Arlington Sun Gazette, August 14, 2006
http://www.sungazette.net/articles/2006/08/14/arlington/news/nws889a.txt
Green Party Candidate Rips C. Board from Left
by SCOTT McCAFFREY, Staff Writer
County Board members may talk about preserving affordable housing and Arlington’s inclusive, diverse community, but their actions are resulting in the destruction of both.
That’s the conclusion of Josh Ruebner, and it has propelled him onto the ballot as the Green Party’s nominee for the board seat currently held by Democrat Chris Zimmerman.
“I love Arlington, and I’m really upset with what’s happening,” Ruebner said in an Aug. 12 interview. “Arlington is headed to being a lily-white, upper-income community in another five years.”
Ruebner, a nine-year resident of Arlington who is secretary of the Carrington Village homeowners’ association off Columbia Pike, said his decision to challenge Zimmerman came during the debate over the future of Buckingham Village. In the end, he said, the County Board sold out Buckingham residents to developers.
“Here’s my problem with what the county did,” Ruebner said. “They portrayed it as a big victory, even though the end result was a net loss of about 150 affordable units. It’s the forced expulsion of people from their homes – what it really is, is ethnic cleansing.”
Ruebner will be in a three-candidate race, running against Zimmerman and Republican Mike McMenamin. In a county that largely has written off the Republicans in general elections, Ruebner’s left-of-Zimmerman attack could present the most viable challenge in the general election.
But the odds are long: Democrats have hundreds of volunteers and plenty of cash. The Green Party is counting on a core of 40 to 50 volunteers, and didn’t have enough campaign funds to pay for a table at the Arlington County Fair.
But their candidate says his effort is for real.
“I’m definitely in this to win it,” Ruebner said. “The Democratic Party deserves to be challenged, on the left and on the right.”
Ruebner is grass-roots advocacy coordinator for the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, a “coalition of more than 200 organizations working to change US policy toward Israel/Palestine to support human rights and international law,” according to the campaign Web site.
While the Buckingham redevelopment plan appears likely to go forward over the objection of housing advocates, Ruebner is equally vexed by proposals in the pipeline for the revitalization of Columbia Pike in South Arlington, and blames the county government and developers for working together to push through an outsized, unfriendly redevelopment effort.
“It’s absolutely crazy,” he said. “They’re trying to redevelop Columbia Pike into another Orange Line corridor – more gentrification, more traffic congestion.”
Make no mistake: Ruebner is to the left of the ever-more-leftward-tilting County Board. He would sponsor a board resolution calling for the immediate pull-out of U.S. troops from Iraq. He wants to prohibit county contracts from going to firms that are responsible for “human rights abuses.”
The challenger says his campaign is nothing personal against Zimmerman (“I think he’s a great guy,” Ruebner said, although he doesn’t know him well). It’s just that the County Board is stuck in a “group-think” mentality, he said.
Ruebner promises “as aggressive a campaign as possible” once the political season starts in early September.
But he has a way to go before then. In the interview, Ruebner said he hadn’t decided whether to support the proposed fall bond referendums. And he was still a little hazy on how to attack Northern Virginia’s transportation problems.
On other issues, though, Ruebner did have opinions:
* He wants to consider scrapping the county-schools revenue-sharing plan in an effort to curb excessive school spending.
* He opposes widening Interstate 66 inside the Beltway.
* He wants to provide greater rebates to homeowners of low and moderate incomes.
* He wants the local delegation to the General Assembly to push for repeal of the Dillon Rule, which extensively restricts the powers of local government in Virginia.
* He supports public funding of political campaigns and limits on individual contributions to campaigns.
* He supports the extension of Metro to Tysons Corner and Dulles.
* He opposes the proposed $120 million trolley line down Columbia Pike.
If elected, “I would serve as a voice of conscience, to push the established parties further along,” Ruebner said. “It’s not really democracy when you have just one candidate.”
Ruebner’s campaign Web site is www.voteruebner.com.