Recent Press Coverage
January 24, 2023
Clement fingered the Arlington County Democratic Committee, or ACDC, as the “obvious suspect.”
“My signs were gone where the ACDC had removed theirs,” she said. Clement came in second, with 28 percent of the vote, in the 2022 County Board race, trailing incumbent Democrat Matt de Ferranti, who took 61 percent. Independent Adam Theo received about 10 percent of the vote.
November 17, 2022
November 2, 2022
But Clement acknowledges that getting to 40 percent won’t likely be enough to surmount incumbent Democrat Matt de Ferranti. A little higher vote percentage, though, and things could become the one word that no incumbent wants to hear: Interesting.
“Estimated conservatively, this race looks like de Ferranti has it in the bag. Estimated liberally, this race looks like a cliff-hanger,” Clement said in response to a Sun Gazette query.
November 2, 2022
October 31, 2022
The software developer said she would only support adding density along transit corridors, citing concerns about how missing middle housing will jeopardize Arlington’s tree canopy and strain county infrastructure.
“It would provide more unaffordable housing,” said Clement, who has tried to appeal to mostly non-Democrats in her campaign. “It will not provide home-buying opportunities for anybody because most of these units are going to be rentals.”
October 27, 2022
“Black and Latino household income is just a fraction of that,” she said, pointing to county-government data. “These folks will not be able to benefit from housing derived from Missing Middle upzoning . . . that housing will be unaffordable.”
October 25, 2022
Vihstadt did not say so explicitly at a recent rally organized by opponents of the Missing Middle housing/zoning proposals, but his remarks left little doubt about his sympathies.
“If you want to send a message to the echo chamber and add diversity of thought and perspective to this County Board, pick your candidate wisely,” Vihstadt said at the rally.
In case anyone missed the implication, he added that if one was a praying person, “pray for ‘in-Clement’ weather” on Election Day.
October 24, 2022
“At the very least, they’re concerned that de Ferranti and Adam Theo, who also is plugging for Missing Middle, will split the YIMBY [‘Yes in My Back Yard’] vote,” she said.
October 18, 2022
October 14, 2022
“She will stand up to the developers and bring an independent voice for Arlington residents to the board,” said Mark Antell, a Green Party member and longtime local activist, in an Oct. 13 release from the party announcing its selection.
September 30, 2022
And she certainly has name recognition among activists, having been running for various local offices continuously for more than a decade.
“I am certain if I ask everyone in this room, they have voted for Audrey at least once,” Hurtt said. “She’s a very smart woman who’s very versed in local issues.”
September 20, 2022
Reciting excerpts of a speech she has presented during the Arlington County Civic Federation and Chamber of Commerce candidate fora, Clement argued that Missing Middle will not add to the county’s stock of 3-bedroom, and will reduce Arlington’s tree canopy, and will not increase home-buying opportunities for people of color — though the latter is an assertion with which the local NAACP disagrees.
September 16, 2022
September 15, 2022
September 15, 2022
Clement ripped into community-engagement efforts as “woefully inadequate” and derided de Ferranti’s contention that online forums on the matter shouldn’t be made available to the broader public as
“truly laughable.” She said that, if elected, “I would first halt the current process,” albeit offering no inkling of how she would get two other County Board members to go along with her.
September 15, 2022
September 7, 2022
September 7, 2022
September 2, 2022
July 13, 2022
June 27, 2022
June 16, 2022
June 9, 2022
May 25, 2022
An independent candidate for Arlington County Board suggests the county government will rely on a “biased survey” to shoehorn more housing into neighborhoods across the community.
In a recent missive to supporters, Audrey Clement said that county government’s online “Missing Middle” survey does not give residents the opportunity to say they want no other types of housing in current single-family neighborhoods, only the opportunity to pick among a number of pre-selected options.
“When the survey results are tabulated, the county can claim universal support for Missing Middle housing, with respondents differing only over the types of multi-family housing they prefer,” Clement said.
May 10, 2022
An independent candidate for Arlington County Board says she’d be OK with a major pay raise for County Board members, if they were providing adequate oversight duties.
But they’re not, Audrey Clement contends.
“Where is the hard work in avoiding hard decisions by kowtowing to staff?” Clement asked in a recent campaign missive to supporters. “This is how the board routinely operates.”
