Virginia's Elections May Show the Potency of the Demand for Gun Reform

With its off-year state elections, Virginia is often viewed as a test case of where issues and voter mindsets are trending.  Now, with Virginia's so-called urban crescent firmly in the Democrat column in state-wide races, 2019 will offer a test of whether demands for sane gun control laws will help flip control of the Virginia General Assembly to Democrats.  After the Virginia Beach mass shooting, Democrat Governor Ralph Northam called a special session of the legislature to address gun control. Despite strong public support for common sense gun control reform, Republicans arrogantly adjourned the session without and debate on the issues and, in my view, basically flipped the middle finger to millions of Virginians. Typical of this attitude is Tommy Norment, current Virginia Senate majority leader, who made obnoxious, derogatory (and uncalled for) remarks about gun control advocates at a CLE - continuing legal education - course where he was a speaker.  A piece in the New York Times looks at Virginia's role in this regard.  Here are highlights

CENTREVILLE, Va. — At door after door, house after house, Dan Helmer, a Democrat running for the Virginia House of Delegates, found voters of both parties telling him one thing as he canvassed for support Tuesday night: Do something about the mass shootings.

“I have it on the TV right now,” Reza Darvishian, a State Department security engineer, told Mr. Helmer on the porch of his home. “I’m sick of listening to all of this stuff.”

The mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, last weekend have rebooted the national discussion over gun violence and ignited a bitter fight between Democrats and President Trump over whether his divisive rhetoric encouraged the violence. Now Virginia’s off-year elections in November loom as the first political battlefield on the issue. Republicans hold only one-vote majorities in both the House and Senate. Democrats are aiming to capture both chambers and pass new gun control legislation next year.

The Virginia elections will help measure the potency of the issue with voters after a series of mass shootings that has outraged many Americans. And it will match the resources of the movement’s biggest supporter, former New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, against the National Rifle Association, the long-dominant Virginia-based gun rights organization that faces internal turmoil and a steady loss of influence.

The 2018 midterms marked the first time the N.R.A. was outspent by gun control groups in a national campaign.

The issue is already highly charged in Virginia, which had its own mass shooting in May, when 12 people were killed in a Virginia Beach municipal building. The massacre prompted the Democratic governor, Ralph Northam, to call a special session in July and ask lawmakers to consider a package of eight gun control proposals, including banning assault-style weapons and implementing universal background checks.

Republicans ended the session after 90 minutes . . . . .

Now Mr. Cox and Mr. Hugo are the top targets for Democrats and gun control proponents. Both represent suburban districts long in Republican control where voters have rejected the party in the Trump era.

“This will be the first thing on the docket,” said former Gov. Terry McAuliffe. “People are fired up. People are sick and tired of saying, ‘My thoughts and prayers are with you,’ and they want action.”

The Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund, the political arm of Mr. Bloomberg’s gun control organization, said this week that it would invest at least $2.5 million in Virginia before Election Day . . . . “Virginia is a bellwether state and we are going to be there,” said John Feinblatt, Everytown’s president. “There is no doubt this is a test. This is the next theater for what’s going to happen everywhere in 2020.”

With its odd-year elections, Virginia has a long record of serving as a leading indicator for national contests the following year. The state’s voters in 2009 were the first to reject Democrats in the Obama era, foreshadowing the rise of the Tea Party, and did the same to Republicans in 2017 following President Trump’s election. That year, Democrats swept out a generation of long-tenured suburban Republican lawmakers while coming within a coin flip in a tied race of winning control of the state’s House of Delegates for the first time since 1999.

Virginia remains a complex state demographically and culturally, with wide swaths of rural areas where Confederate flags are common and belief in gun rights sacrosanct. But the current gun control debate comes as the state has nearly completed a Republican-to-Democratic transition in statewide elections, as urban and suburban voters have swung hard away from Republicans over the last decade.

Help make history.  Make sure you are registered to vote and go to the polls in November, 2019, and vote a straight Democrat ticket. If your senator and delegate are in uncontested races, donate time and money to Democrats in competitive races (this is what the husband and I are doing).  We need gun control reform and a host of other measures which will only happen when Republicans are swept from control of the General Assembly.  

