Virginia’s Top Democrats to Call for Stricter Gun Laws

Governor Northam.

With the guns and the silencer - which many believed allowed the Virginia Beach shooter to take more lives - legal in Virginia, Virginia's top three Democrats are calling for stricter gun laws.  For many years the road block to more sane gun laws in Virginia - and across the country - has been Republicans in the Virginia General Assembly and other state legislatures who are bought and owned by the gun lobby. The ftutory framework act that no law abiding citizen needs a silencer means nothing to Virginia Republicans and Virginia ranks 5th in the nation in terms of the number of silencers on the streets (Texas ranks first).  Virginia's top Democrats are saying enough is enough after last Friday's deadly rampage and are calling for reform of Virginia's ridiculous pro-gun statutory framework which puts gun rights ahead of the safety of all Virginians.  A piece n the Washington Post looks at the renewed call for common sense changes to Virginia's gun laws.  Here are highlights:

RICHMOND — All three of Virginia’s statewide elected officials plan to stand together Tuesday to call for tighter gun safety policies in the wake of Friday’s mass shooting in Virginia Beach.

Gov. Ralph Northam, Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax and Attorney General Mark R. Herring, all Democrats, expressed frustration over the weekend that Republicans who control the General Assembly have repeatedly stifled efforts to consider any form of gun control.

One top Republican suggested Monday that he was open to taking up the issue, though he did not commit to specifics. “I was in Virginia Beach yesterday, and I think there ought to be a meaningful discussion legislatively and in the community about gun control,” said Senate Majority Leader Thomas K. Norment Jr. (James City), according to an account in the Virginia Gazette newspaper that was confirmed by his spokesman.

Norment was addressing about 80 protesters who had gathered outside his office in Williamsburg. They were chanting and holding signs calling for gun control, citing the horrific events Friday, when a Virginia Beach city employee shot and killed 12 people in a municipal building.

But Norment, who voted against a ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines this year, added via email that none of the failed legislation met standards for “merits, practical application, and efficacy.”

The topic is especially sensitive in an election year when all 140 seats in the legislature are on the November ballot. Republicans are nursing two-seat majorities in both the Senate and the House of Delegates, and Democrats are hoping to inspire bigger-than-usual turnout to change the balance of power.

Polls have shown that Virginians increasingly favor tightening the state’s gun laws, which are among the most permissive in the nation. A June 2017 Quinnipiac University poll found that 91 percent of Virginians supported requiring background checks for all gun buyers, for instance.

Northam on Tuesday could call for a special legislative session to force the General Assembly to take up gun control, according to two people familiar with the governor’s plans. . . . Northam hinted at possible action in interviews over the weekend.
“We have stepped up our enforcement of some of the gun laws, but . . . when the laws are as weak as they are in Virginia, it makes it that much harder to keep our commonwealth safe,” [Attorney General Mark] Herring said Monday in an interview.

Though he would not discuss what Northam might propose Tuesday, Herring said he favors requiring universal background checks for gun purchases; banning high-capacity magazines, silencers and “bump stock” devices that accelerate firing; reimposing the one-gun-a-month law; and passing “red flag” laws that allow police to seize weapons from someone whom the courts have deemed to be a threat.

On Sunday, Fairfax spoke at a church in Virginia Beach and called for similar measures.
 The issue — as well as the need to console a grieving community — has drawn all three executive branch leaders back into the limelight after several months when they kept relatively low profiles. Northam and Herring are under fire for blackface incidents from their youth, and Fairfax has denied accusations from two women that he sexually assaulted them in separate incidents in 2000 and 2004.
 Another powerful Republican on Monday seemed in no mood for compromise.

Sadly, I suspect Virginia Republicans will continue to take the gun lobby's blood money.  They need to be voted out of office in November, 2019.

Democrats Hope for a Nationalized Virginia 2019 Election

With things somewhat calmer in Richmond and the clamor for Governor Ralph Northam to resign seeming to quiet down except from mostly out of state and inside the Beltway pundits and talking heads, (the First Lady, Pam Northam was warmly welcomed at the HR Pride launch last Sunday despite the, in my view, anti-Northam idiocy of Equality Virginia), focus is again returning to the 2019 Virginia elections.  I have a piece that hopefully will publish at Smerconish.com sometime soon and other Virginia commentators, including my UVA classmate Larry Sabato are looking forward in their prognostications towards the lead up to November's election during which the entire membership of the Virginia General Assembly will be up for election.  At Sabato's Crystal Ball analysis is done as to where we are at present and how Democrats can move their prospects forward by nationalizing the election to make it, in par, a referendum on Donald Trump.  With Trump opposing payment to many government contractors harmed by the government shut down and many federal employees, especially in Northern Virginia, votes aimed at punishing Trump and the GOP at large could still win the day for Democrats.  Here are article highlights:

For Virginia Democrats, the agony of the moment mixes with the promise of the future

The still-unfolding political crisis in Virginia threatens to derail what could be a breakthrough moment in the South this November for modern Democrats, although it also provides a test of nationalization versus localization that could still break in the Democrats’ favor.  

So here we are, with the top three officials in the state all damaged to at least some degree, but without any real indication as of this writing (Wednesday evening) that any will leave office voluntarily.

What is at stake in the state is more than the future of the three state-level, statewide elected Democrats. Before this cascade of revelations and party chaos, Virginia Democrats were looking at the very real possibility of total state government control and — given that many Southern states were ruled by conservative Democrats before Republican dominance in the region — perhaps the most liberal (or progressive, if you prefer) state government in the post-Reconstruction history of not just Virginia, but the South in general.

The post-Reconstruction political history of the South generally featured conservative white Democrats dominating state governments. But the party’s strength in the South began to weaken for a number of factors, most notably the national Democratic Party’s embrace of civil rights following World War II.

Democrats do not control a single state legislative chamber in the South; that’s true even if one defines the South in a broader way by including states like Kentucky and West Virginia, where Democrats have also lost state legislative chambers in recent years.
The second observation is that control of state legislatures aligns almost perfectly with the 2016 presidential results. Donald Trump won 30 states, and Republicans control every state legislative chamber located in those states.