January 20, 2022
“With the appointment of [Andrew] Wheeler and [Michael] Rolband to lead the state’s environmental program, Virginia voters have been driven from pillar to post. On the one hand they don’t deserve a Department of Education that promotes CRT. They also don’t need a Department of Environmental Quality that promotes climate denial. (p. 6)”
https://sungazette.news/e-edition/
December 9, 2021
“The intramural conflict [among government agencies about permitting the Mountain Valley Pipeline] bodes well for environmentalists seeking to keep fossils in the ground and landowners seeking to preserve their natural surroundings. (p. 6)”
https://sungazette.news/e-edition/
November 11, 2021
“I regret that I have but one opportunity a year to challenge the all-Democrat County Board,” Clement said in a post-election missive to supporters, after she rolled up a second-place finish in the four-candidate field.
September 23, 2021
“The fourth candidate on the ballot, independent Audrey Clement, scoffed that things had been ‘fixed.’ She called the oversight body ‘a toothless tiger’ and wanted a police auditor ‘who is not beholden to the county manager.’”
https://sungazette.news/candidates-split-on-details-of-police-oversight-body/
September 21, 2021
“Clement was asked about her stance critical of restorative justice reforms, which Jones said communities of color support.
“’I am concerned about its potential for abuse in the schools,’ Clement said. ‘I will insist it be used to supplement rather than replace traditional judicial process.’”
September 17, 2021
“’I question the county’s commitment’ to environmental issues, independent Audrey Clement said at the Arlington County Civic Federation’s Sept. 14 candidate forum, held online.
“Clement said the county government was good at ‘double-speak’ and taking credit for things, but its efforts (or lack of same) on issues like tree canopy have left Arlington with ‘more runoff, erosion and heat-island effects.’”
https://sungazette.news/arlington-candidates-do-battle-over-environment-at-forum
September 16, 2021
“It was not a bad showing by the three Arlington County Board independents running against incumbent Democrat Takis Karantonis, as campaign season kicked off with the Committee of 100 debate last week.
“Audrey Clement, Mike Cantwell and Adam Theo presented themselves well and followed our advice (proffered in this space last week), unsheathing the knives and thrusting away at the Democratic oligarchy running the county.”
September 10, 2021
“Clement also is hitting the county government’s “missing middle” housing policy, which supporters say aims to use zoning tools to increase housing options. Like other critics of the policy, the candidate warns of repercussions.
“‘Missing middle’ is a euphemism for upzoning that will not make housing more affordable,” she said.
“Rather than provide a net increase in tax revenue, Clement said shoehorning ever more housing into Arlington’s 26 square miles will exacerbate the need for schools, transportation and other infrastructure, and ‘could bankrupt the county.’”
September 9, 2021
“Clement said the Missing Middle Study will create more housing, but nothing truly affordable, predicting people will continue to get priced out of their neighborhoods. She added that it won’t promote racial equity, citing a study from New York University that found between 2000-2007, upzoning in New York City “produced an influx of whites in gentrified areas, even as white population plummeted.”
‘A far better solution is to repurpose unrented luxury units in the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor to moderate income housing,’ she said.”
July 23, 2021
“If the public is unhappy at the cavalier manner in which [the] County Board disposed of a big piece of its Civil War heritage, and the heavy-handed way in which the Circuit Court extinguished its legal rights, then it can elect new leaders,” Clement said, echoing the legal ruling, in an e-mail to supporters. “I believe Arlington needs public servants who honor rather than disparage the rights of its citizens.”
April 12, 2021
“The county will tell you it can’t afford to reduce the real estate tax rate because the pandemic has drained the commercial real estate tax revenue, but where were your real estate tax rates heading when the county was flush with revenue from corporate tenants?” [Clement] said. “They were going up.”
https://www.arlnow.com/2021/04/12/some-call-for-real-estate-lower-tax-rate-amid-sunnier-revenue-projections/#disqus_thread
March 31, 2021
“Clement suggests that Arlington elected officials don’t seem to care much about the pandemic’s impact on county residents, having allowed real-estate tax bills to balloon up in 2020 and, apparently, planning the same again in 2021.”
https://www.insidenova.com/news/arlington/arlington-contenders-zeroes-in-on-increasing-tax-burden/article_1b2badda-9216-11eb-9905-ff2ea54e313b.html
March 22, 2021
As for the events of March 20, a veteran civic activist – Audrey Clement – said it was emblematic of the county government’s disinclination to fully address the preservation issue.