Virginia GOP Fear Mongering Ahead of Special Session, November Elections

On July 9, 2019, a special session of the Virginia General Assembly will take place in the wake of the mass shooting in Virginia Beach.  The purpose? To try to enact some common sense gun control measures that will (i) make it more difficult for those with questionable backgrounds to purchase guns, (ii) hopefully limit the number of guns one can buy in a given month, and (iii) end Virginia role as being the main source of illegal guns in New York State and the Northeast in general.  To hear the shrieks and lies of the Virginia GOP and their allies at the NRA and in white supremacist and Christofascist groups (the two are largely synonymous), it's the end of the world.  Indeed, they whine that Democrats are going to "take our state away from us" as if the rest of us have no claim to our home state  and no right to be free from constant fear of gun violence. In the lead up to the November, 2019, elections here in Virginia, expect the shrieking to become even louder and the lies to become even more disingenuous.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the GOP fear mongering which will only intensify and, which as the norm for the GOP in Virginia, involves attacking LGBT Virginians.  Here are article highlights: 

One evening, one city still reeling from mass gun violence, two separate gatherings. At a recreation center, residents fearful of too many guns. At a hotel conference room, National Rifle Association members worried about gun restrictions.

The dueling messages have been playing out around Virginia as lawmakers and the NRA rally opposing camps ahead of next week’s General Assembly special session on gun control. Gov. Ralph Northam (D) ordered the July 9 session after a gunman killed 12 people at a Virginia Beach municipal building on May 31.

The issue has crystallized what’s at stake in elections this fall, when Republicans try to defend their razor-thin majorities and Democrats try to seize control of the General Assembly for the first time in more than two decades.

Republicans are sounding an alarm, warning that the consequences this fall could be extensive. The NRA rally in Virginia Beach on Monday night was closed to the media. But at a similar NRA gathering last week in Fredericksburg, a recording of which was obtained by The Washington Post, the message was dark.

“They want our state,” Del. Margaret B. Ransone (R-Westmoreland) told an audience of mostly gun rights supporters in Fredericksburg. . . . They intentionally want to turn it blue. Gun control, abortion rights, social justice — they’ve named their three; that’s what they want.” “We are on the cusp of changing things, and we need all of you to help this year,” Democratic Senate candidate Missy Cotter Smasal told an audience of about 50 gun-control advocates Monday night at a recreation center in Virginia Beach.

As Smasal spoke in the recreation center, the Republican she is trying to unseat, Sen. William R. DeSteph Jr., addressed nearly 200 at a closed NRA meeting in a hotel near the oceanfront. Smasal called DeSteph’s appearance at that event “disrespectful and contemptuous” coming so soon after the mass shooting.

“We’re the counterweight to what’s happening in our town right now. We’re the counterweight to that NRA town hall,” Sibel Galindez, who helps run the Hampton Roads chapter of Moms Demand Action, told Smasal’s gathering at the rec center.

Galindez and her group offered to help people travel to Richmond next week for the special legislative session to express support for the gun-control measures outlined by Northam. Those include bans on military-style weapons, high-capacity magazines and devices to help guns shoot faster or quieter; limiting handgun purchases to one per month; a “red-flag law” allowing authorities to seize weapons from someone deemed a danger; and requiring people to report lost or stolen firearms.

Sen. Bryce E. Reeves (R-Spotsylvania) [who in my view is bought and paid for by the gun lobbt]. . . . described overhearing a Democratic colleague, Sen. Adam P. Ebbin (Alexandria), sitting in his office and telling someone that “we will radically change Virginia when we take control.”

He said Ebbin is “from Northern Virginia. He’s really liberal left; he’s . . . the [only] openly gay senator in our Senate.” And Reeves said Ebbin’s agenda “means infanticide is coming, all the gun bills. We’re going to lose the right to work. . . . Minimum wage — just minimum will be $15, but I heard him talking about $20 to $25.”

Ebbin, when told of Reeves’s remarks at the town hall, said he never made any of the comments attributed to him. “Apparently I’m a radical homosexual who’s misquoted,” Ebbin said sarcastically.

