Rep. Jim Moran is facing another challenger in the Democratic primary for Virginia’s Eighth Congressional District.

Bruce Shuttleworth, a resident of Arlington’s Old Glebe neighborhood, announced his candidacy this week and is putting his money where his mouth is: contributing $50,000 of his own money to his campaign. The former U.S. Navy pilot is also coming out in full-attack mode asked why he wants to take on the well-connected, ten-term congressman.

“I’ve been very impressed by our wonderfully honest local leaders, and I’ve been very struck by the disparity in integrity between those local leaders and [Rep. Jim Moran],” Shuttleworth told ARLnow.com, specifically mentioning campaign contributions Moran has received from earmark recipients. “I don’t think he can be trusted to uniformly act in the best interest of the citizenry.”

“I haven’t found more than one or two [residents] who said they think highly of Jim Moran and that they enjoy voting for him,” Shuttleworth added. “I think his likeability factor is very, very low.”

Shuttleworth, 46, was born in New York and spent the latter part of his childhood in Maryland. A United States Naval Academy graduate, Shuttleworth was a naval aviator who served on the carrier USS America during its support of American actions in Bosnia and Somalia. After leaving the military he attended Harvard Business School and went to work for the Boston Consulting Group, before moving to D.C. with his wife about 12 years ago.

Shuttleworth has been an independent consultant since 2008, according to his LinkedIn profile, after working at local companies like MicroStrategy and Blackboard. He and his wife Diane, a lawyer, have two twin 9-year-old boys who attend Arlington Science Focus School.

Eschewing traditional Democratic red meat, Shuttleworth is instead venturing into unfamiliar political territory by focusing on the national debt as a key campaign issue during the primary.

“I think that America is really facing one of the most serious challenges in its history with this out of control debt,” Shuttleworth said. “These aren’t just numbers in a computer. Having more than $250 billion go to interest payments — that’s money that we cannot spend on our [general] welfare. This is a situation that puts us at great risk for hyperinflation.”

“This is an issue that transcends all American interests, and I don’t think it has the proper attention of Jim Moran,” Shuttleworth said, adding that out-of-control debt jeopardizes the country’s social safety net.

If the focus on the national debt makes Shuttleworth sound a bit like a Republican, he’s quick to point out that he’s very much a Democrat on other issues, including the social safety net, women’s health, gay rights and gun control.

Although he has little political experience, Shuttleworth says he has been active in the community. He serves on the Arlington Public Schools Comprehensive School Health Committee, is a Civic Association delegate and coaches basketball and soccer. He says he’s been pleasantly surprised by the pledges of support he has received since announcing his candidacy Wednesday afternoon.

“My iPhone is just beeping out of control,” he said. The congressional primary is scheduled for June 12.

With a slew of elections in the upcoming months, now is the time to check if you’re registered to vote. Registration deadlines are fast approaching for Arlington residents.

Arlington County Registrar Linda Lindberg explained that registration deadlines are 21 days before all primaries and general elections, but 13 days before special elections. That means anyone who wishes to vote in the Republican Presidential Primary on March 6 must be registered by Monday, February 13. The deadline is Monday, March 12 for those who want to register to vote in the special election for Arlington County Board on March 27.

Voters who have previously registered in Virginia and have not changed addresses do not have to re-register. Anyone who has moved since last voting must update their information. Voters may not register at the polls.

Lindberg wants people to remember that everyone is eligible to vote in the Republican Presidential Primary because Virginians do not register by party. Absentee voting for that primary has already begun, and absentee voting for the County Board special election begins February 10.

“Voters can conceivably come in and vote in the two elections on the same day,” Lindberg said.

More information on registering to vote, including an application, is available online, along with lists of all upcoming elections and sample ballots for March 6 and March 27.

School Board member Libby Garvey has claimed a decisive victory in the Democratic caucus for Arlington County Board.

The caucuses were held on Thursday and Saturday. Out of the 4,314 votes cast, 1,915 were cast for Garvey — more than twice the vote count of her closest opponent. In an email, Garvey expressed gratitude to her supporters and to the other candidates in the race.

