Parrish won’t seek reelection
Longtime supervisor endorses Van Carney for StonewallHawthorne seat ‘People who are raised here … they’ve developed an appreciation for what we have here’
Rappahannock Supervisor Chris Parrish has announced that he will not seek a fourth term representing the Stonewall-Hawthorne district, and in doing so he endorsed county businessman Van Carney to fill his seat on the BOS.
“Currently I’m the only board member who has been raised in the county, and I know Van Carney was raised in the county, and I would like to keep that tradition alive,” explains Parrish of
the double announcement.
“It’s important in my mind because people who are raised here know what [the county] is now, know what it’s been, they’ve developed an appreciation for what we have here, and are more likely to be inclined to preserve the peace and quiet and the open space that we all enjoy.”
“I am thrilled,” Carney says of the supervisor’s endorsement. “They are huge shoes to be filled. As
I’ve been going around the county, I’ve discovered that people absolutely love Chris and they think he’s done a fantastic job. So the county will be losing a good one by him stepping down.”
Carney, who with his two brothers is co-owner of Pen Druid Brewing, reveals that he’s wanted to become a county supervisor ever since he approached the BOS to approve his Eagle Scout merit badge project — constructing the fire danger sign at the entrance to the county park — back in the mid-1990s.
“That was the first moment that I said this is something that I want to do,” he recalls. “And when Chris mentioned to me that he wasn’t going to be seeking another [term] I said I would love to.”
Parrish says he has known Carney, who turns 41 in April, for his entire life. “I knew both his grandparents,” says the supervisor, World War II veteran Col. Jack Carney and Frances “Tiny” Carney.
“Everybody knew her as Tiny,” says Parrish. “She was chair of the Republican
Party and I would go to Republican conventions with her. She was a delegate from Rappahannock. She was energetic, focused, and no-nonsense …
“At the time the Republican Party here was miniscule — it was just literally like a dozen people, not many people at all,” he remembers. “We would meet in Tiny’s living room at Pen Druid Farm. And Jack Carney, Van’s grandfather, we were the two Republicans on the electoral board. We worked together certifying elections — I did that for 27 years until I ran for supervisor.
“They were dedicated,” he says of the couple. “Managed to get things accomplished.”
Carney, who lives in Woodville with his wife and three children — their home just a few miles from the farm where he grew up — becomes the first person to announce his candidacy for the seat. He says he’s already halfway through the process of collecting the required signatures to run in the election, which falls this year on Nov. 2.
“I've been getting a real sense of what people [in the district] want and what they value,” Carney tells the Rappahannock
News. “The common thing that binds us all in Rappahannock, as Chris said, is the open space and I’m dedicated to keeping it that way — open and undeveloped.”
Which, he adds, is a key component of his campaign platform.
“I have three things: I want to keep Rappahannock open and undeveloped; I want to keep the county out of needless debt; and I want to have civil governance. And I think with those three things we can achieve a lot in the county … moving into the 21st century — just tackling the problems that everybody has to tackle with those three tenets.”
Among the most pressing issues the county faces, made glaringly obvious by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, is “communication infrastructure,” Carney says. “Like our phone lines, being able to make a phone call, being able to call 911, that's incredibly important.” Even more widespread are inferior broadband capabilities, especially within the Stonewall-Hawthorne district that stretches from portions of Rock Mills, Laurel Mills and Estes southward through Castleton, into Woodville, Round Hill and Slate Mills.
“I think that COVID has shone a light on the fact that kids who are at home have to ‘virtually’ learn. And teachers who are at home … are having to teach [with] poor internet. That infrastructure is not available to them,” he says. “What we need to do, as the broadband [authority] is trying to do, is have a comprehensive look at the available options so that we can make a decision moving forward.”
Parrish says he is more than confident that Carney would pick up where he leaves off once his third and final term draws to a close at the end of this year, beginning with an all important guarantee of preservation.
“That was my campaign pledge from day one — no change. I feel good that very little has changed,” the supervisor says. “What happens is people come here because they enjoy the atmosphere, and then a lot of them as ‘good samaritans’ want to ‘improve’ the place. And they have these ideas that have failed before, or are indeed detrimental.
“Somebody [like Carney] who's been here all the time knows it's not going to work and to leave it alone.”