Virginia is an outlier among the states when it comes to state legislative control — it’s the only state where the majority party in both chambers of the state legislature is clearly at odds with its federal partisanship.

Democrats made huge gains in the Virginia state House of Delegates in 2017, netting 15 seats and winning 49 total in the 100-member chamber. They could have forced a 50-50 tie, but Delegate David Yancey (R) prevailed in a drawing to determine the winner of his reelection bid, where the vote ended in an exact tie. As of now, Republicans hold a 51-48 majority in the House of Delegates with a special election coming next Tuesday to fill a vacancy in a heavily Democratic seat (more on that at the end of this piece).

Democrats made their heavy gains in 2017 on a Republican-drawn map that could not stand up to the strain Donald Trump’s presidency put on it. Democrats ended up making their gains almost exclusively in districts that Clinton carried in 2016. These were districts that Republicans either believed would perform better for them in non-presidential years and/or ones whose Democratic trend only emerged later in the decade. The map may very well be unwound in time for the 2019 elections, as a federal court found that the GOP-drawn map was an illegal racial gerrymander, although it’s still possible that the old map could remain. . . . All told, the Virginia Public Access Project analyzed the new districts and found that just one Democratic district would be harder for Democrats to defend under the new map while six would become harder for Republicans to defend.

The state Senate map, which was a Democratic-drawn map that nonetheless failed to protect the party’s state Senate majority when drawn in advance of the 2011 election, will remain in place regardless of what happens to the House map. Republicans currently hold a 21-19 majority, but they are defending four Clinton-won districts while Democrats don’t hold any Trump-won districts. So the most vulnerable seats appear to be Republican-held ones, most notably an open Northern Virginia district Clinton won with 54% of the two-party vote.

So Democrats need to pick up two seats in each chamber to win outright control of the state legislature. It is reasonable to wonder whether this extraordinary scandal reduces the Democrats’ ability to do so, particularly if the tantalizing (for Democrats) new House of Delegates map falls through. That the three elected statewide state officials, all Democrats, are now compromised complicates the state legislative picture.

To us, the major Democratic concern isn’t necessarily that a significant slice of Northam voters will defect; instead, it’s that Democrats will be on the wrong end of what even before this scandal broke was an inevitable turnout drop from the most recent election. In the two most recent gubernatorial elections, 2013 and 2017, turnout of registered voters was 43% and 48%, respectively; in the two most recent off-year state legislative elections, 2011 and 2015, it was about 29% each time. Democrats will want that turnout figure to be higher, because it probably would mean that their generally less reliable voter base is coming out in stronger force than it did during the Barack Obama era.

This is where the nationalization of American politics could bail out the Democrats. Virginia’s voters sometimes seem to take the White House into account when casting their ballots: 10 of the last 11 gubernatorial elections have been won by the party not in the White House. More recently, state legislative districts that seemed Democratic on paper, or at least at the presidential level, backed Republicans while Obama was president. Perceptions of Trump helped unlock these districts for Democrats in 2017. We see this nationalization in other places.

While Virginia is a more competitive state than either Connecticut or Oklahoma, it has been trending Democratic, and feelings about [Trump] the president could nationalize what otherwise are state-level elections. It’s also worth noting that President Trump’s assertion that Virginia would trend back to the GOP in 2020 because of the Democratic state-level scandals is almost certainly wishful thinking. . . . the state’s trajectory suggests it will vote more Democratic than the nation as a whole in 2020, like it did in both 2012 (by just a hundredth of a percentage point) and 2016 (by more than three points as Sen. Tim Kaine occupied the Democratic vice presidential slot).

Trump benefited from his modified GOP coalition, which is very reliant on white voters who do not have a four-year college degree, in a lot of places, particularly in the electorally vital Midwest. But the tradeoff hurt him elsewhere, such as in Virginia, which is more diverse than the Midwest and has higher-than-average levels of four-year college attainment.

No doubt, the Richmond scandal is an immense headache for Democrats, and a black eye for the commonwealth. If Democrats fail in the fall, the scandal probably will be part of the reason why. But it may be that Democrats suffer through agony all year and then win the state legislature in the fall anyway. If that happened, it would be another triumph for the long-term, nationalized trends that have more often animated politics across the country in recent years than the local ones that seem so politically important in the moment they are happening.

I hope the prediction that the Democrats prevail in November prove accurate.   The reality is that a majority of Virginians - both black and white - are better off and better represented if Democrats hold both houses of the Virginia General Assembly.  Only rural reactionaries, Christian extremists and white supremacist Republicans benefit if the GOP retains control.  This message needs to be broadcast non-stop from now through November and Trump must be incessantly linked to the Virginia GOP as well, especially in areas that suffered from the government shutdown. 

Second Woman Accuses Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax

The damage from the political tricks of far right Republican operatives against Virginia's top Democrats continues as a second accuser has come forward alleging to have suffered sexual assault at the hands of Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax.   The timing of this and the first accusation, to me is suspect given that the assaults allegedly took place 115 and 19 years ago respectively.  Where were the accusers in 2017 when Fairfax was running for office?  The other irony is that the Legislative Black Caucus - which lead the rush to judgment against Ralph Northam as it salivated at the prospect of a black governor in the form of Fairfax if Northam resigned - now finds itself calling for Fairfax's resignation. Would any of this rolling catastrophe have continued to unfold if the Democrats had used calm, reasoned analysis and understood that they had been played by the right wing when the photos in Northam's yearbook had first been floated?  We will never know for certain, but I suspect ALL of the accusations against Northam and Fairfax were carefully pre-planned, with the far right counting on the Democrats to self-destruct.  And by Democrats, I mean numerous Virginia elected officials and national figures, including would be presidential candidates (all of whom will never receive my support), not the men and women on the street who seemingly have not leaped on the rush to judgment train wreck.  Here are highlights from the Washington Post: 

A Maryland woman said Friday that she was sexually assaulted by Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax (D) in a “premeditated and aggressive” attack in 2000, while both were undergraduate students at Duke University. She is the second woman this week to accuse him of sexual assault. Fairfax forcefully denied both allegations.

