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Op-Ed: Young Democrats Respond to “Virginia’s LGBTQ Voters Should Give Republicans a Chance”

Elias Hakim | October 26, 2018

Topics: LGBTQ, LGBTQ Allies, Mid-Term Elections, Republicans, virginia, Young Democrats

Evan Draim’s GayRVA column “This Midterm Election, LGBTQ Voters Should Give Republicans a Chance” completely misses what’s at stake for LGBTQ people in this election cycle. From health care access to economic security, Democrats on the ballot in Virginia are on the right side of the issues, making them the clear choice for LGBTQ people and those who love us.

Leadership starts from the top, and for the Republican Party that’s President Donald Trump. The Trump-Pence administration has repeatedly taken aim at LGBTQ rights since the moment they took office. This administration encourages businesses to discriminate against LGBTQ people. This administration opposes the right of every student to use the bathroom that corresponds with their identity. This administration twice introduced proposals to ban transgender people from serving in our military. Just this week, the New York Times reported new plans for the Trump-Pence administration to rollback protections for transgender individuals by changing gender definitions under Title IX.

The highest ranks of our federal government have made LGBTQ people the explicit target of politically-motivated regulatory attacks. On November 6, we must elect champions for equality who will fight like hell for our civil rights in Congress.

The contrast between candidates on the ballot could not be sharper. Democratic U.S. Senator Tim Kaine is an outspoken advocate for equality who introduced federal legislation to end housing discrimination against LGBTQ people. His Republican opponent Corey Stewart sought out and earned the endorsement of an extremely anti-gay special interest group; he even voted against declaring June as Pride Month in Prince William County.

Republican Congressman Dave Brat (VA-07) opposes marriage equality and GOP 4th Congressional District Candidate Ryan McAdams is so conservative that he earned a visit from Vice President Mike Pence himself. On the other hand, Democratic Congressman Donald McEachin (VA-04) is a longtime advocate for LGBTQ rights, who earned Equality Virginia’s OUTstanding Virginian award in 2017. And when elected, 7thCongressional District Democratic nominee Abigail Spanberger will fight to protect LGBTQ rights, including our right to serve in our country’s military freely and proudly.

LGBTQ Virginians bring our whole selves to the ballot box and our intersecting identities – economic status, race, immigration status – drive our decisions when selecting candidates to represent us. Senator Kaine and our Democratic congressional candidates are committed to a progressive agenda that works for all of us. Democrats led the way to a more affordable and accessible healthcare system through the Affordable Care Act and eventually Medicaid Expansion here in the Commonwealth. Republicans Stewart, Brat and McAdams all want to see the ACA – which created affordable health insurance coverage for 400,000 Virginians – repealed.

After nationally-known shootings at Virginia Tech and Pulse Night Club, LGBTQ people in Virginia have an unfortunately intimate connection to gun violence. Despite voters flocking to support March for Our Lives and the Pride Fund to End Gun Violence, each and every Republican on the ballot sides with the NRA.

We need real elected officials in Washington, DC, who will lead with moral courage and fight for every person’s rights. Stewart and his Republican ticketmates will continue to be complicit with the Trump-Pence administration’s efforts to protect rights for the wealthy few.

LGBTQ people can’t afford to give Republicans a chance because these elections have tremendous consequences. For example, the ultimate Supreme Court marriage equality decision on June 26, 2015 that brought Evan, me and LGBTQ people across this nation to tears was made possible because Virginia’s Democratic Attorney General Mark Herring refused to defend the Commonwealth’s unconstitutional ban on same-sex marriage. A position his Republican predecessor Ken Cuccinelli refused to take.

Our vote is powerful. On November 6, 2018, lovers of equality should cast their ballots for Democrats.

Note: Op-Eds are contributions from guest writers and do not reflect the editorial opinion of RVA Mag or GayRVA.

Virginia Democrats are Bad at this Politics Thing

Rich Meagher | October 11, 2018

Topics: Democrats, DPVA, gerrymandering, GOP, Republicans, U.S. Constitution, VA Republicans, Virginia Democrats

While I’m teaching, I find myself restating the same point to my students over and over again: Republicans are better at politics than Democrats. We just saw it recently play out at the national level (welcome, Justice Brohim). And it’s certainly true in Virginia, especially after last week’s redistricting debacle.

