Election News & Analysis
📷: Pat Herrity and Supporters Celebrate Four More Years
On the good news front, Supervisor Pat Herrity (R-Springfield) was re-elected to another term, ensuring that Fairfax will have at least one voice of common sense on the county board. With 54 percent of the vote, Herrity’s margin of victory was considerably wider than his 51 percent share four years ago.
Elsewhere in Fairfax County, Republican candidates fell short of victory — although in several races, the GOP share of the vote increased significantly from 2019. Most notably, in the Sully Magisterial District, GOP-endorsed school board candidate Cynthia Walsh garnered 45 percent of the vote — up from 41 percent for the GOP endorsee in 2019. On the county board side, GOP nominee for Sully Supervisor Keith Elliott won 40 percent of the vote — up from 37 percent for the GOP nominee four years earlier.
Fairfax GOP Chairman Steve Knotts told FFX Now that he was “thrilled” to see Herrity re-elected. “To our candidates who fell short, thank you for running as hard as you did,” the chairman added. “To our many volunteers, and to everyone who voted Republican yesterday, we cannot thank you all enough.”
A dark cloud remains over troubled Democrat Marcia St. John-Cunning. The legitimacy of her claimed victory in the Franconia school board race remains subject to ongoing litigation. “This is about strict application of the law and instances where candidates from across the county were held to the same standards,” Fairfax GOP Vice Chairman Nick Andersen recently told WUSA 9. “We’re talking about one person struggling to meet those same legal standards.”
Another Democrat with major legitimacy problems is Ghazala Hashmi, who might have lied about her residency in Senate District 15. “I plan to stop them from certifying the election,” Republican Hayden Fisher told The Daily Wire. “She’s disqualified, that means I ran unopposed as a matter of law.”
If Fisher is seated instead of Hashmi, that would result in GOP control of the Virginia Senate, with Republican Lieutenant Governor Winsome Sears as the tie-breaking vote.
Looking ahead to next year’s congressional elections, two Democrats have already declared their candidacies in District 10: Virginia Senator Jennifer Boysko and former Virginia Secretary of Education Atif Qarni. Boysko was re-elected as Virginia Senator just two days before announcing her run for Congress. Qarni presided over the extended school closures and resulting learning losses, as well as numerous controversies over critical race theory and gender ideology in Virginia classrooms. On the Republican side, one candidate so far — attorney and businessman Mike Clancy — has launched a campaign for the nomination.