Democratic Party leaders quickly called for Fairfax to resign, including the influential Virginia Legislative Black Caucus. Many who had withheld judgment after the first allegation this week said they could no longer stand by him, including most of Virginia’s Democratic congressional delegation and national Democrats with presidential aspirations.

While Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) and Rep. Robert C. “Bobby” Scott (D-Va.) said Fairfax should resign if the allegations were true, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) offered no such equivocation. “The allegations against him detail atrocious crimes, and he can no longer effectively serve the Commonwealth,” Kaine said in a statement. “We cannot ever ignore or tolerate sexual assault.

Meanwhile, Gov. Ralph Northam (D) told senior staff that he would serve out the remaining three years of his term and would not step down amid his own scandal involving a racist photograph from his 1984 medical school yearbook.

It was a head-spinning turn in a spiraling week of chaos in Virginia. Only a week ago, Fairfax, 39, was preparing to take over as Virginia’s second African American governor when it looked as though Northam, 59, would be forced out over the racial issue.

The new accusation against Fairfax came from Meredith Watson, who said Friday in a statement through her attorney that she shared her account with several classmates and friends immediately after the alleged assault occurred. Watson did not speak publicly Friday, and her lawyer did not make her available for an interview.

Democratic U.S. Reps. Gerald E. Connolly, Don Beyer, Elaine Luria, Abigail Spanberger and Jennifer Wexton, in a lengthy joint statement, called for Fairfax to resign. National Democrats piled on, including Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) — who said “it is no longer appropriate for [Fairfax] to serve” — and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.)

Republican leaders in the Virginia state Senate called for criminal investigations while Democrats in the Senate and the House issued a joint statement calling for Fairfax’s resignation.

Fairfax’s statement said he would not step aside. “I demand a full investigation into these unsubstantiated and false allegations,” the statement said. “I will clear my good name and I have nothing to hide. I have passed two full field background checks by the FBI and run for office in two highly contested elections with nothing like this being raised before.”

Where it all ends nobody except, I predict the GOP will retain control both houses of the Virginia General Assembly which is why all of these crises were deliberately ignited.   The GOP is playing three dimensional chess while the Democrats have continued their circular firing squad. 

The Self-inflicted Collapse of Virginia's Democratic Party

Democrat Circular Firing Squad.

Virginia continues to be in a state of political chaos and unflattering national scrutiny as all three of its top elected officials - Governor Northam, Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax and Attorney General Mark Herring - find themselves embroiled in controversy.  A piece in CNN looks at the chaos but, in my view, fails to place blame where it lies, which is not on Governor Ralph Northam or the other targets of a far right Republican operatives.  Here's what CNN says as far as it goes:

    In the last six days, the following things have happened:

·         Gov. Ralph Northam said he was in a picture in his medical school yearbook of two people -- one in blackface, the other in KKK robes. He then recanted and said he wasn't in that picture. But he added that he *had* darkened his face to look more like Michael Jackson for a dance contest in 1984.

·         A woman named Vanessa Tyson accused Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax of assaulting her during the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston. Fairfax angrily denied the allegations. Then on Wednesday Tyson released a statement, in which she said in part "what began as consensual kissing quickly turned into a sexual assault."

·         State Attorney General Mark Herring, in a statement released Wednesday morning, acknowledged that he, too, had appeared in blackface at a party. "In 1980, when I was a 19-year-old undergraduate in college, some friends suggested we attend a party dressed like rappers we listened to at the time, like Kurtis Blow, and perform a song," Herring said.

What the CNN piece fails to do is (i) link these disclosures back to a far right, Trump supporting "news" outlet, and (ii) focus on how the Democrats have stupidly engaged in a circular firing squad  -just as the GOP anticipated they would do - and blown the situation all out of proportion. In short, in my view, the ultimate blame lies on Democrat office holders (the Legislative Black Caucus in particular), including a number of out of state would be presidential candidates who improperly and ignorantly injected themselves into Virginia politics (think Julián Castro, Elizabeth Warren - who has her own new crisis - and Kamala Harris).   Indeed, I would summarize the series of events since last Friday as follows:

Watching how the GOP operatives at Big League Politics set this in motion and how the Democrats took the bait hook, line and sinker and set themselves up to potentially put a racist homophobe (in the form of House of Delegates Speaker Cox) has been horrifying to watch.  Everyone, starting with the Legislative Black Caucus, rushed to judge, looked for every possible slight and never took a deep breath or stopped to consider the bigger picture and the strange coincidence of the timing of the political hit jobs.  Once Northam and Fairfax were targeted, I knew something would be dug up on Herring.  Since Herring announced his own "sin" first today, I believe he must have known the GOP operative were about to expose him.

As regular readers I know both Northam and Herring - Northam is a personal friend - and neither of these men is a racist.  Stupid perhaps in their youth, but not racists. Cox is a whole different story.  Three years of Speaker Cox as governor would be a disaster for LGBT Virginians and black Virginians - and most other Virginia.

In the last few days I've been attacked as a racist "gray old man" wanting to protect "white privilege" by some.  But having been in the political game longer than many of these young upstarts who have attacked me have been alive, I know just how dirty and foul the GOP plays.  I left the GOP almost 20 years ago, but in my days as a city committee member for the GOP for eight years, I saw up close just how dirty the far right was willing to play. I wanted no part of the politics of personal destruction, deliberate lies and, in my view, moral bankruptcy, so I left the GOP.   But I did not forget what I had observed. Sadly, no one in the Democrat Party wanted to listen to my analysis and warnings.

Democrats Grapple with Fairfax Assault Accusation

UPDATED: A reader spells out what the GOP is up to in all of this:

Understand and see their end game. Third in line is the Republican President pro tempore of the Senate - Steve Newman.

Mark Herring had best hope they find no skeletons on him.

