Meet the mayoral candidates

Photos by Justice Lowry for The Richmonder

Richmonder political correspondent Graham Moomaw has spent time since our launch in September sitting down with all five mayoral candidates.

Today, he tells how their backgrounds shaped who they are, and shares what they plan to accomplish during their time in office if elected.

Some highlights from his conversations, in alphabetical order...

Andreas Addison

Addison’s push for the city to adopt a land value tax — a shift that would involve taxing the value of land at a higher rate than the buildings on it — may be the closest thing to a signature policy proposal in the five-person mayoral race. Addison said that concept, which has run into skepticism at City Hall, could ease the tax burden on some homeowners seeing their property assessments rise dramatically while incentivizing developers to build densely on empty lots.

“This is the kind of idea we need to bring into our city, because we have over 1,000 vacant, empty, blighted parcels,” he said. “We have vacant land owned by the housing authority that should be housing.”

Danny Avula

As his career was starting to take off in the early 2000s and he was developing an interest in the root causes of health disparities, Avula said he, his wife (now a teacher at Chimborazo Elementary School) and a group of college friends decided to move to Church Hill with a goal of pursuing “authentic relationships across race and class.”

Over time, Avula also saw gentrification pushing out his Black neighbors who couldn’t afford to stay. Meanwhile, newcomers came in and renovated old houses within walking distance of many of the restaurants that were winning Richmond accolades as an up-and-coming city.

Avula said his focus as mayor would be to continue the “so many good things that have happened” while making a concerted effort to provide more opportunity for lower-income people of color who feel left out of that success or even uprooted by it. To him, that means translating the “principles of justice and equity” into effective, outcome-focused policy.

Michelle Mosby

In her 2016 mayoral campaign, Mosby blasted former General Assembly member Joe Morrissey over his romantic relationship with his teenage secretary who later became his wife. Mosby finished fourth, but Morrissey lost his mayoral bid too.

“What I knew was we had to have a mayor that the city and the people could be proud of,” Mosby said in an interview. With a daughter of her own, Mosby said her role eight years ago was being “the mommy” in the race.

This year is different.

To stand out in a race where she and her competitors are all prioritizing affordable housing, public safety, a more responsive City Hall and better-funded schools, Mosby is heavily emphasizing her longer track record in Richmond politics and background on the City Council.

Maurice Neblett

Maurice Neblett is running to be Richmond’s mayor without much money and without the type of professional campaign help his better-funded opponents have. In his telling, the lack of big donors is a badge of honor, a sign he’s a candidate for the people, not the special interests.

When his opponents get big checks, he said in an interview, the people writing them expect something back.

“They're being given a favor, and they have to return that favor,” Neblett said. “And that's the reality of politics as usual. And I'm bringing something that's going to dismantle that.”

Harrison Roday

Roday has emphasized the rights of workers and has said he’s more interested in standing up for renters than property owners.

“Some people go work in business, and their values change in a bad way,” he said. “What happened to me when I worked in the private sector is I came away strongly believing what I was taught growing up, even more so. Which is that workers and people who don't have as much access to opportunity as they should need a bigger seat at the table.”

Roday’s campaign platform includes promises to invest $100 million in affordable housing efforts, create a permitting “shot clock” to speed up building approvals, creating an office dedicated to gun violence prevention within the mayor’s office, auditing all City Hall departments and creating a five-year improvement plan with metrics that can show how the city is doing on its goals.