Loudoun County’s Board of Supervisors will have two new faces early next year, elected on Tuesday by citizens.
Voters chose Phyllis Randall (D) as their new chairman and Koran Saines (D) as the new Sterling supervisor. They’re the first African-Americans to serve on the board in its roughly 250 years of existence.
Saines said the reality of his win hit him as he read the newspapers the morning after Election Day.
“That’s when it really sunk in that we made history last night in Loudoun County and Virginia,” he said.
Saines grew up in Northern Virginia, studied human resources and works in consulting.
Tuesday night he defeated longtime supervisor Eugene Delgaudio (R).
“It’s not about myself. It was not about my opponent,” Saines said. “It’s about bettering our community in Loudoun County and Sterling as a whole."
Randall hasn’t taken the gavel yet but said she is already thinking about her first measure as chairman. She hopes to get the board to sign and commit to an ethics pledge.
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She admitted she’s not a big fan of the official state-approved title she’ll be assuming: “chairman.”
"Just ‘chair' would be fine,” she said. "I think it’s time for lots of changes, and not just in Loudoun, but [also in] Virginia. And I think for it to be by law, ‘chairman,’ is a bit ridiculous, to be honest. So yeah... just ‘chair.'"
Randall beat both four-term Republican chairman Scott York, who ran as an independent, and GOP nominee Charlie King.
"I think the message was not one that was negative against Mr. York but sometimes ... well, first of all, change is constant and sometimes change is necessary,” she said.
“We don’t really make anything of it other than she got lucky, because we split the vote between two Republicans in the race,” Virginia GOP Chairman John Whitbeck said. “It’s certainly not indicative of any trend either way.”
As Randall and Saines prepare to take power in Loudoun, they're reflecting on the past.
“I realize that no one person ever gets to that place by themselves," Randall said. "It's because hundreds of thousands of people laid down a path for me to walk on."
