Election 2026
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This one’s for the people who really care about local news.
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Ebony Lofton is running again for Dumfries Town Council, bringing a decade of local experience, a banking background, and a blunt critique of how the town has handled its sudden influx of gaming revenue.
Retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Doug Ollivant won the Republican nomination for Virginia’s 7th Congressional District on Tuesday, positioning him to challenge first-term Democrat Eugene Vindman in a seat that has tightened over the past two election cycles and could flip in November.According to unofficial results from the Virginia Department of Elections, Ollivant received 56.58% of the vote (13,337 votes). Philip A. Harding finished second with 30.67% (7,229 votes), and Rick S. Smithers received 12.75% (3,005 votes).
“Thank you,” Ollivant said in a statement Tuesday night. “We have been at this for over a year and the support we have gotten from every part of the community has been incredible. I got into this race because I looked around at my neighbors — veterans, small business owners, families working hard and still falling behind — and it was clear Virginia isn’t working for a lot of them. Washington has spent a decade making promises it can’t keep and sending the bill home. That ends when we send someone who has actually managed hard problems under pressure.”
Rick Smithers is not currently a resident of Virginia’s 7th District—but he says he’ll move the day after the primary if voters choose him. In this Potomac Local News interview, the pastor, veteran, construction business owner, and recent public-policy doctoral graduate lays out why he’s running in the Republican primary for the seat that includes Stafford, Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania, Prince William and surrounding localities.
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Philip Harding, Harvard grad, Republican, former presidential fellow and founder of Impact Junkie, is running in the August 4 Republican primary for Virginia’s 7th District against Eugene Vindman, a Democrat.
In this Potomac Local interview, he hammers on government overreach, rising taxes under the current state leadership, parental rights in schools, and the moral case for cutting waste rather than piling more debt on our kids. He wants stronger families, less red tape, and a return to the American dream he says the rest of the world still envies.
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A Manassas City School Board candidate seeking the Democratic Party endorsement has publicly shared a series of Facebook posts between 2024 and early 2026 that support prayer and Bible reading in public schools, reject evolutionary science in favor of a biblical narrative, affirm traditional marriage as “one man and one woman,” and declare that cultural opinion does not override what the Bible calls sin.
Murina V. Dove’s public Facebook page lists her association with Manassas City Public Schools. Nearly all of the posts are shares of third-party Christian memes and images rather than original long-form writing. Examples include:
Prince William County is preparing its response to a detailed U.S. Department of Justice request for information about its Spanish-language election program, with a federal deadline of July 20.
In a June 22 letter, the DOJ’s Voting Section asked Director of Elections Eric Olsen for extensive data to evaluate the county’s compliance with Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act, which requires language assistance for Spanish-speaking voters. The department also notified the county that federal election monitors will observe the August 4, 2026 primary.
Virginia voters narrowly approved a constitutional amendment on April 21, 2026, allowing the General Assembly to redraw the state’s congressional districts mid-decade. Unofficial results from the Virginia Department of Elections show the “Yes” vote received 1,574,505 votes (51.45%) to 1,485,657 “No” votes (48.55%) — a margin of roughly 88,848 votes, or about 2.9 percentage points.
The measure now faces significant legal uncertainty. Multiple challenges — primarily originating in Tazewell County Circuit Court — are pending before the Supreme Court of Virginia. These cases argue that the General Assembly violated procedural rules, the single-subject requirement for constitutional amendments, and that the ballot language was materially misleading about the proposal’s scope and duration.