolute majority, even though there were four candidates on the ballot. This is the first time since 1999 that any Democratic nominee ran and failed to win election to this office. Arlington County has a population of 207,627 and is directly across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C.
The county has five board members. All seats are elected at-large. Although this is a partisan office, Virginia does not print party labels on general election ballots for county partisan office. Here is a link to the unofficial election returns. Here is a story about the outcome. Although the story says Vihstadt is a Republican, Virginia does not have registration by party. Because Vihstadt qualified for the ballot under the independent candidate procedures, and was not nominated by the Republican Party, that statement in the story is somewhat misleading. Thanks to Brandon Payne for the link.
From the article cited:
Vihstadt captured 57 percent of the vote to Democrat Alan Howze’s 41 percent. Independent Green candidate Janet Murphy and independent Stephen Holbrook each captured about 1 percent of the vote.
“We won the race by a higher margin than my most aggressive expectations,” Vihstadt told supporters at his victory party tonight. “The most exciting and gratifying measure of our victory was that it was north to south and east to west. There really is one Arlington, not two Arlingtons.”
Given that the race hinged largely on the hot-button issues of the planned Columbia Pike streetcar and Long Bridge Park aquatics center, the result is likely to be viewed by many as a voter rebuke of the County Board’s major capital spending projects.
“People want cost-effective, results-oriented solutions on the local level,” Vihstadt said.
Vihstadt touted his “true rainbow coalition” of supporters. Those supporters included all three candidates for County Board in 2012: current Democratic County Board member and fellow streetcar critic Libby Garvey, Republican ARLnow.com columnist Mark Kelly, and frequent Green Party candidate Audrey Clement. Also supporting Vihstadt was Commonwealth’s Attorney Theo Stamos, a close friend of Vihstadt and his wife, Mary.
That’s a bummer that Libertarians were happy about this guy getting elected and even worked towards that end.
Yeah, at the end of the day it shouldn’t be that big of a deal to me. I was just extremely disappointed when I heard about it on election day, and I still am.
People do what they think is best. Your job is to persuade them that it would be better to keep a Libertarian in the race. We have almost 50 candidates in Colorado this year and I’m sure at least one of them will end up dropping out. There’s nothing to be done about it but keep trying.
And in the Arlington situation, leverage the support the winner got from libertarians into some kind of policy making. If you’re going to cut deals, make sure you get your end out of it.
I’ve been busy with work lately, and not paying as much attention to local LP stuff as I usually do. I didn’t know until election day that our candidate had dropped out. Frankly, I’m f-ing pissed off about it.
I’m not sure if this is a sign that I need to stay more on top of things locally, so as to reduce the chance of things like this happening, or that I should just stop wasting my time with this whole LP thing.
This was a great opportunity for the LP to run a candidate, as we’re strong in Arlington, VA. We thought we had one. Nominated him at convention and everything. Then he dropped out. To further the disappointment, a few other Libertarians actually worked to get this clown elected, then celebrated their “success” on election day.
Another opportunity missed for the LP.
This guy IS a Republican, in that he has been active in the NSGOP. He ran as an independent in order to have a chance of winning in a super hardcore Democrat district. This story is actually a bad thing for third parties, or at least the LP. There was a Libertarian in the race who dropped out and endorsed this guy. Unfortunatey, he’s not even remotely libertarian, as a quick view of his website will tell you.