“Your contempt for Arlington’s historic legacy as well as the process for preserving it is shocking, and your treatment of Tom Dickinson is contemptible,” Clement said in an e-mail to the County Board.
2/22/21
“While these initiatives conform with the county’s social-justice agenda, they come at a price,” said Audrey Clement, a former and potentially future County Board candidate and veteran budget-watcher.
“Twenty vacant police and sheriff positions are to be gutted,” Clement noted after perusing the voluminous budget plan. “A host of other police-related positions will be frozen. Of particular concern are reductions in the 911 call center.”
1/25/21
“Clement, an independent, has run more or less continually for either County Board or (less often) School Board over the past decade. Depending on the year and the number of candidates in the race, her general-election percentage of the vote has ranged from the single digits to slightly more than 30 percent.”
9/16/20
“A candidate for Arlington County Board says the board’s recent actions restricting guns on county-government sites assures only that ‘future targets of gun violence are unable to defend themselves on public property.’
“’I’m afraid that the current County Board, led by my opponent Libby Garvey, is endangering the citizens it has sworn to protect,’ candidate Audrey Clement said following the vote.”
9/14/20
https://www.arlnow.com/2020/09/14/board-approves-gun-ban-in-county-buildings-and-parks/
“Among the speakers was independent County Board candidate Audrey Clement, who said the ordinance endangers lives.
‘I’m afraid that the current County Board led by my opponent, Libby Garvey, is endangering the citizens it has sworn to protect,” she wrote in an email to supporters earlier today. “It adopted a blanket gun ban on County property and County sponsored events, thus assuring that future targets of gun violence are unable to defend themselves on public property.'”
8/14/20
“The state and local Democratic parties say they oppose the amendment because it doesn’t go far enough,” she said. “This argument is misleading, because without an independent redistricting commission, another partisan gerrymander is inevitable following the 2020 census – this time a Democratic gerrymander, which is evidently what they want.”
4/27/20
Sun Gazette on County Board’s Push Back Against Critics of Its Luckluster Coronavirus Response
“A number of activists, including perennial County Board candidate Audrey Clement, were critical that the county government on March 13 asked, but did not require, restaurants to close in-person service as the crisis began to ramp up.”
4/8/20
Sun Gazette Coverage of County’s Coronvirus Response
“Will the performance of the Arlington County government addressing the COVID-19 public-health situation become fodder for November’s general election?
“A candidate who already is on the ballot is pressing the case that it should.
“Audrey Clement, who has been running campaigns for elected office for more than a decade, said last week that the County Board failed to use its powers to force restaurants to close in the earliest days of the crisis.”
3/16/20
Sun Gazette Announcement of Candidacy for Arlington County Board
“Audrey Clement has filed the necessary paperwork with county election officials to run as an independent in the Nov. 3 election.
“Clement is a perennial candidate, most often for County Board but occasionally for School Board, who has focused on issues including housing, transportation and government transparency.
“In past runs, Clement’s bids have generated varying degrees of public support. In races where she is the lone alternative on the ballot to a Democrat, she has garnered upwards of 30 percent of the vote. But other times, her vote totals have been significantly more modest.”
ARLnow Coverage of Arlington Court Suites Redevelopment
2/11/20
“’I really do support this project,” Clement said. “This is right up my alley. It does not involve the demolition of an existing property… I’m very impressed with this project, but in one respect it is not consistent with County policy, and that is the parking ratio.’”
“In 2017, the county adopted a new policy that said the parking ratio should be reduced from one space per unit to as low as 0.2 spaces per unit in certain areas near Metro stations.
“’I do believe this project would be more consistent with county policy if it reduced the number of parking spaces and what I’m particularly interested in is the surface parking. Has the developer considered replacing some or all of the surface parking with green space? This would be a benefit to the residents of this facility.’”
ARLnow Coverage of Planned “Missing Middle” Housing Study
2/10/20
“Transportation Commission member Audrey Clement was more wary of the plan, saying that it calls to increase types of housing but says nothing about affordability or equity. Instead, Clement echoed concerns of some in Arlington that the plan is an effort to quietly curtail single-family zoning.
“’This is about the densification of the county and further gentrification of the county,’ Clement said. ‘Given that is implied in the goals, to implement such a plan would require upzoning. Therefore it is disingenuous to say this is not about upzoning because that’s precisely what would be required to increase housing in residential neighborhoods.’
