RVA Mayor's Race Update (Part 1 of 3)

RVA 5x5 - October 1, 2024

No algorithms. No content filters. No A.I. — Honest and insightful analysis from Richmond, VA.

With just five weeks to go in the Mayors race, the landscape is starting to heat up as the countdown to Election Day gets closer (and early voting is underway). With five more mayoral forums this month, we wanted to get you caught up with some recent developments and interviews in bite size and digestible pieces about the campaign over the next three days (because too much at once could quite possibly cause indigestion).

Luckily, we did all the reading and watching and listening so you wouldn’t have to; and, given the unpredictable nature of the race to date, there is a lot to take in as we have seen some interesting interviews in recent days and weeks along with some interesting answers. This week we will highlight some of the Q&A that has been proffered through various media channels, along with links to the source that will allow you to go deeper into a candidate’s responses and become better informed about them and learn more before you select the best person to lead our fair city for the next four years.

There will be a lot of information this week about each candidate’s respective qualifications, vision, and views on numerous issues from economic development to housing to schools, to what is holding Richmond back and what they will do about it, to reparations for slavery, as well as the candidates’ willingness to engage some voters and residents (and some candidates who are unwilling to do so). There is also some interesting media punditry and analysis commenting on the landscape of the race that is also worthy of contemplation.

So grab some coffee, tea, juice, or whatever gets your day started and settle in to read and learn more and share with your friends and neighbors before you cast your ballot!

(NOTE: Tonight there will be a mayoral forum at 7:00PM that will air live on NBC12 and on VPM 88.9FM).

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RVA Dirt created an excellent and unique format with a 10-week feature called the Summer Candidate Survey Series, in which the candidates were asked a question and asked for two responses, elevator speech style. One asked for a 280 character response for X (aka Twitter) and the other was a slightly more detailed (but not rambling) 600 character max for the RVA Dirt blog.

You can read the entire weekly series here, but below is a synopsis of a few of the more interesting questions like, what will you do to fix the mess that is the Finance department, how will you re-engage City Hall with the community, what is holding Richmond back, and what does their ideal development project look like? We have posted the entire 280 character response from each candidate and excerpts from the longer 600 character response).