Bristol’s three incumbent city council members easily won reelection Tuesday while two new faces will join the city’s school board.
Jake Holmes, Neal Osborne and Michael Pollard won additional four-year council terms, according to unofficial totals late Tuesday. Six candidates ran for the three seats.
Holmes, the current mayor who works in external affairs for Appalachian Power, was the top vote-getter with about 24% of the vote. He will serve a second term.
He is looking forward to continuing to make progress on long-term challenges the city has faced, like fixing the quarry landfill, he said by phone after the votes were counted.
“Seeing the results tonight, I definitely realized that the work we’re doing is on the right track,” Holmes said.
Osborne, a United Way development coordinator, won about 23% of the vote and is set to serve a third term.
He’s said by phone that he’s glad that his fellow council members were also reelected. He thinks they work well together and put the best interests of the city first, he said.
Pollard won 21% of the vote and is also set to serve a second term. He is a computer systems engineer.
He said by phone after the votes were counted that he was relieved to be able to serve another term.
“The voters thought that apparently I did a good enough job the last four years to give me another four,” he said. “With an incumbent, that’s what it comes down to.”
Pollard was censured by the council in early 2025 after he admitted to lying about city staff with the intention of damaging their reputations, violating the council’s code of ethics. He publicly apologized for his actions. On election night, he said he didn’t think the issue impacted the race.
Newcomer Jackie Nophlin, a pastor, businesswoman and member of the Bristol Industrial Development Authority, came in fourth place with about 13% of the vote.
Nophlin sought a council seat earlier this year when former council member Becky Nave stepped down and the council had to appoint someone to fill the vacancy. Alex Littleton, an executive for a nonprofit, was chosen instead to serve out the term until 2028, when the next city election will take place.
The other two candidates in the race, Melissa Brown and Elijah Walker, earned about 11% and 7% of the vote, respectively.
At a candidate forum in late October, the candidates discussed fiscal responsibility as a major issue for their campaigns. For many years, the city has shouldered the debt of fixing its quarry landfill and the cost of building The Falls shopping center.
Bristol School Board
Out of five candidates, Vanessa Guffey was the only incumbent on the ballot for school board and won the most votes at about 26%, according to unofficial totals. Guffey, who has served one term and is the current board chair, is a retired teacher.
“Working together with a new board, we will strive to make our Bristol, Virginia, school system a great place to be,” she said by phone once the votes were tallied.
Candidates Rhoda Blackwell and Bryan Kimberlin each won about 21% of the vote, according to the unofficial state results, meaning they are set to take the two remaining spots on the board.
They are both newcomers to Bristol politics. Kimberlin is the executive director of the Southwest Virginia EMS Council, and Blackwell is a retired sales manager.
“When you’re trying to bring in industry and entice people to move into the city, one of the things they look at is how the schools perform,” he said. “We really need to improve that and be able to compete with some of our closer school systems.”
Shannon Love, a retired teacher, got about 19% of the vote, and Ric Watts, a tech industry manager, got about 10% of the vote.
One of the more divisive topics of this election cycle was a new optional revenue stream for localities: an additional 1% sales tax where all the money from the extra revenue goes toward school construction projects.
The increase has to be approved by voters in a referendum. Several counties near Bristol put the sales tax issue on the ballot this November as a referendum, and Washington County is seeking a special election in the spring for it.
Guffey and Blackwell said they wanted to put the issue on the ballot, while Kimberlin and Love said they wouldn’t support doing so. Watts said he didn’t think a vote would pass and the school board should look at other options to improve school facilities.
