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So long, and let us say farewell
Are we safe from these lame-duck supervisors? Will they succumb graciously? Or will they transform their dissatisfaction of losing on Election Day into a spiteful act of bureaucratic vengeance on the county they served? Let us hope for the former.
Despite the headline in last week's Times-Mirror, the Republicans did not lose control of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors. Voters, flexing their mandating muscles, took it away from them in hopes, perhaps, that Loudoun will take a break from growing. But the current board still has time to inflict more damage.
Several major rezoning proposals, which could bring 4,000 additional homes to Loudoun, may be considered by this board before it exits stage right at the end of 2007.
Two of these (Arcola Center with 1,169 homes and Braddock Village with 860 homes) are in growth-happy Steve Snow's Dulles District. Another (Kincora with 1,068 homes) is slated for routes 7 and 28 near the soon-to-expand Dulles Town Center. One more near Leesburg (Ridgewater Park with 931 homes) was once thought dead but could get a vote by year's end, if the developer gets his way.
For the sake of Loudoun's already clogged roads, we can only hope the board's lame-duck supervisors go out with quiet dignity and not with zoning-approving guns a-blazing.
A GANG OF ONE
More astonishing than the the Democrats' almost-sweep of the Board of Supervisors elections is the fact they let one get away -- Republican Eugene Delgaudio (Sterling).
Wise-cracking Delgaudio is part of the so-called Republican Gang of Five, which has steered the agenda of the board for the past four years, passing many residential rezoning applications in a unified 5 to 4 fashion. Delgaudio was also one of the five who voted for Supervisor Mick Staton's rural zoning plan, while all the while dismissing the importance of maintaining western Loudoun's beauty and rural economy.
Worst of all, Delgaudio is to blame for cruelly criticizing the appearance and safety of his Sterling Park, while aggressively marketing the illegal immigration resolution approved by the board this summer.
So, how did a clownish, bad-press-getting scaremonger win re-election? Simple: He worked harder in Sterling than the Democrats did. He raised more money. He planted more signs.
Being a gang of one will most likely relegate Delgaudio even more to sound bites and joke telling. Still, the Democrats should be kicking themselves given that this year, most Republican supervisors, even the most divisive one, were primed for defeat.
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