Northern Virginia’s new election season has kicked off, with redistricting pitting several House of Delegates incumbents against one another while anger over data center development, schools and affordable housing fuels local contests.

Two veteran Fairfax County supervisors — Penelope A. Gross (D-Mason) and John W. Foust (D-Dranesville) — have announced they will not seek reelection in November, setting up Democratic primary contests in their deep blue districts. Galvanising Line

The top two leaders on Arlington County’s board — chair Katie Cristol (D) and vice chair Christian Dorsey (D) — also plan to step down at the end of their terms this year. And Prince William County Supervisor Pete Candland (R-Gainesville) recently resigned, causing a special election to be held in February for the remainder of his term.

With culture wars raging and more economic instability on the horizon, several of the 2023 races are bound to be contentious, despite the Democratic dominance in Northern Virginia, said Mark J. Rozell, dean of George Mason University’s Shar School of Policy and Government.

“Even within the Democratic Party there are significant differences of opinion about how to deal with a variety of issues,” Rozell said.

Northern Virginia was much different when Gross, 79, was first elected to her eastern Fairfax County seat in 1995. Back then, the county board was controlled by Republicans and the region was in the midst of a dramatic population boom. Gross’s victory tilted the board to a Democratic majority, where it has remained ever since, with just one Republican supervisor today.

Her voice grew hoarse with emotion when she announced during a board meeting last month that she would not be seeking an eighth term.

“It was the word ‘retire,’” Gross said recently in an interview. “That word is not in my vocabulary.”

Her accomplishments include securing funding for a pedestrian bridge over Route 50 in 2009 and shepherding through the construction of the Bailey’s Upper Elementary School inside a former office building.

Gross’s successor will inherit a decades-long effort to remake the traffic-congested Seven Corners area into a trio of villages featuring outdoor cafes and as many as 6,000 new homes.

So far, three Democratic candidates have entered the race: congressional staffer Jeremy G. Allen, 30; Andrés Jimenez, 41, an environmental advocate who sits on the county planning commission; and Reid Voss, 40, a local businessman.

The county Republican Party committee is still fielding potential nominees for that district and other races in Fairfax, an official there said.

In Fairfax’s Dranesville district, Foust plans to step down after four terms. The onetime congressional candidate helped facilitate the county’s economic expansion during the past 15 years while leading the board’s economic development advisory commission. That recently included steering federal and local funding to businesses that were hit hard by state-mandated pandemic shutdowns.

“I’m confident that we helped many businesses survive,” Foust said.

His successor will take on the ongoing effort to revitalize the business strip in downtown McLean.

Attorney Jimmy Bierman, 36, the former chair of the Dranesville Democratic Party committee, is the sole Democrat seeking the supervisor’s seat, although Foust said more candidates are considering a bid. Board chair Jeffrey C. McKay (D) does not have an opponent.

Supervisor Pat Herrity (Springfield), the county board’s sole Republican, has become more vulnerable after he lost a redistricting battle in 2021 to include more right-leaning precincts in his newly redrawn district. Democrat Albert Vega, Herrity’s sole challenger, has compared the fourth-term supervisor to “a broken part” that keeps the county’s machinery from fully functioning.

“In general, he’s just out of touch with how the district is growing,” Vega, 45, said, citing Herrity’s opposition to gun control measures passed by the board and lack of support for LGBTQ issues.

Vega, who co-founded a local technology company, said he wants to cultivate more affordable housing in the Springfield district and small-scale manufacturing in the county.

Herrity, 62, said he doesn’t mind Vega’s description of him as a faulty part, arguing it means he is playing a valuable role as a consistent voice of opposition on an otherwise all-Democratic board.

“It’s important to have the other voice,” Herrity said. He highlighted his role in the 2016 defeat of a 4 percent county tax on restaurant meals and his current efforts to bring more sports tourism to Fairfax.

In neighboring Arlington County, Cristol, 37, said in November when announcing she would not seek reelection that “it’s time to make room for new perspectives.” Dorsey, 51, announced his plans to step down last month.

Democrats Tony Weaver, a local businessman, and Julius D. Spain, president of the NAACP’s Arlington branch, are seeking to fill those seats. The elections are expected to be colored by the fight over a zoning deregulation effort advanced by Cristol that would allow developers to create more “missing middle” housing, affordable to middle-income families, in the county’s more suburban neighborhoods.

Arlington County Sheriff Beth Arthur (D), 63, has announced she will retire this month after more than two decades in that role. Jose Quiroz, 43, a deputy sheriff who will take over for her on a temporary basis, has announced his candidacy for the office.

In what may be a competitive Democratic primary election for the role of Arlington’s top prosecutor, Josh Katcher, 40, a former deputy commonwealth’s attorney, is challenging incumbent Parisa Dehghani-Tafti, 49.

In Prince William County, a special election for a supervisor to serve the remainder of Candland’s term in his Gainesville District has been scheduled for Feb. 21, a contest that will be largely fueled by anger over data center development.

Candland, 48, resigned after agreeing to include his family’s home in a proposal for a 2,100-acre data center complex in that area, which Amy Ashworth, the county commonwealth’s attorney, said presented conflicts of interest.

