A man who attacked frequent County Board candidate Audrey Clement while she was gathering signatures outside a library has been sentenced to 100 days of active jail time.
Jonathan Rogers, 47, was sentenced to just shy of two years, with all but 100 days suspended, for the March 7 attack in which he struck Clement in the back of the head and hit another man in the eye, according to sentencing documents. He must also pay $16,050 in restitution for the violent, and apparently unprovoked, struggle outside Central Library.
At a hearing last Thursday, Rogers was ordered to stay away from the victims and Arlington Public Libraries after he pleaded guilty to two counts of assault and battery.
Clement previously told ARLnow that she and an associate were preparing to wrap up the day’s signature collection drive on March 7 when a man became enraged after she asked him whether he’d like to sign her clipboard.
“I said, ‘Have I asked you for your signature already?’ And he then came towards me and took a swing at me,” Clement said last month. “It was very quick. It was like you could see from the look in his eye that he was triggered.”
Clement said she turned around to absorb the blow and was struck in the head. She was dazed as a bystander, a man in his 40s named Joel, saw the attack and confronted Rogers.
“Hey, you don’t hit a woman!” the bystander shouted, according to an officer’s report.
The two men dropped to the ground, fighting, when Clement’s associate, David Wingard, stepped in and placed the attacker in a chokehold, Clement said. A library worker named James also came outside and helped Wingard hold the man down until police arrived.
Clement said that Rogers seemed to be “in a psychotic state” and was removed from the scene on a stretcher with restraints.
Clement, who has run for local office well over a dozen times since 2011, is an independent who in recent years has run largely on a platform opposing “Missing Middle” housing policy and what she views as excessive county spending. She received 17% of the vote in the November 2025 County Board race, her best showing in recent cycles.
She is running this year against County Board Chair Matt de Ferranti, who will face fellow Democrats Julie Farnam and James DeVita in the June primary.
