Published November 6, 2024 at 9:55AM Arlington County Board member-elect JD Spain, Sr. celebrates his victory during a watch party in Crystal City (staff photo by James Jarvis) Arlington County Board member-elect JD Spain, Sr. celebrates his victory during a watch party in Crystal City (staff photo by James Jarvis) Democratic School Board member-elect Kathleen Clark celebrates her victory at a watch party in Crystal City (staff photo by James Jarvis) Arlington County Board member-elect JD Spain, Sr. celebrates his victory during a watch party in Crystal City (staff photo by James Jarvis) Forward party candidates James Rives, middle left, and Madison Granger (staff photo by Scott McCaffrey) Previous Image The local wins by wide margins contrast with a red shift nationally, which will propel former President Donald Trump back to the White House. In an election night interview, Spain said his County Board priorities will include improving housing affordability, public safety and public engagement across Arlington’s diverse demographics. “How we communicate, how we receive information, how we set out to establish good policy and get robust community engagement — it’s really going to be important,” he said. Tapia-Hadley and Clark underscored the need for unity and collaboration among the newly elected officials to address the diverse needs of Arlington’s families, students and teachers. “I’m just thrilled that now [Kathleen Clark] and I are going to be able to not just be active advocates and parents in APS, but also will be able to hopefully ensure that all families and all students are well represented on the school board,” Tapia-Hadley said in a victory speech. In the County Board race, Republican contender Juan Carlos Fierro earned 15% of the vote, Forward Party candidate Madison Granger earned 13% and independent Audrey Clement earned 12%, based on the most recent numbers from the Virginia Department of Elections. For School Board, Forward Party-endorsed James “Vell” Rives IV ended the night with 14% of the vote while independent Paul Weiss is at 17%. Though third-party and Republican candidates failed to claim a spot on either government body, the Arlington GOP touted modest gains in the county this year and celebrated the outcome of the presidential election. Candidates from the recently formed Forward Party, meanwhile, hope to grow support for their centrist platform in years to come. Spain’s stances Spain said his approach on the County Board will emphasize both policy and the county’s overall relationship with the community. “I want to look at how we’re going to do a better to job to really, as a county, to listen and take in the input from our county — working without County Board members and working with nonprofits and working with stakeholders to make sure we hear them,” he said. “Because a lot of times, they feel like they are not being heard.” Spain, who claimed the Democratic nomination in the fourth round of vote tabulation in June, hopes to push the county to cast a wider net in community engagement while personally having conversations with residents in a variety of settings. “As a County Board member, I have to be the one to challenge our county staff to go out and do a little bit more,” he said. “We may have to slow down a bit in how we engage in policy shaping, when the fact remains that there’s a wrong way to do the right thing.” In terms of policy, Spain identified goals of raising the salaries of Arlington police officers and firefighters, further investing in resources for mental illness and behavioral health challenges, and diversifying the county’s housing stock. “I know there’s a lot of work to be done,” he said in an acceptance speech at an Arlington Democrats watch party. “Some of you are concerned about if Arlington is going to be a place you can call home for the next 5, 10 years. I want to help you achieve your dreams. Some of you are concerned about safety in our community. I want to make sure every community feels safe.” Spain, who led the Arlington branch of the NAACP from 2018 to 2022 and helped to boost its local influence, called for building more housing in Arlington. Despite a judge recently overturning the Expanded Housing Option zoning policy, he continues to support the premise of Missing Middle and hopes to re-approve a version of the zoning changes, after addressing pertinent legal issues. “That doesn’t mean we go back and start at ground zero,” he said. “That means we pick up where we left off, and we go out and we speak with the community, and we have robust conversations again where we continue to move the needle, because housing is a right.” The former Marine — who said he will be the first veteran on the Board since the 1980s — noted unfolding economic challenges for Arlington County in the face of a high commercial vacancy rate. To combat this, he pledged to pursue stronger partnerships with entities like Arlington Economic Development, business improvement districts and the Virginia General Assembly. Spain said he wants to focus on Arlington’s immediate future as well as long-term goals. “We’ll have to … do everything in our power to ensure that Arlington continues to be an innovative, creative, inclusive and diverse community where everyone is welcome, everyone is respected,” he said. School Board priorities Both newly elected to the Arlington School Board have indicated they plan to focus on enhancing transparency, supporting underserved students, and addressing resource allocation to better meet the needs of Arlington Public Schools. Tapia-Hadley, a senior director of Government Affairs at TelevisaUnivision who has two children in the school system, identified teacher salary increases, mental health support, and addressing staffing shortages as other key priorities. She also called for increasing transparency in the APS budget. “I want to take a really closer look, because I’ve looked at budgets — both nonprofit and government … and this APS budget as it stands could be served by a lot more transparency,” she told ARLnow. Tapia-Hadley also raised concerns over proposed changes to the school boundary policy, which the School Board is mulling revisiting every two years rather than its current five years. She cautioned that more frequent reviews could lead to unintended disruptions. “If we are relooking at looking at boundaries every two years, I think that can cause a lot of potential distress, unintended distress, and challenges, potentially for families, for educators, for staff,” she said. Tapia-Hadley, who identifies as Latina, highlighted the need for representation on the board, especially given that Hispanic students make up 30% of the district’s population. She expressed her commitment to bridging language and cultural gaps, ensuring families have access to APS resources and support. “To me it’s really important that we not lose the representation of someone who is in that community and has that very personal lived experience and background, and is, more importantly, able to directly communicate with Latino parents that maybe don’t speak English and can speak in language and in culture,” she said. Additionally, she highlighted the need for more support for