1st challenger surfaces in coming race for City Council

The first challenger has emerged in the race for the Charlottesville City Council.

Kristin Szakos confirmed Monday that she has decided to seek the local Democratic nomination in hopes of filling one of two seats on the City Council up for election in November.

Szakos, who did not yet want to elaborate on her decision to run, will formally announce her candidacy at noon Saturday on the Downtown Mall in front of City Hall.

A community organizer, Szakos most recently served as volunteer coordinator for President Barack Obama’s local campaign and was the statewide coordinator for the National Day of Service held last month. A Charlottesville resident for 15 years, she has also worked for several area nonprofits and co-written two books on community organizing.

Her husband, Joe, is the executive director of the Virginia Organizing Project.

On her campaign blog, Szakos wrote the following on Monday on her decision to run: “I feel that this is the perfect time for me to start giving back to the community that has done so much for my family. I also recognize that there are many families for whom our city could be doing more. We need to talk about why there are still such great gaps in opportunity and education in Charlottesville — and work hard to close them.”

She continued to write that fiscal and inequality challenges will manifest over the next few years, demanding elected officials who are creative and flexible in crafting solutions to the city’s problems.

Council incumbents Dave Norris, the mayor, and Julian Taliaferro are up for re-election this fall. Neither Democrat has announced his plans, but both said they would declare their intentions next month.

Norris said he was pleased to hear that Szakos is planning to enter the race.

“I think elections should be competitive and I don’t think elections should be coronations,” he said.

The local Democratic Party may also make changes to its nomination process, which will be held in the spring. Jennifer McKeever, co-chairwoman of the Charlottesville Democrats, said there are two alternatives that could replace the mass meeting typically held to determine the party’s nominees — a firehouse primary, where voters could, at their convenience, drop by a central location on one day to vote for their Democratic nominee; or a modified mass meeting with an instant runoff, in which party voters would rank their favorites on the ballot.

McKeever said the mass meetings for the 2006 and 2007 local elections went very smoothly, but they can be a very lengthy process involving multiple ballots and hours of tabulating.

“The previous mass meetings have taken a long time,” said McKeever, a lawyer who ran for the City Council in 2007.

The party’s executive committee will make a decision about the upcoming primary process at a meeting Thursday.

“I think it’s really up to the committee and up in the air right now,” McKeever said. “We have a lot of passions on both sides of the issue.”