Republicans select Weir as Gainesville Supervisor candidate. Democrats also campaigned for him.

Republicans selected Bob Weir as their candidate for a Special Election in Prince William County’s Gainesville District.

Weir will face Democrat Kerensa Sumers in a February 21 match-up, where voters will decide who will serve the remainder of former Gainesville District Supervisor Peter Candland’s term that ends December 31, 2023.

Candland resigned a month following the approval of the Prince William Digital Gateway, a tract of land larger than 800 acres next to the Manassas National Battlefield Park, now cleared for data center development.

Candland owns a home on the land and stands to make millions by selling his property to data center developers. Candland had abstained from making land-use votes on the Digital Gateway the year leading up to the project’s approval and subsequent resignation.

The GOP selected Weir at a mass meeting at Park Valley Church near Haymarket today, Monday, January 2, 2023. He won more than 50% of the vote in the first round, beating former county school board member Alyson Satterwhite and Ray Mizener, who chairs the Prince William Committee of 100.

The nominating process began at 7 p.m. with speeches by the candidates. The GOP required participants to pledge allegiance to the party and renounce any prior political party affiliations before they were allowed to cast a ballot. The GOP declared Weir, the winner at 9 p.m.

A total of 372 people registered to vote at the mass meeting to decide the nomination. The voting was done by secret ballot.

Weir could not be reached for comment on this story.

Several Democrats, like Bill Wright and Marilyn Karp, outspoken opponents of the Prince William Digital Gateway, attended the meeting. According to Karp, she cast a ballot for Weir. They campaigned for Weir, who joined them last year in opposing the massive data center project next to the site of one of the first major battles of the Civil War.

Wright, who Prince William County Democrats ousted from their organization last year after he called for Board of County Supervisors Chair Ann Wheeler’s resignation, says he plans to oppose his party’s nominee in a larger effort to oppose the majority of Democrats who sit on the Prince William Board of County Supervisors.

“Kerensa Sumers sounds like a decent person, I’ve read her position statements, but as long as Ann Wheeler is in charge of the Board of County Supervisors, I’m not going put another vote in her bucket,” said Wright.

Wright and others who opposed the Digital Gateway and a host of data center projects on coming to the area say Supervisors are more concerned about trading the county’s remaining rural landscape for data centers, felling trees, and paving over surfaces which will lead to more stormwater runoff and sediment in area reservoirs.

Voters chose Wheeler and four other Democrats to sit on the board in 2019. When they took office in January 2020, the Board of Supervisors flipped from Republican control for the first time this century.

The two remaining Republicans on the board, Yesli Vega and Jeanine Lawson, also spoke during Monday’s mass meeting.

Weir sits on the Haymarket Town Council, where he’s served off and on again since 2004. Voters most recently re-elected him to the town council in November 2022.

Satterwhite has declared her candidacy for the Gainesville District Supervisors seat for the November 2023 General Election but also tossed her name into the ring for the February Special Election after Candland’s resignation.

Satterwhite spent eight years on the county School Board representing the Gainesville District. She ran against Dr. Babur Lateef twice for the School Board Chairman At-large seat and lost during a Special Election in 2018 and the General Election in 2019.

Correction: Marilyn Karp, a self-proclaimed Democrat, cast a ballot for Weir during a mass meeting on Monday, January 2, 2023.