“Clement pointed to the Veitch Street home to be replaced by several townhouses, discussed earlier in that same meeting.
“’We’re really replacing every million-dollar home with up to seven million-dollar homes on residential lots,’ Clement said. ‘That will serve the purpose of densifying the county, but it won’t provide more affordable housing and it’s a misnomer to call this a Missing Middle plan.’”
2/5/2020
Washington Post On Former Opponent Christian Dorsey’s Removal from WMATA Board
“After Audrey Clement, a frequent candidate who sought a board seat last year, complained that Dorsey had yet to repay the union donation, Arlington board Chair Libby Garvey (D) said Dorsey gives ‘incredibly good service to us.’”
Washington Post Coverage of Ethically Challenged Incumbent Board Member
11/6/19
“Dorsey said he realized he had neglected to disclose the union contribution to Metro after Audrey Clement, an opponent in his campaign for reelection in Arlington, criticized him for both the $10,000 ATU donation and an equally large one from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. She said the money should disqualify him from discussions or votes involving labor negotiations.”
InsideNOVA.com Coverage of Public Comment At Recent County Board Meeting
10/25/19
“Audrey Clement’s perpetual County Board campaign took the offensive at last Saturday’s board meeting, attacking board chairman Christian Dorsey for accepting campaign contributions from unions that potentially could benefit from decision-making during his service on the board of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority.”
ARLnow Coverage of 2019 Chamber of Commerce Candidate Forum
9/10/2019
Overall, Clement argued that development drives up costs to build housing and that even dedicated affordable housing units come at a steep cost.
InsideNOVA.com Coverage of 2019 Civic Federation Candidate Forum
9/6/2019
“I would characterize Arlington’s growth as growth on steroids,” said challenger Audrey Clement, portraying current County Board members as putting their heads in the sand on its ramifications while allowing “developers and builders to line their pockets.”
ARLnow Coverage of 2019 County Board Independent Candidates
Clement also told ARLnow she believes she’s able to earn the support of Arlington voters now more than ever thanks to those who oppose the Board’s approval of the HQ2 deal with Amazon, which has led to rising rents and home values, and potentially higher real estate taxes. She’s pledged to fight for tax relief for those “priced out of their homes” if elected.
“For those who want to make a killing by selling their property, Amazon HQ2 was a good thing. For voters who want to stay here on fixed incomes, it may be up and out,” she said. “If so, they have Katie and Christian to thank.”
InsideNOVA.com Coverage of FY2019 Arlington County Adopted Budget
“Placing vital programs on the chopping block is the best way for County Board to push a tax increase while concealing real pork in the budget,” Clement said.
InsideNOVA.com Coverage of 2018 Arlington Civic Federation Debate
Kanninen, who won the 2014 election over Clement by a two-to-one margin, also stayed true to her own past performance: She was willing to accept her opponent’s verbal body blows during the debate, while pressing home her message that the school system is acting as responsible stewards with the public’s money.
Clement, who has run multiple times for several local offices, was having none of that argument. She promised the voters would “get more bang for the School Board’s buck” if they elected her.
“Arlington spends 2.5 times the state average for new classroom capacity,” she said at the heavily attended forum. “The additional money that Arlington is spending . . . is not resulting in better performance. We don’t have better schools.”
ARLnow.com Story On Design of New Reed Elementary School
“It will force 9- and 10-year-olds to march up three flights of stairs several times a day,” Clement told the Board. “While this scheme furthers APS’ commitment to a more-car diet, it will impose physical hardship on students and drive up costs.”
InsideNOVA.com story On Changing Name of Washington-Lee High School
“Had not George Washington, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson – all Virginia native sons and slaveholders – greased the skids of institutionalized slavery by agreeing to write it into the U.S. Constitution, Lee would not have taken up arms against his own nation,” Clement said in a missive to supporters. “To strike Lee’s name from Washington-Lee High School without also striking Washington’s name is hypocrisy in the extreme.”
ARLnow.com Editorial on Decision to Run for School Board
“If past track record is any indication, the odds will be overwhelmingly against Clement, who would be running to unseat incumbent Barbara Kanninen. On the other hand, uncontested elections are rarely a good thing in a democracy, and Clement has added to the civic conversation whenever she has run.”
InsideNOVA.com Editorial on Decision to Run for School Board
“I say this as one who likes Clement and thinks she brings valuable points of view to the community conversation: It’s time for her to stop running for office.”