Did claims of cronyism in Virginia Beach help Worth Remick land a spot on City Council?

In the race for Virginia Beach’s District 6 council seat, newcomer Worth Remick led sitting City Council member Linwood Branch by 226 votes. It was the city’s closest race and — behind the scenes — possibly the grittiest. Remick’s no-holds-barred campaign strategy may have given him the edge.

As Election Day approached, Remick, 62, sent several different mailers to residents attacking Branch’s character. Among the messages, the ads claimed Branch was in the pocket of a “preferred developer” and supported “back-room deals.”

Branch, 67, saw the negative ads and publicly dismissed Remick’s claims in a letter posted on his website days before the election, but it may have been too late.

“I just don’t have it in me to get in a mudslinging contest,” Branch wrote in the letter. “I repudiate all of his baseless accusations against me.”

Now that all votes are counted, Branch is reflecting on the impact Remick’s claims had on the race.

“His accusations against me and the city were hurtful and wrong,” Branch said by phone Tuesday. “I hope the campaign I saw him run is not how he will behave as a District 6 representative.”

Remick, a commercial real estate adviser for Colliers International, decided to run for City Council in January when he heard Guy Tower wasn’t going to seek reelection and that Branch was in the newly drawn district.

One of his priorities is more transparency in government. His campaign slogan posted on his signs around town was, “your interests, not special interests.”

“That really crystallized the campaign,” Remick said in an interview Tuesday.

Branch, who owns the Days Inn at the Oceanfront hotel, had been appointed to the Lynnhaven seat on City Council in 2021 to fill a vacancy after another member resigned. He previously served on council from 1992-2002 and on the city’s development authority from 2010-2018.

Branch’s campaign centered around his recent accomplishments, which included advocating for neighborhoods and adding public parking to the resort area.

“I’m proud of the campaign I ran,” Branch said. “It was very positive.”

District 6 has 45,000 residents and includes the Seatack neighborhood, part of the resort area, the North End and Hilltop.

Remick and Branch raised the most money of all the City Council candidates on the ballot this year. Their top donors came from the real estate and construction industries, according to the Virginia Public Access Project, which tracks campaign donations.

At a few candidate forums held this fall, both Remick and Branch kept it civil, but Remick’s mailers arrived in mailboxes across the district.

One alleged that Branch put “the wishes of certain developers over the needs of the people.” Another stated that Branch didn’t prioritize transparency on City Council. “It’s common knowledge that he engages in back-room deals that enrich his preferred developer friends who have donated over $50,000 to his campaign.”

Remick said he sent the mailers to shine a light on Branch’s voting record on certain projects that included public money, but Remick didn’t elaborate.

“It should be a level playing field, and that’s the point I was trying to make,” he said.

Remick is not against growing Virginia Beach, but he plans to get behind “smart planned development that is supported by the people as much as it is in the interest of the city moving forward,” he said.

During the campaign season, one of Remick’s high-profile supporters reiterated the accusations against Branch that were featured on the mailers.

NFL Hall of Famer and real estate developer Bruce Smith, who donated to Remick’s campaign, alleged that Branch was involved in a backroom deal concerning future development at Rudee Loop. Smith is one of several developers who have submitted informal proposals for the land.

He made the comments at a “town hall” in Virginia Beach Oct. 22. Remick was among several City Council candidates in the audience.

“We cannot afford to allow Linwood Branch to be elected to council,” Smith told the crowd.

On Nov. 2, Smith also wrote an open letter to Virginia Beach Mayor Bobby Dyer addressing the issue.

“If our city is to move forward with a diversified economy that will generate the revenue to invest in our neighborhoods, education, infrastructure, arts and culture, we must reform our city government and upend the cronyism that unduly favors wealthy insiders and citizens of Virginia Beach can begin the work in this crucial endeavor by uniting to reject Linwood Branch at the polls on November 8th,” Smith wrote in the letter, obtained by The Virginian-Pilot.

The mayor responded in an opinion column that ran in The Pilot on Nov. 5.

“It seems that in all local elections the challengers and their supporters find it necessary to trash and demonize the current elected body as a vehicle for getting elected,” wrote Dyer.

Though Remick also accepted donations from developers pursuing projects in Virginia Beach, he said he was in a different situation than Branch because it was small amounts from only a few of them.

“The amount of dollars given by special interest is more of question than who,” Remick said. “Yes, Bruce Smith is on my list. I have not made one promise to him at all.”

When asked if he thought the mailers worked in his favor, Remick said campaigning is not like a sporting event where there’s a scoreboard that keeps tabs on the sidelines.

“You don’t know the score, so you work as hard as you can,” he said. “You play to win.”

Stacy Parker, 757-222-5125, stacy.parker@pilotonline.com