Our endorsements in the Democratic primary for Arlington County Board

Starting May 5, Arlington voters will head to the polls to select two Democratic nominees for the County Board–but in this deeply blue county, the Democratic primary essentially decides who will win the general election this November.

This is the county’s first Ranked Choice Voting election, meaning voters can select three candidates, ranked by preference. GGWash endorses Julius “JD” Spain Sr., Maureen Coffey, and Jonathan Dromgoole, in that order.

First, the questionnaires

Our endorsements are primarily based on the questionnaire that we send to candidates. Completing that questionnaire is a prerequisite in order to be considered for our endorsement.

We published all six candidates’ questionnaire responses (a blank version is visible here). It asks applicants 24 questions about housing, land use, transportation, and community input. Some of the questions are about issues in Arlington County while others are more broad, designed to reveal how applicants think and how they would approach the many tradeoffs and wicked problems that arise in urban planning.

The stakes are high

Since Arlington County doesn’t have an elected mayor or executive, the County Board wields immense power. To wit: within days of former board member John Vihstadt’s election in 2014, the Columbia Pike streetcar, which he had campaigned against, was canceled. That’s one reason we’ve endorsed in Arlington several times over the past decade, including four of the five current County Board members: Matt DeFerranti (who we endorsed in 2018), Takis Karantonis (who we endorsed in 2020), and Christian Dorsey and Katie Cristol, who we endorsed in 2015 and 2019. Dorsey will step down in December, while Cristol is leaving in July to lead the Tysons Community Alliance.

Not surprisingly, the key issue in this year’s election is Arlington’s new Missing Middle zoning, which allows up to four and in some cases six homes in a vast swath of the county where previously you could only build a single-family house. The County Board voted unanimously for the change in March, and Dorsey and Cristol were its biggest champions. DeFerranti, meanwhile, pushed to reduce the size and scope of the zoning change last year during his reelection campaign–and Karantonis and Garvey (who was never really a fan) went along with him.

Opponents have already filed a lawsuit to block the zoning change, which takes effect in July. But even if they lose, having just one Missing Middle opponent on the County board could be enough to kill or seriously weaken it.

Thus, one question in our questionnaire stood out in helping us make our decision: do you support the Missing Middle zoning changes, as written and passed by the County Board this March?

The endorsements

Three candidates said yes: Julius “JD” Spain, Sr., Maureen Coffey, and Jonathan Dromgoole.

JD Spain is arguably one of the front runners for County Board, with a raft of union endorsements and, as of March 31, the second-most dollars raised. He’s a veteran, a PTSA parent, and the immediate past president of the NAACP Arlington Branch. In his questionnaire Spain displayed a passion for tackling the wide racial disparities in housing in Arlington County, a main driver behind the NAACP’s support for Missing Middle.

“As a member of the County Board, I will continually advocate for access to affordable housing, combat housing discrimination, and work diligently to eliminate any restrictive housing practices in public and private housing and lending practices,” he wrote. We especially appreciated that he’d prioritize door-knocking as a form of community outreach, as typical forms of engagement like public hearings are rarely representative of the entire population.

We need more voices like Maureen Coffey on the County Board. A renter in her 20s, Coffey described her frustrations in looking for an affordable home in the Washington Post last fall, a problem that many Arlingtonians can relate to. Her answers displayed a deep and thorough understanding of Arlington’s affordable housing issues, and a willingness to be proactive in growing its housing supply. Noting that the County usually negotiates for affordable housing units one project at a time, she proposes developing a “housing pipeline that includes developing future prospects similarly to how our economic development team has business prospects.”

Like Coffey, Jonathan Dromgoole is in his 20s and a renter, and would be one of few openly gay board members in the county’s history (the first was Jay Fisette, who served for 20 years and stepped down in 2017). We appreciated his support for a more aggressive housing production target, and that he specifically called out the need to ensure that missing middle and deeply affordable housing get built in wealthy far North Arlington, which is literally cut off on the county’s affordable housing map. We’d be glad to see Coffey and Dromgoole on the County Board, and ranked choice voting means voters can express their support for both on their ballots.

Missing Middle’s opponents

The other three candidates all said no to Missing Middle, for different reasons. G.O. “Tony” Weaver, a small business owner, supports a higher housing production goal, but doesn’t think four- to six-unit buildings will get built under new zoning, and told Arlington Patch he only supports up to three homes per lot. Susan Cunningham, who has a long career in affordable housing, has good ideas, such as creating an inclusionary zoning program like Fairfax or Montgomery counties, but testified at the County Board that “Missing Middle is a mess” and that the legislation, already three years in the making, should have taken even more time.

Then there’s Natalie Roy, a real estate agent, avid bicyclist, and the leader in fundraising. Unlike the five other candidates, Roy didn’t complete our survey in the online form as required, and instead sent us a PDF that allowed her to avoid giving concrete answers to many questions.

Roy told us that Missing Middle zoning “will not increase affordability or promote diversity,” which would certainly be news to the NAACP Arlington Branch. But she offered few alternatives for building affordable housing, or any housing at all. When asked if a child who grew up in Arlington should be able to afford to live here as an adult–something the other five candidates agreed with!–Roy said she’d only prioritize “essential workers” and “the most vulnerable members of our community,” which would likely be cold comfort to voters struggling to afford a home here.

Now what?

Zoning is, of course, not the only issue in Arlington right now. We could talk about the candidates’ positions on traffic safety, or bike lanes, or how far they think people should have to walk to park near their house. All of those answers are in the questionnaires (and to be honest, no candidate really blew us away with a clear, forward-looking vision for transportation, meaning there’s still work for advocates to do!).

But Arlington made history this spring, and we need to make sure the county doesn’t go backwards. The two new County Board members will be the deciding votes, and that’s the priority right now. We’re confident that JD Spain, Maureen Coffey, and Jonathan Dromgoole will come through for us, that is, if you come through for them.

Early voting in Arlington begins May 5 and runs through election day, June 20. Here’s a list of polling places. If you haven’t registered to vote in this year’s primary, you have until the end of May.