People have dragged a hodgepodge of props -- sheep, tractors, Darth Vader, Patrick Henry, fake coffins, the music of Tammy Wynette, thousands of Monopoly houses -- into the battle over suburban sprawl in Loudoun County.
But none of the theatrics ever got anyone into serious trouble, until a man walked up to the podium at a board of supervisors meeting last year and identified himself as "Mr. Valerie Kelly," the husband of a vocal critic of development.
His nearly three-minute monologue landed him in court -- a bizarre twist in the county's heated debate over growth that raised questions about the line between satire and humiliation, between witty zoning rhetoric and bad taste.
The man said he'd come to apologize for the behavior of his wife. "You just got to talk to her," he said, asking whether he could smoke and placing a tall bottle of liquor next to him on the podium. "She listens to you. She reads everything you say. She doesn't give me the time of day anymore, which is why I've just left and I'm shacked up with some blonde in Hillsboro."
He was tall and unshaven, scruffy-looking in a flannel shirt, jeans and black knit cap. And he wasn't Valerie Kelly's husband.
His name was John Grigsby, and his speech was a performance -- a snippet of amateur theater poking fun at Kelly, his political rival on the development issue. A few in the audience chuckled, and others looked dismayed. But one person in particular was not amused: Kelly's real husband, Bob.
Bob Kelly sued Grigsby for defamation of character, seeking $1.5 million in damages.
In one of the fastest-growing counties in the nation, where the population has jumped 41 percent in four years and development continues to transform the rural landscape, the rapid changes have fueled a quirky kind of political warfare that is sometimes humorous, sometimes hostile.
Kelly v. Grigsby caused each side of the growth issue to accuse the other of taking the development battle to outlandish extremes. And it sparked worries that people would censor themselves at the podium in public meetings, for fear not only of a lawsuit but also of being the target of another embarrassing spoof.
Grigsby's skit "has a chilling effect on people speaking out," said Andrea McGimsey, a spokeswoman for Campaign for Loudoun's Future, which opposes the rapid development in the county. "They don't want to get involved with something that sordid."
Valerie Kelly was sitting in the audience that February morning last year when Grigsby appeared before the board inside its Leesburg chambers. The 56-year-old Middleburg woman was outraged. Here was a man she barely knew pretending to be her husband, telling everyone that she didn't respect him anymore.
"I was stunned," she recalled. "I was completely stunned."
