FCDC Chair Responds to FCRC Promoting New Crop of Candidates
The Fairfax County Republican Committee recently issued a press release trumpeting their latest crop of candidates. Here is FCDC’s analysis.
First, if the Republicans are going to challenge our candidates, they ought to first get their facts straight.
- There are 17 House of Delegate districts with precincts in Fairfax County, not 16.
- This list leaves out the 49th (also, they don’t have a candidate in the 37th).
- One of their three remaining Delegates, Tom Rust, actually represents the 86th District, not the 83rd. They 83rd District is represented by Delegate Joe Bouchard in Virginia Beach. We’d be happy if Tom Rust would like to run in Virginia Beach.
It was widely known that the Fairfax GOP (Tom Davis) specifically discouraged candidates from running in 2007 to suppress Democratic turnout across the County to minimize Republican exposure in their Senate races. For the GOP to suggest that running a big slate of candidates after specifically encouraging people not to run to save their own incumbents in 2007 is a stretch. For a real comparison, in 2005, the Republicans ran candidates in every seat except two – Adam Ebbin’s and Jim Scott’s. Lots of challengers filing in a gubernatorial cycle is nothing new.
The Republican’s showing in the two 2009 special elections was not encouraging for them. Republicans have won most major special elections in Fairfax County since the last redistricting in 2001 – Cuccinelli (2002), O’Brien (2002), Hugo (2002), Cook (2009) (we only won Herring (2006), Herring (2009) & Bulova (2009) that’s it). Braddock District is the third most Republican-performing supervisor seat in the County after Springfield and Sully. Special elections in this County have historically favored Republicans – especially in districts that trend Republican.
We would suggest that a better measure of the Republican Party’s viability might be local committee fundraising If the Republican grassroots was energized or even existed, one would think they would be writing checks. The following is taken from the FEC where we are required to file monthly.
| COMMITTEE NAME | RECEIPTS | DISB | CASH | DEBT | THROUGH |
| Virginia | |||||
| FAIRFAX COUNTY DEMOCRATIC COMMITTEE – FEDERAL | $110,235 | $125,848 | $124,226 | $0 | 04/30/2009 |
| FAIRFAX COUNTY REPUBLICAN COMMITTEE (FEDERAL) | $31,485 | $38,317 | $5,673 | $0 | 04/30/2009 |
FCDC has also raised $16,000 in non-federal funds versus the Fairfax GOP’s $3,600 since January 1, 2009 (this is on VPAP). FCDC also raised over $100,000 in the month of May for our second largest month in FCDC history after a fundraising dinner where 475 Democratic activists paid $150 per ticket to attend. The fact that 161,000 Fairfax County residents showed up to vote in the 2008 Virginia Democratic Presidential Primary versus 60,000 for the Republican Presidential primary coupled with the fact that Fairfax County Democratic turnout was UP 58% from the Webb-Miller (5.8%) primary hardly suggests that the Republican Party is any more viable today than they’ve been in the last five years.
From the Democratic Party’s point of view, this crew coupled with the three statewide nominees is the biggest gang of anti-government, obstructionist, ideological demagogues that the Republican Party has ever inflicted on Fairfax County.
We welcome the challenge and we look forward to highlighting our record and promoting good progressive policies as we continue to earn the trust that Fairfax County’s voters have placed in our 14 Democratic legislators in Fairfax County.
Scott A. Surovell
Chair, Fairfax County Democratic Committee
