You can see where all the Lynchburg city council candidates stand on the issues in our Voter Guide.
In a presidential election year where passions and political divisiveness run high, the race for Lynchburg’s Ward I seat on the city council pits three candidates against one another in what will likely be the closest-watched local election in the Hill City.
After eight years on the council, serving as vice mayor and then mayor in 2018-2022, MaryJane Dolan announced in March that she wouldn’t be seeking reelection, adding she’d intended to limit her tenure to two terms from the beginning.
Much has changed in that time: Most candidates for the city council ran as independents, but now voters have seen party-affiliated candidates running for each seat, and 2024 marked the first party primary in recent memory. Schisms on the council that emerged after the 2022 election for its three at-large seats have led to escalated drama at meetings and censures for two members — another first for Lynchburg City Hall.
This cycle has the four ward seats up for grabs, and among them, Ward I has historically been the most competitive. Dolan won with 58% and then 52% of voters as an independent candidate up against more conservative opponents, and as one of two members considered by many as Democrats, her replacement could shift the balance in a now Republican-dominated, yet still highly fractious council.
Running to replace her are independent Cameron Craddock Howe, Democrat Randy Smith and Republican Jacqueline Timmer. All three have cast themselves as bridge-builders and share some similar outlooks but differ in their priorities and backgrounds.
Meet the candidates
Howe, 36, is the latest addition to the candidate slate, announcing her campaign in early July. A Lynchburg native and part of the long-established Craddock family, she’s been on the Greater Lynchburg Transit Company board of directors since 2019, serving as president since 2022, and works for the city as a zoning official, a position she’d have to vacate if elected. In the past, she’s worked in social work-adjacent jobs and previously as lead project manager at HumanKind, a large nonprofit that provides community services.
At first debating whether to step into the political arena, Howe said she believes being a nonpartisan candidate puts her at a disadvantage but added that “people are sick of party politics and drama.” She added that she wants to keep up the tradition of having an independent candidate in the Ward I seat and has kept a campaign mantra of: “It’s not politics, it’s people.”
Having spent her whole life in Lynchburg, Howe said she’s built rapport with people from all over Lynchburg: behind the scenes at city hall, among most members of the city council and from her work as an advocate for those with mental health issues and people experiencing homelessness.
“My favorite part that gets me really excited about being on council is the ability to problem solve with a variety of people across many sectors of our city,” she said. “I think that’s how we’re going to have the best outcomes.”
When asked about building consensus in a council that at times seems strongly resistant to it, Howe said that as long as the end goal is benefiting the city, “then the rest is all just noise.”
“You’ve gotta kill ’em with kindness and lead by example,” she said.
Smith, 56, has lived in Lynchburg for 30 years, initially working as a mechanical engineer for Framatome and then running Hill City Hardwoods off of Fort Avenue for the past 16 years, supplying lumber to area woodworkers and supporting small business startups informally. He’s one of four Democrats running for each open ward seat this year under Lynchburg Better Together, a shared campaigning effort.
He said Lynchburg Better Together is the product of local organizers that draw logistical and tactical — but not financial — support from Rural Ground Game, supplementing gaps in Democratic support in areas west of Richmond. Smith said he wasn’t engaged in politics until recently.
“In the last two years … I’ve seen the city of Lynchburg lose its way, veer off the path of progress, and it just isn’t the city I’ve known for all these years and come to love,” he said.
Smith said the last straw for him was watching a police body-worn camera video of former assistant city manager John Hughes meeting with an intense line of questioning after a city council meeting from a supporter of the now twice-censured Marty Misjuns, who’s been a source of controversy since taking an at-large seat on the council in 2022. Hughes left his position soon afterward, and Smith said the confrontation was “frustrating and angering and definitely did not represent who we are as a city.”
About a year ago, Smith said he started getting involved with local Democrats, seeking out people who’d be willing to run for the council and ensure no race was uncontested, then decided he should be willing to run as well. He said he’s talked to residents who aren’t necessarily politically engaged but frustrated at the state of the city council and wants to encourage enthusiasm for a positive and cooperative Democratic ticket.
Timmer, 32, moved to Lynchburg in 2009, attending New Covenant Schools and then Liberty University, from which she graduated in 2014 after studying government and philosophy. She moved to California, declining in an interview to say why, then moved back to Lynchburg in 2022 to raise her family near the Rivermont Avenue area she’d come to love.
