It Seems Some Candidates Have Blogger's Block

To blog or not to blog?

For Fairfax County candidates this year, the answer mostly seems to be no. While blogs have become a staple of campaigns from the presidential level on down, most local candidates seem to have blogger's block.

"I'm weighing the options," said Supervisor Penelope A. Gross (D-Mason), who will face Republican businesswoman Vellie Dietrich-Hall in November. "You have to decide on how much time you can spend and whether the commentary is going to be legitimate or not."

Gross has a point. Some candidates seem to have launched so-called blogs on their campaign sites with all good intentions, only to let them sit and gather cyber-dust.

Stan Reid, who's running in next month's Republican primary against Pat S. Herrity for Springfield District supervisor, has exactly one haiku-sized entry from April 27:

"The Primary Election is June 12th. Your vote is important."

Hall, who runs a defense contracting business, also has not posted since April 27. When she does write, she sometimes takes a lyrical bent, as she did in her March 15 discussion of diversity:

"As I sit here, it is snowing quite hard outside, blanketing everything in a thick layer of white. I am in awe at nature's ability to give each snowflake its own design making sure that no two are ever exactly alike. And it occurs to me that despite everything we have in common, nature has seen to it that as individual human beings we are each and every one of us, unique. We have our own personalities, traits, characteristics, needs, wants and dreams. And that's what makes us such a dynamic, diverse, interesting group. Nowhere is that diversity more highly prized and celebrated than right here in our own Mason District . . . "

Republican Doug Boulter, who will face Democrat Jeff McKay for the Lee District supervisor's seat this fall, has used his "Not Quite a Blog" to write about the county's lack of zoning code enforcement.

Perhaps the longest-running blog belongs to Chap Peterson, a Democrat running for the 11th District state Senate seat held by Republican Jeannemarie Devolites Davis. In "Ox Road South," which predates his candidacy, the Fairfax lawyer and former state delegate has written on topics as disparate as "The DaVinci Code" ("I saw an interesting plot. I saw a predictable attack on the history of the Catholic church. I saw everything except the key to any good book: a point.") and Jamestown's 400th anniversary ("Examine John Smith. When he took control of the starving colony, his rule for self-preservation was simple: if you don't work, you don't eat. . . . To borrow a current slang, he kept it real.")

Deus Ex Voting Machine

Wander through Fairfax County's cavernous warehouse in Springfield these days and, amid the library books and firefighters' oxygen tanks, you'll find election officials readying more than a thousand voting machines.