Sandy Marks Wins Alexandria Race, Creating First Female-Majority City Council

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Before Tuesday morning’s sunrise, volunteers in zipped winter coats stood outside precinct doors across Alexandria, balancing campaign literature and coffee cups in the chilly dawn air as campaign signs fluttered in a brisk spring wind.

At 6 a.m., doors opened at all 32 precincts across Alexandria, from City Hall to the West End. Neighbors greeted neighbors, and handshakes crossed party lines. Some voters came before work; others came after school drop-off. As evening approached, many precincts saw a final surge between 6 and 7 p.m., when voters streamed in to cast their votes before polls closed.

By Tuesday night, Democrat Sandy O. Marks (D) had secured a decisive victory.

The April 21 special election was the final link in a chain of political transitions that began in Richmond.

Longtime State Senator Adam Ebbin (D) resigned in February after 22 years in the General Assembly to accept a senior advisory role with the Virginia Cannabis Control Authority (CCA) under Governor Abigail Spanberger (D).

Ebbin’s resignation opened the 39th Senate District seat, won by Delegate Elizabeth Bennett-Parker (D). Her move to the Senate created a House of Delegates vacancy that was filled by Alexandria City Councilmember R. Kirk McPike (D), who was elected to represent Virginia House District 5.

McPike’s move to Richmond then opened the City Council seat now won by Marks.

Marks will be sworn in on Tuesday, May 12, and will serve the remainder of McPike’s term through December 31, 2027. To remain on the council after that date, she would need to seek election in November 2027. She will take her seat on the dais immediately upon being sworn in.

Alexandria once again revealed itself less as a single political landscape than a layered civic identity, Old Town’s long-established political memory, the West End’s faster-growing and more diverse precincts, and neighborhoods in between where national politics and local governance increasingly overlap.

In elections like this, turnout is never just participation. It is geography made visible, with each corridor of the city speaking in slightly different tones but arriving at the same ballot box.

Sandy O. Marks (D) won the three-way special election with 24,869 votes (53.37%), defeating Frank H. Fannon IV (I), who received 13,702 votes (29.41%), and Alison Virginia O’Connell (I), who received 6,999 votes (15.02%). Write-in candidates accounted for 1,026 votes (2.20%).

Overall turnout reached approximately 44%, with nearly half of all ballots cast before Election Day.

Vote totals and turnout figures are based on unofficial results posted by the City of Alexandria’s elections office Tuesday night.

The result gives Alexandria its first female-majority City Council (four of seven seats) in the city’s 279-year history.

The governing body now includes Mayor Alyia Gaskins (D), Vice Mayor Sarah Bagley (D), Councilwoman Jacinta Greene (D), and incoming Councilwoman Sandy Marks (D).

The council also retains institutional continuity through Councilman John Taylor Chapman (D), first elected in 2012, along with Councilman Canek Aguirre (D) and Councilman Abdel-Rahman Elnoubi (D), the first Arab American elected to the body. Both Greene and Elnoubi previously served on the Alexandria City School Board.

With four of seven seats held by women, the council’s new alignment also establishes a working majority on routine 4–3 votes, where a single member can determine the outcome.

As evening settled in, watch parties from Del Ray to Old Town filled with phone screens, applause, and steady precinct updates.

Campaign volunteers embraced between result drops. Candidates waited. Alexandria slowly revealed its decision.

At Hi/Fi Tex-Mex BBQ in Del Ray, Marks entered to sustained applause, standing beside Alexandria Democratic Committee Chairman Jon DeNunzio and Delegate Kirk McPike (D).

“I am absolutely honored to be your next City Council member,” Marks told a room of cheering supporters. “This may have been our fifth election in four months, but from the energy and turnout today, Alexandria, you showed up.”

“The Alexandria Democratic Committee continues to show how important this committee is in protecting the values and the things we care about here. Imagine if you had not been out today. Imagine what might have happened.”

“I promised to value our public schools. We create and recreate this city every time we graduate a class from Alexandria City High School, and how we educate our children helps determine who we become as a city.”

“I promised to focus on housing affordability, because people born here should be able to live here for life, including seniors and working families.” “I promised to prioritize climate action, because it affects every aspect of our lives, from extreme heat and flooding to public health.”

Supporters cheered and lifted their phones as results continued to roll in.

“Because of your work, your trust, and your votes, I’m going to join the council in three weeks, and I promised to take all of you into those chambers with me.”

