Conservative candidate wins seat on Loudoun County school board

As Democrats dominated statewide races in Virginia, one of the most high-profile school districts in the state and country elected a conservative school board candidate critical of the district’s bathroom policies, the second election in a row that a seat in a blue district has been flipped.  

Unofficial results compiled by the Virginia Public Access Project show Amy Riccardi winning 51.47% of the vote in the race for a seat on the Loudoun County Public Schools Board of Education representing the Sterling District.

Riccardi has defeated Democrat-endorsed incumbent Arben Istrefi, who captured 47.7% of the vote. Loudoun County Public Schools is a school district located in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., that has drawn national headlines in recent years amid debate over its policies related to trans-identifying students.

Riccardi’s campaign website highlights the candidate’s position on Policy 8040, a controversial policy adopted by the Board of Education in 2021 that allows trans-identified students to use sex-segregated facilities that align with their stated gender identity as opposed to their biological sex. She calls for its revision to meet “federal and state requirements while ensuring ALL of our students are heard.”

“This summer, the US Supreme Court reaffirmed Title IX, upholding the separation of boys’ and girls’ sports and the dignity of their unique spaces in restrooms and locker rooms,” the website noted. 

“We also need to acknowledge the impact of those policy decisions on our Title I schools with regard to Federal funding.”

Riccardi’s profile on the candidate database iVoterGuide characterizes her as a candidate who “leans conservative” based on her responses to a questionnaire. However, she ran as an independent. Riccardi told 7News that her supporters want an end to Policy 8040, saying she thinks it’s a big reason why she won. 

“We want to make sure all of our transgender kids and all of our students in LCPS feel safe in their learning environment. Absolutely. And frankly, kids and teenagers, it’s all about exploring life and how they’re going to fit into it. So, I think it’s creating great safe spaces for them to be able to do that,” Riccardi said. “But on the other hand, parents don’t want boys and girls sharing bathrooms, locker rooms or sports. They just don’t.”

Thoughout the campaign, she said she was asked dozens of times a day if she was going to “protect my daughter in the bathroom?”

“Are you going to keep the boys and girls out of each other’s spaces? And the answer to that is yes,” she said. 

Istrefi was a supporter of LCPS’s policy allowing male students to use female locker rooms and bathrooms.

Riccardi responded to a question about the use of Planned Parenthood as a resource for students by insisting that “Abortion counseling or other pregnancy counseling services should not be offered in the school system” and maintained that parents should have to “OPT-IN” to comprehensive sexual education and social emotional learning as opposed to “OPT-OUT.”

Riccardi’s victory comes two years after a candidate endorsed by the conservative 1776 Project PAC won a school board seat in Loudoun County. This year, Lauren Shernoff won unopposed in her re-election bid for the Leesburg District. 

Riccardi will join fellow conservatives Shernoff and Deana Griffiths, who received $200 from the Loudoun Conservatives Care group in her successful 2023 campaign against an incumbent school board member in the Ashburn District who supported policy 8040.

Griffiths was not on the ballot this year. 

The 1776 Project PAC is an advocacy group that works to elect “reform-minded conservatives who oppose political indoctrination and believe in parental rights, safe and secure schools, fiscal transparency, improving educational standards, promoting transparency, and reversing pandemic-related learning loss.”

The outrage over Policy 8040 in Loudoun County has received national attention. Most recently, the school district has faced allegations that it “unfairly targeted” male students for “sexual harassment” because of their opposition to the presence of a trans-identified female in the boys’ locker room.

The school district previously faced allegations that it covered up the sexual assault of female students in the bathrooms at two separate high schools at the hands of a male student to ensure the passage of Policy 8040. 

While Riccardi and Shernoff won school board seats in a county that voted overwhelmingly Democratic in Virginia’s statewide elections last week, other conservative school board candidates in the district came up short.

April Chandler, identified as a liberal by iVoterGuide, overwhelmingly defeated her conservative challenger, Matt Malone, in the race to represent the Algonkian District.

In the Broad Run District, liberal candidate Ross Svenson defeated his conservative opponent, Samuel Yan. In the Dulles District, liberal Jonathan Pepper defeated conservative Santos Munoz-Melendez. 

The 1776 Project PAC published an X post on Friday announcing that 27 of its endorsed candidates won their races last week. Since the 1776 Project PAC endorsed 72 candidates ahead of the 2025 election, this means that slightly more than one-third of its preferred candidates secured seats on school boards across the U.S.

The 1776 Project PAC saw all of its preferred candidates win their races to serve on the Worcester School Committee in Massachusetts, the Little Miami School Board in Ohio and the Xenia School Board in Ohio as well as several school districts in Pennsylvania.

The 1776 Project PAC had a 75% success rate getting its endorsed candidates elected to the Eastern Lebanon County School District in Pennsylvania. Only one of the 1776 Project PAC’s three endorsed candidates won a seat in the Anoka-Hennepin School District in Minnesota. 

Meanwhile, the group had a 50% success rate in the Kansas-based USD 453 in Leavenworth and the Pennsylvania-based Lehighton Area School District. The group had a 25% success rate in two additional Pennsylvania-based school districts: the Pennridge Central School District and the Centennial School District. 

Candidates endorsed by the 1776 Project PAC came up short in the Pennsylvania-based York Suburban School District, West Shore School District, Chalfont School District, Lower Merion School District and the Perkiomen Valley School District as well as the Ohio-based Southwestern City School Board, Miamisburg School Board, Mentor School Board and Riverside Local School Board. 1776 Project PAC-affiliated candidates also failed to win seats in Stafford County, Virginia, and the Lansing School District in Leavenworth, Kansas. 

