Across Virginia
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) — Charlottesville officials are getting an update on the discovery of unmarked graves in a city park where enslaved people could have been buried.
The Daily Progress reports the city council will receive a report Monday indicating that there are 43 likely unmarked and unrecorded graves near a cemetery in Pen Park. The report comes after the city commissioned an archaeological firm to survey the site.
They could be the graves of enslaved people. The property was once owned by slaveholders, including Dr. George Gilmer, who was Thomas Jefferson’s physician.
City staff have plans to ensure the graves are not disturbed by any future projects. And the city is planning to work with historical groups to identify who may be buried in the unmarked graves.
Poll Conducted by The Institute for Policy and Opinion Research: Former Vice President Joe Biden holds an 11-percentage point lead over President Donald Trump (53%-42%) in Virginia with less than a week before Election Day, according to The Roanoke College Poll. Over 90% of those who support either candidate are very certain of their vote intention, and almost half (48%) have already cast their ballot. The size of the lead has not changed significantly since first polled in May. U.S. Senator Mark Warner leads his Republican opponent Daniel Gade (55%-39%). The Institute for Policy and Opinion Research interviewed 802 likely Virginia voters[1] between October 23 and October 29 and has a margin of error of+3.5%.
Fully 97% of Democrats said they would vote for Biden, while 91% of Republicans said they would vote for Trump. Only 1% of Democrats said they would cross over to vote for Trump while 6% of Republicans said they plan to vote for Biden. Overall, only 2% said they were undecided about their vote, and 3% said they would vote for another candidate. Biden and Warner hold very large leads among those who have already voted, while Trump and Gade lead among those who still plan to vote.
Likely voters also favor amending the state Constitution to create a bipartisan commission to draw Congressional and state legislative districts by a 48%-26% margin.
Trump, Biden, the U.S. Senate race, election controversies, and the Nation
A majority of likely voters (56%) disapprove of the way President Trump is handling his job, while just 41% approve, a slight improvement for the President since August.Trump’s favorable/unfavorable rating is 41%/56% while Biden is at 53%/43%.
Almost two-thirds (63%) of respondents think the country is on the wrong track (down from the 79% record high in the August Roanoke College Poll), while only 30% think it is headed in the right direction.
Likely voters see the economy and COVID (both at 29%) as the most important issues in the election ahead of civil unrest (15%), race relations (11%), and Supreme Court nominations (6%).
Mark Warner’s favorable rating is 53% while his unfavorable is up to 33%. Daniel Gade, his Republican challenger, remains unfamiliar to almost half the electorate (46%), but his favorable rating (31%) is higher than his unfavorable (19%), both up about 10% from August.
Just under two-thirds of likely voters (65%) are at least somewhat confident that the votes across the country will be accurately counted, and 58% are at least somewhat confident that the nation will accept the official outcome and winners of the election. Still, about one-third say they are not too confident or not confident at all about accurate vote counting or acceptance of the outcome.
Analysis
“Biden has maintained a consistent double-digit lead over Trump in Virginia since May, and time has just about run out for Trump,” said Dr. Harry Wilson, director of the Roanoke College Poll. “Trump’s job approval and favorable/unfavorable numbers have changed little in more than two years in the Roanoke College Poll. It is difficult to see a path to victory for him in the Commonwealth in 2020 even if more Republicans ‘come home’ on Election Day.”
“Senator Warner has a comfortable margin at this point with a healthy lead, a positive favorable rating, and an opponent in Daniel Gade who remains largely unknown to many voters,” Wilson said.
“Baseball manager (and former player) Yogi Berra once quipped, ‘It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.’ Berra’s New York Mets were in last place when he uttered the now-famous line in 1973, and they came back to win their division,” Wilson said. “Republicans need to hope for another Berra quote, ‘it’s déjà vu all over again.’”
Methodology
Interviewing for The Roanoke College Poll was conducted by The Institute for Policy and Opinion Research at Roanoke College in Salem, Va. Between Oct. 23 and Oct. 29, 2020. A total of 802 likely voters in Virginia were interviewed. Telephone interviews were conducted in English with polling support provided by Reconnaissance Market Research. The sample was drawn from a list of registered voters compiled by L2 Political, a non-partisan provider. Participants were sampled from that list, which has phone numbers associated with approximately 76% of the registered voters in Virginia. The list included both landlines and cellphones. Cellphones constituted 62% of the completed interviews.
