Alexandria — To the Editor:
Last week, Michael Lee Pope wrote an interesting article on “The BRAC Five”, a small group of local politicians who apparently initially supported the construction of the controversial BRAC-133 facility at Mark Center. In his article, Pope focused on the possibility that the BRAC situation could be used against those incumbents come November.
While bringing out the BRAC controversy may elicit cheers from debate audiences, its true effectiveness on the political battlefield has yet to be seen in our area. In 2010, Republican Congressional candidate Patrick Murray tried to pin the issues of BRAC on Congressman Jim Moran. Yet Murray still lost his bid for the Eighth Congressional District with the average two-thirds voter majority going to Moran. In 2011, Libby Garvey tried to use the BRAC issue to win the 30th District Democratic Primary; she placed third of the three candidates.
While it remains to be seen if the BRAC issue will affect the local elections, past evidence indicates that its political impact will be far lower than its traffic impact. Do not be surprised if other local issues as well as the general ideological climate of Northern Virginia hold a greater sway in the results.
Michael Gryboski