A few items of note from the 5-way, 47th House of Delegates district race between Miles Grant, Adam Parkhomenko, Alan Howze, Patrick Hope and Andres Tobar.*The first candidates debate will be held this Thursday, April 2, at the Barcroft School and Civic League Meeting. According to the groundrules, each candidate will have up to 2 minutes to make an opening statement. "Following the opening statements, questions will come from the audience with BSCL dues-paying members allowed to go first." I presume all the candidates will be at this debate, which is the first of several in the race to succeed retiring Del. Al Eisenberg.
*Looking at the candidates' voting records since 2003 (from the VAN), a few things jump out at me. First, Andres Tobar "does not show up in the 47th district voter file." Second, all the other candidates except for Alan Howze voted in the 2006 Webb-Miller primary. Third, none of the candidates listed in the voter file are shown having voted in a Republican primary since 2003. Finally, Adam Parkhomenko has voted in the most Democratic primaries (7) since 2003. Patrick Hope has voted in 6 Democratic primaries, Miles Grant and Alan Howze in 3 each.
*Alan Howze's website header is a bit odd, as he's got two pictures from outside the 47th House of Delegates district, where he's running. One photo is of the Air Force Memorial, located in the 48th district [correction: the Memorial apparently is just over the line into the 48th; my bad!]. Another photo appears to be a ride-on bus from Montgomery County, Maryland - not exactly in Virginia's 48th district. (note: I emailed to the campaign a couple of days ago to alert them to this, but they haven't responded or changed the website header)
*To date, I have received responses to my questionnaire from Adam Parkhomenko, Miles Grant and Patrick Hope. I have not received responses from Andres Tobar or Alan Howze.
*Adam Parkhomenko picked up endorsements from the Arlington Professional Firefighters and Paramedics Association and the SEIU/NAGE Local R3-05. I'm also hearing that another union in Arlington County is set to endorse Parkhomenko this week.
UPDATE: I was just informed that Andres Tobar was endorsed by current and former members of the Arlington School Board, Libby Garvey and Frank Wilson.
UPDATE #2: Josh Reubner, who has run twice for the Arlington County Board as a Green Party candidate, is rumored to be thinking about running this year for House of Delegates in the 47th. Reubner would have until June 9 at 7 PM to file as a Green or as an independent, but the deadline for filing to run in the Democratic primary is April 10 at 5 PM).
UPDATE #3: Following this story, Alan Howze's campaign changed the Montgomery County, MD Ride-On bus image on its website to one of an Arlington "ART" bus.