“I did speak to him once on, ‘Couldn’t we agree on universal background checks,’ but I’ve never talked to him about radically changing the course of Virginia,” Ebbin said. “I’ve never heard any Democrat in Virginia or elsewhere that I recall talking about a minimum wage over $15.”

Ebbin said he was most upset that Reeves would invoke his sexual orientation.

Expect Reeves, DeSteph - who I have no use for - Ransome and other Republics to lie through their teeth booth about the special legislative session and the November elections. I was at a CLE course where Tommy Norment, GOP Senate majority leader, was the presenter and even in that venue he lied non-stop on gun control issue.  Today's Republicans have something in common with the "professional Christians" of the "Christian Right": if their lips are moving, it's almost a 100% guarantee that they are lying.

Virginia Republicans May Not Be Able to Smother Gun Control Again

Yesterday, my friend Governor Ralph Northam called a special session of the Virginia General Assembly to consider gun control reform in the wake of the horrific massacre in Virginia Beach last Friday by an individual armed with a silencer and extended magazines - all items legal for purchase under Virginia's current insane gun laws. Coincidentally, I attended a continuing legal education seminar today where the presenter was Republican Senate majority leader Tommy Norment who took time before the seminar began to figuratively take shots at Governor Northam and the majority of Virginians who favor universal background checks and the banning of extended magazines and silencers - things no law abiding citizens needs for self-protection or hunting. If Norment represents the GOP mindset, the special session will be filled with much vitriol and GOP political fellatio of the gun lobby. As a column in the Washington Post lays out, this go round it may be far harder for the Republicans in the General Assembly to smother gun control measures.  Let's hope the column proves to be correct.  Here are column excerpts:

If you want to know how things have rolled in Virginia on the firearms issue, consider that Gun Lobby Day is an unofficial but highly memorable event held every year at the state Capitol on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

“That was so wrong for so many reasons,” Jennifer Wexton, a former state senator who is now a member of Congress, observed about the timing of the pro-firearms offensive. Wexton, first drawn to politics in part by her desire for tougher gun laws, said that the state Senate’s Republican leadership would “put up all the gun bills on that day and kill them, one after another.”

It was quite a spectacle, said state Sen. Janet D. Howell, who, like Wexton, is a Northern Virginia Democrat. “We would have citizens wandering the halls carrying Uzis and other assault weapons,” she said. “That was Virginia, darlin’.”

But it may not be Virginia anymore, or so Wexton, Howell and other advocates of gun safety hope. On Tuesday, Gov. Ralph Northam announced he was calling a special session of the state legislature to take up a package of gun-control bills in the wake of last week’s mass shooting in Virginia Beach. They include many measures that Republicans, who narrowly control both houses of the state legislature, have smothered in committee before.

They may try to do this again. But it will be harder with an election looming this fall and the power on the gun issue shifting toward those who favor regulations that only the most fanatical gun rights advocates would question. They include background checks, restrictions of silencers and bump stocks, and “red flag” laws allowing families to seek the removal of firearms from those they fear pose a danger.

Democrats need to pick up only two seats in each body to take control of the House and the Senate, and after years in which opponents of gun-safety laws had the upper hand in mobilizing and organizing, the energy has switched sides. Wexton says she noticed a large shift after the shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.

“It’s clear from several recent elections that there’s been a sea change from the old arithmetic that the only people who vote on guns are pro-gun,” said Geoff Garin, who has polled for Democratic candidates in Virginia — Northam among them — for three decades. In his successful 2017 campaign, Garin said, Northam “leaned into support for gun-safety legislation and used his F-rating from the National Rifle Association as a badge of honor.”

Further evidence for this came from 2018 exit polling. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who also faced strong opposition from the NRA, won 82 percent among voters who said they cast their ballot on the basis of the gun issue, far exceeding his 57 percent statewide reelection total.

Almost all of McAuliffe’s gun proposals were killed by the GOP, but Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) said that the special session called by Northam puts the party’s gun-control foes in a more difficult position.

“. . . the Republicans in the General Assembly are in a pincer,” Connolly said. “Either they act on the governor’s proposals, which are going to be sweeping, or they risk the rage of the electorate. . . . The patience of the electorate on these issues has been tested, strained and is at the breaking point.”

