Fireworks Fly in Sully District Candidate Forum in Fairfax County

What began as a routine candidate forum in Fairfax County’s Sully District supervisor’s race ended with fireworks as Republican nominee John Guevara and Democratic nominee Kathy Smith traded personally-charged attacks and abandoned more routine issues to spar over ongoing local sources of polarization, including the debate over the school board’s transgender restroom policy.

The Debate

The event itself began quite uneventfully. Both candidates opened with the usual and customary routine, with Smith focusing on her personal history, and Guevara setting forth his policy agenda and campaign themes of transportation, local budgets, and education.

Both candidates refrained from openly supporting tax increases, while both expressed support for a referendum on a meals tax for Fairfax County. Smith coolly stated her support, while Guevara remained dismissive, declaring it a “punishment” on diners and restaurateurs, and branding as “lazy” officials who overlook budgetary reforms. At the same time, Guevara stated “I’m open to looking at other sources of revenue,” but did not elaborate. Smith later challenged Guevara, stating it made little sense to express such openness while opposing each tax by name.

Guevara clearly outperformed on transportation, leading early and often, while touting his micro-website www.SullyStreets.com as an engagement tool allowing voters to connect directly with his campaign. Smith’s coverage of transportation was delayed and lackluster, with little of substance emerging until Guevara had established his substantive lead nearly 45 minutes into the debate.

Both candidates declared their support for the widening of I-66 and expressed enthusiastic support for transit expansion, including extending Metrorail’s Orange Line to Centreville. Additionally, both candidates declared their support for the bi-county parkway. Both candidates, however, failed to clearly address one critical component at the heart of the transportation issue: namely, the necessary and unavoidable involvement of federal and state leaders in securing the funding necessary to address the region’s transportation challenges. Neither acknowledged the significant role both the federal and Commonwealth governments play in highway funding and construction, despite highway issues being a primary talking point during the debate.

Both candidates were also left flummoxed as the debate shifted to the conflict between Dulles Airport and residents within its flight paths. Smith quickly admitted to this policy blind spot, while Guevara only cited his futile call to the FAA when a low flying plane buzzed his neighborhood.

According to Supervisor Frey, Dulles Airport is the district’s largest driver of economic growth, and managing the conflict between competing concerns will be an important policy challenge faced by his successor. Neither candidate offered specific solutions, whether through adherence to the county’s comprehensive development plan as a tool to prevent conflict-generating development, or through the implementation of appropriate disclosure forms to purchasers of real estate within designated zones susceptible to overflights and their associated noise.

The candidates’ responses to the issue of affordable housing fared no better. While both rejected the use of bonds as a funding mechanism, Guevara took an expected and more skeptical approach to county involvement, while Smith expressed her support for the private development of affordable housing units on county-owned land for occupancy by county employees.

Smith’s bizarre proposal for affordable housing will surely stoke controversy and even offense, as fiscal conservatives question the propriety of benefits available only to government employees, while voters of all persuasions wonder why those first responders who put their lives on the line should be expected to make ends meet not on an appropriate salary for the area, but rather, by living in Smith’s concept of a government-backed housing project eerily reminiscent of a company town.

While both candidates offered their respective visions for the future of leadership in Sully District, Guevara ended the uncontroversial portion of the debate with a clear substantive advantage, though both campaigns would be well-advised to strengthen their policy knowledge, as the presentations from both sides were too heavy on rhetoric and platitudes at the expense of the issue-level mastery which can make or break a campaign in a competitive local election.

The Fireworks

As the underwhelming policy discussion wound down, routine answers gave way to fireworks when Smith’s innocuous declaration of her intent to serve as a full-time supervisor provoked a personal attack by Guevara, to the jeers of her supporters in attendance.

The exchange began when Guevara highlighted Smith’s family income and the flexibility he claimed it allowed, in contrast to his own decision to continue working full time if elected.

Smith’s condemnation was swift when she labeled Guevara’s discussion of her family’s income as “offensive” as she quickly attacked him for similar comments he made concerning the family of Brian Schoeneman, one of his rivals for the Republican nomination. While campaigning for the nomination, Guevara stoked similar controversy when he criticized Schoeneman for sending his preschool-aged son to a private school, despite the absence of any similar education program offered by Fairfax County’s Public Schools.

