Staunch Loudoun Republican Reconsiders Her Label
In a County of Aggressive Affiliation, Supervisor's Growth Stance Stands Out

By Sandhya Somashekhar
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 9, 2007

Lori L. Waters figures she has been a Republican since Ronald Reagan was president. She lobbied her state legislature as a teen alongside her Republican activist mother. After college, she spent four years as head of the conservative Eagle Forum.

But this weekend, the Loudoun County supervisor will contemplate what would have been unthinkable a few years ago: running for reelection as an independent.

Waters (R-Broad Run) is on the outs with some members of the local Republican Party, who will select nine candidates for the Board of Supervisors at a nominating convention today. She faces stiff competition from newcomer Jack Ryan, who has recruited hundreds of delegates who have promised to choose him over Waters today. The winners will face Democratic challengers in the Nov. 6 general election.

GOP critics say Waters has broken campaign promises on development and tax issues, putting her at odds with her colleagues on the board. But Waters and others say they believe she is being singled out for the one issue on which she is a moderate: growth and development.

"It's not something I'm embracing," said Waters, 31. "I am a Republican at my core, and anywhere else in the country I'd be a Republican. My problem is with the local committee."

For months, she has been booed at Republican committee meetings. Party insiders have promised in internal e-mails to ostracize her. During a discussion on limiting development in rural western Loudoun last year, three committee members sat in the audience wearing safari hats and peering at her through binoculars.

They said they were hunting RINOs: Republicans in Name Only.

The idea that Waters might disavow the party that defined her for so long came as a shock to many of her friends and family, who have known her as a devoted anti-abortion, anti-gay-marriage and anti-tax activist since childhood.

"People can call her a moderate and a RINO and all of that, but that girl is as conservative as they come," said her mother, Elizabeth Cole of Sharpsburg, Ga., who remembers her daughter writing letters to her congressmen as early as age 8. "That's a joke. I have to laugh about that all day."

Waters was elected in 2004 as part of a slate of pro-growth Republicans promising to make Loudoun friendlier to business and approve large developments in exchange for millions of dollars for roads and schools. Since then, however, Waters said she has come to believe that too much development can lead to higher taxes because developers don't always pay their share.

She broke with her GOP colleagues last year when she voted against a compromise crafted by Supervisor Mick Staton Jr. (R-Sugarland Run) to allow greater housing density in the county's rural west. Waters also has voted against allowing 30,000 new homes south of Dulles International Airport and a large development south of Leesburg, proposals that were supported by most of the GOP majority.

None of that, she said, should lead anyone to question her devotion to the Republican Party's ideals of low taxes, property rights and socially conservative policy.

"All Republicans don't have to agree 100 percent of the time," she said. "We're going to have areas of agreement and areas of disagreement. But I feel like, in Loudoun County, growth has become a kind of litmus test for whether you are Republican or not, and that's simply not right."

Supervisor Stephen J. Snow (R-Dulles), one of Waters' greatest critics, disagrees.

"If people who run for politics want to run in a party, but want to be independent and not be part of that team, then I would suggest that person is really an Independent," Snow said. "If you're in a party, I don't believe you can cherry-pick and take out of a platform what you want."

Ryan, Waters's opponent, said her about-face was a response to a "change in the political winds" and pressure from anti-growth groups. He said she has sought to distance herself from her colleagues because of an FBI investigation into some supervisors' cozy relationships with developers.

"She flip-flops," said Ryan, human resources director for a technology company, who ran unsuccessfully for the board a few years ago. "She lost Republican support because she has been disingenuous to other Republicans."

Of the 722 delegates from the Broad Run area who registered for today's convention, Ryan said his campaign signed up 400. Although not all registered delegates will show up, and they may might change their minds once they arrive, it is likely to be a close race.

Waters says she will accept the results of the convention if she thinks the process has been fair. If not, she said, she will still have to think hard before taking such a drastic measure as declaring as an independent.

If she does go it alone, Waters will be the second supervisor to disavow the Loudoun GOP over its stance on growth. Scott K. York, the board's chairman and another moderate on development issues, declared as an independent during the 2004 campaign. Although he said his situation was different from Waters's, he sympathized with her predicament.

"She is the one [on the board] you could label a Republican's Republican, and yet, because of this one issue, there are people in the party who want to kick her out," York said.