Congratulations to former Falls Church School Board chair Laura Downs on her decisive victory this week to fill an unexpired term on the Falls Church City Council. Her opponent, former F.C. Board of Zoning Appeals chair John Murphy ran a competitive campaign but fell short by the margin of 4,701 for Downs to 3,279 for Murphy. Downs will now join six other members of the F.C. City Council to fill for a year the seat formerly held by Caroline Lian, who resigned in September amid controversy surrounding her failure to have fully reported her employment history as a candidate for Council.
In a post-election statement Downs thanked her supporters and Murphy, and did not mention whether or not she would seek election to a full four-year term a year from now, and she is permitted to get her feet wet in the new job before committing to keep at it another four or more years. We expect Downs to be a very proactive member of the Council, however, if her role as a leader of the School Board is any indication. She cited her endorsement by the News-Press on yard signs, quoting the N-P, “She brings an avid commitment to open and reasoned communication that will enhance her work and that of the entire Council.”
Her election restores the lopsided advantage that women have in leadership roles in the Falls Church government at 6-1 on the Council. The only male is now David Snyder, and he will be up for election again next year.
The total turnout this year for registered Falls Church voters was 83 percent, according to City Voter Registrar David Bjerke, not as high as 87 percent which has turned out for previous presidential elections here in the past. But the robust growth in the population of the Little City may account for the slight deviation in the numbers.
Falls Church City voters expressed shock at the national presidential election result. The entire Northern Virginia region went for Harris over Trump in a very lopsided fashion that provided the margin by which the entire state of Virginia went for Harris. But it is too soon for this newspaper to fully sort out what happened overall in time for this week’s edition, but certainly will have a lot to say on the subject in the weeks ahead.
Again, we reiterate that it is at the local level, with Falls Church being a prime example, that the best way forward for the nation is demonstrated. On the local level, there is no room for the kind of ideological extremism to play any kind of a meaningful role, because there are too many potholes to fill, sidewalks to repair and dedicated employees to compensate while figuring out how to keep taxes at a reasonable level for residents.
Kamala Harris was apparently defeated by the general influence of male chauvinism nationally. Clearly, such factors don’t dominate in F.C.
