By Michael Laris
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 6, 2003; Page A01

When Loudoun County voters on Tuesday abandoned the leadership they had elected four years ago to slow the county's growth, they demonstrated more than just a change of heart. They revealed a county deeply divided by party, ideology and, most notably, geography.

In the populous eastern side of the county near Dulles International Airport, voters elected six Republican candidates who promised to reverse or relax tight restrictions on home building imposed by the current board. Those voters complained that the board's efforts to slow the march of subdivisions in rural western Loudoun had essentially come at the expense of their more-crowded communities.

Meanwhile, voters in picturesque western Loudoun turned out in such large numbers that they propelled to victory board Chairman Scott K. York, a contractor from Sterling who has become the face of the slow-growth movement. Voters there also elected two district supervisors who promised to keep the restrictions on growth.

The result pits the suburban east's planned communities against the rural west, still home to horse farms and rolling estates.

"It's just been so one-sided," newly elected Supervisor Stephen J. Snow (R-Dulles) said, referring to the board's efforts to preserve the rural character of western Loudoun. "The present board thought they had a mandate to impose everything they could upon the east. They found out that's not the case, didn't they?"

The current board was elected in 1999 on a pledge to slow home building. While supervisors reduced the number of homes that could be built in a 300-square-mile swath of western Loudoun, they declined to make sharp reductions in eastern Loudoun, citing what they called sound environmental and planning principles that call for directing building to existing communities rather than the countryside.

Although county officials cut tens of thousands of future homes from planning maps in eastern Loudoun in the late '90s, many voters, concerned about increasing traffic and rising taxes, said they couldn't shake the notion that they were being treated unfairly.

"A lot of the slow-growth is protecting western Loudoun, not here where we live," said Regina Willard, a financial analyst at Northrop Grumman Corp. who has lived in Sterling for 28 years. "They're protecting the landowners in western Loudoun, and that's okay, I guess," Willard said. But, she added: "I think we got the short end of the stick."

Voters in the tiny town of Hillsboro, just a few miles from the West Virginia line, had a warmer view of development limits adopted by the board, which cut the number of homes that can be built in Loudoun by more than 80,000, mostly in the county's rural west.

"I don't want to be surrounded by suburbs," said Laurie Farnsworth, a part-time theatrical costume designer. "I've done my best to vote for the people I think will help stop that, or at least cut it down a little."

York's narrow victory over Republican challenger Robert M. "Bob" Gordon illustrates the county's geographical divide over growth. York, who ran as an Independent, won all but two of 22 precincts in western Loudoun and Leesburg, and lost all but two of the 30 precincts in eastern Loudoun, where he lives. A larger proportion of registered voters turned out in the west than in the east, which put York over the top, according to results released yesterday after an early morning count of absentee ballots. York defeated Gordon by about 1 percentage point of the vote, and Gordon conceded the race yesterday.

York said he did not view the results as a rejection of the county's growth-control efforts. About 19 percent of the chairmanship vote went to a third candidate, Democrat Alfred P. "Al" Van Huyck, also an advocate for growth controls for Loudoun. York accused the Republicans of misrepresenting their stand on development limits.

"Go look at what they told the voters in the campaign," York said, speaking of the Republican candidates. "They said they were all for smart growth, so we're going to see."

York declined to predict what the new GOP majority on the board might do to the building restrictions he helped put in place during the past four years.

"I will work with all eight members, and we'll see what occurs," he said.

In an e-mail to his party faithful, Loudoun Republican Chairman J. Randall Minchew -- whose law firm has filed dozens of suits seeking to overturn the zoning restrictions passed by the board -- quoted the prophet Isaiah on the kind of changes he foresees.

"And I will bring the blind by a way that they knew not; I will lead them in paths that they have not known: I will make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight," he wrote, quoting the Old Testament.

In Loudoun, the chairman has one vote, the same as fellow board members. With a 6 to 3 majority, GOP supervisors will be able to redirect the county government's agenda. Underlying whatever changes occur will be the east-west tensions that emerged in such stark terms in the election.

Just how Tuesday's contradictory messages will translate into new policies in Loudoun is being watched closely across the Washington region and Virginia, as building interests, slow-growth advocates, party activists and government officials jockey for position in the radically altered political environment that has emerged from the election.

Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth, said the new majority on the Loudoun board will find that dealing with traffic congestion and other side effects of swift development will be difficult.

"The folks who exploited frustrations with the growth problems, claiming they were for controlling growth, are going to have just as big a challenge meeting those goals as the current board did because of preexisting zoning," Schwartz said.

The goal of controlling the growth that has doubled Loudoun's population in the past decade may also be at odds with the expectations of real estate and construction industry contributors who were the top sources of campaign funds for GOP candidates, political observers said.

Snow said he is not sure how he will vote on the planned communities proposed in his eastern Loudoun district by some of his top campaign donors.

The district, including the Dulles area, is seen by some development firms as the logical location for Loudoun's next generation of subdivisions.

The newly elected supervisor said he hopes for what he calls more equitable development in Loudoun's future. He said western Loudoun should be open to more home building, and he will consider additional projects in his own district as well.

"Nothing's off the table," Snow said. "This is a time for reassessing."