As noted in the prior post, Virginia Democrats have set the stage where any accusation no matter how old or questionable now has the potential to derail elected officials' political careers.  The tempest over Ralph Northam started by a right wing GOP outfit now has spread to Justin Fairfax. A piece in Big League Politics looks at the accusation here:

Last night after Big League Politics released the bombshell report that Stanford University Fellow and Professor Vanessa Tyson allegedly accused Democrat Virginia Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax sexually assaulted her at the Democratic National Convention in 2004. She did not use his name in the initial release, and Big League Politics did not receive confirmation from Tyson that she wrote the post.

However, this changed late last night when Tyson confirmed to independent Virginia media outlet RVA Dirt that she made the allegations, and enlisted a friend to help spread the story.

Do I believe the story?  Not really given that the Washington Post supposedly looked into it and found it untrue and because I view this all asa coordinated effort to severely harm Democrats in the lead up to the 2019 Virginia elections.  Is it a coincidence that the same outlet , Big League Politics, that first attacked Northam is behind the Fairfax story?  I doubt it.  It's all part of an agenda to set the stage for the Virginia Democrat Party to implode, something it seemingly is working very hard to do.  Right wing Republicans must be ecstatic at the Democrats willingness to tear themselves apart. The problem for Virginia Democrats simply put is that now they have set the stage where no one is safe from such accusations and there is no limit on how far back in time one will be judged. A piece in the Washington Post looks at this second nightmare for Virginia Democrats:

The day after Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax (D) denied allegations of sexual misconduct, Democrats grappled with how to respond without betraying a rising star in their party or abandoning victims in the #MeToo era.

Nearly all Democrats at the state and federal level swiftly called for Gov. Ralph Northam (D) to resign over a racist photo from his 1984 yearbook that became public Friday.

But lawmakers and party officials interviewed took a more circumspect approach to the allegation against Fairfax, which surfaced Monday, just three days later.

Although Democrats at the state and national level have been quick to say women should be believed and that all allegations should be investigated, they say they are resisting a rush to judgment. . . . . Virginia Democrats privately note the accuser in the Fairfax case has not yet offered evidence she says corroborates her claim.

The dilemma shows the trouble they have enforcing a policy of zero tolerance.

“I have so many different things going through my head right now,” said Monique Alcala, chair of the state Democratic Party’s Latino caucus and a Fairfax supporter since he first made a splash in state politics by nearly winning the 2013 Democratic primary for attorney general.

Quentin Kidd, the director of the Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University, said Democrats are in a bind. “The silence is deafening from Democrats,” he said. “They may be thinking, ‘We don’t want to throw our lieutenant governor under the bus while we’re also trying to throw our governor out of office.’ Republicans are probably eating all the popcorn they can find right now. It’s quite a show.”

Democrats almost uniformly took their cues from the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus {which lead the attacks on Northam], which Monday evening released a statement saying lawmakers take all allegations of sexual assault or misconduct “with the utmost seriousness.”

“Given the recent allegations regarding Lieutenant Governor Justice Fairfax, the VLBC will continue to assess this developing situation as more details become available,” the statement continued. The state party released a nearly identical statement.

Most Republicans have been content to let Democrats’ problems unfold uninterrupted. “What’s going on with the lieutenant governor?” Del. Steve Landes (R-Augusta) said coyly before adding: “I don’t have any comment, thanks.”

This insane zero tolerance policy - despite its good intentions - will be the death of the Virginia Democrats in the near term.  I predict the GOP will retain control of the General Assembly after November and if the Democrats want someone to blame, they best look in the mirror.

Trump and Trumpism Rejected in Virginia

I will admit that I am on a post election win high at the moment.  Last nigh's Democrat blow out victory has helped restore my faith in the decency of Americans - at least Virginians after a depressing year watching Donald Trump trash decency, wage war on LGBT citizens and strive to make the reprehensible normal.  Thankfully, Virginia rejected Trumpism and bitch slapped Republicans who for the most part have prostituted themselves to Trump and all but donned KKK robes as they sought to emulate his racism/hate and bigotry agenda.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the election aftermath.  It correctly notes that yesterday was a first step in taking America back from the forces of hate, division and bigotry.  Trump lost big time even though not on the ballot.  Here column are excerpts:

One year after President Trump rode a campaign of white nationalism into the White House, the American people struck back. Decisive Democratic wins for governor in New Jerseyand Virginia, not to mention the Democratic victories for lieutenant governor and attorney general, are a clear sign of the electorate’s disquiet with Trump’s low-road Twitter presidency.

But three other signs come to mind in the afterglow of Election Day 2017. Here are my quick thoughts.

Borrowing pages from Trump’s white-nationalist playbook will hurt you.

Nothing was more disturbing and degrading of the presidency than Trump’s both-sides nonsense in response to the ugly white supremacist rallies in Charlottesville, where Heather Heyer was allegedly killed by a racist who plowed his car into a crowd of counter-protesters. That Ed Gillespie adopted Trump’s rhetoric on monuments to Confederate generals and tried to scare voters with loose talk of Latino gangs clearly was a bridge too far the people of the commonwealth. 

No, Democrats don’t need to have a progressive, Bernie-anointed candidate to win.

Tom Perriello lost the primary to now-Governor-elect Ralph Northam, a centrist anchored in the establishment. Perriello was endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who ran for president in the Democratic Party in 2016 but doesn’t see fit to join the party. But Perriello didn’t disappear. He worked hard on Northam’s behalf and not grudgingly. . . . Thus proving that a vanquished primary opponent who works hard to help his victor during the general election is essential.

The American people are not afraid of self-correction.

When the election was called for Northam, I was sitting in the same spot on my sofa where I watched in horror the dawn of Trump nation a year ago. The American people broke my heart that night. Everything that I knew to be true — hoped to be true — about my country was voided by voters who responded positively to the most racist, xenophobic and misogynistic campaign for president in recent memory. The fear his election unleashed was raw and palpable. But the ugliness and incompetence that followed Trump into the White House had an impact.

