when you're the underdog party, a special election is your best chance to win.  Its a lot easier to get your specific voters out and affect the percentages.

Congrats to Justin!

Justin lost some support in the west end of alexandria by being honest, and not kowtowing to the  folks who want no connector, and va paving to go away.

Also,  he was a litle unknown to a lot of folks, and cleveland is the only republican who has won in alexandria in the past 40 years

but I don't remember that issue.  What's the controversy about exactly?

I'm the model of an independent voter. I hate one one party rule. If for nothing else,if someone from another party is elected, it makes the ruling party justify itself. In Alexandria, the Dems rule! therefore they should have some opposition. Therefore I'd like a member of the GOP on the city council. Besides which, Cleveland is hardly a Bush-Bot, he'd be a RINO anywhere else.

Could the district have been in the least Democratic part of Alexandria? The other thing is that this was a very local race. And taking what Del. Amudson stated in her interview on Sunday night to heart, she said that these local races hinge on personality. She says that people sometimes think "I don't like Republicans normally, but I do like Vince Callahan". At the very local level these races are more about personality than partisan affiliation. I could be totally wrong, though.

the entire city of Alexandria, not one district.

va pavng plant on van dorn, just n of the beltway.... it has bad pollution and lots of dust.

The connector issue that wont die, like frankenstein, connecting  the beltway at eisenhoer, slashing thru ben brenman park and dumping the traffic at 5000 duke st.

I am on record as really opposing this, but as eisenhower gets more development, the issue wont go away

n/t

If the development is coming on Eisenhower (smart growth means building up around metro stations) why is building a short connector on Duke Street a bad idea?  I think it will take traffic off of Duke Street as well in the evening, heading to the Beltway.  Right now it all funnels down to Telegraph Road causing massive gridlock in and around Old Town, and some gargantuan delays on Duke Street when the Woodrow Wilson backs up.

It's an earnest question however, as I don't know anything about the park or area where it's actually supposed to be constructed.

But, in general, I'm strongly against slicing roads through green space or neighborhoods, whether it's in Alexandria or in Maryland (the "Intercounty Connector").  First, I'd look at all other options, including transit.

Bill Cleveland has very high name recognition in Alexandria having served in city council and more recently for having run (and lost) for sheriff.  He also did not tell voters that he was the Republican candidate, and expressly less all party identification off of his campaign materials.  This was probably a good idea and likely got him more votes from people thinking his was truly an independent.

By contract to Cleveland's name recognition, Justin has only lived in the city since 2001, and is 28 years old.

Despite these two points, while working at the polls yesterday I ran into one guy who changed his vote at the last minute after feeling that the Cleveland campaign was taking a victory for granted by not staffing the polls. 

Though I am proud that we have preserved our all-Democratic city council, Justin will certainly infuse a productive amount of energy and new ideas into council.

Way to go Justin and Alexandria Dems!

Someone or two folks said they were changing from cleveland to wilson when they found out the developers were funding cleveland.  Ben Brennam  park is the east end of cameron station, where the lake is, that is the site of the comcast film festival.