By Samantha Yates
Lexington City Council candidates will be in a tight race Tuesday as two incumbents and two challengers campaign for three seats.
The terms of three current City Council Members—Mary Harvey-Halseth, George Pryde and Chuck Smith—end Dec. 31. Harvey-Halseth and Smith are running for reelection with new candidates David Sigler and Patrick Rhamey. Pryde has decided not to run again.
Both incumbent candidates are finishing their first four-year term on council, and both said they feel pretty confident about being re-elected.
“I think people know me…. I’ve been involved in local government for 22 years,” Harvey-Halseth said. “It’s not that I’m not worried… but as long as I keep plugging at what my job is—to represent the people—I think they’ll re-elect me.”
Before she was elected to City Council, Harvey-Halseth served on the planning commission, the board of zoning appeals and the Rockbridge Area Youth Task Force, among other posts.
Smith is also happy to run on his record. “I think as long as things are running satisfactorily, incumbents have maybe a leg up on the challengers,” he said.
Sigler, a Washington and Lee University graduate who now works in the VMI athletic department, said he feels extra pressure as one of the new guys.
“Name recognition is pretty important, and people in Lexington want to know who they’re voting for,” Sigler said. “So I’m at a disadvantage in that my signs haven’t been up previously … I think I’m definitely an underdog, but that’s okay. Everyone starts sometime.”
Rhamey, a political science international studies professor at VMI, said the incumbents have a slight advantage because people know who they are and because they are familiar with the system.
“They can give more detailed responses to questions because they were in the room when the decision was made,” Rhamey said. “And that can make them sound more knowledgeable about an issue if they know the minutiae.”
All four candidates have been putting up signs, knocking on doors, talking to people on the streets and attending candidate forums.
![Lexington Residents show their support for all four City Council candidates. Only three will secure seats on Election Night. Photo by Samantha Yates](https://rockbridgereport.academic.wlu.edu/files/2014/10/YATECITY_4signs1-300x200.jpg)
Photo by Samantha Yates
But Smith, as he did four years ago, has taken a different approach to campaign signs. His kids made his.
“The homemade signs got the kids involved and shows I think a different side of somebody who’s interested in public service, public office,” Smith said.
Smith said he got the idea from a candidate in a nearby town. He calls it a response to how much spending goes into election campaigns on a national level.
The candidates all say they are concerned about the same major issues that Lexington faces: infrastructure, real-estate taxes and balancing the city budget.
“In fact, you can take the four of us and there’s not a lot of disagreement on the issues. It’s more about how you get there,” Rhamey said. “It’s a matter of focus and prioritizing the things that need to get done around town.”
Rhamey said many good ideas come before City Council. But he said he hopes to use his political science background to help council make smarter decisions.
Each candidate also has his or her own new ideas for the city.
Harvey-Halseth, who has three dogs of her own, is working on a project called UnChainLex. She said she hopes to help prevent inhumane treatment of dogs by providing some sort of shelter for animals that are on chains or tethers 24 hours a day. But her plans go beyond that.
“I want an ordinance that says no chaining between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.,” Harvey-Halseth said. “That pretty much guarantees that that dog will not be chained 24/7, so the dog has the opportunity to interact with the family so behavioral issues won’t happen.”
UnChainLex works with the Lexington Police Department to reach out to dog owners. In one case, UnChainLex built a doghouse free of charge for a family.
Harvey-Halseth said the project is meant to educate the families and will need funding and volunteers to build more doghouses. She said she got the idea from an ordinance Staunton has in place and from researching other localities.
Sigler has also been looking to other localities and successful college towns for ideas he’d like to adopt in Lexington. He wants to have a loyalty card designed for W&L and VMI students that gives them discounts downtown.
“Eat 10 meals locally at any of the restaurants and get a $10 gift card or discount,” Sigler said. “I think W&L and VMI students would eat that up.”
Sigler said Chapel Hill, N.C., has developed such a system. He said he thinks it will encourage college students here to shop downtown and benefit local businesses.
Smith, who is on the local tourism board, is working on a program that will most likely be called “Rockbridge Outside.”
“The idea of the program is to showcase and broadcast the high quality of life opportunities that we have here to attract tourists, to attract people that want to move here, that attract businesses,” Smith said. “Happy employees are a good thing to have.”
Rhamey said he is “anti-projects” because everybody has one and they never get done, or they get done instead of something more important. But he would like to improve the town-gown relations in Lexington, especially with W&L third-years apparently destined to live on campus in the near future. That proposal is awaiting approval by both Lexington City Council and the county Board of Supervisors.
“For both safety reasons and just a broader quality of our community, I think we need to be less divisive,” Rhamey said. “W&L kids are part of the town that need to be treated as part of the town, and we need to stop acting like it’s some separate issue. That’ll make everybody better off.”
Harvey-Halseth said she wants to continue her good working relationship with the council. She will miss working with her fellow council members if she is not reelected, she said.
“They’re respectful, and if people don’t agree with me they aren’t yelling and screaming at me…. There’s always a respectful discourse,” she said. “I love enacting, changing, or carrying on policies with people who think it is just as important as I do.”
All of the candidates encourage voters to come out and register their preference.
Lexington City Council elections will be held Tuesday. All Lexington residents vote at the Piovano Building, 350 Spotswood Drive.