The Democratic gubernatorial victories in New Jersey and Virginia are the first sign of correction. Another is the successful run of Justin Fairfax, the newly-elected lieutenant governor of Virginia who will become only the second African American to win that seat. L. Douglas Wilder won the post in 1985. He went on to become the commonwealth’s and the nation’s first black governor. And yet another is the election of Danica Roem to the Virginia House of Delegates. She becomes the first openly transgender state legislator in the United States by defeating the homophobic and anti-transgender Republican incumbent Bob Marshall.

Zac Petkanas, former rapid response chief for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, summed it up best in a tweet after the race was called for Northam. “The #resistance began on November 9, 2016,” he wrote. “The #revolution began tonight [Nov. 7].”

Onward to taking our country back from the marauding forces of division and hate in 2018. This is not over.

Democrats Dominate in 2017 Virginia Elections

Ralph Northan (at rear center right) in our home with campaign volunteers

It has been an exciting and emotional night watching the election results come in for the Virginia 2017 elections.  The husband and I have labored long and hard and given money for the Democrat statewide ticket and have provided housing for a Ralph Northam staffer in out home since July 4th. To say that we are very invested is to put it mildly, especially with me as a one time GOP activist, City Committee chair, and precinct captain.  It would seem that many Virginians have come to the realization that I came to years ago: the GOP of my parents' generation and my youth is dead and gone .  With a sweep by the Democrat statewide ticket and the possibility of flipping the House of Delegates still in play, this election is of major impact.  The results also show a growing division between Virginia's progressive urban areas - which foot the financial bill so to speak for the state as a whole - and rural areas where racism, religious extremism and bigotry remain strong.  What is of interest in the election results available is that even cities in Virginia's rural southside and southwest are moving to the Democrat column.  Perhaps they have realized that embracing the GOP message of division, racism and homophobia will do nothing to revitalize their economic base.  Here's a sample of some of the unofficial results in the gubernatorial race:

Albemarle County*          63.75% Northam

Alexandria City              78% Northanm

Arlintgton County          80% Northam

Chesapeake*                    53% Northam

Charlottesville                 85% Northam

Danville*                        57% Northam

Fairfax City                     64% Northam

Fairfax County                67.85% Northam

Falls Church                    78% Notham

Fredericksburg                69.9% Northam

Hampton                        71.6% Northam

Harrisonburg*                 63.5% Northam

Henrico County *             60% Northam

Lexington*                     66% Northam

Loudoun County*           59.45% Northam

Martinsville*                  58.5% Northam

Newport News                65% Northam

Norfolk                            68.6% Northam

Petersburg                      87.7% Northam

Portsmouth                     70% Northam

Prince William County*   64% Northam

Richmond                       81.5% Northam

Roanoke*                       62% Northam

Staunton*                      53% Northam

Suffolk                            58% Northam

Virginia Beach*             52% Northam

Williamsburg                70% Northam

* designates localities in southside/southwest Virginia or that historically vote Republican

Perhaps I am overly optimistic, but part of me wants to think that some of the urban areas that flipped to Northam or went much more Democrat recognized that all of the Republican statewide candidates ran campaigns that were based on shameless lies, not to mention overt calls to white supremacists and religious fanatics.  Virginia had a glorious history in the early days of the nation when intellect, democracy and knowledge were ascendant.  Then came the Civil War, Jim Crow and Massive Resistance.  Hopefully, the majority of Virginians want to recapture the Virginia of  the Founding Fathers.

The irony is that the rural areas that embraced Ed Gillespie are embracing the very forces that are holding them back economically and making them anathema to modern, progressive business. Will they ever wake up?

Trump, Gillespie and the Same Old Party

Tomorrow is election day in Virginia and the choice is between an expansion of the Trump/GOP racist and reverse Robin Hood agenda embodied by Ed Gillespie and the rest of the GOP statewide ticket or, in contrast, the Democrat ticket of Ralph Northam for Governor, Mark Herring for Attorney General and Justin Fairfax for Lt. Governor or which will continue a progressive, forward looking agenda that makes Virginia a welcoming location for all citizens.  A column in the New York Times makes the case that a vote for Gillespie is a vote for Donald Trump and his ugly agenda.  As a former Republican who is sickened by what the GOP has become, please take the time to read the column and take the time to get out and vote tomorrow for the Democrat ticket.  Our children's and grandchildren's futures depend on you.  Here are column excerpts:

Since last year’s presidential election a number of establishment Republicans have very publicly wrung their hands over what has happened to their party. George W. Bush has even lamented that he may turn out to have been the “last Republican president,” because Donald Trump represents something so alien to the party’s tradition.

But how different is Trump, really? He’s cruder, ruder and less competent than his Republican predecessors — although on that last point, we shouldn’t forget the Bush administration’s disastrous occupation of Iraq and botched response to Hurricane Katrina. But there’s a lot more continuity than his conservative critics want to admit. If Trumpism seems to be taking over the Republican Party, that’s largely because in many ways the party was already there.

What, after all, does the modern — by which I basically mean post-Reagan — Republican Party stand for? A cynic might say that it has basically served the interests of the economic elite while winning votes from the white working class with racial dog whistles. And the cynic would be right.

[H]ow much has changed in the era of Trump? Consider two current news stories: the House Republican tax plan and the campaign that Ed Gillespie, a consummate Republican insider, has been running for governor of Virginia.

On the tax plan: . . . . According to the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, by the time the law would be fully phased in, there would be huge income gains for millionaires — even bigger if you take repeal of the estate tax into account — with minimal benefits for a great majority of the population. In fact, tens of millions of middle- and lower-income families would end up facing tax increases . . .

In short, Trumpist tax policy is as elitist if not more elitist and anti-populist than the policies of previous Republican administrations. Same old, same old.

[W]e don’t have to argue about the past: Just look at how Ed Gillespie has campaigned in Virginia over the past few months.

Gillespie is, as I said, a consummate Republican insider, former chairman of the Republican National Committee and counselor to George W. Bush. So what does it say about the Republican establishment and its values that he has run a campaign completely focused on stirring up white racial hostility?

