Election 2019: Democrats' push to win Virginia legislature could mean Fairfax County goes all blue
A broad Democratic push to win control of Virginia’s General Assembly is affecting local elections in Fairfax County, with left-leaning groups trying to flip the last two GOP-held seats on the Board of Supervisors.
Virginia’s largest jurisdiction has not been governed by just one party in at least four decades, according to election records dating to the mid-1960s. An all-blue board would punctuate the county’s decades-long shift from a swing jurisdiction to one that is strongly Democratic and, activists say, open the door for Fairfax to become Virginia’s leading voice on liberal issues.
With President Trump deeply unpopular in Fairfax, and with union and gun-control activists blanketing parts of the region to support Democrats in key state legislative races, political analysts say it is getting harder for any Republicans to win in the county of 1.1 million residents.
“Donald Trump may not have much to do with county issues, but these days you go in with a partisan tide or you go out with a partisan tide,” said Stephen J. Farnsworth, a political science professor at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg. “If you happen to be [a Democrat] running for a Board of Supervisors seat in an area where there is a strong Democratic campaign for the House of Delegates or the Senate, that can only help you.”
For decades, Fairfax’s county board was mostly evenly split, with Republicans holding a short-lived 5-to-4 majority in the mid-1980s and a brief 6-to-4 majority in the mid-1990s. The GOP members ensured a moderate approach to spending on schools and other services as the county underwent explosive growth.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/democrats-push-to-win-virginia-legislature-could-mean-fairfax-county-goes-all-blue/2019/09/23/d783fb1e-da56-11e9-a688-303693fb4b0b_story.html
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