The town council meeting had reached the point on the agenda where the public could speak on any topic, and emotions, to put it mildly, were a tad raw.
“It’s not too late to resign!” a woman shouted at the lawmakers, four of whom, including the mayor, are the focus of a recall campaign.
“Stop screwing our town!” a man railed.
“We are broke and sicker of you than ever!” someone else yelled.
Small towns often are known for their quirky, insular intrigue, but the drama unfolding in Purcellville, a Virginia exurb that’s a 50-mile drive west of Washington, is a brass-knuckled version of quaint.
The battle is rooted in tensions that often divide communities across the country — change versus status quo, growth versus no growth — only in Purcellville the weapons are lawsuits, an attempted citizen revolt, and the kind of ferocious rhetoric that defines much of public life in contemporary America.
Residents could be forgiven for needing a whiteboard to chart the dizzying developments.
Over the past year, state police accused the vice mayor and town manager of orchestrating a bid-rigging scheme — charges both men deny. The vice mayor has filed a $42 million lawsuit against a gaggle of town and law enforcement officials, alleging that his rights have been violated. The interim police chief has filed a $20 million defamation lawsuit against the vice mayor.
Then there are the more than 1,100 residents who signed petitions seeking to recall the mayor, vice mayor and two council members — a campaign that has caught the attention of state lawmakers in Richmond who are weighing whether to intervene.
The civic discourse has grown so uncivil that a police officer stands guard by the dais during council meetings, as was the case Tuesday. The meeting went on for more than five hours and drew a crowd large enough to fill Town Hall, including some who brought bags of popcorn to snack on. More than a thousand people watched online.
“We are a microcosm of how politics are in this country right now,” said Josh Shields, 47, who has lived in Purcellville since 2016. “Nobody is willing to meet in the middle, nobody is willing to discuss issues. It’s us versus them. A town council meeting should be like watching paint dry. Instead it’s a dumpster fire.”
Shields added to the theatrics at the meeting when he shouted at the lawmakers after the audience was warned that outbursts could mean being asked to leave. Christopher Bertaut, Purcellville’s mayor, furrowed his brow and ordered Shields to “escort himself out.” As Shields departed, the mayor could be heard saying “jackass” under his breath — a hot-mic moment caught on video that someone shared with 5,600 followers on a Purcellville-centric Facebook page.
Mayberry versus Metropolis
The council’s to-do list that night included deciding whether to reappoint as vice mayor the man at the center of the maelstrom, Carl “Ben” Nett, a council member whose official biography says he has worked for the U.S. Secret Service and as a contract CIA intelligence officer.
Nett, 51, gained a measure of national attention in Kentucky in 2019 when, as a candidate for secretary of state, he unsuccessfully tried to add “Trump!” (including the exclamation point) as his middle name on the ballot. At another point, he deleted a tweet suggesting he wanted to use a Democratic congressman for target practice. Nett, who apologized for what he described as “my attempt to be clever,” received 13 percent of the vote in the GOP primary and finished fourth.
After buying a home in Purcellville in 2021, Nett joined the town’s police force and, while still a patrol officer, ran for a council seat in 2024. He aligned himself with a slate of candidates who called themselves “Team Mayberry,” a reference to “The Andy Griffith Show,” the 1960s sitcom about a sheriff and his son, Opie.
Team Mayberry touted itself as a defender of Purcellville’s small-town identity and tagged its opponents as “Team Metropolis,” advocates of city-slicker-style development and higher taxes and utility rates.
Nett’s team won, after which Purcellville’s raft of troubles — and his own — exploded into public view.
First, in April, the police terminated him over allegations that he improperly used sick time. Then, in July, a grand jury indicted Nett and then-Town Manager Kwasi Fraser for allegedly conspiring to steer a $12,000 contract to assess the police department to a consultant with whom they had discussed the work before soliciting bids. Nett, in a memo to the consultant, laid out a restructuring plan for the department that included the vice mayor becoming police chief.
Nett and Fraser, who are awaiting trial, have each pleaded not guilty to two felony counts of bid-rigging and commercial fraud. Nett faces four additional charges for allegedly using his position as a police officer to improperly obtain information from a database about two political opponents.
Fraser, reached by phone, called the case against him “laughable” and said he is being “defamed and slandered every day in the court of public opinion.” Referring to his meeting with the consultant before seeking bids, Fraser said his position as town manager allowed him to “meet with anyone prior to a procurement decision.”
“I’m ready to take this to court so the truth can prevail,” he said.
Nett, in an interview, said the allegations, as well as his firing, are part of a coordinated campaign to deprive him of his right to due process and ruin his political career. His lawsuit alleges that those behind the effort to damage him include several of his council colleagues, as well as Purcellville’s interim police chief and Loudoun County’s chief prosecutor.
“I’m not the bad guy in this,” Nett said. “I’m the victim.”
Caleb Stought, a council member who is among those named as defendants in the vice mayor’s lawsuit, said Nett’s claims “defy reason” and have made “an already toxic situation much, much worse.”