So has Gillespie faced strong criticism from establishment Republicans for waging such a gutter campaign? No — there has been a bit of tut-tutting from lower-level figures, but hardly anything from people whose condemnation might matter. . . . . if “never Trump” Republicans really wanted to purge Trumpism from the party, they’d be urging voters to reject Gillespie for his vile tactics.

So how many in the Republican establishment have spoken up to say that Gillespie must lose if the party is to save its soul? Hardly any.

Oh, and if you’re in Virginia, reading this, and haven’t yet voted, please do. This is a hugely consequential election, and it will be a shame — indeed, a tragedy — if its outcome is determined by people who couldn’t be bothered to get to the polls.

Washington Post Endorses Democrat Ticket in Virginia

I concur 100% with the Post's endorsements

The Washington Post has endorsed the entire Democrat statewide ticket in the Virginia Elections a little over a week away.  In doing so it lays out criticisms of the Republican ticket that largely define why I left the Republican Party years ago.  Whenever the choices are between hate and bigotry versus decency and/or between exclusion versus unity and cohesion, today's GOP always embraces the toxic and divisive.  As the Post lays out, Ed Gillespie had many opportunities to run a moral and forward looking campaign and every time he chose to do the wrong thing, including his pie in the sky tax cut proposal which would bankrupt Virginia.  John Adams is perhaps the most extreme and ugly of the three statewide GOP candidates which says a lot given that Jill Vogel wanted to subject women to invasive ultrasounds as part of pre-abortion counseling.  In contrast, the Democrat ticket seeks to unite Virginia and move it further into the 21st century rather than take it backwards to a foul version of the 1950's.  To me the choice is to vote Democrat, especially if one has children and grandchildren.  Here are highlights from the Post editorial:

Mr. Northam, whose knack for working across the aisle once prompted Republicans in the state Senate to ask him to switch parties, mounted a campaign largely true to his reputation for decency and good sense. Unfortunately, Mr. Gillespie chose a different path. Faced with a choice of highlighting his undeniable command of policy or pandering to vile and racially inflammatory tendencies in his party’s base, the Republican opted for the latter. In so doing, he shocked even some admirers.

It is not that Mr. Northam is qualified and Mr. Gillespie unqualified. It is that Mr. Northam can convincingly promise to be governor for all Virginians, while Mr. Gillespie, even while asserting the same, has disqualified himself from any such credible claim. We support Mr. Northam.

Having used massive TV advertising buys to whip up the fears and hatreds of his party’s extremists — by equating illegal immigrants with violent Hispanic gangs; by embracing Confederate monuments weeks after they were the rallying cause for neo-Nazis and white supremacists in Charlottesville; by distorting the facts on rights restoration for a convicted sex offender — the Republican candidate has swapped his cloak as a problem-solver for a demagogue’s mantle. 

 

Mr. Northam has maintained relatively consistent stances, Mr. Gillespie, trying to play to both right-wing and centrist factions in the GOP, has hopscotched from one side to the other on many issues.

 

Before he tilted toward incendiary social issues, the centerpiece of Mr. Gillespie’s campaign platform was a pie-in-the-sky tax cut that would slash state revenue, by about $1.4 billion from an annual tax-supported budget of $20 billion — even as he proposed dozens of costly new programs and initiatives. Asked to name state programs he might cut to pay for his tax plan, Mr. Gillespie did not name any.

 

On climate change, Mr. Northam would continue Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s (D) innovative initiative promoting low-carbon energy technologies with efficient, market-based policies. Mr. Gillespie has condemned the plan, in keeping with his and his party’s effort to promote coal, an outdated, dirty energy source that has struggled to compete in recent years.

In the down-ticket races, which feature four lawyers, the choices are equally clear. For lieutenant governor, Democrat Justin Fairfax, the much better choice, is a bright, competent, well-versed former federal prosecutor turned corporate attorney. His opponent, State Sen. Jill Holtzman Vogel (R-Fauquier), opposed the 2013 transportation bill, then acknowledged it did wonders for her district. Her campaign website touts her sponsorship of radical tea party legislation that would have empowered states to overturn federal laws and regulations they disliked; now she seems utterly unaware of the bill. She objected to what she called President Barack Obama’s “heavy-handed” federal mandate on transgender bathrooms, but sponsored a far more heavy-handed measure that would have forced most women seeking abortions to undergo mandatory vaginal ultrasounds.

For attorney general, we favor the incumbent, Democrat Mark Herring. Mr. Herring won the office four years ago by assailing the partisanship of his arch-conservative Republican predecessor, Ken Cuccinelli II. Once in office, he was attacked for being almost equally activist as a champion of leftist causes. Yet Mr. Herring plausibly argued that his highest-profile decision — refusing to represent the state, his client, in a lawsuit challenging its ban on same-sex marriage — was a principled decision tantamount to declining to defend segregated schools in mid-20th-century Virginia. The Republican candidate, John Adams, an intelligent corporate lawyer, attacks Mr. Herring for spurning his own client, acknowledges that he, too, would have refused to defend segregation; but discounts the analogy. Advantage Mr. Herring.

Oppose the Demonization of Gays and Minorities in Virginia's 2017 Elections

Vote for Ralph Northam on November 7, 2017 (as well as the rest of the Democrat ticket)

I left the Republican Party shortly after I came out.  It was obvious to me at the time that the Christofascists were ascendant in the Party and that there was no place in the GOP for anyone who believed in the separation of church and state - something I stated in my letter of resignation - much less for anyone who is LGBT.  Things have only worsened in the years since that time.  Today's Republican Party is only welcoming to white, heterosexual, ultra-conservative Christians who use the Bible daily to condemn members of the LGBT community and, in my view, justify the separation of the races with whites being the only ones entitled to full civil rights much less treatment as fully human.  In the current statewide races, gays and minorities are being demonized by the Republican ticket with Ed Gillespie running deliberately untrue ads that pander to racists.  Meanwhile, AG candidate is an anti-gay extremist who is just as hysterically anti-gay as Ken Cuccinelli and Rick Santorum (both of whom I believe are closeted gays since they are a tad too hysterical about gay sex to be straight men secure in their own sexuality).   A column in Huffington Post looks at the disturbing tactics of Gillespie and Adams who are both running campaigns fueled by hate and bigotry.  Here are excerpts:

No 14-year-old kid should live with these crippling fears, yet that is the reality facing thousands of high schoolers across the country. For undocumented students, every deportation they see on the news is a daily reminder of their precarious legal situation. Every act of violence against an LGBTQ friend or neighbor reminds them that their safety is constantly at risk just for expressing who they are and how they love. And since last November, the stakes for people of color, immigrants and LGBTQ Americans have never been higher.

