'People Are Fed Up': Candidates Hear From Voters At Fairfax City Polls
FAIRFAX CITY, VA — Candidates running for office in the City of Fairfax entered the final stretch of their months-long campaign on Tuesday, with many making a final appeal to voters at polling sites around the city.
By noon on Tuesday, 2,599 people — about 14.87 percent of the city’s active, registered voters — had cast in-person ballots at one of the city’s six precincts, according to Wannicha Rojanapradith, the city’s general registrar and director of elections.
Rojanapradith told Patch that as of 5 p.m. on Saturday, 8,289 of the city’s 18,897 active, registered voters had cast ballots either by mail or in-person during the early voting period. Adding that to the 2,599 people who cast in-person ballots in the city on Tuesday morning, 9,345 people have voted in the 2024 election so far. That’s about 62.71 percent of the city’s active registered voters.
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Related: 6K+ Ballots Already Cast In Fairfax City: See Latest Data
Fairfax City Council candidate Stacy Hall arrived at Precinct 6 located at Christ Lutheran Church on Meredith Drive around 5:30 a.m. Tuesday to greet voters when the polls opened at 6 a.m. As a resident of the Cobbdale community, the Christ Lutheran polls are Hall’s home precinct.
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“I had a chance to talk to many voters,” she told Patch around midday. “I think they love seeing their own candidate here in their own precinct. I’ve been able to start conversations. They recognize me. I recognize them. We all have a commonality here.”
During the campaign, Hall said she has spoken to many voters whose concerns about the city could be summed up into a single sentiment.
“People are fed up,” she said. “From the people I’ve spoken to and not right, taking credit for other people that are not feeling this way. People are tired of what’s going on. I think they want to feel like they matter. They want to feel that they are important and that they’re heard, and that even if you know the vote or the decision doesn’t go their way, that they can at least say, ‘You know what? We came. We’re at the table together. We had conversations and now we understand why it’s not going that way.’”
Mayoral candidate Susan Kuiler was also at Precinct 6 and shared some of the things voters have shared with her.
“I’ve had people mention overdevelopment,” she said. “I’ve had people talk about crime. Some have talked about homelessness, and I’m not equating homelessness and crime.”
Jon Stehle, a current member of the city council who decided not to seek reelection this year, was at Precinct 6 answering voters’ questions and handing out sample ballots for the City of Fairfax Democratic Committee. This is the second time that group has endorsed candidates running in city races.
Traditionally, city elections have been nonpartisan and independent, but that changed in 2022 when the Fairfax City Democratic Committee endorsed a slate of candidates running for mayor and city council for the first time and handed out sample ballots at the polls.
“Any time you have a November election, when there’s a top of the ticket, it makes sense to have people have conversations about how they align with the candidates at the top,” Stehle said. “That’s exactly appropriate. It is non-partisan by definition, right? That is the way it works. There is no ‘R’ or ‘D’ on the ballot and that’s good.”
All candidates running for local office appear as independent on the official ballot because the City Charter and the Code of Virginia do not specifically bar endorsement by a political party.
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