The changing politics on guns reflect a response to the pace of the threats — and to personal experiences. Democratic state Sen. Jeremy S. McPike (Prince William) told of his daughter’s suburban high school going on lockdown at the end of April after a gun was fired. “As the parent of a kid who was in lockdown, it’s real and it’s frightening to see that nothing’s getting done.

It’s your move, Virginia. The special session calls for a different kind lobbying day, one more in keeping with the spirit of nonviolence that King preached before he was gunned down.

Virginia Republicans’ Racist Project

GOP Senator Tommy Norment, author of racist plan

Perhaps being a gay man makes me more conscious of discrimination since one never knows when one will encounter a homophobic bigot who cannot see beyond who I love to see me as a full and complete human. Thus, I am continually appalled when I see those who hold no shred of empathy for other people even if their skin color may differ.  Here in Virginia, the Virginia GOP not only lacks empathy for minorities.  The party's continuing agenda is to disenfranchise as many minority voters as possible.  Given the unequal rate at which minorities are arrested and convicted of crimes that cause them to forfeit their voting rights, it is no surprise that the Virginia GOP is strenuously opposing the restitution of voting rights to former felons who have served their time and paid any applicable fines.  Donald Trump may have helped to bring the Republican Party's growing racism into full view, but that racism has been alive and well in the Virginia GOP.  A editorial in the Washington Post looks at the Virginia GOP's racist agenda.  GOP State Senator Tommy Norment deservedly has a new one ripped for him.  Here are excerpts:

IN ABOUT 40 states, people convicted of serious crimes regain their voting rights upon discharge from prison or completion of parole. In a handful of others, convicts either are never disenfranchised or automatically regain their rights after a waiting period. These rules amount to an American consensus on what constitutes a reasonable and humane approach to redemption in a modern democracy.

In just four states are felons permanently barred from voting absent action by the governor. And in one of them, Virginia, lawmakers are considering an even more restrictive regime that would forever foreclose the possibility of redemption for tens of thousands of citizens.

For this essentially racist project, Virginians can credit the ethically challenged majority leader of Virginia’s state Senate, Thomas K. Norment Jr. (R-James City). He filed legislation last week that would bar people convicted of violent felonies, in Virginia disproportionately African Americans, from ever having their voting rights restored.

It’s impossible to say precisely which offenses would trigger permanent disenfranchisement under Mr. Norment’s proposed constitutional amendment, which would leave it to the GOP-dominated legislature to define violent felonies. However, they might easily include categories of assault or drug crimes that might earn a young convict a few years in prison, followed by a lifetime banned from the voting booth.

Mr. Norment’s amendment would leave Virginia as an extreme outlier in terms of restoration of rights. It would strip the governor of any role in the process by automatically restoring voting rights for nonviolent felons — a category that would also be defined by lawmakers — after they had completed their sentences and paid court costs and restitution, which often amount to thousands of dollars.

For Mr. Norment, the bill is retribution against Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), who has infuriated Republicans by attempting to restore voting rights to some 200,000 ex-convicts, nearly half of them African Americans and many of them disenfranchised decades after the completion of their sentences.

Before Virginia tightened its laws in response to a scandal involving former governor Robert F. McDonnell (R), Mr. Norment was notorious as the recipient of lavish hunting trips paid for by corporate bigwigs seeking favorable legislative treatment. Last year, it was reported that he was interviewed by the FBI for conduct arising from his personal relationship with a female lobbyist whose firm regularly pushed for legislation that he voted for and, in two cases, personally sponsored; he neither recused himself nor disclosed the relationship in a timely way.

Mr. Norment, who was charged with no crime, admitted to “exceedingly poor judgment” in the affair. Maybe his voting rights should be rescinded.