Virginia’s gubernatorial race makes it clear that these threats aren’t just coming from the White House, but are right here in the Commonwealth. Following in the footsteps of Donald Trump, Ed Gillespie is running a xenophobic and homophobic campaign that makes it clear how much we have to fear from a Gillespie administration.

Throughout his campaign, he has aired hateful, fear-mongering ads that criminalize people of color and make erroneous links between immigrants and MS-13 gang violence. He has also consistently opposed LGBTQ rights, from opposing marriage equality to supporting anti-trans legislation. John Adams, who is running for attorney general, is just as dangerous. During his campaign, he has spread lies that all undocumented students are getting in-state tuition benefits in Virginia or that the Supreme Court decision granting marriage equality is “totally made up.”

No matter what Gillespie says, hate is not a Virginia value. His opponent, Dr. Ralph Northam, is the only candidate for governor who has Virginia’s true values at heart ― values like opportunity and justice for all. Instead of working to divide us by our differences, Northam has fought his entire life to make Virginia a more supportive, welcoming place for all people, no matter their color, race, sexual orientation or immigration status. Now more than ever, we need a leader for our state who will be steadfast defense against the discriminatory policies emanating from the Oval Office, as well as a fearless advocate for LGBTQ and immigrants’ rights. Ralph Northam is that leader.

October 11 marked National Coming Out Day, an annual reminder of the journeys many of us have taken to come out . . . . I reminded people why it was important to vote for Ralph Northam, along with Justin Fairfax (candidate for lieutenant governor) and Mark Herring (candidate for attorney general).

What did I tell them? No matter your politics, we can all agree on one thing: no one should ever have to live in fear.

No one should have to live in fear.  I hope that "friends" as well as my clients and the husband's clients who voted for Trump - who is aggressively attacking the LGBT community - will take the opportunity this November to make amends and vote to protect our civil rights and lives by voting for Ralph Northam, along with Justin Fairfax (candidate for lieutenant governor) and Mark Herring (candidate for attorney general).  Again, no one should live in fear and see their civil rights and basic humanity under attack.

Virginia 2017 Elections - Political Endorsements

The following are excerpts from my column in the October, 2017, issue of VEER Magazine. (I write a monthly column)  To read the full column (and many other timely columns, look for VEER on news stands now. across Hampton Roads.  Here are the excerpts:

With Virginia's off year elections, LGBT Virginians find themselves confronted with crucial decisions at the ballot box every year.  But this year may be more critical than most given the war against LGBT Americans being relentlessly waged by the Trump/Pence regime in Washington, D.C.  On top of some of the already egregious measures - e.g., rolling back LGBT protections and intervening in a case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit to argue that existing federal civil rights laws do not apply to LGBT individuals - the Trump regime representative to the United Nations recently voted against a U.N. Human Rights Council resolution that condemns the death penalty for those found guilty of committing consensual same-sex sexual acts.  In voting against the resolution, the American delegation joined with Islamic countries such as Bangladesh, Iran, Iraq, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.   One way to create a firewall against such anti-LGBT animus is to elect LGBT allied candidates to the offices of Governor, Attorney General and Lt. Governor on November 7, 2017.    As has become increasingly the case, the allies to the LGBT community in Virginia among elected officials are almost without exception the Democrat candidates.  

OFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR.   My endorsement goes to Democrat, Ralph Northam.  There are numerous reasons to endorse Democrat Ralph Northam over his challenger, former lobbyist Ed Gillespie, a/k/a "Enron Ed," but Dr. Northam's strong support for LGBT community and our civil rights, including our right to marry the person we love, certainly is a powerful factor.  No American citizen should have to worry one election cycle to the next about whether or not their civil rights will be abrogated or restricted based on the results of the coming election, yet that is the reality faced by LGBT Virginians, especially given the offensive being waged against us by the Trump White House.
 Just like the dishonesty and disingenuousness we see daily from the Trump/Pence regime, Ed Gillespie has tried to have it both ways and lied while speaking out of both sides of his mouth on LGBT rights and other issues.  Late last month, desperate to secure the endorsement of the Northern Virginia Business Political Action Committee, the PAC for the Northern Virginia Chamber, Gillespie privately promised to veto any anti-transgender bathroom that might come to him if he is elected governor.  Not surprisingly, that privately made promise is directly opposite of the many promises Gillespie, like Trump, has made to the evangelical Christians who wield huge influence within the GOP base in Virginia.  This Christian extremist influence is best embodied by The Family Foundation ("TFF"), a virulently anti-gay, anti-transgender organization that vigorously opposes any legal protections for LGBT Virginians and which, if given its way, would bring back the sodomy laws struck down in 2003 by the Supreme Court ruling in Lawrence v. Texas.  Equally disturbing is Gillespie's repeated promises to Christian right extremists about his dedication to protecting their "religious freedom."  Sadly, this religious freedom ruse has become the standard Republican double speak which means Gillespie will protect the right of Christofascists' to discriminate against others based on real or claimed "religious belief." Stated another way, Gillespie supports license to discriminate laws veiled behind a smoke screen of "protecting religious freedom."  As icing on the cake, Gillespie believes in "traditional marriage" and is no fan or supporter of same sex marriage.
 In sharp contrast to each of Gillespie's positions, Ralph Northam has consistently supported LGBT rights initiatives, ran for the office of Lt. Governor on a platform that openly supported same sex marriage, and believes that real or feigned religious belief should not be a license to discriminate against or mistreat other citizens, be it in the form of refusing service to LGBT customers or refusing them housing. No one should be exempt from the scope of non-discrimination laws. If Gillespie's embrace of the larger GOP anti-LGBT rights agenda isn't enough to cause you to vote for Ralph Northam, then one should consider Gillespie's dangerous positions on health care, gun control and or fiscal responsibility.  . . . . Gillespie promises a 10% across the board tax cut if elected.  This tax cut would cause well over a $1.3 billion budget deficit for Virginia according to reports published by the Washington Post.  On his campaign website Gillespie claims that this would equate to a $1,300 tax cut to a family of four.  Like most GOP projections this claim does not seem to match mathematical reality.  My husband and I with our two wage earner incomes and CPA generated returns would see nowhere near this large of a cut in our annual state taxes.  One can only wonder what Gillespie considers to be a "typical family.”  By my calculation it would mean only those families making over perhaps approximately $200,000+ per year would realize the tax cut Gillespie promises. The very wealthy would be the big winners. 