As Democrats dominated statewide races in Virginia, one of the most high-profile school districts in the state and country elected a conservative school board candidate critical of the district’s bathroom policies, the second election in a row that a seat in a blue district has been flipped.  

Unofficial results compiled by the Virginia Public Access Project show Amy Riccardi winning 51.47% of the vote in the race for a seat on the Loudoun County Public Schools Board of Education representing the Sterling District.

Riccardi has defeated Democrat-endorsed incumbent Arben Istrefi, who captured 47.7% of the vote. Loudoun County Public Schools is a school district located in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., that has drawn national headlines in recent years amid debate over its policies related to trans-identifying students.

Riccardi’s campaign website highlights the candidate’s position on Policy 8040, a controversial policy adopted by the Board of Education in 2021 that allows trans-identified students to use sex-segregated facilities that align with their stated gender identity as opposed to their biological sex. She calls for its revision to meet “federal and state requirements while ensuring ALL of our students are heard.”

“This summer, the US Supreme Court reaffirmed Title IX, upholding the separation of boys’ and girls’ sports and the dignity of their unique spaces in restrooms and locker rooms,” the website noted. 

“We also need to acknowledge the impact of those policy decisions on our Title I schools with regard to Federal funding.”

Riccardi’s profile on the candidate database iVoterGuide characterizes her as a candidate who “leans conservative” based on her responses to a questionnaire. However, she ran as an independent. Riccardi told 7News that her supporters want an end to Policy 8040, saying she thinks it’s a big reason why she won. 

“We want to make sure all of our transgender kids and all of our students in LCPS feel safe in their learning environment. Absolutely. And frankly, kids and teenagers, it’s all about exploring life and how they’re going to fit into it. So, I think it’s creating great safe spaces for them to be able to do that,” Riccardi said. “But on the other hand, parents don’t want boys and girls sharing bathrooms, locker rooms or sports. They just don’t.”

Thoughout the campaign, she said she was asked dozens of times a day if she was going to “protect my daughter in the bathroom?”

“Are you going to keep the boys and girls out of each other’s spaces? And the answer to that is yes,” she said. 

Istrefi was a supporter of LCPS’s policy allowing male students to use female locker rooms and bathrooms.

Riccardi responded to a question about the use of Planned Parenthood as a resource for students by insisting that “Abortion counseling or other pregnancy counseling services should not be offered in the school system” and maintained that parents should have to “OPT-IN” to comprehensive sexual education and social emotional learning as opposed to “OPT-OUT.”

Riccardi’s victory comes two years after a candidate endorsed by the conservative 1776 Project PAC won a school board seat in Loudoun County. This year, Lauren Shernoff won unopposed in her re-election bid for the Leesburg District. 

Riccardi will join fellow conservatives Shernoff and Deana Griffiths, who received $200 from the Loudoun Conservatives Care group in her successful 2023 campaign against an incumbent school board member in the Ashburn District who supported policy 8040.

Griffiths was not on the ballot this year. 

The 1776 Project PAC is an advocacy group that works to elect “reform-minded conservatives who oppose political indoctrination and believe in parental rights, safe and secure schools, fiscal transparency, improving educational standards, promoting transparency, and reversing pandemic-related learning loss.”

The outrage over Policy 8040 in Loudoun County has received national attention. Most recently, the school district has faced allegations that it “unfairly targeted” male students for “sexual harassment” because of their opposition to the presence of a trans-identified female in the boys’ locker room.

The school district previously faced allegations that it covered up the sexual assault of female students in the bathrooms at two separate high schools at the hands of a male student to ensure the passage of Policy 8040. 

While Riccardi and Shernoff won school board seats in a county that voted overwhelmingly Democratic in Virginia’s statewide elections last week, other conservative school board candidates in the district came up short.

April Chandler, identified as a liberal by iVoterGuide, overwhelmingly defeated her conservative challenger, Matt Malone, in the race to represent the Algonkian District.

In the Broad Run District, liberal candidate Ross Svenson defeated his conservative opponent, Samuel Yan. In the Dulles District, liberal Jonathan Pepper defeated conservative Santos Munoz-Melendez. 

The 1776 Project PAC published an X post on Friday announcing that 27 of its endorsed candidates won their races last week. Since the 1776 Project PAC endorsed 72 candidates ahead of the 2025 election, this means that slightly more than one-third of its preferred candidates secured seats on school boards across the U.S.

The 1776 Project PAC saw all of its preferred candidates win their races to serve on the Worcester School Committee in Massachusetts, the Little Miami School Board in Ohio and the Xenia School Board in Ohio as well as several school districts in Pennsylvania.

The 1776 Project PAC had a 75% success rate getting its endorsed candidates elected to the Eastern Lebanon County School District in Pennsylvania. Only one of the 1776 Project PAC’s three endorsed candidates won a seat in the Anoka-Hennepin School District in Minnesota. 

Meanwhile, the group had a 50% success rate in the Kansas-based USD 453 in Leavenworth and the Pennsylvania-based Lehighton Area School District. The group had a 25% success rate in two additional Pennsylvania-based school districts: the Pennridge Central School District and the Centennial School District. 

Candidates endorsed by the 1776 Project PAC came up short in the Pennsylvania-based York Suburban School District, West Shore School District, Chalfont School District, Lower Merion School District and the Perkiomen Valley School District as well as the Ohio-based Southwestern City School Board, Miamisburg School Board, Mentor School Board and Riverside Local School Board. 1776 Project PAC-affiliated candidates also failed to win seats in Stafford County, Virginia, and the Lansing School District in Leavenworth, Kansas.