Here’s the rundown in case you missed it:

A federal court ordered Virginia to redraw the lines of 11 state legislative districts, arguing that they sorted voters by race in violation of the U.S. Constitution. After the General Assembly called a special session to respond, Democrats offered a new map that seemed designed to help Democrats win more seats — Republicans called it a “partisan power grab.” They then responded with their own map. This plan garnered some bipartisan report, including from the aptly-named Portsmouth Democrat Steve Heretick, who criticized his own party for “corrupt gerrymandering.” The Governor vowed to veto the plan, so the Republicans cancelled the session.

While the Democrats get what they probably want anyway – the courts redraw the lines, probably in ways favorable to Democrats – the GOP gets to paint them as partisan hacks.

We can learn two big lessons from this mess:

First, redistricting remains an important battleground in the national Vote Wars between the two parties. Ever wonder why Republicans scream to the hilltops about voter fraud, despite the lack of any evidence that it’s occurring on a wide scale? Or why Democrats across the country are challenging a number of Republican-drawn district maps in the courts?

It’s the Great Game, played out at a national, state, and local level, in the courts, statehouses, and media, over the basic rules of our electoral system. It includes district lines, but also a number of laws and rules that govern access the polls, like voter ID and polling locations. And the Democrats have been getting their asses kicked in all these arenas for years.

Which brings us to Delegate Heretick, and the second lesson we learned last week; again: Democrats are terrible at politics.

Part of that is individual. Heretick may be a great person, and even a great legislator — but in criticizing his own party, he comes off sounding at best naïve and, at worst, a dupe for the GOP.

It’s great that Heretick supports an independent redistricting process. It’s also great that he wants to “work across the aisle” and find some bipartisan common ground. But he’s operating in a hyper-partisan environment, engaged in a fundamental battle over the rules of the game. Heretick sandbagged his own caucus in the middle of an important political confrontation, and acted like he was the hero of the story. In an interview with the Virginia Mercury’s, Ned Oliver, are Heretick’s own words:

“In other words, the federal court order ordered us to redraw the 11 affected districts … and yet [Democrats] were using this opportunity for a blatantly partisan purpose, and that is to try to weaken Republican incumbents.”

Oh my heavens! How shocking that your political party was practicing…politics (gasp)!  Heretick sounds like a Pollyanna in the middle of a red light district.

But this isn’t entirely the Delegate’s fault; it also doesn’t help that Democrats seemed to bungle the whole process of informing their own caucus. In his interview with Oliver, Heretick complained of a “mysterious” process, including caucus phone calls where he didn’t even know who was on the line. Worse still, the Democrats’ proposed map cut into Heretick’s district, likely reducing his possible margin of victory in the next election. If you want your people to take one for the team, you have to make sure they know why and what they’re getting in return.

The one thing the Democrats did do well was the thing which they were most criticized: offering a blatantly favorable map at the start. You don’t begin negotiations by giving away everything, and a “neutral” map would have meant they were starting the process from the middle — allowing the GOP to chip away at lines until they got something more favorable. Heretick’s complaints about his party’s own gerrymandering just gave political top cover to the GOP who, of course, were engaged in the same kind of gerrymandering on the other side.

It’s obviously not a good thing that this kind of political battle rages in our state legislature. The basic rules of our democracy should not be up for grabs in a power struggle among partisan forces. This is why good government groups like One Virginia 2021 have been so vocal in advocating for redistricting reform: the rules of the game are too important to be determined by the players, especially the ones who are winning.

And everyone who wants bipartisan reform and fair rules have to favor the losing side right now; Democrats have the incentive to change how district lines are drawn because they’ve lost so much ground to the GOP in that battle.

But Heretick was acting last week like the game had already been reset. The Democrats who run his caucus didn’t help him understand this very well. If the Democrats want to avoid even more political losses, they need to get their act together — or, to put it more bluntly, they need to get their heads out of their you-know-whats. I’m not holding my breath.

Reports to National Sexual Assault Hotline Jump 147 Percent

RVA Staff | September 28, 2018

Topics: brett kavanaugh, congress, Professor Christine Blasey Ford, RAINN, Republicans, sexual assault, supreme Court, testimony, women

Yesterday’s testimony by Professor Christine Blasey Ford about being sexually assaulted by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was a testimony to the bravery and courage of survivors everywhere. A sympathetic, articulate, and well spoken individual, Ford highlighted the deep trauma and pain that victims of sexual assault bear everyday.

Alternately, Kavanaugh and the Republican men on the Senate Judiciary Committee demonstrated a complete lack of empathy for women who have experienced sexual assault. And according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), there are 321,500 victims of rape and sexual assault in the US each year – one every 98 seconds.

