Fleisher and Wade win nomination to City Council; Pinkston places third

An incumbent City Councilor failed to secure a nomination for re-election in the first official use of ranked-choice voting in Charlottesville.

Only one round of counting was necessary for two candidates to achieve enough votes to qualify for the ballot.

Newcomer Jen Fleisher received 3,108 first or second rank votes and Juandiego Wade received 2,216 first or second rank votes. That equates to 50.56 percent for Fleisher and 36.05 percent for Wade. In a race for two seats, a threshold of 33 percent was enough to go through to the general election.

Brian Pinkston received only 823 first or second rank votes, or 13.39 percent of the vote. Pinkston placed fourth in a five-way race for three seats in the 2019 primary and second in the 2021 primary.

Pinkston and Wade ran a joint campaign with all fundraising going through a political action committee called the Wade-Pinkston Victory Fund.

Pinkson is the first sitting Councilor to lose a nomination since 2015 when Dede Smith placed fourth in a five-way race three slots on the ballot. The same thing happened to Julian Taliaferro in 2009 when he placed third in an “unassembled caucus” for two Democratic nominations.

With no independent candidates or Republican candidates having filed, Charlottesville will now have an uncontested general election for the second cycle in a row.

“I am deeply grateful to Charlottesville voters for placing their trust in me, and I’m so looking forward to the work we can do together,” Fleisher wrote in a statement.

Fleisher is a resident of the Belmont neighborhood. Wade and Pinkston are both residents of the Locust Grove neighborhood.

According to unofficial reports, turnout was 18 percent with 6,257 ballots cast out of a pool of 34,705 registered voters.

The executive director of a group that advocates for this method of voting said its first use in Charlottesville was a success.

“Tuesday’s results demonstrate that ranked choice voting delivers on its promise of diverse representation,” said Sally Hudson, Executive Director of Ranked Choice Virginia. “Charlottesville voters got two winners who come from different corners of our community. One lives on the north side and one lives on the south side.

Ranked Choice Virginia is a project of the Virginia Organizing Project, a group that serves as fiscal agent for many progressive causes.

In 2023, Hudson ran in an unsuccessful primary against fellow Democrat Creigh Deeds for the 11th Senate District.

Albemarle County opted not to move ahead with ranked choice voting for this election cycle after a discussion last August.

Arlington County is the only other locality in Virginia to have passed an ordinance to use ranked choice voting. Only two candidates were vying for the Democratic nomination for the sole seat on the County Board up for election this fall, so the method was not used. Incumbent Takis P. Karantonis got 64.14 percent of the vote. He was first elected in 2020 in a special election.

Before you go: This story should have been posted to this website soon after it was in the June 18, 2025 edition of Charlottesville Community Engagement. It was not. Why? It is quite likely that there are inefficiencies that come with being a one-person information operations. One day Town Crier Productions will have a content management system where it can all be entered into one place. That day is not now. Management and labor both apologize for the inefficiency, but maybe it’s okay to be human?