The local Republican Party committee Monday selected Bob Weir, a Haymarket town council member and planning commission member as its nominee for that seat. He will compete against Democrat Kerensa Sumers.

Before Candland resigned, Weir was assisting groups seeking to have Candland recalled.

Weir, 59, said the county board needs to restrict data center development in areas that local residents argue aren’t meant for that kind of use. “There seems to be a consensus that both the county staff and the board are ignoring input,” Weir said. “That needs to change.”

Sumers, 39, said she is also opposed to more data center development and wants to cultivate more sustainable affordable housing in the area, improve local park facilities and attract more small businesses.

“The reliance on large corporations for all our financing is not the best and it limits creativity and options,” said Sumers, who works for Loudoun County coordinating services for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

So far, Republicans have not mounted a challenge against board chair Ann Wheeler (D). But she is facing a recall effort launched by groups angry about her support for data center development.

Among several General Assembly races in the area, Democrat Holly Seibold, 44, and Republican Monique Baroudi, 48, are competing in a Jan. 10 special election to replace Del. Mark Keam (D-Fairfax), who resigned to join the Biden administration.

Veteran Dels. Marcus Simon, 52, and Kaye Kory, 75, both of whom represent Fairfax, are seeking the Democratic nomination in a redrawn 13th District House of Delegates seat.

Former House speaker Eileen Filler-Corn, 58, and Del. Kathy Tran, 44, both Fairfax Democrats, are vying for their party’s nomination in the House’s 18th District. Dels. Rip Sullivan, 63, and Kathleen Murphy, 74, also Fairfax Democrats, are competing in the 6th District.

Del. Danica A. Roem (D-Manassas), 38, is competing for a newly drawn 30th District Senate seat against Republican Ian Lovejoy, 40, a former Manassas City Council member.

In Loudoun County, the fallout over two high-profile sexual assault cases in county schools — which led to indictments of former superintendent Scott Ziegler and school district spokesman Wayde Byard — probably will factor into county board seat elections.

County board chair Phyllis J. Randall (D) does not yet have an opponent. County Sheriff Michael L. Chapman (R), 65, is facing a challenge from Democrat Craig Buckley, 50.

Among the races for other supervisor seats, Republican Ana Quijano hopes to unseat first-term Supervisor Michael R. Turner (D-Ashburn). Quijano, 34, said she plans to highlight what she called a dismissive attitude by Democrats on the board about the sexual assault allegations. The charges galvanized conservatives opposed to the use of unisex bathrooms in Loudoun schools after it was revealed that the accused male attacker was dressed in women’s clothing. There is no indication that he is transgender.

“Instead of trying to get to the root cause of the problem, they remained silent,” said Quijano, a private-school music teacher who on her campaign website describes herself as a survivor of domestic abuse. “For me, assault and abuse are not political.”

Turner, 71, called Quijano’s view of the county board’s role in that case “uninformed,” saying the allegations fell under the purview of the sheriff’s office and the school board. “We were very upset, very frustrated and as outraged as anybody but were statutorily limited, in that we can’t be involved in any school operations,” Turner said about the county board’s response to the allegations. “I would think she would know that. That’s fairly basic stuff.”

Turner said he wants to cultivate more affordable housing in the area, including “missing middle” homes, and continue to find ways to control data center development in the county. Quijano said that, with the arrival of the Silver Line, she wants to keep the area from becoming too densely populated.

Voters in the newly drawn Little River district, which includes Aldie and Middleburg, will elect their first supervisor.

Two Democrats have entered that race: Lissa Savaglio, the former local Democratic Party committee chair, and Laura A. TeKrony, a legislative aide to Randall. Republican Ram Venkatachalam, an IT consultant who chairs the county’s transit advisory board, is also seeking the office.

Savaglio, 42, said she would work to control development in Middleburg. A primary goal, she said, is to solve the problem in the Brambleton area of airplane traffic noise, which has increased in recent years after FAA-sanctioned flight paths out of nearby Dulles International Airport were changed.

“That is a big, big issue here,” she said. “We’re not against the airport; it’s important to the area. We just need to solve this.”

TeKrony, 53, said she wants to curtail residential development in the area, push for the installation of traffic roundabouts along a portion of Route 50 that runs through the district and accelerate plans to build a new high school in Brambleton to absorb the families moving into a recently approved 246-home development.

“This area needs someone who has experience” in local governance, said TeKrony, who has worked for Randall for seven years. “Also, I’ve lived in this district for 18 years.”

Venkatachalam, 42, hopes to become the first South Asian supervisor in the steadily changing county. He said he is also concerned about the airport noise issue in Brambleton and would look for ways to diversify the county’s commercial tax base away from data centers.

Venkatachalam argued that the county board should withhold county funding to the school district if its leadership issues continue.

“The system is broken; it needs new leadership, positive community engagement, fresh perspectives,” he said. The county board “should no longer keep transferring money without demanding a credible plan.”

Teo Armus contributed to this report.

Zinc Coating Parts A previous version of this article incorrectly reported that Dels. Marcus Simon and Kaye Kory are seeking the Democratic nomination in a redrawn 30th District. They are seeking a seat in the 13th District. The article has been corrected.