Jim Hyland and Mark Keam have been on similar trajectories in their professional lives as Capitol-Hill-staffers-turned-lobbyists, a career path that is familiar to several people living in Fairfax County.

In his nearly two decades on the hill, Hyland, 48, worked for U.S. Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tx.) and the congressional banking committees.

As a member of the Pennsylvania Avenue Group, he now lobbies on behalf of such varied interests as the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill foundation and the Texas Land Title Association.

Keam, 43, worked for U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Il.), the Small Business Administration and the Federal Communications Commission. But he mostly recently served as vice president and part of the government relations team at Verizon Communications.

Now, both men are hoping to replace Steve Shannon as the representative from Vienna and Oakton in the Virginia House of Delegates. Shannon chose not to run for the 35th district delegate seat again when he was named the Democratic nominee for Virginia Attorney General this year.

Hyland and Keam will compete against each other in what the two campaigns and will be a close election Nov. 3. Voters will also decide on the Virginia gubernatorial race, the Virginia attorney general race and a special Providence District school board race on the same ballot.

BOTH CANDIDATES are familiar to political activists in Fairfax County and have picked up the official endorsements of most of their local party leaders.

Hyland has run for office twice before, challenging Shannon for the delegate position in 2005 and Supervisor Linda Smyth (D-Providence) for her Fairfax County board seat in 2003. More recently, he served as head of the Fairfax County Republican Committee during the 2007 and 2008 election cycles.

Keam was the co-founder and original coordinator of "Fairfax for Obama." He was the contact person for the Barack Obama campaign during early efforts to get president elected
He was also one of the most dedicated volunteers on Fairfax County Chairman Sharon Bulova’s campaign last February. Keam’s work during Bulova’s campaign, in part, earned him the early endorsements of Bulova and U.S. Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-11) during a bruising, four-way primary battle for the Democratic Party’s nomination to the delegate seat in June.

BUT FOR ALL they might share in common, Hyland and Keam’s experiences diverge drastically when it comes to their background and personal story.

Hyland was born in the Town of Vienna and has spent almost his entire life living in the 35th district. He graduated from Madison High School and attended George Mason University School of Law.

That type of intimate knowledge of the district means that Hyland understands the nuances of what local residents want and value in a representative, according to the Republican candidate.

"I think it makes a difference when you can make connections with people on personal level, not just a political level," said Hyland.

While campaigning door-to-door in the Sun Valley neighborhood Oct. 12, Hyland came upon a family with children wearing sweatshirts with "OLGC" written across them. Hyland immediately recognized the acronym for Our Lady of Good Counsel, a Catholic school and parish in Vienna.

"I went to OLGC. My kids went to OLGC. I was even baptized there," he told the family.

STILL, many people living in Fairfax County and the 35th district are transplants from somewhere else and increasingly, immigrants born in another country altogether.

Only about one quarter of Fairfax residents were born in Virginia and nearly 30 percent are foreign born, according to the U.S. Census figures from 2008.

Of Fairfax County’s foreign-born residents, nearly half emigrated from Asian countries. About 50 percent have also become naturalized citizens who are qualified to vote, according to 2008 census information.

Keam and his wife Alex are both Korean immigrants who came to the United States as children. In addition to Korea, Keam, whose father was a minister, also spent time in Vietnam and Australia before his family moved to Orange County, California when he was a preteen.

Like many other constituents in the 35th district, Keam and his wife chose to settle in Vienna as adults because of the good standard of living and the excellent public school system. They both, at one time, worked in the federal government.

"I wasn’t born here but I chose to live here," he said during a forum before the Vienna-Tysons Chamber of Commerce.

Should he be elected, Keam would be the only Asian American to serve in the Virginia General Assembly and only the second Asian American to serve in elected office in Fairfax County.

Ilryong Moon, another Korean American, is an at-large member on the Fairfax County School Board.

The Asian community is Fairfax’s largest ethnic or racial minority at about 16 percent of the county’s total population. Among Asian communities, Koreans, about 3.4 percent of the county’s total population, are the largest subgroup.

BOTH KEAM AND Hyland describe themselves as practical politicians who are willing to work across the aisle.

"Jim comes at things from a commonsense perspective. He is absolutely a moderate that is about building consensus. He is definitely someone who could work across party lines," said John Kane, who worked with Hyland on Capitol Hill and in the private sector.

