“I Voted - Arlington” stickers by Rob Pegoraro licensed under Creative Commons.

While the 2022 election season is just behind us, jurisdictions in Maryland and Virginia are gearing up for local 2023 elections. This year, Greater Greater Washington will be endorsing candidates in a handful of jurisdictions in these states.

For years, voters have turned to Greater Greater Washington’s endorsements to better understand the ins and outs of candidates’ positions on housing, transportation, and land use. We issue in-depth questionnaires to candidates designed to dig beneath sound bites and get into policy details. We publish those questionnaires on our website so that you can read them. And then we make public endorsements, with thoughtful write-ups that explain our decision-making.

We take this work seriously, and we wanted to share information at the outset of our 2023 endorsements process about how it will unfold this year.

The Maryland and Virginia races in which we will conduct endorsements

A lot of jurisdictions in our region are facing elections in 2023 that are critically important for shaping how we grow and develop in years to come. We identified several key races in which we will make endorsements this year. They share a few characteristics: they’re in places where we already have a sizable base of readers or supporters; involve positions that have authority over land use and transportation policy-making; and are places where there may be competitive elections or open seats.

In 2023, GGWash will conduct endorsement processes in the following primary races:

  • Arlington County Board (Primary Election - June 20)
  • Fairfax County Board of Supervisors (Primary Election - June 20)

GGWash will also conduct an endorsement process for Montgomery County Planning Board appointments, with appointments anticipated in February and June. The County Council appoints individuals to these positions; they are not chosen via an election. There are five open seats, however, and a long tradition of organizations and advocates endorsing applicants and advocating to the County Council to appoint them.

In 2023, GGWash may also conduct endorsement processes in the following general election races, with a final determination to be made following the primaries:

  • Rockville City Council and Mayor (General Election - November 7)
  • Arlington County Board (General Election November 7)
  • Fairfax County Board of Supervisors (General Election - November 7)

What about [insert place here]?

Since municipal elections tend to occur in off-years, not all towns, cities, and counties in Maryland or Virginia will hold elections in 2023. Among those that will, we prioritized jurisdictions in which elected officials have control over land use.

Additionally, endorsements are a labor- and resource-intensive process and there are restrictions around what financial resources we can use to support this work. Specifically, almost all grant funders prohibit the use of grants for political activity, which means we lean on individual donations to support this work. Therefore, we carefully identified a limited number of races in which we felt we could make an impact within those constraints. With your help, we can launch additional endorsements in Maryland and Virginia in future election cycles.

The endorsements process

In consultation with GGWash board members and myself, GGWash policy staff design questionnaires for each race. While we know how tightly intertwined land use, housing, and transportation are with other topics, like economic justice, climate policy, and policing, many trusted groups with expertise in those areas are designing surveys of their own. So, we focus our questionnaire on our areas of expertise: land use, housing, and transportation.

We send that questionnaire to all registered candidates with a submission deadline. Following receipt, we publish the received responses on our website as a resource to voters. Then, our endorsement committee reviews the responses to our questionnaire as well as other publicly available information like candidate materials and answers in public forums to make endorsement decisions. We then write up our decisions and post them on our website and social media channels in advance of each election.

Completion of the GGWash endorsement questionnaire is a prerequisite to be considered for GGWash’s endorsement. Beyond that, some races may be uncontested, or have no candidates that support our values, or we may not agree on the best candidate. In those cases, we reserve the right to not endorse anyone, but we will publish an explanation for why.

In 2023, a subset of staff and board at GGWash comprise the elections committee:

  • Chelsea Allinger, executive director
  • Alex Baca, DC policy director
  • Jayson Harpster, board member
  • Dan Reed, regional policy director
  • Alberto Rivera, board member
  • Caitlin Rogger, deputy executive director

The above committee members are the sole individuals responsible for determining GGWash’s endorsements in 2023; no other staff or board members play a role in determining endorsements. In keeping with professional standards of nonprofit journalism, our editorial staff will not participate in endorsements.

Ethics and conflicts of interest

GGWash maintains a political activity policy that allows people to work for, volunteer for, or otherwise serve GGWash while engaging in politics in various ways, but also implements numerous guardrails to protect the integrity of not just our endorsements process but also our work overall, including our non-political work. That policy is publicly visible here.

As detailed in the policy, we prohibit the sharing of non-public campaign information with individuals involved in making endorsements. Elections committee members with a campaign affiliation – whether on the basis of volunteering or financial contribution – are required to recuse themselves from the endorsement decision-making process for that race.

Mission-driven work

GGWash engages in political endorsements as a service to voters and in service of our mission. It’s an intensive, important process that we take extremely seriously. We’ve developed this process and the policies that guide it through extensive work, discussion, and consultation with outside and legal expertise.

With these parameters in place, we look forward to delivering a slate of endorsements for candidates who will support more housing, more affordable housing, frequent and reliable transportation, and fair land use, and do the work within their power to bring those things to bear for Maryland and Virginia voters. Any questions about the process guiding our 2023 endorsements should be directed to me at callinger[at]ggwash.org.

This process relies on staff to administer it, contributors to fund it, and readers to make it worthwhile: thank you for believing in the value of this work.

Note: This post was last updated on February 2, 2023, to incorporate a revision to the elections committee.

Chelsea Allinger (she/her) is GGWash's executive director. Before coming to GGWash in 2021, she spent nearly 15 years working in different capacities on land policy, urban policy, and community development. Outside of GGWash, Chelsea is a doctoral candidate in public policy and public administration at George Washington University. She served as an elected Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood of Washington, DC, from 2019-2023.