Republican Pat Herrity doesn’t have to worry — as so many hopefuls for Fairfax County’s Board of Supervisors do — about name recognition.
His father, the late former board Chairman Jack Herrity, was one of the most powerful politicians in the county’s recent history. His name graces not only a major county government building, but one of it’s longest and busiest highways.
His opponent, Democrat Mike McClanahan, has struggled to raise money in an uphill race for the Springfield District seat. And despite a shifting political tide in Northern Virginia toward the Democratic Party, McClanahan enters the final days of the campaign as the underdog.
Both men are vying to replace outgoing Springfield supervisor Elaine McConnell, who has served in the spot since 1983.
The Democrat warns that a Herrity win would return the board to the “divisiveness on the past” and would spark a clash with the chairman, Gerry Connolly. Connolly is widely credited with the supervisors’ shift to near-constant unanimity.
“I think Pat looks at this seat as an opportunity to have an ideological platform to throw rocks at other members of the board,” McClanahan said.
Undoubtedly, Herrity is politically out-of-synch with the rest of the Fairfax board. At a Friday debate with his opponent on News Channel 8, he accused the supervisors of “sticking their heads in the sand” on illegal immigration. He went on to say they “must hold developers accountable,” which was a clear knock at a board so often accused of allowing campaign contributions to cloud their judgment on major development projects.
McClanahan, in an interview with The Examiner earlier that day, pointed to his opponent’s campaign contributions from developers as evidence of hypocrisy. Herrity has taken about $28,000 from real estate and construction firms, according to the Virginia Public Access Project, which tracks campaign finance. He recently took $10,000 from Jon Peterson of Peterson Companies, a prolific local developer.
McClanahan has accepted $1,700 from real estate and construction firms, according to an Examiner review of the records.
Herrity could not be reached for comment on Friday.