“I was asked to run by a number of people because of my background in building coalitions with people of diverse political backgrounds and interests, and with the current state of council, that experience is needed,” she said.
Timmer is the founder and director of the American Voters’ Alliance, a nonprofit through which she’s worked “defending individual freedoms and fair elections,” her campaign website states. The alliance has drafted model “election integrity” legislation and has filtered its efforts down to several state-specific organizations — namely in swing states — that repeatedly and unsuccessfully pursued lawsuits to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, along with other election-related lawsuits around that time that were dismissed or withdrawn.
When asked about whether the alliance’s work falls under “election denial,” Timmer said she’s advocated for “transparent, accountable and inclusive elections” and “worked in the inner city with people of various political affiliations to ensure that the legality is being followed, but no, I’m not focused on a fraudulent aspect so much as the legality of how elections are conducted.”
Pressed about the specifics in the work she’s touted with “prominent Democrats … and top Republicans” on “model legislation that is pretty common sense,” she declined to name names, saying, “I just think it’s disrespectful to list off and name-drop in the context of a local election.”
“We recruited people from all across the political spectrum to engage in poll working and poll watching, specifically minorities within their own community, so that people were not being bussed in to fill legal quotas for those roles,” she responded.
On social media, Timmer’s campaign page has avoided posts that align her with any of the other Republicans on the council — responding to questions about who’d she support as mayor by proposing Lynchburg residents vote for the mayor directly — but has shared some posts that depict support from Veronica Bratton, chair of the Lynchburg Republican City Committee. Bratton and the LRCC have sided with Misjuns and outgoing Ward III member Jeff Helgeson, and the LRCC recently announced its plans to censure and revoke the “R” from Mayor Stephanie Reed and Vice Mayor Chris Faraldi, something the state party says it cannot do.
Priorities and issues
Although each candidate spoke to the limits of the city council’s involvement in Lynchburg City Schools, each lists education at the top of their priority list.
Timmer said she’d like to see the council earmark the schools’ budget, creating and prioritizing line items that fund “where students interface [with] the system … whether it’s coaches or school bus drivers and attendance.”
“I think we need to put our first things first and then everything else falls into line from there,” she said in response to a question about discussions over diverting funding from administrative expenses. “So my priority is getting money to the kids, and then we assess the rest of the budget after that.”
Smith said he sees funding public schools as a top priority for the council, along with the operation of school facilities and appointing school board members who handle the rest.
“Where we are now … is that we have more of a line-item management of the budget where city council is looking more closely at the city schools budget on a line-item basis and requesting where money goes to within that,” he said. “I don’t agree with that general philosophy of operations.”
Howe said teachers aren’t getting the support they need and she’s concerned that the city is losing them.
“I would like to see the city maintain the physical buildings so that the schools can focus on what they do best, which is education,” she said. “And I want to make sure that we are appointing school board members that prioritize early intervention, small classroom sizes and supports for teachers.”
In terms of taxes and revenues, Howe states on her website that she believes taxes “should be as low and simple as possible.”
She voiced support for lowering the burden on both homeowners and renters through vehicle taxes, proposed yearly fees of $100 on around 600 short-term rentals — whereas they currently pay a one-time registration fee of $150 — to ensure units are following ordinances and protecting residential areas, and creating zoning initiatives that would encourage home ownership and more stability in the housing market, pointing out that many homes are business-owned.
“We’re kind of at the bare bones for services — if anything we need to be increasing them — but we need to be mindful of how we’re using the tax dollars to be as efficient and transparent as possible,” Howe said.
Timmer said she’s focused on boosting revenues and growth outside of additional fees and taxes, supporting small businesses and sales tax revenue by proposing a phase-out of noncompetitive business license taxes and examining “excessive building codes or regulations — not things in the name of safety, but elements that create hurdles for businesses to expand.”
Considering rising property values, Timmer said it’s important to keep tax rates as low as possible while allowing the city to function consistently. She also prioritized “minimizing dependency hurdles” for those on government assistance through expanding local trade and workforce development programs.
Smith said he supported real estate tax equalization and the 89-cent rate council settled on in 2023 below equalization rates was too low.
“For our residents, having that giant bump in that real estate tax – that is a problem,” he said. “You bring that down by decreasing the rate. But stability also matters for the city, and having such a precipitous drop in the rate is creating a lack of stability for budgeting at a city level and for the services that we provide.”
