2026 Alexandria Election Hub
Alexandria City Council Firehouse Primary
Election Day: Saturday 2/21, 8:30am-7pm
Voter & election info at https://www.alexdems.org
YIMBY Candidate Scores!
Each candidate for the City Council firehouse primary received a questionnaire with 5 questions about their housing policies. This week our Alexandria members scored the responses, and we've ranked the candidates by those scores. Notes on process follow the rankings.
Member Score: 4.6 of 5
In one candidate forum Tim called himself "probably the most YIMBY candidate," and our members seem to agree. Tim has been active with YIMBYs and advocating for housing in Alexandria for several years, also managing detailed discussions of land use as president of Del Ray Civic Association. His questionnaire responses clearly demonstrate his understanding of the need to make Alexandria more affordable, in part by adding housing supply
Tim has been publicly pro-housing for years, showing our members we can trust him to show up for housing regardless of the audience.
https://timforalexandria.com/
Member Score: 4.3 of 5
As former chair of the Alexandria Democrats, Sandy has focused on electing Democrats but was unable to take public positions on specific city policies.
That is, until she stepped down as chair and stepped up to run for Council. She has run an unabashedly pro-housing campaign from the start, including in her questionnaire responses, and our members have seen and appreciated how she's shown up and defended the need to add housing supply even with audiences where that isn't a popular position.
In a short campaign, Sandy's shown our members that she is ready to have hard conversations and to stand up as a real housing champion.
Member Score: 3.1 of 5
Roberto spoke powerfully in favor of Zoning for Housing (ZFH) in 2023, has consistently spoken for affordable housing, and has hands-on experience in the trades that would provide a unique perspective on Council. Members initially gave him high rankings based on this record and strong questionnaire responses, but ballots submitted during and after a Federation of Civic Associations event lowered his score.
At that event Mr. Gomez appeared to hedge his support for Zoning for Housing, and gave unclear responses on reducing costly parking mandates, Duke Street in Motion, and the Braddock Road safety project.
That late lack of clarity on Mr. Gomez's positions left our members less sure of him as a day 1 housing champion.
Member Score: 3.0 of 5
Charles founded a nonprofit dedicated to providing housing and other services to LGBTQ+ youth, and provided strong responses to our questionnaire. Members initially gave him high rankings, but ballots submitted during and after a Federation of Civic Associations event lowered his score.
At that event Mr. Sumpter told the audience he'd have voted no on Zoning for Housing, Duke Street in Motion, and the Braddock Road safety project. To his credit, he did say he favored reducing costly parking mandates.
That late lack of clarity on Mr. Sumpter's positions left our members less sure of him as a day 1 housing champion.
Mr. Tapia did not submit a response so could not be evaluated by our members.
Our Alexandria members reviewed questionnaire responses and candidates' platforms, and scored them 1-5 according to who they believe are the strongest housing champions. The scores here represent the average member score for each candidate. Cesar Madison Tapia did not respond to our questionnaire, so members did not have the opportunity to rank him as a candidate.
The 1-5 scale is intended should be interpreted on a curve. On reviewing questionnaire responses our Leads believed (& members later affirmed in their feedback) that everyone here provided us with strong pro-housing responses. The grade here is meant to be relative to the other pro-housing candidates. The 1-5 scale is "good to great," not "bad to good".
The AFCA event referenced occurred during the last few hours of our members' window to vote, which ended at 11pm on 2/18. While Tim and Sandy's responses there were generally consistent with what we saw in our own questionnaire, responses by Roberto and Charles cast some doubt on whether they had shifted their views.
Of course, it is perfectly legitimate for a candidate's opinion to change over time as they learn more about the issues. And questions that are phrased differently may elicit different answers, without necessarily implicating a change in a candidate's underlying beliefs or values.
But that does make the candidate harder to evaluate, especially in a short election. YIMBY Leads and Members have done our best to gather, evaluate, and share out information in a compressed election cycle. We look forward to hearing more from all of these candidates, whether in this year's general election or 2027's larger, 6-seat Council Race.