Despite the cold reception she received, one of the unintended consequences of Ford’s testimony yesterday was the empowerment of women to come forward with their stories and reports of sexual assault. As millions of women listened to Ford detail her experiences, then listened to Kavanaugh and the all male Republican squad gnash their teeth, wail, and defend allegations of sexual assault, women started calling the National Sexual Assault Hotline in record numbers to detail their own experiences.

Time Magazine has reported that the hotline saw a 147 percent increase in calls yesterday, “compared to a normal workday.” The obvious correlation? The testimony of Ford. RAINN asserts that when sexual assault is in the news-cycle, there is always a concomitant spike in reports. However, yesterday’s numbers exist outside of anything which might be deemed normative; more so, given the fierce defense of Kavanaugh that took place on the Senate floor.

There are now three allegations of sexual assault and misconduct against Kavanaugh, the last being alleged by Julie Swetnick, who claims that the judge and his friends would get women drunk so they could be “gang raped.” The Senate Judicial Committee has announced that it will vote today on the fate of Kavanaugh, in what has been one of the most politically outrageous episodes of our hyper-partisan times.

*RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline can be reached at: 800.656.HOPE (4673)

 

The Best (or weirdest) Political Ad of the Mid-Term Season Has Just Arrived

Landon Shroder | September 20, 2018

Topics: Attack Ad, Bigfoot, congress, Creative Agencies, Democrats, Mid-Terms, Political Ads, politics, Republicans

While Virginia had its own political controversy with the mysterious cryptozoological phenomenon earlier this summer with the great Bigfoot Erotica scandal of 2018, peak Bigfoot has now been achieved in the contest for Minnesota’s 3rd District. Apparently all that was needed for the creature to reveal its existence to the world was the ongoing political climate. The ad, released by Democratic challenger, Dean Phillips, uses the North American Yeti to make the point that his challenger, incumbent Republican Erik Paulson, is more elusive and harder to find than Bigfoot himself.

The ad starts with Bigfoot wondering out loud: “I thought I was good at hiding,” before saying “Then Erik Paulson comes along.” The arc of the story only grows more ironically hilarious from there as Bigfoot opines: “How can you have tens of thousands of people looking for you all the time, and not one of them find you. I started to wonder, does Erik Paulson even exist?” From there Bigfoot sets out on a quest to find the Republican Congressman, armed with nothing more than a classic Ford T-Bird, a roller cooler, and an old school VHS video camera. Narrating the video in first person, Bigfoot tells the viewers his plan, “Paulsen takes piles of money from big pharma and votes to erode essential healthcare protections. So the most likely place to find him is at a big pharmaceutical company.” Staking out the lobby of one such company, Bigfoot eventually finds his man, telling the audience that he was prepared to stay there for weeks, but that “it took seven minutes,” before coyly smiling at the camera.

The ad has already been viewed 48, 358 times on YouTube and an additional 144,000 on Phillips’ Facebook page and has been widely lauded in marketing and advertising news, and even more conservative publications like Forbes, who called it, “fantastic”. According to Ad Week the campaign video was made on something of an ad-hoc basis with volunteers from the campaign and various agencies pitching in creative direction. There is no doubt that this campaign ad will be remembered as one of the greats, and in an age of visceral attack ads that are often deeply personal; this combination of film making, thematics, and irony was an interesting reimagining of how attack politics can be done in a way that is light-hearted and contemporary.

So, #2018.

Republican PAC Launches Bogus Attack Ad Against Abigail Spanberger

Landon Shroder | September 6, 2018

Topics: 7th District, abigail spanberger, CIA, Congressional Leadership Fund, Dave Brat, Democrats, Republicans, Security Clearance, USPS, virginia

The Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF), the controversial Republican PAC linked to Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, has just released an attack ad against the Democratic candidate for the 7th District, Abigail Spanberger. CLF is the same PAC, who only last week, released Spanberger’s un-redacted security clearance forms in a move that was highly controversial and condemned by the national security establishment. The documents showed that Spanberger, a former CIA case officer for counter-terrorism, was briefly a substitute teacher at the Islamic Saudi Academy (ISA) in Fairfax, Virginia. The international school, before closing, was funded by the Embassy of Saudi Arabia, who is an ally of the U.S. in all counter-terrorism efforts.

Spanberger told RVA Mag last week that she only taught at the school briefly and according to her campaign, she was only at the ISA for a year.

