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As evidence of that, Salim has been involved in the local Democratic Party, serving as chairman of the Providence District Committee and finance chair of the Fairfax County Democratic Committee.

The second story of the night came at the end of the forum, when Chap Petersen, who has served in the State Senate since 2007, shared an anecdote that he said best summarized what public service meant to him.

When Petersen was first running for the Fairfax City Council in 1998, he knocked on the door of an elderly couple who lived on Warwick Avenue in the city. After getting to know the novice campaigner, the couple agreed to vote and support him.

A year later, when a neighboring shopping center was under redevelopment, Petersen visited the couple again so that they could go over the plans together.

“And then in 2001, I ran for the House of Delegates against a Republican incumbent member,” Petersen said. “I stopped by the house early, days before the election. Knocked on the door. The woman came to the door and I said, ‘I hope I can count on you and your husband’s vote.’

“She said, ‘Chap, you know that I’m going to vote for you. But you have to know, my husband passed away last week.’ And I said, ‘I’m sorry to bother you. It’s not appropriate.’ She said, ‘Oh, no, it’s fine. He voted for you absentee before he died. He knew he was terminal and voted absentee because he wanted to make sure you got it.'”

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“He was dead. What’s your excuse?” Petersen said, looking at the audience and eliciting a smattering of laughter.

“It just goes to show that politics is about loyalty,” he said. “It’s about building friendships and building relationships with people and I respect that my colleague has knocked on 3,000 doors. I don’t need to talk about how many doors I knocked on. I’ve been to your house. I’ve been to your civic association. The bottom line is, I’m there because I want to represent you. I represent a community, not a committee.”

Two Democrats Square Off In Redrawn Senate District

The Falls Church Chamber of Commerce hosted Thursday night’s candidate forum. About 50 people attended the event, which had been moved to American Legion Post 180 in Vienna to accommodate more people. Central Fairfax Chamber of Commerce and Greater Merrifield Business Association co-hosted the forum and Doug Francis served as the moderator.

Petersen and Salim are competing to be the Democratic Party’s candidate on the ballot in November. The June 20 primary will determine who that will be.

Petersen was first elected to the House of Delegates in 2001 and the State Senate in 2007. He has never faced a primary challenge in a Virginia General Assembly race until this election cycle.

What has changed for Petersen since the last time he ran is that the district he represents has been redrawn. It now includes Fairfax City, Oakton, Vienna, Merrifield, Dunn Loring, Idylwood, Tysons and Falls Church.

Earlier on Thursday, Erika Yalowitz, a court officer in the Arlington County Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court, announced that she was withdrawing from the 37th District race. In fact, she was scheduled to take part in Thursday night’s forum.

In an an email to her supporters, Yalowitz criticized Petersen for voting against a law that would have required lost and stolen weapons be reported and another bill to ban assault weapons. She went on to tell her supporters that she was endorsing Salim and giving any leftover campaign funds to him.

During the candidate forum, Salim said the first thing he would do if he were elected to the Virginia Senate was to introduce a bill banning assault weapons.

In February 2022, Petersen was one of four Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee who stopped a House bill that that would have imposed a sweeping ban on assault weapons, according to the Virginia Mercury. The lawmakers said they wanted to hold the bill for a year to clear up some of its language. The bill was not brought back in the next legislative session.

At the time, Gov. Ralph Northam and House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn, who are both Democrats, voiced their disappointment over the committee’s decision, according to the Virginia Mercury.

At a recent meeting of the City of Fairfax Democratic Committee, Petersen said he didn’t support language in the law that made it retroactive to apply to people who had already purchased assault-style weapons legally.

On Thursday night, Petersen defended his record on gun control, saying he supported a number of laws that have been passed by the Senate, including one limiting the purchase of one gun per month, the red flag law and requiring criminal background checks.

In the 2023 General Assembly session, Petersen introduced Senate Bill 1167, which would have made the firearm industry liable if its products were sold to distributors or retailers that failed to establish and conduct reasonable controls in the sale of firearms.

“Senate Bill 167 takes indemnification and applies liability, basically liability against those companies which sell firearms which end up in the hands of felons, children or people that are not qualified to own a firearm and basically make them liable for negligence or gross negligence if they sell things, particularly over the internet, because that’s where a lot of gun transactions are now taking place,” he said.

Although SB 167 crossed over, it was not passed by the House of Delegates, which is controlled by the Republican majority.

On his website, Petersen lists the successful fight to reopen K-12 public schools for in-person instruction in the spring of 2021 as one of his accomplishments in recent years. But, he drew heat from other Democrats for working with Republicans to reopen schools. He also supported repealing the universal mask mandate for students, which many Democrats opposed.

In a Feb. 22, 2022 letter to Scott Brabrand, who was then the superintendent of Fairfax County Public Schools, Petersen said to the best of his knowledge there was no need for FCPS to force students to wear masks.

At that point in the pandemic, Petersen said the wearing of masks in public was more of a political choice rather than a health decision.

“In other words, by wearing a mask in a public setting, the wearer is able to communicate a political message, e.g. ‘I Care About Others’ or ‘I Voted for Biden’ or even ‘I’m Vaccinated,” he wrote. “The ability to communicate a political message is the essence of our First Amendment, but coercing others into adopting that statement, especially a student in a public school, is the exact opposite.”

After Petersen officially kicked off his 2023 campaign, Patch asked him what accomplishments he was running on.

“Focus on bringing the kids back, public education, restoring all learning loss issues we’ve had over the past couple of years,” he said. “Protecting small business, that’s always been one of my biggest issues, particularly if we’re facing an economic downturn.”

Salim And Petersen Disagree Over Repealing Right To Work In Virginia

As Democrats, Petersen and Salim voiced many of the same views on a number of issues in Thursday night’s forum, differentiated only by the fact that one had served in public office and could point to legislation he had worked on.

Aside from gun control, the other major disagreement came after Salim said he would work to repeal Virginia’s right to work policy.

“If you look over the last couple of years during the COVID period from the early 2000s to now, we have seen union workers be the front line of our society,” he said. “We have seen taxi drivers, we have seen Uber drivers, we have seen teachers, we have seen such workers that put themselves out there during the pandemic. For me in the state legislature to say, ‘I don’t want to give you your benefits,’ that doesn’t seem right to me.”

Petersen responded that repealing right to work would undermine small businesses.

“I’m proud to be a pro-business Democrat,” he said. “That’s kind of my identity. At the same time, we’ve done things like protecting workers rights. We raised the minimum wage. But we would be foolish to try and reinvent ourselves with some type of quasi-socialist regime that my opponent seems to want to go. It just makes no sense.”

Salim countered that he was not trying to hurt small businesses. “We’re trying to make sure that the working class gets their fair share of the pay,” he said.

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