Smith said he also views the city council as a conduit for connecting and strengthening existing services — a priority for him when 19.6% of the population lives below the poverty line. Having attended initial meetings for the Bridges to Progress initiative, and with his wife having served on one of its multiple committees, he envisions an “upside-down” version where the city council creates a broader framework for cooperation that doesn’t necessarily involve budget decisions.
Both Timmer and Howe list public safety among their priorities, with Timmer applauding the council’s record in that regard and prioritizing shifting mental health issues away from police, and Howe focusing on wraparound services and crime prevention.
Howe also advocated for changing the city charter to implement term limits for council members.
Entering the fray
The road to the city council — whose meeting a mere month ago reached new levels of chaos replete with insults, yelling and singing — has already been a bumpy one.
The Republican primary for Faraldi’s Ward IV seat ended in an unusual lawsuit that was eventually dropped. And 20-year council veteran Helgeson, whose failed bid for mayor after the 2022 election appeared to be the starting point of the council’s division, dropped his campaign weeks ago. The LRCC nominated Curt Diemer in his stead for Ward III, a move that the Hill City Young Republicans decried as denying their voice in choosing a nominee.
Timmer, whose nonprofit espouses accountability and transparency in elections and ensuring they’re conducted in accordance with the law, said she isn’t aware of any illegalities in the Ward III swap and doesn’t “see the relevance of that.”
“Things change politically, and they change all the time, so you just keep moving forward with what your vision is and then you work with whoever’s there to get things done,” she said. “It just is a part of life, part of politics.”
She declined to comment on the lawsuit over the primary.
Howe said the swap was intentional and is a “disservice to voters.” Smith said it speaks to the level of division among Republicans in Lynchburg and “the only reason at all for them to wait till the last minute to announce it after he’s the nominee is to control who he’s replaced with.”
All three candidates voiced frustration over the volley of censures, saying that it distracts from policy issues that affect citizens directly.
“Any time that even having censorship as an option on the table, it’s really concerning,” Howe said. “It means that you’ve reached a point where you have to publicly shame a member into acting correctly.”
“What’s going on with council and the personality conflicts and the division is holding us back as a city from moving forward,” Smith said. “We’ve been locked up through COVID and now through all of this. We’ve been at a standstill.”
He added that he views the censures as necessary action, since the lack of civility in city hall leads to a negative reputation that detracts residents and employers alike.
“It starts with not taking offense with stupid behaviors,” Timmer said. “Everybody does silly things and with our new cancel culture focus, people get written off when they do something dumb, and we need to be able to move past that, to not take offense and stay focused on the goal. That’s where it starts.”
Campaign funding
The Ward I race has seen the most money raised this cycle, with Timmer’s coffers at $74,271, Smith’s at $10,330 and Howe’s at $9,383, according to recently updated campaign finance reports tallied by the Virginia Public Access Project.
Timmer has received $7,451 from her father, Phill Kline, a central figure in efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and a spokesperson and policy director for her nonprofit, the American Voters’ Alliance. Del. Tim Griffin, R-Bedford County, who’s been involved in both the alliance and Kline’s Amistad Project, has donated $500 to Timmer.
She’s also received $5,000 from Patrick Byrne, former chief executive of Overstock.com and yet another national name in rhetoric aimed at subverting the 2020 presidential election.
University Education Services, a company run by current school board chair Atul Gupta, has donated $1,000 to Timmer’s campaign but is not listed among top donors for the other candidates.
Reports for Smith indicate his largest contributors have been mostly local, with his wife donating $1,000 and former school board vice chair Dr. Robert Brennan donating another $1,000.
Howe’s largest donors are also largely local, with several of her family members among them.
Donations for all council candidates this year have totaled $183,321, or over $200,000 with Ward IV Republican primary challenger Peter Alexander factored in. Whether 2024 totals surpass the $323,690 spent in Lynchburg’s 2022 at-large races remains to be seen.
The other Lynchburg council races
All four ward seats on Lynchburg City Council are on the ballot this fall. Here’s who’s running.
Ward 2:
Democratic incumbent Sterling Wilder faces two challengers.
Ward 3:
Republican incumbent Jeff Helgeson is retiring.
Ward 4:
Incumbent Chris Faraldi, the city’s current vice mayor, is seeking re-election.
The city’s three at-large seats will be on the ballot in 2026.
You can see where all these candidates for the Lynchburg City Council stand on the issues in our Voter Guide.