“I’d like to thank the Arlington elected officials who endorsed me in this race: Senators Barbara Favola, Mary Margaret Whipple, and Patsy Ticer and School Board Members Abby Raphael and Emma Violand-Sanchez. Their assistance was critical in securing this victory,” she wrote. “I would especially like to thank the other candidates. It was a race between five well-qualified Arlington Democrats, and I’m particularly thankful for the kindness they showed me on the campaign trail.”

Garvey will now be the official Democratic nominee for Arlington County Board in the special election that’s being held on March 27. She will face Green Party candidate Audrey Clement and Republican Mark Kelly, who just announced his candidacy this past week.

“This County Board contest was one of the hardest fought in recent memory, featuring five great candidates from various constituencies in Arlington,” Arlington Democratic Chair Mike Lieberman said in a statement announcing the caucus results. “We are proud that Libby Garvey emerged from this caucus as our nominee. She has been an outstanding School Board Member, and we know she will make an excellent County Board Member as well. We look forward to committing our full party resources behind getting Libby elected on March 27.”

The final vote count, as reported by the Arlington County Democratic Committee:

• Libby Garvey — 1,915 votes
• Melissa Bondi — 966 votes
• Terron Sims — 922 votes
• Kim Klingler — 333 votes
• Peter Fallon — 178 votes

(Updated at 4:10 p.m.) Tonight, Arlington voters will head to Washington-Lee High School for the first of two caucuses to pick a Democratic nominee for County Board. In advance of the caucuses, six County Board candidates participated in a debate last night at the Cherrydale Volunteer Fire Department.

Here are some of the candidates, in their own words, on a few key issues brought up during the debate.

Affordable Housing

Kim Klingler: “We have large employers here who want to bring the best and brightest to Arlington County. And they want them to live here. So let’s hold some of our business owners accountable to see if they can assist us in providing affordable housing for their staff.”

Libby Garvey: “We can work more with developers on bringing them increased density to provide more affordable housing than they built. And we do indeed need to work with preserving our existing stock, and offering tax incentives or loans to the current owners to maintain the affordable housing that they have now.”

Peter Fallon: “We need to revisit the affordable housing bonus density that is available in the zoning ordinance to incentivize more developers to keep using it … At the same time we need to not sabotage [existing affordable housing]. Columbia Pike — the county’s own study has indicated that the trolley would raise the average affordable rent by 30 percent.”

Melissa Bondi: “I would look at new tools like community land trusts, looking at statewide tax relief for existing affordable housing, and a statewide housing trust fund to help Arlington with the tools we already have in place.”

Audrey Clement: “Create a housing authority that would… [consolidate] all the county’s housing programs under one agency, enabling it to qualify for federal HUD money that it currently still does not qualify for, and leveraging the money that it has to build more affordable housing in this country.

Terron Sims: “We can’t do anything to control property values. So we’re going to be careful with how we invest in certain areas of the county where the affordable housing exists because of market forces. Depending on how development goes in certain areas… we may cause those [lower-income] citizens to go live somewhere else, which is not what we want to do.”

Traffic/I-66

Libby Garvey: “We need to make sure that we don’t become the highway everybody drives through to get other places. I think it’s a shame that we lost the voting member on the WMATA board that we had.”

Peter Fallon: “In the year 2000, somebody sent me something in the mail — that VDOT, the state, wanted to widen I-66. And I thought: heck no. I became a founding member of the Arlington Coalition for Sensible Transportation… and I continue to be opposed to the wholesale widening of I-66, particularly inside the Beltway.”

Terron Sims: “Having lived in this area since 1986, it saddens me that traffic has only gotten worse and there’s no real clear solution in sight. Our transportation problem is a regional issue — something that we’re going to have to tackle with D.C. and Maryland, as well as the Commonwealth as a whole.”

Melissa Bondi: “I too opposed the widening of I-66… I agree that we will need more express bus service that may run from west of Arlington through to the District of Columbia, and also those that start in Arlington.”

