By Bill Turque
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Linda Q. Smyth's résumé in Fairfax County politics carries the unmistakable imprint of Gerald E. Connolly.

As Providence District supervisor in 1999, Connolly appointed the Briarwood neighborhood activist to the county Planning Commission. When he left his seat in his successful bid for Fairfax Board of Supervisors chairman in 2003, he backed Smyth as his replacement in a tight three-way Democratic primary that she won before defeating Republican James Hyland.

Smyth has Connolly at her side once again as she faces a primary challenge for her central Fairfax district seat, which includes Tysons Corner. And this time, her benefactor has something at stake as well, because the race might provide an early indication of any anti-development backlash that could affect Connolly's own reelection campaign in November.

Smyth's challenger in the June 12 primary, former Washington Post editor Charles W. Hall, says Providence voters are upset about her consistent support of high-density development in their district over the past four years, including MetroWest, a community of 2,250 townhouses, condominiums and apartments that will go up just south of the Vienna Metro station.

Primaries in the county's supervisor districts are the electoral equivalent of family squabbles: low-turnout affairs that draw mainly party activists and insiders. Smyth won last time with 514 votes out of 1,367 cast. But because Connolly has no primary opponent and Providence is his political back yard, the race there is being watched partly as a scene setter for his contest in the fall against Republican lawyer Gary H. Baise and independent Glenda "Gail" Parker.

Connolly is clearly a player in the primary, which will effectively elect the next Providence supervisor because there is no Republican or independent opposition. He acknowledged that he helped prepare Smyth for last week's League of Women Voters debate with Hall and has lent her some of the campaign staff he will use this fall. Still, he rejects the idea of Providence as an early indicator of his political health.

"I haven't put a lot on the line. I haven't been asked to," he said. "Linda is perfectly capable of building her own case."

Politics does not come naturally to Smyth, 56, a former substitute teacher who did her doctoral dissertation at the University of Virginia on disputes over authorship of the Federalist Papers. In defending her position on MetroWest at the debate last week, she offered a chronology of the project so laden with land-use jargon -- "out-of-turn plan amendment" and "APR" (area plans review) -- that only those steeped in its history were likely to follow.

As supervisor from Providence, she has presided over some of the county's biggest construction projects. They include MetroWest as well as plans to build 720 apartments and stores at the Dunn Loring-Merrifield Metro station and an overhaul of Tysons Corner Center that will surround the mall with a ring of eight office and residential high-rises.

Smyth, who supported all of those, said they are exemplars of a "smart growth" policy to cluster construction around mass transit. She also cites as major accomplishments the board's decision to spend a penny of the real estate tax rate on preservation of affordable housing and on storm water management.

"This has been the most progressive board in Fairfax County history," she said at the debate.

She said in an interview that she's no puppet of Connolly's. "I'm my own person. Gerry has never told me what to do, and he doesn't now. If he did, I'd bite off his head."

Hall, 52, who works in media relations for the American Bar Association, is a co-founder of FairGrowth, an organization formed to fight the size of MetroWest. A first-time candidate, he has struggled through awkward moments as well. At the League of Women Voters debate, a cable television technician had to interrupt to tell him to speak up. Campaigning door-to-door in Vienna, he interrupted his pitch to a voter to answer his cellphone.

Hall said Smyth has provided "passive leadership and at times almost invisible leadership," indifferent to those concerned about the increased traffic and overcrowded schools that come with massive new development. He said that if elected, he would work for greater community involvement in land-use decisions and approve no new projects without road improvements.

The race has been marked by an undercurrent of charge, countercharge and score-settling. Connolly has been outspokenly critical of Hall's lack of involvement in the Democratic Party, even suggesting that he is a closet Republican in cahoots with Connolly's arch political rival, Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va). Providence is in Davis's 11th Congressional District.

"Charlie Hall has no known Democratic credentials," said Connolly, who normally extols as a virtue the board's bipartisan consensus on major issues.

Hall said newsroom guidelines at The Post, where he worked as a reporter and part-time copy editor from 1985 to 2005, barred active involvement in partisan causes. He did acknowledge, however, that he and other activists met with Davis for 45 minutes in his congressional office in January to discuss politics in Providence. Hall, who said the meeting was arranged by someone else, said he had been considering running as an independent and wanted to know about the chances that a Republican would join the race, which would make an independent candidacy less attractive. He said Davis described the chances as low.

The issue infuriates Hall, who said that he has voted Democrat his whole life and that Connolly "has spent a hell of a lot more time in Tom Davis' company in the last six months than I have." His campaign produced records showing that Smyth voted in Republican primaries in 1988, 1989 and 1996.

"Meanwhile the other side is questioning my fitness as a Democrat," he said. "It seems like an odd tack to take. Anybody looking at my fundraising would see that if I had a congressman behind me, I'd be in a different boat." Smyth enjoys a commanding edge, $77,856 to Hall's $3,685, according to the latest reports.

Smyth said she has "no recollection" about 1988 and 1989 but confirmed that she voted for U.S. Sen. John Warner (R) in his 1996 primary.

"I thought John Warner deserved support," she said.