All three Democratic candidates for County Board say they support at least some district-based representation on the governing body.
While the five seats on the Board are all currently at-large, some advocates have called for creating voting districts as part of potential future governance changes. Current County Board Chair Matt de Ferranti and challengers James DeVita and Julie Farnam endorse the concept, at least to some extent.
“That’s a wonderful idea,” DeVita said at a candidate forum sponsored by the Arlington County Democratic Committee on Wednesday.
DeVita supports a proposal to move from five to seven Board members and to make at least some of them district-based.
“It’s important to have representatives of the people,” and districts would accomplish that, he said at the forum.
De Ferranti told Democrats he supports expanding the Board and having its chair be a separate elected position. As for districts, he said there are “some merits” to the idea but that he supports a hybrid arrangement, with the majority of seats remaining at-large.
Farnam said she also supports a hybrid arrangement. Instead of an elected County Board chair, Farnam said Arlington should have an elected county manager. “I don’t think our County Board does a very good job” in supervising the work of its appointed manager, Mark Schwartz, she said.
Board members in July are expected to tap a community task force that will consider possible changes to the governance structure in place across Arlington for more than 90 years.
“We as a community need to have a conversation,” said de Ferranti.
Critics have contended the current Board has purposely delayed moving forward on consideration of governance changes that emanated from the Arlington County Civic Federation.
At the June 3 forum, de Ferranti said the decision last December to postpone creation of a task force was designed to get the county government past budget season.
General Assembly approval would be required to allow the county to make substantive changes.
Farnam, making her second bid for the Democratic nomination, criticized allowing incumbent County Board members to make a final decision on governance changes.
“Let the voters decide. It should be the people’s decision,” she said.
DeVita, too, has sought office before. He competed for the Democratic County Board nomination in 2024 and 2023 and unsuccessfully challenged Sen. Barbara Favola (D-40) in a 2023 Democratic primary.
Any change to the county’s governance structure would come nearly a century after the last significant revision.
From the Reconstruction era of the 1870s to 1932, Arlington was governed by a three-member Board of Supervisors elected in districts that spanned the northern, central and southern areas of the county.
Unlike today’s all-at-large County Board members, who have oversight of the county manager but minimal roles in day-to-day governance, county supervisors during that period exercised legislative, executive and sometimes even quasi-judicial powers.
The Democratic County Board race is one of three elections on the Aug. 4 primary ballot in Arlington. It will be conducted under ranked-choice rules.
Also on Aug. 4, Democrats will select a nominee in the 8th Congressional District, while Republicans will choose a U.S. Senate candidate. Those races will be conducted under plurality “winner-take-all” voting.
Voters can cast ballots in either the Democratic or Republican primaries, but not both.
The Arlington County Democratic Committee will conduct a straw poll in the races at its summer picnic, slated for July 11 at Bon Air Park.