Audrey Clement: “I single-handedly took on VDOT in 2009 and challenged VDOT’s decision to proceed with the [I-66] spot improvement project… My efforts were quashed, I got no support from Arlington County Board. They paid lip service to the cause, they said they opposed the widening but they did nothing to stop it.”

Kim Klingler: “My plan, my approach, is a regional one — that we work with [various Northern Virginia localities] to ensure that transportation isn’t just about what’s happening in Arlington. Because, as you know, we’re all impacted by those who come and go across Arlington.”

Libraries/Parks

Terron Sims: “As a published novelist, libraries have a special place in my heart. I think the first thing we need to do to tackle this issue, as well as the nature centers… is we have to implement some budget forecasting.”

Melissa Bondi: “Our libraries, our nature centers, our community centers, our public facilities are the way that many residents interact with their government. We have an affirmative responsibility, and it’s a plus for Arlington that we invest in the maintenance and the operations of those facilities.”

Audrey Clement: “Local government should pay for basic services, not expensive, extravagant, overpriced capital projects, which is what this county is currently doing. I think if the county just took one item off its budget — that is, the Artisphere — that the savings could pay for not only restored branch library service but expanded branch library service… I think the Artisphere was a great concept, but it should be paid for by private philanthropy.”

Kim Klingler: “We know today that we have a capital maintenance backlog for parks and facilities of over $50 million, because we don’t know when we actually need to maintain our parks… Through my campaign I’ve been running through all the parks in Arlington, and I will tell you that some of them are in disrepair. We need to make sure this becomes a priority.”

Libby Garvey: “Cutting back on parks and libraries — those are basic core services. Those are facilities and resources that we have, and we need to keep up what we have before we get something new… You need to fix the leak in the roof before you get a new kitchen.”

Peter Fallon: “In a one billion plus budget, you do not balance it by nickel-and-diming the libraries or the nature centers. And while I fully support public-private partnerships, you don’t shake down the taxpayers and the residents by threatening to close or limit the hours or operation of something they use.”

Development/”McMansions”

Peter Fallon: “Virginia, as you probably already know, is a big property rights state… The rules are not always applied the way you and I would expect.”

Melissa Bondi: “We’re still losing too many trees when these houses are being built, and that’s a concern to me.”

Terron Sims: “I walked the lot on Nottingham Street with the pipe stem… I was really shocked by how the developer was able to squeeze the house back there. What I would want to do as a board member is assist those communities in having a much more powerful and stronger say into what is built in their communities — especially when it comes to the size of the house, with respect to height restrictions and width.”

Audrey Clement: “Impose a moratorium on high density development projects like Crystal City, Columbia Pike and East Falls Church, until the county identifies their infrastructure requirements and funds to pay for them.”

Kim Klingler: “One of the comments that developers have said to me is: Kim, sometimes the county really lets us off easy. Because of our current processes that we have in place, a community might not know that an application has actually been put in for a large lot. Whether is be through email, Facebook — I mean most civic associations now have a website or a Facebook — we can use these tools to make sure citizens, residents know that the developer is looking at the land. And if that is the case, they can get ahead of the developer to make sure that we don’t pass these special variances.”

Libby Garvey: “People feel like development is something that’s happening to them, not with them. This is our community, it needs to happen with us. We need to have clear rules.“

One of the top issues in the race for Arlington County Board is education and the capacity crisis at our public schools. With that in mind, what kind of education did each of the six candidates receive, and what experience, if any, do they have in the field of education? Per several reader requests, we looked into the educational background of each candidate.

Terron Sims (D) graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point, according to his campaign website. Sims has served on the Arlington Public Schools Strategic Plan Steering Committee and on the Committee  on the Elimination of the Achievement Gap.

Kim Klingler (D) graduated from James Madison University with a Bachelor of Science degree, according to her campaign manager. She majored in Health Services Administration and minored in Business Administration. Her campaign website says she has previously volunteered at a local elementary school.

Libby Garvey (D) graduated cum laude from Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, with a major in Politics and a minor in Economics, according to her campaign website. Garvey helped run Mount Holyoke’s Washington internship program in the early 1980s and has served on the Arlington County School Board since 1996.