The fireworks did not end there. After Smith continued her uninspiring, low-content debate performance with a closing statement devoid of any reiterations of the substantive themes of her campaign, Guevara squandered his opportunity to close strong and on-message by instead invoking the recent controversy over the Fairfax County School Board’s transgender restroom policy. To both laughter and applause, Guevara exclaimed:

“They don’t like it when their own elected officials don’t listen to them. Whether it’s a boundary issue, or whether it’s on the gender issue..…I was one of those 500 at that school board meeting and I heard you loud and clear, and I heard you say ‘Listen to me, I’m the parent.’ And I saw a school board that failed to listen, a school board that said ‘I will do as I want, go home and sit down.’ I’m not going to do that. That’s offensive. The offense comes when your own childrens’ privacy is no longer protected, and I’m tired of seeing that in my county.”

This out-of-nowhere reference left the crowd largely puzzled. Guevara’s divisive and tone-deaf statement on an issue not salient to the seat for which he is running only further alienates the key, center-left voters his campaign must win on less-partisan local issues such as transportation. Coming as the final statement, it also gave Smith no chance to respond to the criticism.

Ben Tribbett, a senior strategist with Kathy Smith’s campaign, responded to the controversy with the following statement:

“I’ve seen the Guevara campaign advancing a social agenda quietly during the caucuses and since – but they have been careful to avoid it in literature and outside of one on one type situations with like minded voters. I think he unmasked himself tonight, and that is a genie he can’t put back in the bottle.”

Though the Guevara campaign declined to issue an official statement in response, Guevara partially walked back his comments, stating that he would prioritize efficiency and budgetary reform over social issues in his interactions with the school board.

As painful as it may be for Republicans to admit, Tribbett is spot-on. While campaigns enjoy extensive latitude to run against the grain of their respective districts during one-on-one interactions, Guevara’s off-message divergence during a recorded forum has indeed freed that genie from its bottle and introduced to the race a form of controversy deeply unfavorable to Guevara’s campaign.

These off-message comments alienate the very voters Guevara must capture to secure victory, whether by demonstrating his lack of agreement with their own social policy positions, or allowing his candidacy to be dismissed as being ill-focused on the core issues of greatest relevance to the race which Guevara correctly identified during his opening statement.

This campaign blunder is a textbook example of how not to elect Republicans in a Democratic district – one which Republicans across Virginia would be well-served to learn from and avoid in similar races elsewhere. Contested races in centrist districts at any level of government are not forgiving of candidates on either side who are perceived to be advancing their own social agenda at the expense of the bread-and-butter issues at the heart of the race.

The center-left electorate in Fairfax’s Sully District has reliably supported Democrats by nine points or more in every statewide election since 2012. Predictably, among these more partisan high profile races, Ed Gillespie was most effective at bridging this gap in his 2014 run for US Senate against incumbent Democrat Mark Warner, and was the only candidate among the six to close to within a single-digit deficit of the Democratic opponent. Likewise, Mark Obenshain outperformed his two running mates in Sully District by maintaining message discipline despite the constant barrage of Democratic attacks directed upticket.

Sully-District-Results

By contrast, Guevara’s closing performance was a prime example of how not to win in this district.

The closing controversy is an issue for school board contests, not this supervisor’s race. Guevara’s off-message remarks have left him with a nearly insurmountable challenge to overcome above and beyond his need to outperform Gillespie’s campaign by nine points. Whether Guevara’s campaign can overcome this unforced error is yet to be seen. In the meantime, more fireworks will surely fly in concert with the now-inevitable attack ads, and Republicans across the Commonwealth would be wise to learn from and not repeat the unfortunate lessons of this episode.

In the meantime, this debate left ample grounds for both campaigns moving forward. On policy, neither scored a decisive victory, while Guevara’s unforced errors at the end seemed to be the only subject capable of eliciting enthusiasm from Smith.  What had been a bland open-seat race has become more personal. It will be interesting to see how this impacts future debates (if any) and the tenor of the campaigns in the closing two months.

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