Posted: Wednesday, November 9, 2011 12:15 pm
by SCOTT McCAFFREY, Staff Writer | 3 comments
Voters sent what could be construed as a mixed message to the Arlington Green Party on Nov. 8.
The party’s County Board candidate, Audrey Clement, picked up 9,724 votes based on unofficial counts reported Nov. 9 by the State Board of Elections. That compares to 24,447 votes for Democratic County Board Vice Chairman Mary Hynes and 23,587 votes for Democratic board member Walter Tejada.
Clement’s vote total equates to 16.5 percent of all votes cast, but since each voter had two votes to spread out among candidates, Clement picked up votes from almost one-third of those who went to the polls.
Fortunes of Green Party candidates for County Board have tended to be tied to whether the Arlington County Republican Committee fields a candidate:
* Last year, with Democratic incumbent Chris Zimmerman and Republican challenger Mark Kelly on the ballot, Green Party candidate Kevin Chisholm scored 3,454 votes, or 6 percent of the total.
* In 2009, when there was no Republican on the ballot, the Green Party’s John Reeder scored 32 percent of the votes (14,970 votes) against Democratic incumbent Jay Fisette.
* In the presidential year of 2008, Reed scored 21,451 votes, or 23.3 percent, against Democrat Barbara Favola. No Republicans were in the race.
* In 2007, the last “constitutional” election year, Green Party candidate Josh Ruebner won 3,275 votes in a five-way contest that also featured Democrats Hynes and Tejada and Republicans Mike McMenamin and Joseph Warren.
In appearances on the campaign trail this year – often accompanied by political gadfly Jim Hurysz – Clement attempted to make the case that the all-Democratic County Board was too beholden to developers and too interested in funding luxury pet projects over basic services.