Peter Fallon (D) graduated from George Washington University with Bachelor of Accountancy degree. He has served on Arlington County’s Marymount University Task Force and was appointed by the School Board to serve on the Yorktown High School building level planning committee.

Audrey Clement (G) received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Pennsylvania and went on to receive a Ph.D. in Political Science from Temple University, where she also worked as a teaching assistant. Clement says she spent some of her time as a Congressional Fellow working on special education issues.

Melissa Bondi (D) studied Physics at the University of Rochester but did not complete her degree. She attended the university from September 1989 to December 1991, according to records at the National Student Clearninghouse. She has worked on local campaigns for Arlington County School Board, according to her campaign website, and has been endorsed by School Board member James Lander.

The six candidates for County Board each struck a note of fiscal conservatism at local civic association debates this week.

Even as Arlington has avoided the worst of the stagnant economy, fears about the impact of federal spending cuts on Arlington’s tax base, combined with the reality of a burgeoning school population, has ushered in a slate of candidates largely devoid of ideas for sweeping new county initiatives. Instead, candidates are talking about prioritizing spending and, perhaps, pulling back on big ticket items like the struggling Artisphere cultural center and the planned Columbia Pike streetcar and Long Bridge Park aquatics center.

Iraq veteran and West Point graduate Terron Sims was perhaps the most blunt of the five Democrats in race when it came to spending.

“We do need to prioritize,” Sims said. “We spend money as though it’s coming out of trees… Though we have the money, that doesn’t necessarily mean we have to spend the money.”

“I’m disturbed at the trolley’s cost,” Sims said of the Pike streetcar’s $250 million price tag. “As for the Artisphere, it’s a failed investment, or at least it appears to be at this time.”

Peter Fallon, an Arlington County Planning Commission, was also candid about his views on spending — particularly when it comes to the streetcar.

“Let’s face it, we need to do a much better job of deciding what we need versus what we want and what we can have,” Fallon said. “I am certainly very pro-transit… however, I am not convinced that $250 million for a five mile rail in the ground is necessarily the way to go.

“If I’m on the County Board, I’m not going to sign off on it until I’m convinced it’s the right thing to do for all of Arlington, and I have not seen that analysis yet,” Fallon added. “There are cheaper ways to enhance traffic and transit throughout Arlington County.”

School Board member Libby Garvey said that some big ticket items sound good in theory, but must be put in perspective when it comes to other needs.

“I think the streetcar sounds like a great project, I think the [proposed Long Bridge Park] aquatics center sounds like a great project, the Artisphere had really good possibilities — they all sound great,” she said. “Meanwhile, our schools are busting at the seams, our police force has not had an increase in 10 years. There are a lot of issues we are facing, and the news is we cannot do it all — or we cannot do it all right now.”

“We need a strategic plan to pick out what our priorities are and decide what we’re going to do first,” Garvey continued. “So if we put money into an aquatics center but we don’t build a school, we’re saying that the aquatics center is more important than a school. Our budget statements are value statements.”

Kim Klingler, a Democratic activist and a senior manager at a large consulting firm, said she would bring her “private business perspective” to the County Board if elected. Klingler said the Board needs to “prioritize and spend wisely.”

“This may not be the time” for the Long Bridge Park aquatics center, she said, adding a . “That doesn’t mean there isn’t a time, but maybe not today with our capital maintenance and school needs.”

Klingler also expressed skepticism about the Columbia Pike streetcar project, but did not outline any specific action she would take if elected.

Melissa Bondi, who has expressed support for the streetcar, said that the county must be thoughtful in deciding how to invest taxpayer funds.

“All of us need to be very vigilant in looking at how we invest resources so that it will be used well,” she said.

Bondi said Artisphere was a victim of a failed planning process that did not seek enough input from the community or from those with economic and cultural expertise.

“The Artisphere was something that was supposed to reflect our community’s needs,” Bondi said. “What was really difficult to see was a business plan… that was not vetted by the community, that was not vetted by the economic development commission or the arts commission in a meaningful way.”

