Our endorsements for Alexandria City Council

Alexandria voters will head to the polls this spring to select their Democratic nominees for City Council who, barring any Republican or independents jumping in, are the likely winners of the general election this November. GGWash endorses Sarah Bagley, Kevin Harris, James “Jimmy” Lewis, Jr., Kirk McPike, and Jesse O’Connell.

First, the questionnaires

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

Five of the eleven candidates completed our questionnaire, and we published their responses (a blank version is visible here). It asks candidates 24 questions about housing, land use, transportation, and the role of community input in decision-making. Some of the questions are about issues in Alexandria 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.

For Alexandria City Council, GGWash endorses Sarah Bagley, Kevin Harris, James Lewis Jr., Kirk McPike, and Jesse O’Connell

Alexandria is blessed with a strong group of City Council candidates this year–in addition to the four incumbents, there are two school board members, community activists, and a prolific blogger. We’re excited to endorse five of them alongside mayoral candidate Alyia Gaskins, as in Alexandria the mayor serves on the City Council as well.

A first-term councilmember, Sarah Bagley has a deep background in our stuff, leading a housing nonprofit and having served on committees for both Virginia Railway Express and the Northern Virginia Transportation Commission, which coordinates planning and funding for transit systems in six cities and counties. She’s also written a transit diary for us, sharing her experiences biking around Alexandria in the dead of winter.

Bagley, who lives in a condo, explained her support for Zoning for Housing in a recent candidate forum: “This is absolutely personal and it’s absolutely real for anybody who’s earning above the AMI (area median income), but not $300,000, but doesn’t have intergenerational family wealth to buy a home above $700,000. If my fourplex in your neighborhood erodes your quality of life, we should have a longer conversation together, because my fourplex enhances our city in my neighborhood.” In her questionnaire, she identified ways to build on Zoning for Housing, including reducing expensive parking requirements and speeding up the permitting and approval process.

Kevin Harris has a powerful backstory. He grew up homeless, became a minor league basketball player, and today is a professional trainer. He lives with his family in Alexandria public housing, and serves on the public housing authority’s Board of Commissioners. In 2021, he ran for City Council and narrowly lost to Kirk McPike. The result: Harris understands the challenges Alexandrians face in finding affordable, stable housing–and the solutions.

“We need to use every tool in our tool box to effectively address this crisis,” he wrote in his questionnaire, describing tools like using public land to build as many homes as possible and density bonuses for developers who include dedicated affordable units. He recognizes the role that market-rate housing plays, noting that Alexandria can’t recruit firefighters due to housing costs, and supported last year’s Zoning for Housing reforms. Harris supports using limited street space to expand bus and bike lanes, and more automated traffic enforcement as well. He also said he’d like to walk to the grocery store more instead of driving, especially now that his kids are old enough to come along.

James “Jimmy” Lewis, Jr. chairs the city’s Traffic and Parking Board, but in his questionnaire was most enthusiastic about affordable housing. He supports going above and beyond the 20,000 homes that Alexandria is estimated to need by 2030, and described several ways to get there, like allowing up to six homes per lot (above the four legalized in Zoning for Housing) and converting older office buildings to housing. Lewis said he supports repurposing street space to create more bus and bike lanes, though we must note his past opposition to bike lanes on Seminary Road, one of Alexandria’s biggest transportation controversies in recent memory. City officials say they’ve worked, calming traffic, discouraging speeding, and reducing crashes since their completion in 2019. We believe he’ll keep an open mind about them in the future.

The council’s only openly gay member, Kirk McPike understands how housing policy can build on the city’s long history of openness, from supporting LGBTQ+ rights in the 1980s to its role in defeating the state’s gay bar ban.

“The question we’re facing is whether we’re willing to commit effort and resources to make the city more inclusive…or if we’ll continue down a path of exclusivity, where only those with the most are able to remain,” he said at the Zoning for Housing vote. He gave detailed answers on how he’d provide more homes for people of all income levels, from expanding the city’s affordable housing trust fund to streamlining the permitting process. McPike says an e-bike has allowed him to replace a lot of car trips around Alexandria, and he supports expanding the bus lanes and bike lanes he’s voted for as a councilmember.

You might have seen Jesse O’Connell’s blog ALXtra, whose deep dives into land use and transportation policy and often snarky tone remind us of, well, us. Naturally, he had a lot of ideas for increasing housing production to tackle rising costs in a city where the median home price is one million dollars, like incentives for transit-oriented development, expanding multi-family zones, and encouraging more homes in formerly industrial areas like Eisenhower Valley that have become more residential. He supports repurposing street space for bus and bike lanes, and like Bagley expressed interest in reducing parking mandates. We appreciate that he’d prioritize public input from door-knocking and online surveys, which can draw feedback from a wider and more diverse group of residents than more traditional community meetings.

What about the other incumbents?

Two incumbents did not get our endorsement but are worth noting. We would have loved to hear from fourth-term councilmember John Chapman, who did not submit a questionnaire. He grew up in Alexandria public housing, served on two Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments committees, and was president of the Alexandria NAACP.

Chapman has seen the city change dramatically in recent years, especially for younger residents and people of color, and laid out the stakes for Zoning for Housing on the evening of the vote: “People are not able to stay here and live here. We’ve lost 90% of market rate affordability in the city over the last couple of decades. The market has not been kind to Alexandria’s middle and working class,” he said. He’s right–supply isn’t enough–and we’re curious to learn more about Chapman’s approach to ensuring Alexandrians can afford to stay here.

Canek Aguirre has been a reliable pro-housing vote and did send us a questionnaire. But like Natalie Roy in Arlington, he sent us a PDF with his answers so he wouldn’t have to directly answer multiple-choice questions. When asked how many homes he’d seek to build in Alexandria by 2030, he replied, “I’m not going to speculate on numbers. Despite being a small jurisdiction in comparison to others in the region, Alexandria has been fully committed to building our share of housing and then some during my time on Council. Other larger localities in the region need to pull their weight.”

We agree, which is why we’ve endorsed in Arlington and DC this year and in the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors primary before that. That doesn’t mean officials in Alexandria shouldn’t set their own ambitious goals! We’re glad that Bagley, Harris, Lewis, McPike, and O’Connell are willing to take a swing.

Now what?

Early voting in Alexandria runs through June 15. You can also vote on Election Day, June 18. Here’s a list of polling places and a sample ballot. You can register to vote in this year’s primary through Election Day, though you may need to use a provisional ballot.

For more information about how we’re making endorsements in Virginia in 2024, see our 2024 endorsements process post. Our 2024 Elections Hub is your one-stop shop for GGWash’s questionnaires, endorsements, process details, and more. Access the hub anytime from the “2024 Elections” link in the upper right corner of our homepage.