At Vola’s Dockside Grill in Old Town, Fannon struck a gracious and reflective tone to a large group of his supporters.

“Tonight’s election results were not what we hoped for, but they are clear, and I respect the outcome of the election,” Fannon said.

“Voter turnout was driven by national issues and reinforced how local and national conversations can shape voting patterns across the ballot.”

Fannon won outright in four precincts:

• Old Town South (102)
• Lyles-Crouch School (103)
• Trinity (202)
• North Quaker (204)

Those victories reflected his strongest support in Old Town and adjacent established neighborhoods, where zoning, density, and tax concerns were central themes of his campaign.

“We discussed issues that were not getting talked about, and I am deeply grateful to the 13,702 Alexandrians who supported our campaign.”

“That support demonstrates there are strong and underrepresented voices in our city who care about the issues we ran on.”

“My 35 years of community leadership did not end with an election and will continue forward starting today. As citizens, we must stay involved, stay engaged, and remember Alexandria belongs to all of us.”

At The Pita House on King Street, O’Connell thanked supporters and emphasized movement-building over personality politics.

“We know that reaching a better, braver, more liberated world is never about elevating one person. I am here tonight because of all of you, all of the people who gave of their time, energy, money, and labor, to share our message. I am so grateful that you took a chance on this project,” O’Connell said.

O’Connell did not win a precinct outright, but she outperformed Fannon in seven precincts:

• Cora Kelly (106)
• Mt. Vernon Recreation Center (107)
• Charles Houston Center (110)
• Charles E. Beatley Library (303)
• Tucker School (304)
• William Ramsay School (306)
• Del Pepper Center (310)

Those results reflected stronger support in renter-heavy West End and higher-density precincts, where affordability, housing access, and human-rights issues resonated most directly.

“I met so many neighbors we had not reached before who want Alexandria to support human rights,” she proudly added.

“We have so much more to do, but we also have so many opportunities. It is easy to be discouraged in difficult times, but we are growing, even if it does not always feel fast enough, and there are still so many connections left to build.”

Marks entered the race with a well-developed volunteer network built over four years leading the Alexandria Democratic Committee, helping drive precinct operations from dawn through the final evening surge.

Fannon, who previously served on the Alexandria City Council as a Republican from 2009 to 2012, ran as an independent on a neighborhood-focused campaign centered on development, taxes, and quality-of-life concerns.

O’Connell, a community advocate, ran as an independent while carving out a progressive lane focused on affordability, tenant protections, and civic inclusion.

The result reflected a city that remains strongly Democratic, yet increasingly diverse in how different communities prioritize local issues.

The election unfolded alongside Virginia’s congressional redistricting referendum—an amendment to move congressional map-drawing from the General Assembly to an independent commission—one of the most expensive ballot measures in state history, with total spending estimated between $83 million and $100 million.

Supporters spent roughly $64 million, while opposition groups spent between $21 million and $30 million.

Statewide, the amendment narrowly passed with 1,575,331 votes (51.5%) in favor to 1,486,239 votes (48.5%) opposed.

In Alexandria, however, support was overwhelming.

City voters approved the measure by 40,310 votes (78.89%) to 10,787 votes (21.11%).

Support was broad across the city, but heavily weighted in West End precincts, including:

• Patrick Henry Recreation Center, 87.75% Yes
• John Adams School, 87.52% Yes
• Olympus Condo, 86.72% Yes
• Del Pepper Center, 85.63% Yes
• Tucker School, 83.57% Yes
• NOVA Arts Center, 83.26% Yes
• Charles Beatley Library, 83.00% Yes

Even more traditionally mixed precincts favored the amendment comfortably, including Old Town North (67.00% Yes), Trinity (65.15% Yes), and North Quaker (69.24% Yes).

In practical terms, the referendum did not simply share the ballot with the council race; it helped shape it, heightening awareness and giving voters another high-stakes reason to show up across Alexandria’s precincts.

FINAL RESULTS

Sandy O. Marks (D), 24,869 votes (53.37%)
Frank H. Fannon IV (I), 13,702 votes (29.41%)
Alison Virginia O’Connell (I), 6,999 votes (15.02%)
Write-ins, 1,026 votes (2.20%)

From the first volunteers in the brisk morning darkness to the final rush of voters before polls closed, Election Day moved across Alexandria like a long civic heartbeat.

When it ended, the city had made its choice.

Neighbor by neighbor, street by street, vote by vote, that is how Alexandria writes itself.