By Brian Trompeter
A delegate from the Newport News area has done what Vienna Town Council members sought in their 2024 legislative agenda: introduced legislation that would move municipal elections from November back to May, if localities requested it.
Republican W. Chad Green’s bill would allow cities or towns, by a majority vote of their council members, to choose to hold their municipal elections on the first Tuesday of May, starting in 2025. Newly elected members’ terms would begin July 1. If councils chose to hold May elections, the bill stipulates that members’ terms would be extended by six months to allow for the transition.
The General Assembly in 2021 passed legislation, signed by then-Gov. Ralph Northam (D), that switched municipal elections from May to the general election in November, starting in 2022.
Proponents touted the measure as a way to save money and increase voter turnout. But Vienna officials opposed the idea, preferring to keep their nonpartisan town elections separate from the partisan scrums in November and increase the likelihood that the voters who showed up would have at least minimal familiarity with candidates on the ballot.
The May contests allowed the town to hold staggered elections, with three candidates on the ballot each year and the mayor’s seat up for grabs in even-numbered years. This ensured at least some Council members every year would have experience and that voters couldn’t toss out the whole lot at once. Newly elected members formerly assumed office July 1.
The Town Council has pressed unsuccessfully since the 2021 bill’s passage for a return to May elections. Acquiescing to reality, Council members canceled the town’s 2022 election and extended members terms so all seven seats, including the mayor’s, could be on the ballot last November. Those members’ two-year terms began Jan. 1.
The Council deemed reverting elections back to May so important that it moved the request higher in priority for this year’s legislative agenda. But neither General Assembly member representing the town, Del. Holly Seibold and state Sen. Saddam Salim (both D-Vienna-Tysons), filed bills to do so.
Mayor Linda Colbert issued a statement on behalf of the Council.
“In December 2023, the Vienna Town Council ranked the request to amend the Virginia State Code to permit localities to have May local elections fourth on our 2024 legislative agenda,” the statement read. “The mayor and another Council member met with both Del. Seibold and Sen. Salim and discussed all of the Council’s 19 priorities.”
But that apparently didn’t sway the legislators.
According to a statement from Salim’s office, the state senator “values inclusive elections that yield high voter turnout, and elections that are held in months other than November have been shown to decrease voter turnout.”
Seibold has been in office for one year, having won a special election in January 2023 to fill the unexpired term of former Del. Mark Keam (D-Oakton-Vienna), who resigned to take a job in the Biden administration. Voters in November re-elected Seibold, who was unopposed, to a full two-year term.
Salim defeated incumbent state Sen. Chap Petersen (D-Fairfax-Vienna) in the Democratic primary last June, then won a four-year term in November by beating Republican candidate Ken Reid. Salim took office in January.
While Salim and Seibold did not file bills on the municipal-elections matter for Vienna, they have introduced identical legislation on the town’s behalf regarding tree-canopy preservation.
