Ongoing challenges for political candidates and elected officials of color were the topic of a recent discussion with several local leaders.
Representatives of minority groups who make it onto the ballot and into office too often are looked on as “representational symbols,” said Christian Dorsey, a former two-term Arlington County Board member.
“We’re not always seen for the individual we are, [but for] the color we represent,” he said at an Advance Arlington panel discussion last week.
Having a small but noticeable amount of diversity among elected officials seems to be acceptable to those in the local political power structure, Dorsey argued. He said that complicates the efforts of others in the Black and Latino communities to move into such positions.
“It shouldn’t be that a person of color should have to wait for another person of color to vacate” in order to get a political post, said Dorsey, who won elections in 2015 and 2019.
Dorsey was joined in the online forum by former Arlington School Board member Emma Violand-Sánchez and current Alexandria City Council member Canek Aguirre. The program was moderated by former County Board member Walter Tejada.
Violand-Sánchez, who won victories in 2008 and 2012 after a career as an Arlington educator, said having diverse representation provides an opportunity to look at issues through different lenses.
“We need strong voices to work through the system,” she said.
Aguirre, who in 2018 was elected to his first three-year term on the Alexandria council, said that those of color need to understand the nuances of the political process, and apply them appropriately.
“There’s a time to use a chisel and there’s a time to use a sledgehammer,” he said.
Several participants discussed those who served as mentors in their journey to political office. For both Tejada and Violand-Sánchez, the name of James Hunter III came up.
Hunter, a native Arlingtonian who served on the County Board until shortly before his death in 1998, was a champion of diversity before it was fashionable, they suggested.
“He found ways to get me involved, explained how things worked,” said Tejada, whose civic-engagement journey began in the 1990s as an advocate for workers’ and tenants’ rights in Northern Virginia.
Dorsey pointed to a number of Black elected officials as mentors, including former County Board member William Newman Jr., the late County Board member Charles Monroe and the late School Board member Frank Wilson.
Their counsel “helped prepare me for the slings and arrows … the sideways glances,” that came with being a non-white elected official, Dorsey said.
Tejada, Violand-Sanchez and Dorsey all came up the political ladder via the Arlington County Democratic Committee, which several said could be something of an insular group indisposed to encouraging outsiders.
“I almost felt like I was a fly in a glass of milk,” Violand-Sánchez said of attending Democratic meetings.
If the environment was perhaps not always welcoming at the local level, it could be downright unsettling when local officials represented Arlington at events elsewhere in the commonwealth.
Tejada related a story of a gathering of Virginia elected officials, held downstate, where several participants seemed incredulous that Virginia had a Latino chairing a county government.
“I didn’t let it bother me — I used it as motivation,” said Tejada, who came to office via a 2003 special election resulting from the death in office of Monroe. He served until 2015.
In his remarks, Tejada said efforts must be made to encourage a wider pool of prospective candidates.
“There’s a saying: If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu,” he said.
The hour-long forum was designed to highlight an issue “rarely if ever authentically discussed,” said Devanshi Patel, who developed the program in collaboration with Krysta Jones.
It was part of a broader effort by Advance Arlington (formerly the Arlington Committee of 100) to provide “fresh ideas and engaging discussions” through “neutral, informative programming,” Patel said.
