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Ex-Cantor Chief Takes Over as Interim Fairfax Mayor After Previous Mayor’s Arrest

Steven Stombres will serve until a February special election in Fairfax

Steven Stombres is sworn in as Fairfax's interim mayor on Wednesday. (Courtesy Jeff Goldberg/Virginia ABC 7 via Twitter)
Steven Stombres is sworn in as Fairfax's interim mayor on Wednesday. (Courtesy Jeff Goldberg/Virginia ABC 7 via Twitter)

The former chief of staff to Eric Cantor was sworn in Wednesday as interim mayor for the city of Fairfax, Virginia, after the former mayor resigned amid a drug scandal.

Steven Stombres was voted unanimously to the post by the city council on Tuesday night to replace R. Scott Silverthorne, who was arrested for allegedly distributing and possessing methamphetamine.

Stombres will serve as the city’s mayor until a special election on February 7, according to WTOP. He is a former city council member.

Silverthorne was arrested on Aug. 5, at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Tysons Corner, Virginia, and accused of selling meth in exchange for sex. He handed over two grams of the drug to undercover detectives, WTOP reported.

He resigned on Aug. 11.

Stombres worked on the Hill for 20 years and was with Cantor from 2001 until the then-Majority Leader lost his Republican primary to Dave Brat in 2014.

At the time, Stombres was a three-term member of the Fairfax City Council but had announced that he would not run for re-election that year.

He launched Harbinger Strategies, a government affairs shop, in early 2015 with Kyle Nevins, Cantor’s former deputy chief of staff, and John O’Neill, a former counsel and policy director for Trent Lott when he was the Senate GOP whip.

Stombres, his wife Kristen, and their three children live in Fairfax.

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