Fallon also criticized Artisphere’s “incredibly over-optimistic” initial business plan.

“The people weren’t there. It might have worked if you could have dropped the Artisphere in Clarendon,” he said. “They need to hire a non-profit arts group to actually manage the thing.”

Audrey Clement, a Green Party member who’s currently the lone candidate in the race who’s not a Democrat, continued to hammer away at Arlington’s “vanity projects” — as she has done in past races.

“The county has cut social safety net programs by approximately 10-15 percent over the past three years,” Clement noted. “One way we can refund those programs is to stop spending money on vanity projects.”

“Eliminate wasteful funding,” Clement said, mentioning Artisphere, the Long Bridge Park aquatics center and the Columbia Pike streetcar. “The County Board misappropriates taxpayer dollars for extravagances the county doesn’t need.”

Clement was also skeptical of the $10 million price tag of the county’s proposed year-round homeless shelter.

“I definitely want to provide year-round housing to the homeless, but at a reasonable cost,” she said.

Clement did, however, suggest some new spending priorities, including keeping branch libraries open sevens days a week instead of five, repaving local roads, and hiring 4-6 county inspectors to investigate recycling compliance at apartment and office buildings.

Photos by Erin Schwartz Sutherland

Over the past two nights, civic association debates between the six candidates running for County Board have been a remarkably civil affair. The candidates — five Democrats and one Green Party member — touted their records, focused on the issues, politely disagreed with some county policies, and refrained from directly criticizing one another.

Behind the scenes, however, mud is being slung, and it’s being directed at one Democratic candidate in particular: Melissa Bondi.

For the past couple of weeks, Republicans and Democrats alike have been bombarding local media outlets with dirt on Bondi — on and off the record — claiming she failed to register a car in Arlington and she has been late in paying her taxes on multiple occasions.

In an interview with ARLnow.com on Tuesday, Bondi had some answers, but professed surprise at the most serious charge: that she failed to pay the IRS $19,252.23 in taxes accrued between 2005 and 2006, resulting in a federal tax lien being filed in March 2011. (See: document provided to ARLnow.com.)

According to Bondi, she was not notified about the lien at the time and only found out about it this week via a post on a local blog. She said she immediately contacted the IRS and tried to find out why the lien was assessed.

“I learned about when I learned about the blog post, and I was shocked and extremely concerned,” Bondi said. “I believe it’s an error, I believe it’s a mistake. I don’t know what the circumstances are, but I’m anxious to get to the bottom of it as soon as possible.”

Asked if she has, to her knowledge, paid all her federal taxes “in full and on time,” Bondi said yes.

But according to the Arlington County Treasurer’s Office, Bondi has not always paid her local taxes on time. A FOIA request filed by a local resident reveals that Bondi was twice delinquent in paying Arlington personal property taxes on her car. In 2004, Bondi was 14 days late in paying the tax. In 2005, she was 53 days late, and only paid “following a threat of seizure by the Treasurer’s office,” according to Treasurer Frank O’Leary.

O’Leary, who’s supporting the campaign of County Board candidate Terron Sims, did not mince words when sharing his professional opinion of Bondi with the Clarendon Patch.

“She is a scofflaw and tax evader,” O’Leary told the website. “If I sound a little angry about it, I am. She simply ignored us.”

Asked about the past delinquencies, Bondi would only discuss her current county tax situation.

“I believe I am fully paid up with Arlington County with any obligations I have,” Bondi said. “I try to be responsible on my obligations, and I believe I am responsible on my obligations.”

If there were any tax delinquencies, she said, they were not intentional.

The questions surrounding Bondi’s personal property taxes don’t stop there. Critics say Bondi kept a car in Arlington from 2006 to 2008, despite the fact that her car was reported as sold and removed from Arlington’s personal property tax rolls in February 2006.

In fact, Bondi’s own campaign website seemingly supports the critics’ assertion.

“In 2008, Melissa gave up car ownership and now takes full advantage of Arlington’s walkable, transit-oriented neighborhoods,” the “About Melissa” portion of the site says.

