[1] Though she was Virginia Beach's first directly elected mayor, her role was primarily to serve as the chair during City Council meetings, of which she had been a member since 1976, and to officiate at a wide array of ceremonial functions.

[3] Combined with city officials denying use of public facilities for the event and new ordinances which led to the arrests and citations of hundreds of attendees for mostly minor offenses such as jay-walking and loud music, Oberndorf's statement heightened racial tensions which exploded with the "Greekfest" riots in which over 100 beachfront stores were damaged.

Despite her claim that NAACP assertions of poor racial relations between the city and African Americans were "poppycock,"[4] city actions in 1989 and in the years following so damaged race relations that it wasn't until two decades later, at the tail end of Obendorf's long-time mayoralty, that Virginia Beach again began to have success drawing large numbers of African Americans to the resort beachfront.

O'Reilly claimed she mishandled a situation involving illegal immigrant Alfredo Ramos, who was accused and later convicted of causing a fatal drunk driving crash on March 30, 2007.

O'Reilly said that Virginia Beach should have reported Ramos to Immigration and Customs Enforcement once they realized he was in the country illegally, since he had prior alcohol-related convictions, including DUI and public drunkenness.