Thursday, November 13, 2008

Arlington Environmental Activist Miles Grant Running for House of Delegates

We just learned that one of our fellow Arlington bloggers, Miles Grant, aka "The Green Miles," is planning on running against incumbent Democrat Al Eisenberg for a House of Delegates seat.

Good for you, Miles.

At age 31, Miles is quite a youngster, but he's been at it for some time with his blog and as an active member of various environmental groups, including heading up ACE--Arlingtonians for a Clean Environment.

Like the old days of the one-party (Democratic) South, Arlington today has only one party, so if you want to get in, you have to do it in the Democratic primary.

We'd say Miles has an uphill battle against Eisenberg, who has played it pretty safe as a delegate from Arlington. Miles will need to reach out to other constituencies, such as the Latino community, the fair housing folks, etc., if he wants to win.

Win or lose, however, Miles' candidacy will ensure that environmental issues and policies in Virginia will be front and center in this district, and if nothing else, prod Eisenberg to be more aggressive on the environmental front.

Of course, Eisenberg isn't the real problem--it's all those GOP delegates who still control the lower house in Virginia. We hope Democrats can nibble away enough additional seats on the periphery of Northern Virginia to swing it the other way. Then we'll see some real progress on lagging issues such as renewable energy mandates for Dominion Electric.

1 comment:

TheGreenMiles said...

Thanks for the mention! There's no shortage of things to be outraged about in Richmond these days. Skyrocketing energy bills, paltry funding for Metro, and a huge budget deficit. And who's to blame? Why, immigrants and gays, of course!

You hate lousy service and bad science? That's the Republican-controlled General Assembly for you.