Fairfax Candidate Fights For More Diverse Board

Gross has won each of her elections with less than 53 percent of the vote -- hardly a landslide. A Republican, Rep. Thomas M. Davis III, held the seat before he ran for county board chairman and the House of Representatives. There is a chance, Davis said, that a Republican with the right message and the right biography could recapture the seat.

"Democrats seem to think they own minorities, but these folks are very independent," Davis said. "These races are inherently local races."

Hall has a compelling story to tell. She came to the United States at 30 from Butuan City, on the Philippines island of Mindanao, where, as a teenager, she sold doughnuts, firewood and vegetables from a basket on her head, often walking miles each day. Although she emigrated with an undergraduate degree, Hall worked first as a nanny and then as a clerical worker for a defense contractor before launching a business.

She also lived briefly in a shelter for battered women in Alexandria, to which she fled with her baby daughter after her first husband, who she said was an alcoholic, became abusive. Hall is now married to Harry Hall; they live in the Sequoia Park neighborhood of Springfield. Her daughter, Ayn, is now 24. She is named after the author Ayn Rand, whose message of self-sufficiency and individualism appealed to Hall.

"You have to start with yourself first," she said. "If I cannot take care of myself, you cannot count on me taking care of other people."

That philosophy drew Hall to the Republican Party, in which she quickly immersed herself during the 1990s, after moving with her daughter to the Springfield area. She has given money to GOP candidates over the years and on more than one occasion participated in forums having to do with diversity and immigration with former senator George Allen (R-Va.). Most recently, Hall stood alongside Allen in the summer after a controversy erupted over his use of the term "macaca" to describe a young man of Indian descent. She believes the incident was blown out of proportion, she said in a recent interview.

President Bush appointed Hall to an advisory commission dealing with issues having to do with Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.

Yet such credentials might not help Hall much in the Mason District, which voted nearly two-to-one against Allen in November and almost as overwhelmingly against Bush in 2004.

What might help her is if she is able to connect with voters on local issues. That's one reason she is out every day, going door-to-door in the neighborhoods near her home, introducing herself to the electorate.

"I want them to know me," she said. "The Korean community, the Vietnamese community, the Filipino community, the black community. I am strong. I have more energy and more determination. I want to do something better."