Questions answered by the entire sample of 802 residents are subject to a sampling error of plus or minus approximately 3.5% at the 95% level of confidence. This means that in 95 out of 100 samples like the one used here, the results obtained should be no more than 3.5 percentage points above or below the figure that would be obtained by interviewing all Virginia likely voters who have a home telephone or a cellphone. Where the results of subgroups are reported, the sampling error is higher.
Quotas were used to ensure that different age groups and regions of the Commonwealth were proportionately represented. The data were statistically weighted for gender, race, education, and political party. Weighting was done to match the 2016 Virginia statewide election exit poll. The margin of error was not adjusted for design effects due to weighting. The design effect was 1.098 which would increase the margin of error to plus or minus 3.6%.
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — A civil suit filed by the family of a northern Virginia man who was fatally shot by two U.S. Park Police officers during a stop-and-go chase three years ago has been put on hold, despite the family’s objections to the delay.
Bijan Ghaisar, 25, of McLean, died after the November 2017 chase on the George Washington Memorial Parkway outside the nation’s capital. Ghaisar was unarmed, but the officers have said they feared for their life because they believed Ghaisar was driving at them after they approached his vehicle with guns drawn.
U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton on Friday ordered a delay in the trial, which had been scheduled to begin next month. He said a stay is appropriate now that the two officers, Alejandro Amaya and Lucas Vinyard, have been charged criminally with involuntary manslaughter in state court.
Lawyers for the Ghaisar family argued unsuccessfully that the family’s pursuit of justice will now be delayed for years longer than it already has.
“His family has waited three years to get some semblance of justice in this case,” said Tom Connolly, one of the family’s lawyers.
Connolly argued that delaying the civil trial to get testimony from the officers is an exercise in futility because they will never testify in the civil case.
Resolving the criminal case, he said, could take years. Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano announced criminal charges against the officers earlier this month, but a battle is expected over whether the case belongs in state or federal court.
If the criminal case is removed to federal court, prosecutors have already said they do not plan to file criminal charges. But Connolly said Friday that the Justice Department could revisit that decision at any time, particularly if the election brings a change in administration. As a result, he said, the officers will never be willing to testify in a civil trial.
After the hearing, Ghaisar’s mother, Kelly Ghaisar, said the ruling was a disappointment.
“Those officers have had three years to testify,” she said. “They have nothing to testify about.”
Most of what is known about the case comes from a four-minute dashcam video of the chase and shooting released by Fairfax County Police, who played a supporting role in the chase. The video shows three separate instances in which Ghaisar stopped his Jeep, and officers approached with guns drawn. Each time, Ghaisar drives off.
Ghaisar’s family said the video speaks for itself and shows no such threat.
Hilton scheduled a status hearing in March to reassess when the civil trial can be held.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal marshals have recovered 27 children reported as missing throughout Virginia as the result of a five-day operation, the U.S. Department of Justice said Friday.
A news release announced the completion of the effort dubbed “Operation Find Our Children.” The department also said the operation confirmed the location of six other children previously reported as missing but subsequently discovered by the U.S. Marshals Service as being with their legal guardian.
“While this Virginia operation is the most recent recovery of endangered and missing children led by the U.S. Marshals Service this year, we have also recovered more than 440 kids in Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, Louisiana and other states,” Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen said in the news release. “Because of this initiative, the recovered children are now out of harm’s way.”
The department said that since 2005, the U.S. Marshals Service has recovered more than 2,000 missing children. Over the past five years, the agency has recovered missing children in 75 percent of the cases it’s received. Of those recovered, 72 percent were recovered within seven days, the department said.
According to the latest numbers released this morning by The Virginia Department of Health there are 121 new confirmed or probable coronavirus cases and 3 hospitalizations being attributed to the Roanoke Valley.67 new cases and 2 hospitalizations in Roanoke City, 34 new cases in Roanoke County, 11 new cases and 1 new hospitalization in Salem and 9 new cases in Botetourt County.
(AP Photo/Steve Helber)
During its meeting today the Virginia Military Institute Board of Visitors voted unanimously to remove the statue of Confederate Lt. Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson from its central location on post. That’s according to several media reports. A new location was not announced, but both putting it in storage or moving the statue to the New Market battlefield were mentioned. The president of the board, John Boland, said it has been the “general consensus” that moving the statue is the right decision.
