Democrat Libby Garvey is so confident of winning a second full term on the Arlington County Board that she hasn’t updated her campaign website since June and didn’t raise any money in September.
Garvey made a name for herself when she joined the board by denouncing the proposed Columbia Pike streetcar project and other major spending, endorsing a board candidate who wasn’t a Democrat and regularly ending up on the short end of 4-to-1 votes.
This year, however, the 65-year-old lawmaker has settled into a less confrontational rhythm. Only one of her original board colleagues remains in office, the streetcar project is dead, and Garvey has rotated into a one-year term as board chairman. The board’s workshop meetings are now webcast, a result of her push for greater public access. And she says county lawmakers are working better together than ever before, with little evidence of the acrimony of 2012, 2013 and 2014.
“When I came on the board, you had a group of people who had been together for a really long time,” Garvey said. “I asked a lot of questions and it upset their way of doing things . . . I think I was the beginning of a transition.”
During an interview in her paper-stuffed corner office, at 2100 Clarendon Blvd., Garvey said she has no plans to propose big initiatives if she is reelected next month.
Instead, she suggested that modest improvements are all that’s needed for this wealthy, urbanizing suburb to continue “realizing its potential.”
That includes ensuring schools have enough money and space for the booming enrollment; improving bus routes and monitoring state-mandated changes to traffic on Interstates 66 and 395; allowing single-family homeowners to rent out part of their homes to generate extra income; and prioritizing the county’s many strategic plans.
“The job of the board is to manage change,” she said. “You can’t stop change, you can only manage it, and if we work well with developers, this county will be in a good place.”
Clement, 67, has focused her campaign on the pace of “hyper-development,” its effects on schools and affordable housing, and what she describes as a too-close relationship between developers and county officials.
Critics say that closeness led to a complex and controversial fight recently over the future of the old Wilson School site, an adjoining park and fire station, and an agreement with developer Penzance that allows it to build part of a new residential complex on county-owned land.
A school will also be built on the site, while the agreement means that the fire station will be temporarily relocated and the densely developed neighborhood will lose scarce park and recreation space.
“We were trying to do too much on that site,” Garvey said. “When you’re dealing with all the issues we have, it’s going to be bumpy.”
Garvey, a part-time property manager, followed a well-worn path to office, serving 15 years on the county School Board before running for a County Board seat left vacant when Barbara Favola (D) was elected to the state Senate.
She beat out four other Democrats in a party caucus in 2012, then won a special election that March, defeating Clement and Republican Mark Kelly. The following November, she was elected to a full term.
Garvey defeated Democrat Erik Gutshall in a primary contest in June, the first time in 14 years that a County Board incumbent had been challenged in a party primary. Although much of the Democratic establishment endorsed Gutshall in that race, Garvey captured 55 percent of the vote.
She has raised $99,000 this year, mostly for the primary, and remains far ahead of Clement in the contribution-and-spending race. Clement, who reported $9,962 as of Sept. 30, was the largest donor to her own campaign.
Clement, 67, is a programmer-analyst with federal contractors who commutes to work via Metro and bicycle.
At a recent civic association forum, she expressed skepticism of the still-theoretical construction of a Georgetown-Rosslyn gondola and pushed for tax cuts for residents and businesses to stop what she described as "the exodus of federal agencies" from Arlington.
She said the county should create a housing authority, a suggestion that has twice failed countywide votes but that she says would allow the use of eminent domain to stop the sale and destruction of privately owned affordable housing.
Her best showing in a County Board race was in 2013, when she won 17,916 votes, or 31 percent, against incumbent Jay Fisette. She lost a 2014 School Board race to Barbara J. Kanninen, 36,756 to 18,429.
Clement said her goal is to challenge "a corrupt one-party system . . . This can only result, in my opinion, in tyranny." She accused Garvey of being overconfident, pointing to the incumbent's recent suggestion that the County Board consider raising — and possibly doubling — board members' pay.
“In a competitive district, any reasonable or rational politician would have waited until after the election,” Clement said. “If you measure my candidacy by my ability to raise money, I’m not competitive. If you measure it by my ability to raise issues, I am serving an important function.”
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