Not to put any additional pressure on the Arlington County Republican Committee leadership team – that’s not the media’s job – but if the party can’t in coming weeks find any candidates for local/legislative races this year, it will be the first time in at least a half-century the GOP has come up so short.
A GazetteLeader analysis of elections held the years that the most Arlington elected offices are on the ballot (a once-every-eight-years phenomenon) shows that Republicans had general-election candidates on the ballot going back as far at least as 1975.
Try to delve deeper into the history books and the record gets murky, because until the 1970s – and in some cases more recently – candidates would run as independents under umbrella groups like Arlingtonians for a Better County (center-left-leaning) and Arlington Independent Movement (centrist-right) rather than having formally been nominated by political parties.
Often that was to avoid being trapped by Hatch Act rules prohibiting federal-government workers from engaging in partisan political activity, even at the local level.
In each of those once-per-eight-years elections – 1975, 1983, 1991, 1999, 2007, 2015 and now 2023 – all five constitutional offices were on the ballot: commissioner of revenue, clerk of the Circuit Court, sheriff, commonwealth’s attorney and treasurer. Four of the five are four-year jobs, but in Virginia, clerk of court is an eight-year position.
Those years also all featured two County Board seats up for grabs, as well as local seats in the state Senate and House of Delegates.
For 2023, that adds up to 13 positions on the ballot, although that number has varied through the years depending on how many seats Arlington was entitled to in the legislature at the time.
In 2015, for instance, Arlington had been allotted an additional Senate seat and one more delegate compared to today, so there were 15 offices on the ballot. (No voter got to cast that many votes, however, as Arlington is split up into multiple General Assembly districts. Local races, however, are all conducted at-large.)
Republicans fielded candidates in some of those races in each of the past six relevant elections:
2015: The party had candidates for County Board and 31st state Senate seat.
2007: The GOP ran contenders for 45th House of Delegates and clerk of court.
1999: Republicans had contenders for the 31st and 32nd state Senate seats, 47th and 48th House of Delegates seats and County Board.
1991: The GOP had contenders for the 30th and 32nd Senate districts, 48th and 49th House of Delegates districts, commissioner of revenue, sheriff, treasurer and County Board.
1983: Republicans had candidates for the 32nd Senate district, 47th House district, treasurer, sheriff and County Board, and the party’s contender for commonwealth’s attorney (Henry Hudson, formally running as an independent) won election over Democrat Brendan Feeley.
1975: Republicans had candidates for what was then the multi-member 22nd House of Delegates district plus commissioner of revenue, commonwealth’s attorney, treasurer and County Board. Dorothy Grotos and Walter Frankland Jr., running as independents with Republican backing, won the two County Board seats.
As for 2023? Republicans are still looking for contenders; the filing deadline for all candidates to get on the November ballot is June 20.