(AP Photo/Steve Helber)
Virginia’s governor and attorney general are applauding a judge’s ruling this week that the state has the authority to remove the Robert E. Lee statue from Richmond’s Monument Avenue. But opponents of such a move say they have solid grounds to appeal. The Richmond judge ruled the iconic statue was erected against the backdrop of white supremacy, and Governor Northam has the right to order its removal. WFIR’s Evan jones has more;
(Liberty University photo)
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) _ Jerry Falwell Jr. has sued Liberty University two months after resigning amid a series of scandals. Fallwell is alleging the evangelical school founded by his late pastor father defamed him through statements it issued. The lawsuit filed in Lynchburg Circuit Court on Wednesday also includes a claim of breach of contract. The suit alleges that Liberty officials accepted what Falwell says are false claims about whether he was involved in an extramarital affair and “moved quickly” to destroy his reputation. Liberty spokesman Scott Lamb said the school would have a formal statement in response to the lawsuit later Thursday. Falwell had served as president and chancellor of the university.
According to the latest numbers released this morning by The Virginia Department of Health there are 90 new confirmed or probable coronavirus cases and 2 deaths being attributed to the Roanoke Valley.39 new cases and 2 new deaths and 1 hospitalization in Roanoke City, 31 new cases in Roanoke County, 12 new cases in Salem and 8 new cases in Botetourt County.
Governor Northam says COVID-19 case numbers are increasing at a higher rate in southwest Virginia than in other regions of the state, and he says he is prepared, if necessary, to reinstate restrictions in this part of the commonwealth. Northam said at an afternoon briefing that he is particularly concerned with areas bordering Tennessee, a state the White House Coronavirus Task Force currently lists as having the 9th-highest rate of new cases in the country. WFIR’s Evan Jones has the story:
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Southwest Virginia is seeing a sustained, troubling increase in cases of COVID-19 driven partly by small family gatherings, the governor and top health officials said Wednesday, as one area health system issued a stark warning that its resources were being stretched thin.
“To be quite frank, today our region is in a really bad place in this pandemic,” said Jamie Swift, the chief infection prevention officer for Ballad Health, which serves southwest Virginia, as well as adjacent parts of Tennessee, North Carolina and Kentucky.
Gov. Ralph Northam said at a news conference in Richmond that Virginia overall is among just a handful of U.S. states not reporting large increases in COVID-19 cases. But the seven-day testing percent positivity rate in the region’s westernmost localities is about twice the rate of the rest of the state’s 5.1 % and has been increasing for 15 days, Northam said.
“I strongly urge everyone in the southwest — look at these numbers and step up your precautions,” Northam said.
The governor said there were no immediate plans to introduce new regional restrictions to reduce the spread of the virus, but he said such a move was a possibility if the numbers keep trending up.
Northam and Secretary of Health and Human Resources Dr. Daniel Carey said gatherings of extended family members not living in the same household were contributing to the spread. Virginia has so far reported nearly 177,000 cases of COVID-19 and just over 3,600 deaths since the start of the pandemic, according to health department data.
Dr. Karen Shelton, the director of a health department district that includes much of southwest Virginia, wrote in an email that other factors contributing to what she called a “surge” in cases included: outbreaks at churches, inconsistent mask wearing, in-person schooling, social gatherings of friends and coworkers, and relatively fewer people telecommuting due to less broadband access.
Shelton also said a surge in cases in neighboring Tennessee was contributing.
“Tennessee has fewer regulations and has had events, social gatherings, and sports. Friday night football has continued with fans gathering closely in stands without masks,” she wrote.
Swift, Ballad’s infection prevention officer, said at a news conference that it was “past time” for the area to change its behaviors.
The health system said it had seen a 43% increase in the cases across its region over the past week, 88.5% of its ICU beds were full, and it had 181 team members in quarantine or isolation.
“At this rate, we’re only going to be able to care for COVID-19 patients,” said Ballad’s Chief Operating Officer Eric Deaton.
Dane Poe, the administrator of Lee County, located in the furthest southwest tip of Virginia, said the county has been lucky so far to not have more than a few dozen cases requiring hospitalization. The county’s only hospital closed in 2013.
Still, having to be prepared for the additional hospital trips has further strained the six already-strapped volunteer agencies in the country that provide ambulance services, he said.
The county is using some of its funds from the federal coronavirus rescue package to buy six more ambulances, one for each agency, said Poe, who described community members showing a “lackadaisical” attitude toward the virus, including many not wearing masks in public places.
Teresa Owens Tyson, CEO and president of The Health Wagon, a nonprofit that serves the area at mobile free clinics and three stationary sites, said her organization is seeing significant demand for COVID-19 testing and treatment.
Tyson, who is a nurse practitioner, said her “biggest fear” is the virus becoming entrenched in the area, which already has a disproportionate number of people living in poverty and with underlying health conditions like diabetes, heart disease and black lung disease.
“I feel that we’ve probably got one of the most vulnerable (populations) in the nation,” she said.