Last week, appearing before the monthly meeting of the Arlington County Democratic Committee, incumbent Commonwealth Attorney Theo Stamos announced her candidacy for re-election to represent Arlington and the City of Falls Church, having served for seven years to date. Stamos has an announced challenger in Parisa Dehghani-Tafti, whose campaign kickoff was reported in last week’s News-Press.

Stamos said in her announcement, “I have been the county’s chief prosecutor for the last seven years. In that time, I have led my office with a set of values that any Democrat would endorse: a sense of fair play, respect for all, and an appreciation for the humanity that rests within everyone – victims and defendants alike.”

She added, “Under my leadership, this will be seventh year of a robust Drug Court program that provides a meaningful alternative to incarceration for drug offenses. As this new year started, not one person was sitting in the Arlington Jail awaiting trial on a charge of simple possession of marijuana and not a single person was serving a sentence on an original charge of marijuana possession. Also, we have instituted a Second Chance program that offers an alternative to prosecution and school suspension for our community’s young people. And I’m proud to report that as of last Friday, the inmate population in the Arlington Jail is at the lowest it’s been in five years. That’s because of smart policing and smart prosecutions, and initiatives that I’ve led on such as our Magistrate Diversion program and our Bond Diversion program. And it’s due to my leadership that Arlington has a state-of-the-art protocol for addressing sexual assault and intimate partner violence that serves as a model for the Commonwealth. I’ve been a Democrat since I was holding up posters for Hubert Humphrey on the corner of 93rd and Kingston on the South Side of Chicago.”