In our interview, Bondi confirmed that she drove a car up until 2008 — but asserted that it was her father’s car. Her father, she said, became sick in 2006 and let her use his car for her frequent trips to visit him in Pennsylvania. After her father passed away in 2008, she gave up the car.

The county frequently sends letters to owners of out-of-state cars observed parking in Arlington for an extended period of time, reminding them that “every vehicle garaged in Arlington County must be registered with the Arlington County Commissioner of Revenue.” Since the car was in her father’s name, Bondi said, he would have handled any correspondence with county tax authorities. Bondi said the car’s registration “was the furthest thing from my mind” as she tended to her ailing father.

ARLnow.com was sent a photo of a black Honda, purported to be the car in question, parked in a Courthouse parking garage. The car has an Ohio license plate — Bondi’s father lived in Ohio and Pennsylvania, she said — and had political bumper stickers for County Board member Chris Zimmerman and School Board member Sally Baird.

One final car-related accusation against Bondi concerns two citations issued in 2004. According to court records, however, the two traffic charges against Bondi — driving on a suspended license and an expired Virginia inspection sticker — were ultimately dismissed.

Bondi said she intends to “clear and explain the record” wherever there have been “errors or mistakes.” In the meantime, she says she’ll continue to run on her track record as a “proven community leader” and an “accomplished public policy professional.”

“I am proud of my personal record, I am proud of my professional record, and I am proud of my track record of accomplishment,” she said. “Every voter needs to decide for themselves what are the most relevant or important things that they’re going to look at… I respect that.”

As for what’s driving all the negative attacks from both Republicans and fellow Democrats, Bondi said that she wasn’t quite sure.

“I know that whenever you are going to assert priorities or positions… maybe not everyone is going to like everything you do all the time,” she said.

Off-the-record conversations with several of Bondi’s critics, however, have revealed one possible explanation.

Bondi is strongly endorsed by County Board member Chris Zimmerman. Since Zimmerman also worked to get Walter Tejada elected to the County Board, critics say that Bondi’s election would give Zimmerman a three-person voting block on the five-member Board — a virtual lock on legislative decision-making in the county.

Bondi, though, says she has disagreed with Zimmerman on votes before and will likely disagree again.

“I believe I already am serving as my own voice,” she said.

Democrats will choose their County Board nominee during caucuses on Thursday, Jan. 19 (at Washington-Lee High School) and on Saturday, Jan. 21 (at Kenmore Middle School).

County Board candidate Kim Klingler is taking the phrase “running for office” literally.

Klingler’s campaign has scheduled a series of morning jogs with the candidate. The jogs are open to anyone interested in learning more about Klingler, a trained emergency medical technician and a certified personal trainer.

“Arlingtonians can start their new year off right and join Kim for a morning jog and discussion about how Arlington is doing as a County and how we can improve,” the campaign said in a press release. “This is an opportunity for those on the go to meet Kim, run with a group, and get to know different neighborhoods in Arlington.”

Five runs are scheduled between Jan. 5 and Jan. 16, in advance of the Democratic caucuses on Jan. 19 and 21. The chosen Democratic nominee will compete in a special election on Tuesday, March 27. (See run schedule, after the jump.)

“Runs range in distance from 2 miles to 5 miles, and those of all paces are encouraged to join,” the campaign said. “In addition to these scheduled runs, Kim plans on joining established running groups for a run, time permitting, and also invites area runners to suggest other runs.”

Campaign photo via Facebook. Disclosure: Kim for Arlington is an ARLnow.com advertiser. Advertising on ARLnow.com is open to all political campaigns and does not influence news coverage.

Run schedule, as provided by Kim for Arlington campaign.