underserved groups, including students in special education and English language learners, pledging to make these students’ needs a priority if elected. Clark, meanwhile, says she plans to bring a focus on data-driven, long-term planning to APS. She aims to set consistent standards for school sizes and capacities, addressing current disparities in space and resources. Her vision includes strategic plans spanning 3-5, 10, and 15 years. Clark also advocates for a curriculum that keeps pace with advancements in science, technology, and sustainability. She wants to integrate practical skills, like financial literacy, coding, and environmental conservation, into students’ learning alongside traditional academics. “If you think about teaching to the SOLs, everything we do is just standards,” she told ARLnow. “Whatever’s on the test is what we work towards, but science, AI, all this stuff is moving way faster than that. We need to think really intentionally about ‘Yes, we need to have our kids do well in a test, but we need to get them some practical life skills too that keeps pace with technology.'” Another priority for Clark is enhancing support for special education. She plans to expand early intervention programs and improve differentiated instruction, while also working to smooth transitions from early childhood services to pre-K and elementary school. “I’m so grateful to be part of a community within the special education community and within APS, just to be able to serve our students and our student populations that are often overlooked in this process,” she said. Republican perspectives While Republican ballot-integrity officers were camped out at the Arlington elections offices in Courthouse Tuesday evening, rank-and-file members of the party gathered in Clarendon at the Leadership Institute, a training center for conservative activists, to watch the early national returns filter in. The same facility in Courthouse had been used throughout the day as a Republican “war room” providing get-out-the-vote support for the party at the local level. Even though Democrats ran the table in Arlington races, local GOP chair Matthew Hurtt said early Wednesday morning that, from his perspective, Democrats seemed to be taking the Arlington electorate for granted this cycle. Democrats had dispatched volunteers to support Kamala Harris’s efforts in the battleground states of North Carolina and Pennsylvania. That outreach took the place, Hurtt contended, of remaining focused on the political situation closer to home. And that has provided the GOP an opening, he has said throughout the campaign cycle. “Here in Arlington, the Dems’ local candidates ran barely-there campaigns, which relied on the strength of their sample ballot,” Hurtt said, pointing a media inquirer to a party posting on X (formerly Twitter) for a more robust explanation. Republican fund-raising improved under Hurtt’s leadership, enabling the party to send out a campaign mailer and conduct more robust get-out-the-vote efforts than in previous years. As a result, while the party’s candidates for president, Congress and County Board trailed significantly in Arlington results, there was modest improvement from past performance. Trump was running several percentage points ahead of the 17% of the vote he achieved in 2016 and 2020 in the county, based on incomplete vote totals filtering in through Wednesday morning. Republican County Board nominee Juan Carlos Fierro had received about 15% of the vote that had been reported by Wednesday morning, placing him second behind Spain but ahead of Forward Party candidate Madison Granger and perennial independent Audrey Clement. At the same time, Hurtt did not downplay the reality that it is not a level playing field in local politics, with the GOP lagging behind Democrats in vote totals and facing chronic candidate-recruitment challenges. “We will continue to work to build a brand, build our infrastructure, and build trust with voters,” he said. A new political party reflects At Ireland’s Four Courts, several blocks from county government headquarters in Courthouse, members of the two-year-old Forward Party gathered to see how the party’s two endorsed candidates did. “I learned a lot. I threw myself into it,” said Madison Granger, a first-time candidate who ran under the centrist party’s banner for County Board. “I had a lot of great mentors.” She was joined at the event by James “Vell” Rives IV, making his second run for School Board as an independent — this time affiliated with the Forward Party, which was created two years ago by former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang. Rives said many of those he met on the campaign trail were intrigued by the new political party, which aims to fill a gap and win support from those disaffected by the Republican-versus-Democratic split. Financial health of the school system and teacher retention were two issues that were important to many voters, Rives told ARLnow. Based on preliminary results, which could change as additional ballots are added to the tally in coming days, both Granger and Rives were battling for third place in their four-candidate County Board and School Board races, respectively. The Forward Party supported 125 candidates across the nation in 2024, said Mike Cantwell, a civic leader from Arlington’s Yorktown neighborhood and one-time County Board candidate who served as a campaign adviser to Granger and Rives. “I truly believe that we’ll be growing exponentially,” Cantwell said. Both Republicans and Forward Party leaders were hoping that, in the County Board race, Spain, could be held to less than 50% of the vote in the first-in-Virginia ranked-choice general election race. But the Democrat emerging with a clear majority will eliminate the need for the ranked-choice machinery to be cranked up. Next steps for Arlington Democrats Arlington Democrats are slated to assemble for their monthly meeting tonight. Given national results, it likely will be a repeat of 2016, when the Democratic rank-and-file gathered in something of a shell-shocked condition after Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton and scored major congressional gains. Democrats, the county’s dominant political party since the early 1980s, used that experience to redouble outreach efforts. Those efforts were fueled by an influx of Democratic voters who arrived in droves to support the effort as something of a coping mechanism after the 2016 national results. Efforts in Arlington paid dividends in the 2017 governor’s race, won by Democrat Ralph Northam. A year later, those efforts played a key role in ousting independent County Board member John Vihstadt. The party was able to find voters who typically were disinterested in local and state races, activating them to cast ballots every year. Vihstadt had been first elected in 2014, when the power of single-family neighborhoods in off-year Arlington elections often dominated the county’s political landscape. But 2018, when the seat came up for re-election, the dynamics had shifted and those living in Arlington’s urban apartment and condominium corridors were playing a larger role in determining political outcomes. About the Authors