‘We have horses, hemp and hybrid SUVs’
The center of Purcellville, by all appearances, could be a postcard from another era. Nichols Hardware, opened in 1914, is still in the same location, across from an American Legion hall, on a stretch lined with century-old brick buildings, a smattering of shops and restaurants and a gazebo furnished with four green Adirondack chairs.
“It’s the American Dream,” said Ron Rise, 69, a retired aerospace executive and a town resident since 1988. “You know that little girl in ‘Miracle on 34th Street’? What did she want? A little house in a place like Purcellville.”
And now?
“I feel so sad for this little town,” Rise said. “The hate is just so awful.”
Purcellville’s population began swelling a generation ago, from 3,500 to about 9,000, as developers poured into Loudoun County, propelled by the tech boom that brought data centers, shopping centers and subdivisions that made the region among the country’s most rapidly changing.
“We have sixth-generation farmers and fresh-off-the-beltway transplants,” photographer Becky Gardner told the council last week. “We have horses, hemp and hybrid SUVs. We have small-business owners, home-schooling parents, federal employees, retirees, developers, preservationists.”
As Purcellville’s population grew, a rift emerged over how to oversee the town’s growth, the tension manifesting in battles over land annexation and proposals to raise utility rates and build roads intended to ease traffic.
Nett and his allies won their 2024 races and gained majority control of the council after promoting their ticket with the slogan “Mayberry Not Metropolis.”
They promised to cut utility rates and maintain Purcellville’s “small-town feel — no six story buildings,” as Nett wrote in the Blue Ridge Leader, a news outlet that his foes allege seeks to bolster Team Mayberry.
Valerie Cury, the Leader’s publisher, wrote in a December opinion article that the town is divided “between a majority fulfilling the will of the voters and a very well-connected political minority determined to reverse the outcome of an election.” The headline: “View from the Ridge: Purcellville isn’t corrupt — it’s being sabotaged.” Cury declined to be interviewed.
Beverly Chiasson, 72, a third-generation Purcellville resident and a former council member, understands the appeal of Team Mayberry’s anti-growth message, even as she also knows change is inevitable. “I would’ve loved to keep my little town,” she said. “But I knew that wasn’t an option.”
The council infighting began almost immediately after Nett and his allies took office 13 months ago. Without warning or discussion, the new majority voted to fire the town manager and install Fraser, Purcellville’s former mayor.
The three dissenting council members — Erin Rayner, Kevin Wright and Stought — accused Team Mayberry of operating in secret to impose its agenda, a near-constant refrain when the Mayberry majority wins votes by a 4-3 margin.
The machinations prompted residents to take the extraordinary step of organizing the petition drive to recall Nett and Bertaut, along with council members Susan Khalil and Carol Luke, the other Team Mayberry members.
“Every single meeting they were coming in and ramming something through,” said Brian Morgan, 61, the recall campaign’s organizer. “They don’t respond to emails. It was audacious, it was a lack of transparency.”
Nett said the last election proved that most Purcellville residents support the Mayberry majority and predicted the recall effort will fail when it goes to court in March. Bertaut, Khalil and Luke declined to be interviewed.
The fireworks became louder in April after the town’s interim police chief, Sara Lombraña, fired Nett. Less than a week later, Nett and his council allies, again without warning, signaled that they’d seek to disband the police department, provoking enough of a public outcry that the lawmakers subsequently rejected the idea.
The sequence of events prompted Loudoun County’s chief prosecutor, Bob Anderson, to allege that Nett, in what Anderson described as a “blatant conflict of interest,” appeared to have used his council seat to retaliate against the police for his firing. Nett counters that eliminating the police would save the town money.
By then, Anderson had placed Nett on a list of cops deemed unreliable to testify in court, a designation that effectively strips police officers of their power. A grievance panel eventually reversed Nett’s termination, but a special prosecutor, Eric Olsen, nullified that decision, contending that the panel had not followed state and local law.
Then, in July, state police announced the arrests of Nett and Fraser, and Purcellville, once again, generated headlines that made it a topic of chatter well beyond its borders.
“The other day, a guy I know in Ohio called and said, ‘Why is your town on the news?’” said Dale Thompson, 58, who owns a Main Street gun shop. “I don’t want to be on the news for some scandal all the time. It’s embarrassing.”
The saga also has brought residents together in unexpected ways, whether it’s rallying around the recall campaign or meeting up to attend council sessions and court hearings.
Cristina Buffington, a local entrepreneur, said she was inspired to start a website, Purcellville News, to track developments. The chaos of the past year, she said, has caused her anxiety that she tries to manage by thinking of each council meetings as an episode of reality TV.
“You have to find the humor in it,” she said. “Or it will make you crazy.”
An expected outcome
The council meeting was well past its second hour last week when a member of Team Mayberry nominated Nett for another one-year term as vice mayor. Laughter could be heard in the audience.
“Nett has neither the temperament, the personality nor the character to serve as this town’s vice mayor,” Stought said when the mayor opened the floor to discussion.
The crowd applauded.
“After everything Mr. Nett has been through, he knows the role very well and he has shown he can deal with it,” Luke said when it was her turn.
The council approved Nett’s reappointment by a 4-3 vote, as expected.
The post ‘Us versus them’: The battle that’s tearing a small Virginia town apart appeared first on Washington Post.