• Thursday, January 5th 7:30 am – Ballston to Rosslyn *Meet outside of the Ballston Cosi 4250 Fairfax Drive Arlington, VA 22203*
• Saturday, January 7th 8:00 am – Columbia Pike *Meet outside of Columbia Pike Branch Library 816 S Walter Reed Dr Arlington, VA 22204*
• Wednesday, January 11th 7:00 am – Dominion Hills *Meet outside of Dominion Hills Park 1060 N. Liberty St. Arlington, VA 22205*
• Friday, January 13th 8:00 am – Nauck *Meet at Jeannie Dean Park 3630 27th Street South Arlington, Virginia 22206*
• Monday, January 16th 7:00 am – Donaldson Run *Meet at Marcey Road Park 2722 Marcey Rd. Arlington, VA 22207*

(Updated on 1/3/12) The six announced candidates for County Board will have an opportunity to publicly make their case to fellow Democrats next week.

The Arlington County Democratic Committee has scheduled a candidate forum for Wednesday, Jan. 4. The forum will be held during the ACDC meeting at 7:00 p.m. at the NRECA building in Ballston (4301 Wilson Blvd) George Mason University Law School’s Founders Hall in Virginia Square (3351 Fairfax Dr.).

To date, the candidates who have announced their intention to seek the Democratic nomination for County Board are: Melissa Bondi, Peter Fallon, Libby Garvey, Kim Klingler, Elmer Lowe, and Terron Sims.

The deadline for filing to seek the nomination is 7:00 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 9. Democrats will choose their nominees during caucuses on Thursday, Jan. 19 (at Washington-Lee High School) and on Saturday, Jan. 21 (at Kenmore Middle School).

The County Board special election — to fill the seat being vacated by state Senator-elect Barbara Favola on Dec. 31 — will be held on Tuesday, March 27. So far, no Republicans have announced their intention to run for the seat.

About 200-300 supporters of Republican presidential contender Newt Gingrich packed a large conference room in the Key Bridge Marriott in Rosslyn last night, to hear a brief campaign speech by the former House speaker.

“I have one opponent: Barack Obama,” Gingrich told the enthusiastic crowd.

But with a dozen television cameras rolling and with members of the national press corps typing notes into their laptops, Gingrich focused his sharpest words on GOP rival Mitt Romney. Specifically, Gingrich bristled at the negative ads Romney and others have been running against him in Iowa.

“If they don’t have anything positive to get elected on, they shouldn’t be running,” Gingrich said, later suggesting that Romney is in danger of being branded “just another normal national politician with clever consultants and a lot of money but no willingness to tell the truth.”

(Video of the speech is available via the Democratic blog Blue Virginia.)

Before and after the speech, campaign volunteers collected signatures to get Gingrich, a McLean resident since 2000, on the ballot in Virginia. Gingrich’s campaign needs to turn in 10,000 valid voter signatures today to get on the ballot for the Commonwealth’s primary, which is held on Super Tuesday (March 6).

Despite a busy campaign schedule, Gingrich and his wife took time to pose for photos with dozens of supporters after the speech. Gingrich’s campaign headquarters is located in Ballston.

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich will be appearing at a rally in Arlington Wednesday night.

Gingrich’s campaign has scheduled a rally from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. on Wednesday at the Key Bridge Marriott (1401 Lee Highway) in Rosslyn, according to an email published by Politico. The rally is apparently part of an effort to make sure Gingrich collects enough signatures to appear on the ballot in Virginia.

This is not Gingrich’s first appearance in Arlington as a presidential candidate. The former House speaker was in Arlington this summer for the grand opening of his campaign headquarters, which is located on Fairfax Drive in Ballston.

Photo by Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia

The special election for Arlington County Board will take place on March 27, 2012, according to a court order issued today.

The election is being held to fill the seat vacated by Barbara Favola, who defeated Caren Merrick in the race for Virginia Senate last month. The date could not be set until Favola formally resigned from the County Board.

Arlington County Registrar Linda Lindberg said the County Electoral Board will meet on Wednesday to determine candidate filing deadlines for the special election. Candidates could not officially file to run until the special election date was released. Until now, they were required file as if they were running in the November 2012 election, and then amend the request once the special election date was official. So far, there are six Democrats who have expressed intent to run, but no Republicans.

Whoever claims victory in the special election still must run again for the seat in November.