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Michael Berlucchi Appointed To Serve Interim Term on Virginia Beach City Council

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With David Nygaard gone, we can at least be glad that Virginia Beach will still have LGBTQ representation on its City Council, in the person of former Hampton Roads Pride President Michael Berlucchi.

On Tuesday, Virginia Beach’s City Council voted 9-1 to appoint Hampton Roads LGBTQ activist Michael Berlucchi to fill a vacant seat on City Council. This appointment came in the wake of not one but two vacancies on the Council, both of which occurred since the start of 2019.

The first of these vacancies came when a panel of Circuit Court judges ruled that David Nygaard, Virginia Beach’s first openly gay council member, had made an invalid claim to residency within the district he’d been elected to serve. Nygaard, who’d faced multiple legal challenges to his office since his narrow electoral victory last November, had only been seated on the council two months earlier.

Berlucchi was not nominated to replace Nygaard — that council seat was filled last month by retired attorney Guy Tower. Instead, Berlucchi was appointed to replace a second City Council member, Shannon Kane, who resigned her seat last month after moving out of the city’s Rose Hill District. Berlucchi’s appointment to the seat means that, less than two months after Nygaard’s removal from office, Virginia Beach’s City Council once again has LGBTQ representation.

Berlucchi, currently the Community Engagement Manager at Nofolk’s Chrysler Museum of Art, has also served as the president of Hampton Roads Pride, and on Virginia Beach’s Human Rights Commission. He also co-chairs Virginia Beach For Fairness, an LGBTQ advocacy group created to lobby Virginia’s General Assembly to pass statewide anti-discrimination housing and employment laws for LGBTQ citizens of the Commonwealth.

However, Berlucchi’s time as president of Hampton Roads Pride was not without controversy; his decision to allow Gays For Trump to have a booth at Hampton Roads Pride in 2017 was widely criticized. This was partly due to that group’s connections with Scott Pressler, an anti-Muslim activist with connections to ACT For America!, which has been labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. That said, Berlucchi has maintained a non-partisan position in his pro-LGBTQ activism, and received an OUTstanding Virginians award from Equality Virginia in 2018.

Berlucchi made no overt mention of his LGBTQ activism in his stated priorities for his time on Virginia Beach’s City Council, instead naming his top priorities as:

  • Storm water, recurrent flooding and sea level rise;
  • Jobs and a vibrant economy supported by strong schools;
  • Public safety.

Berlucchi’s interim term will extend until a special election to be held on the first Tuesday of November 2019. According to the Virginian-Pilot, Berlucchi intends to run for a full term in the election.

Photo by Glenn Bashaw, via Facebook

David Nygaard Required to Vacate Seat On Virginia Beach City Council

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The man who was, for a short time, Virginia Beach’s first openly gay city councilman has vowed to keep fighting. But this is the latest in a long line of obstacles in Nygaard’s path to political office.

Less than two months after he was seated on Virginia Beach’s City Council, David Nygaard’s time as a councilman came to an end. This happened after a panel of Circuit Court judges ruled that Nygaard’s claim of residency within his particular district was invalid, and that he did not plan to live in an apartment he rented before announcing his campaign.

Nygaard was disheartened by the ruling, but pledged to continue working to have a voice in Virginia Beach’s city government. “When I moved into the Beach district, it was because I felt a deep desire to serve my fellow citizens as a member of City Council,” he wrote in a Facebook post shortly after the decision was made public.

Moving to Virginia Beach for the purpose of running for office had been one of the reasons the panel of judges nullified his win; in the post, Nygaard did not deny that he had moved for that purpose. “While I disagree with the logic of the court’s ruling, I respect their authority and the due process that I was afforded,” he wrote on Facebook. “Moving to dedicate your life to public service should not disqualify you from serving.”

Nygaard also expressed confidence that he’d get another shot at the City Council seat he’s been forced to vacate. “Soon a special election date will be set and I will be fighting to keep our seat at the table,” he wrote. “Consider my hat already in the ring.”

However, the timeline for that special election remains uncertain. Until the date of the election is set, city council will choose someone to fill the spot on a temporary basis.

The lawsuit that led to Nygaard being removed from office was filed by John Uhrin, who previously held the council seat before the November 2018 election that saw Nygaard prevail by less than 200 votes in a four-way race against Uhrin, Richard Kowalewitch, and John Coker.

The margin was below the theshold for a recount, which Uhrin quickly called for. The result of the recount saw Nygaard prevail again — but by that time, Uhrin had filed suit over Nygaard’s place of residence during the campaign.

Uhrin expressed his satisfaction over the verdict when speaking to Virginia Beach’s WTKR. Asked about those who have tagged him a sore loser due to his recount demands and this lawsuit, Uhrin told WTKR, “I would agree with anyone that that’s not a great way to do it, but if I wouldn’t have taken action we would’ve had someone gaming the system.”

Nygaard’s removal from office marked the second time in a 24-hour period that an openly gay Virginia Beach elected official was removed from office; last Thursday, Joel McDonald was removed from the Virginia Beach School Board, again due to a question of his residence within the district he was elected to represent.

How the embattled Nygaard campaign for Virginia Beach City Council will ultimately resolve itself remains open to question. However, regardless of how everything shakes out, the process continues to be a messy one for the man who still hopes to be Virginia Beach’s first openly gay city councilman.

Photo by Eric Hause