Keam also said he would take pragmatic approach to legislation, said the candidate. He worries the Democrats and Republicans tend to move too far toward the edges of the political spectrum when reviewing public policy proposals.

"In this economy, government is part of the solution but government is not the entire solution. Government is effective for certain things but not effective for other things," said Keam about his political philosophy.

On the issue of funding transportation projects, both candidates espouse similar views, saying they would be open to all proposals, including raising taxes.

"The constituents want a bipartisan solution. They want to do whatever it takes to get it done," said Hyland, about garnering more money for transportation projects in Northern Virginia.

Keam said the Northern Virginia General Assembly delegation has to get more creative about attracting support for increasing transportation funding. They have to appeal to delegates in other parts of the commonwealth.

Though they don’t necessarily need more transportation projects, some rural areas of the state, like the Southwest region, desperately need jobs. Keam speculated that the Northern Virginia business community might be able to convince one of its members to locate a plant or customer call center in Southwest Virginia, in exchange for support from Southwest Virginia delegates for increased transportation funding in the Northern region.

"We really should have a partnership with other parts of the commonwealth and we really should find a bipartisan solution for transportation. The reason we have had such a deadlock over transportation for 20 years is that one party doesn’t want to the other party to get the credit [for a solution,]" said Keam.

HYLAND said he has also heard many complaints about the limited number of spaces for Northern Virginia high school graduates at some of Virginia’s most prestigious universities and colleges.

A few schools, including the University of Virginia and the College of William & Mary, draw less than 70 percent of their undergraduate class from the commonwealth.

University officials have said they have to accept more out-of-state students because the Virginia General Assembly does not fund the colleges adequately enough and out-of-state student tuition helps cover the cost of educating in-state students. The University of Virginia, for example, gets less than 10 percent of its overall operating budget from the commonwealth.

A few delegates, including Fairfax County’s Dave Albo (R-42) and Tim Hugo (R-40), have introduced legislation to force colleges to take a certain percentage of in-state students. Hyland does not necessarily agree with that approach.

He said he would want to meet with the college and university officials as well as key players in the General Assembly to discuss the issue.

He agreed that Virginia should be funding its higher education institution more than it is currently.

"I am not sure we have all answers to this problem yet," he said.

KEAM, meanwhile, is concerned about the way primary and secondary education are funded. Fairfax provides nearly 75 percent of its school system’s funding and Keam said the state should be contributing more to educate Fairfax students.

It is also a precarious situation that Fairfax, and most of the local funding, is so dependent on local real estate property taxes. During a downturn in the housing market, like the one the country is experiencing now, Fairfax schools funding is unnecessarily put at risk because the county does not have many other options for revenue generation.

If elected delegate, Keam would be supportive of giving the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors more control over local taxes.

Currently, the Virginia General Assembly controls most local taxes including the income tax, restaurant food tax, sales tax, gas tax and cigarette tax. In order to raise most taxes or fees, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors must seek permission from the Virginia General Assembly.

"There have to be reforms at the county level. Basically real estate property taxes fund 76 percent of the schools and that is just ridiculous," said Keam.

THE 35th DELEGATE seat is in a swing district that has been represented by both Democrats and a Republican over the last decade.

Prior to Shannon winning the seat in 2003, former state Sen. Jeannemarie Devolites Davis (R-34) represented the area as delegate for six years. Both elected officials, who were viewed as moderate members of their respective political parties, won their first elections with just under 52 percent of the vote.

In 2008, a historic year for Democrats, Obama won the presidential vote in delegate district 35 easily. But during the much closer 2004 election, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry only beat former President George W. Bush with 51 percent of the vote in the same precincts.

Hyland believes he will get a lot of "crossover" voters, people who voted for Obama last year and who might support Democrats for governor or attorney general next month.

"There are yards with ‘Shannon for Attorney General’ signs and ‘Hyland for Delegate’ signs," said the Republican.

But Keam has worked extremely hard, winning 55 percent of the vote against three opponents in the Democratic primary in June. Keam has also raised $354,215 in campaign donations as of the end of September, nearly three times Hyland’s $127,436 in the same time period, according to the latest campaign finance reports.

"I don’t see anyone out there working as hard as Mark. I told him that he should focus on old-fashioned, retail politics," said state Sen. Chap Petersen (D-34), who represents Vienna in the General Assembly.