On gun control, Ralph Northam is again the better candidate.  With America still reeling from the mass murder in Las Vegas earlier this month and the Pulse night club massacre still in the minds of many in the LGBT community, it is important to be aware of Ed Gillespie's opposition to sensible gun control laws.   In fact, earlier this year, Gillespie (and GOP Attorney General candidate John Adams) bragged about his top ratings from the NRA.  In sharp contrast to Gillespie, Ralph Northam received an "F" rating from the NRA, an organization that is little more than a front for gun manufacturers.  As a former military physician, Northam knows all too well what automatic weapons can do to the human body in the wrong hands and supports both a ban on the sale of assault weapons and other common sense legislation to reduce the carnage  from gun violence.  Remember those ratings when you vote in November and vote for Ralph Northam (and Mark Herring who is similarly disliked by the NRA). On healthcare, Gillespie is a supporter of the failed Republican effort to repeal the Affordable Health Care Act and despite promises to the contrary sees no problem with thousands of Virginians losing health insurance coverage.

OFFICE OF ATTORNEY GENERAL: My endorsement goes to Democrat, Mark Herring.  Since taking office in January, 2014, Mark Herring has been a steadfast supporter of the constitutional rights of all Virginians, including LGBT Virginians, as evidenced by his refusal to defend Virginia's unconstitutional ban on same sex marriage, a ban based on far right religious belief rather than the concept of equal protection under the law.  Similarly, Herring has opposed Republican efforts to employ voter ID laws to disenfranchise minority voters.  Herring's opponent, John Adams hypocritically whines that Herring has allowed "politics" to influence his actions as Attorney General, yet Adams, if elected, would bring back a religious right and white supremacist political agenda not seen since Ken Cuccinelli left office.   Adams would do all in his power reverse the McAuliffe/Northam/Herring effort to "make sure that Virginia is business-friendly and welcoming to all."
 Demonstrating Herring's effectiveness over the last almost four years, in endorsing Herring, the Northern Virginia Business Political Action Committee stated “General Herring has ably served the Commonwealth, just as he did serving Northern Virginia in the Senate and Loudoun County on the Board of Supervisors,” . . . . “He has a record of leadership on a host of key business issues important to the Northern Virginia Chamber, including his unwavering support for the landmark HB2313 transportation plan, and his commitment to modernize Virginia’s regulatory framework to prepare the Commonwealth for the emerging technologies that will lead private sector growth in the 21st century.”
 Adams' attacks on Herring simply are not true and ultimately reflect his own bias against equality for all Virginians, those who are LGBT in particular.  Adams supports a ban on same-sex marriage and has stated that "“I have a religious faith that tells me that marriage is a sacred institution between a man and a woman. That’s what I believe.”  As the Washington Post this past summer noted, Adams even longs for a Trump packed Supreme Court that can reverse the 2015 ruling in Obergefell.  He also supports voter ID laws that have little or nothing to do with perverting voter fraud, but which instead, are aimed at stopping "those people" from voting, so draw your own conclusions as to whether the label "racist" applies to Adams.   

Like Ed Gillespie, Adams is also very big on "religious freedom" laws and the myth that American Christians are being persecuted.  Adams' vision of religious freedom does NOT include religious freedom for gays, Muslims, Hindus or other non-Christians despite his dishonest posturing that he would represent all Virginians.  And yes, he supported the toxic Hobby Lobby decision (he worked on the case for free of charge Hobby Lobby when it opposed contraception coverage in health care plans).  It goes without saying that Adams counts as friends and endorsers a veritable who's who of right extreme wing Republicans. Vote for Mark Herring on November 7, 2017. OFFICE OF LLIEUTENANT GOVERNOR:  My endorsement goes to Democrat Justin Fairfax.  Justin Fairfax, the Democrat candidate, tracks the positions of Ralph Northam and Mark Herring: expand healthcare coverage to poor and working class families, common sense gun control laws, increased efforts to clean the Chesapeake Bay and policies to address climate change and rising sea levels.  He also backs common sense women's reproductive rights policies, equal pay for equal work, and marriage equality and non-discrimination protections for hard working LGBT Virginians. Fairfax opposes Republican efforts to dismantle America's healthcare laws and leave hundreds of thousands of Virginians without health care coverage.
 Similar contrasts exist between Fairfax, and Republican, Jill Vogel, as note in the other statewide races. Like Adams, Vogel is an extremist and was the sponsor of one of the bills (SB484) during the McDonnell governorship that would have forced women seeking abortions to undergo forced invasive trans-vaginal ultra sounds.  This effort subjected Virginia to national and international ridicule and proved that Vogel is no moderate despite the deceptive effort on her campaign website.  A review of Vogel's "issues" are a warmed over version of those of Gillespie and Adams and appear aimed at deceiving voters from realizing her true right wing, reverse Robin Hood agenda, best embodied by Gillespie's tax cut promise that will disproportionately reward the very wealthy while bankrupting Virginia.

The election of Donald Trump in 2016 underscores the dangers of not voting and the danger posed by Republican government control of all branches of government. We cannot allow a similar disaster to happen in Virginia.