Anti-Gay Republicans Advance Virginia Gay Marriage Opt-Out Bill

Anti-gay Sen. Tommy Norment

One thing that one can always count on is that if the Virginia general Assembly is in session, Virginia Republicans in the legislature will be striving to make life Hell for LGBT Virginians while working to grant special rights to extremist Christians.  The 2016 session of the Virginia General Assembly is keeping up this tradition as Republicans advance anti-gay bills while killing gay friendly bills.  Some of the usual crackpots and extremist have introduced anti-gay bills, and the rest of the GOP members with few exceptions, are supporting them so as to not run afoul of Victoria Cobb, the queen of hate and president of The Family Foundation, Virginia's leading hate group. One has to wonder how the GOP House member caught on Grindr - some believe his identity has been confirmed - will vote if the bills reach the floor of the House of Delegates.  Local Senator, Tommy Norment, cast his vote with the hate merchants.   Here are highlights from the Daily Press on the GOP support of special rights for Christofascists:

Senate Bill 40 is heading for the Senate floor. If it passes the full General Assembly, it's a lock for a gubernatorial veto.  Gov. Terry McAuliffe's administration sent someone to Wednesday's committee meeting to note his disapproval, a step the governor doesn't typically take on pending legislation.

Sponsoring state Sen. Bill Carrico, R-Galax, said the bill is a response to the arrest of Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who refused to issue licenses to gay couples in the wake of last year's U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage. She spent five days in jail.

Carrico's bill would have the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles issue marriage licenses whenever a local clerk objects on "personal, ethical, moral or religious grounds."

The legislation passed the Senate Courts of Justice Committee 8-7. Committee Democrats voted against the bill. Freshman Republican state Sen. Glen Sturtevant, R-Richmond, was the only Republican to join them.

State Sen. Thomas K. "Tommy" Norment Jr., the only Peninsula senator on the committee, voted for the bill.

A number of religious groups supported the bill, including The Family Foundation. Spokesman Chris Freund called the bill "a win-win," because marriage licenses will be available even if clerks don't want to issue them.

The American Civil Liberties Union and Equality Virginia opposed the bill. ACLU lobbyist Claire Guthrie Gastañaga said clerks have a duty "to serve all members of the public equally."  "It's any personal whim you're authorizing people to discriminate on," she said.

The committee also dealt Wednesday with Senate Bill 10, which would strip various gay marriage prohibitions from Virginia state code, comporting Virginia law with the Supreme Court's ruling and current practice.  The committee's Republican majority declined to approve the bill, with Chairman Mark Obenshain, R-Harrisonburg, saying it's better to leave those changes to a more comprehensive editing being undertaken by the Virginia Code Commission.

"Family Values" Virginia GOP Leader Used Ashley Madison

GOP's Tommy Norment

As noted before, the hacking of the Ashley Madison adultery site continues to provide gifts exposing the hypocrisy of "family values" Republicans and professional Christians such as Josh Duggar.  Yes, there are Democrats on the Ashley Madison lists, but unlike the Republicans they have not made a career out of attacking gays and women's rights while putting on a hypocritical cloak of piety.  Locally, the name of Virginia Senate majority leader Tommy Norment has been revealed to has used Ashley Madison's services to seemingly cheat on his wife. Somehow, I suspect that Victoria Cobb of The Family Foundation which basically runs the Virginia GOP is not too happy with Mr. Norment (unless, of course, she's too busy worrying about her own name or her husband's name popping up).  Here are highlights from a piece in the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

Jeff Ryer, spokesman for the Senate Republican Caucus, when asked about the appearance of Norment’s name in the data, said, “It is the policy of our office to neither respond to nor comment on any inquiry related to Senator Norment’s personal life.”

Several attempts to reach Norment by phone and email were unsuccessful.

The records show three transactions under Norment’s name, with his home address, partial credit card information and purchase history on the website.

A payment of $68.99 was made Sept. 15, 2009. Two $79 payments followed on Aug. 22, 2010, and Jan. 4, 2011. The member used the email address blackberrybarrister@vzw.blackberry.net for the transactions.

Norment, 69, who is married, is a 23-year veteran of the state Senate. In April, two months after he was appointed to the Virginia Conflict of Interest and Ethics Advisory Council, Norment admitted to a past personal relationship with a lobbyist. He said it occurred while he was contemplating divorce.

Personally, I don't care if Norment and others are cheating on their spouses.  What I DO care about is their rank hypocrisy.