| | Issue #19.40 :: 10/02/2007 - 10/08/2007 | Board of Supervisors Race: Focus on White Hall District: Hawking slow growth to the new growth
On the trail with challenger Ann Mallek
| BY WILL GOLDSMITH
| If you’re a candidate running for the Board of Supervisors, one of the most daunting parts of going door to door is finding people who are not home. You leave a flier anyway, but it’s another voter not met, another minute on the campaign trail that can seem fruitless.
So Ann Mallek was delighted recently when, in a local market, two people in line saw her, recognized her, and said, “You came to my door, I recognize you from your picture. Thank you so much for doing that.”
“And it was wonderful,” says Mallek, who is wearing her trademark straw hat with her last name printed in big letters. “You get a little boost from something like that and it helps to keep you going.”
Ann Mallek
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Today, Mallek, who is running on the Democratic ticket, is going door to door in the Highlands subdivision. With about 300 lots, it makes for more than can be accomplished in the limited afternoon hours when locals are likely to be home and before dark, when people become sketched out by callers. She can cover about 50 homes in two-and-a-half hours by walking fast and with help from a volunteer, Frances Lee Vandell, with whom she worked on one of Al Weed’s unsuccessful congressional campaign to unseat Virgil Goode.
Mallek seems quite comfortable when she finds someone who is home. She introduces herself, gives the person her literature, explains what the hell she’s doing. “I’m going door to door to introduce myself to folks, and also to ask you, since you’ve been kind enough to come to the door, what issues in the county are on your mind?”
She’s always sure to ask that question, and it usually is a way into a friendly conversation. One man, recently moved from New Jersey, dislikes price-gouging local businesses. Many young moms mention schools.
But most people struggle to come up with anything—either because they’re so new to the area or because they’re simply content.
“I enjoy living here, I don’t have any problems,” says a middle-aged woman with a prominent Northern accent. “No, seriously. I was born and raised in New Jersey where people pay $10,000 for taxes, so I’m not jumping up and down when they say it’s so much money.”
Based on the sample that Mallek comes across, most Highlanders aren’t from around here originally—they are from New Jersey or Wisconsin or Israel or Korea. A few are grad students. Many are young couples moving into their first house with their kids and pets. Two woman dressed in saris, one pushing a stroller, amble along the sidewalk.
Mallek’s talking points revolve around controlling growth and making sure that infrastructure improvements for water and roads are met before development gets out of hand. If the subject comes up, she tells people that development has speeded up during Wyant’s four-year term. She likes public transit and would love to see passenger rail between Crozet and Charlottesville. She raises cattle—“grass-fed” she likes to point out—though her views don’t match up entirely with the Farm Bureau’s stances, which usually are looking to protect a farmer’s ability to sell his land to developers if he needs to.
With views that often come across as big government and anti-development, she also finds that sometimes they get exaggerated. Some concerned voters at least called her to let her know. “One rumor was I was going to ban all hunting and take away everybody’s guns.”
But even the misinformed at least know there’s an election going on. Even though supervisors make most of the big decisions on county life, some people Mallek meets today need a tutorial about just what on earth she’s running for.
Mallek cheerfully explains: “It’s like city council for the country.” She’s sure to ask if anyone in the house needs a voter registration form, and passes out a couple if they do.
“It’s a hard way to get votes,” says a man wearing a Top Gun cap who doesn’t seem too into politics as he peruses Mallek’s material.
“But it’s the only way,” says Mallek. “It really is.” And you can tell she believes it.
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