There is a Council election in May but there are 3 people running for 3 jobs so it isn’t drawing much in the way of excitement.  There is a contested School Board race with 6 contenders for 3 slots so you see lots of signs and door knocking going on in that race.  There was also a forum last night for the school board contenders but I couldn’t make it due to a Council meeting on the budget being held at the same time.

A race that is over the horizon that *is* drawing a lot of buzz amongst local politicos is the next round of State level races.  There is much speculation that Senator Colgan is going to retire (and the race for his seat has already begun in some circles) at the end of this term.  The reason that this is generating interest is the potential pin action here.  If Delagate Miller were to run for Senator Colgan’s seat, his seat would become vacant – they’re up at the same time so he can’t run for both.  This leaves a Delegate seat available and if a Manassas City Council member whose name is not Andy Harrover or the Mayor wanted to run for the delegate seat, you could have an open Council or Mayor slot.  I’m a City politician but the majority of the good Senator’s district lies outside of Manassas so you could also have a County Supervisor interested in that seat which could generate some pin action there.

Stuff like that is what local politicos live for!!

Further complicating this is redistricting.  Redistricting attempts to even out the number of people in each district but is also routinely used to redraw districts into “safe” territory to protect an incumbent in which event it is also called “gerrymandering”.  This goes on all over the country and is an abuse but I don’t see any way to really get around it short of having the courts involved in every redistricting plan.  Nevertheless, if redistricting goes as it should, the districts will be redrawn early next year, primaries held and then a fall election. 

However, if that doesn’t go smoothly and the politicos in Richmond can’t agree (which seems like a lock) then it gets way more complicatd.  Fortunately, I found an article in the Washingtonian that does a really good job of laying out what’s happened in the past and why it might happen again.