Nonetheless, the video starts by asking the question: “What is Abigail Spanberger hiding?” before saying, “Spanberger doesn’t want us to know that she taught at an Islamic school nicknamed, ‘terror high’, a terrorist breeding ground.'” While two students at the ISA were implicated in terrorism cases, the claims made by the CLF video do not pass scrutiny. A timeline prepared by the Spanberger Campaign shows that Spanberger left the ISA in 2003, almost six years before these men were implicated in any kind of terrorism charges.

First CLF ad in #VA07: For the last year, Abigail Spanberger hid from Virginia voters that she taught at “Terror High.” https://t.co/fzKVukjH7k pic.twitter.com/cjS10F9st9

— Congressional Leadership Fund (@CLFSuperPAC) September 6, 2018

In a statement released this morning Spanberger said, “For a Republican Super PAC to question my national security credentials and integrity based on the time I spent as a long-term substitute, teaching English to children at an embassy school in Northern Virginia, is desperate and weak, and it shows just how terrified they are of having an independent voice representing this community in Congress.”

Justin Jones, Communications Director for the Spanberger Campaign, reached out to RVA Mag to talk about the video saying, “Attacking her for being a substitute teacher is ridiculous. Abigail has nothing to hide, she received top-secret security clearances based on her background, experience, and integrity and faithfully served our country for over a decade as a federal law enforcement and CIA officer.” He went on to say that the ad was also based off of information that was “illegally disclosed” by the United States Postal Service in a freedom of information act request made by an organization affiliated with the CLF.

Beyond the veracity of the CLF’s claims, this is an obvious attempt to drum up anti-Muslim sentiment as a way to score political points. According to FBI data released in November 2017, religiously motivated crimes against Muslims made up 25 percent of all reported hate crimes, which was a marked increase from the year before. Pew Research released a study about the rise in anti-Muslim hate crimes in July 2017; among other things the study said, “Overall, Muslims in the United States perceive a lot of discrimination against their religious group, are leery of Trump and think their fellow Americans do not see Islam as part of mainstream U.S. society.” This attack ad against Spanberger by the CLF only fuels this distrust and as the study went on to show is part of the reason why a third of Americans believe there is a “fair amount” of backing by U.S. Muslims for extremists or a “great deal”.

Virginia Politics Has Now Hit Peak Weird with Bigfoot Erotica

Landon Shroder | July 30, 2018

Topics: Bigfoot, Bigfoot Erotica, congress, Democrats, Denver Riggleman, Leslie Cockburn, Mid-Terms, Republicans

Virginia politics has now entered a new phase. Bigfoot erotica, a new subgenre of cryptozoological inquiry in which the elusive creature is pictured in sexual situations, has popped up on the Instagram account of Republican Congressional Candidate for the 5th District, Denver Riggleman. While Riggleman’s account is apparently set to private, his Democratic challenger, Leslie Cockburn, allegedly found the images and they do not disappoint. Cockburn has now taken to Twitter questioning the candidate’s suitability in running for high office, saying, “He has been exposed as a devotee of Bigfoot erotica. This is not what we need on Capitol Hill.”

While Bigfoot erotica makes for questionable credentials for high office, Cockburn, in the same Tweet, also claimed that Riggleman is an acolyte of Republican Senatorial Candidate, Corey Stewart. “My opponent Denver Riggleman, running mate of Corey Stewart, was caught on camera campaigning with a white supremacist.”

The Bigfoot erotica of Denver Riggleman

According to The Daily Progress, which broke the story, Riggleman has penned at least one book on Bigfoot called, “Bigfoot Exterminators Inc. The Partially Cautionary, Mostly True Tale of Monster Hunt 2006.” The campaign manager for Cockburn, responding to the viral tweets, has said, “Leslie has been traveling throughout the district meeting with real people about real issues that matter to them…Meanwhile, Mr. Riggleman is home scrubbing his social media of ‘Bigfoot erotica’ and who knows what else.”

For his part, Riggleman denies any association with Bigfoot erotica and claims the posts were a joke played on him by his military friends, claiming he never thought they would be used against him “politically”; clearly misreading the political climate of 2018. One of the erotic images had a big black box covering the elusive forest creature’s penis and was captioned with, “Cover art for #matinghabitsofbigfoot almost complete. I hide nothing in this magnificent tome. Don’t erase the censor box…”

Cockburn’s tweets have now gone viral, being shared over 4,000 times, and were met with some colorful commentary from the Twitter-verse, the best of which can be found below:

For more on Bigfoot Erotica, check out this article by Buzzfeed. Don’t ever say RVA Mag didn’t do anything for you, Virginia.

Bigfoot’s New Mate by Soichiro Irons
Bigfoot Depravity by Robyn North
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