State and National Government
A new Wason Center poll of likely Virginia voters statewide that focuses on 4 key State Senate districts – none are in this region – reveals that 59 percent of respondents say they are less likely to vote for a pro-Trump candidate. But will those same candidates get any type of “bump” from the killing of ISIS leader al-Baghdadi in Syria – announced yesterday by President Trump? Ed Lynch chairs the political science department at Hollins University:
(Lynch was a staffer in the Reagan White House). A strong turnout by Democratic voters on November 5th could help “flip” the state senate,where Republicans now hold a slim majority.
Congressman Ben Cline says Charlottesville’s police chief did not represent the views of most law enforcement personnel when she appeared before Congress and urged a ban on assault-style weapons. Chief Rashall Brackney recently appeared before the House Judiciary Committee; Cline is a member of that committee. WFIR’s Evan Jones has more:
FAIRFAX, Va. (AP) — A civil rights group says election officials in a Virginia county ran afoul of voting regulations when they rejected registrations for 171 college students.
The Washington Post reported Thursday that the students were from George Mason University in Fairfax.
County registrar Gary Scott said the applications were rejected because the students listed campus mailbox numbers and a general university address. He said that makes it impossible to know where they live and which precinct they would be eligible to vote in.
A lawyer with the Washington-based Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law has challenged the rejections. Lawyer John Powers said the registrar should ask for more information, not reject the applications.
The dispute highlights the challenges students can face when they try to vote.
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (AP) — Chris Parker is the type of Virginian whom Democrats hope to get to the polls next month to help them flip the legislature and usher in a wave of stricter gun laws.
Parker leans Democratic and believes there “definitely” needs to be more gun control, including limits on military-style assault weapons. And he has a personal connection to one of the state’s most deadly mass shootings. As a construction contractor, Parker’s work used to take him to the Virginia Beach municipal building where a gunman killed a dozen people this summer, though he doesn’t know anyone who was shot.
But Parker, like many Virginians in an off-year election with no statewide candidates, isn’t paying much attention to next month’s contests.
“I stay so busy. I probably won’t even go out and vote, to be honest,” Parker said.
Democrats and national gun-control groups founded by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former Arizona congresswoman Gabby Giffords are spending millions on TV ads, canvassing and other efforts to get people like Parker to vote.
In one TV ad, a survivor of the Virginia Beach shooting directly criticizes a Republican senator for not doing more to curb gun violence.
The Virginia Beach shooting was just one of several high-profile mass killings that took place around the country this past summer, leading to widespread calls for new gun laws at the federal level. But President Donald Trump recently poured cold water on prospects for a bipartisan compromise. In the absence of a federal push, Virginia’s elections have become a key opportunity for gun-control supporters.
“It is time for us to enact real common-sense gun safety measures, not just in Virginia but throughout the country,” said Ghazala Hashmi, a Democrat running in a suburban state Senate race.
Only four states are holding legislative elections this year and Virginia is the only one where partisan control is up for grabs. Control of the legislature will likely come down to suburban districts, many of which are in Virginia Beach, where anti-Trump sentiment has helped Democrats make major gains in the past two election cycles.
Home to the National Rifle Association’s headquarters, Virginia was once a state where politicians in both parties were outspoken supporters of gun rights.
But Democrats have become increasingly willing to back stricter gun laws as the state has become more urban and diverse, a move that’s also been prompted by the recent mass shootings.
Guns have been a perennial issue both at the legislature and on the campaign trail in Virginia, and gun control groups spent heavily four years ago when all 140 legislative seats were up for grabs. Still, there has been little movement on the issue in either direction. Republicans currently hold a slim majority in the legislature and have long blocked efforts to pass gun-control legislation while Democratic governors have vetoed pro-gun bills.
The Democratic party is hoping this year will be different: They need only to win a few seats to secure a majority and pass Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam’s package of proposed gun laws, which includes universal background checks on gun buyers and limiting handgun purchases to one a month.
The party also says voters are agreeing with them that GOP lawmakers shirked their duty when they refused to take up a series of gun-control measures that Northam tried to revive after the Virginia Beach shooting in May. City employee DeWayne Craddock opened fire with two semi-automatic handguns, a silencer and extended ammunition magazines, killing 12 people, police said. He was killed in a shootout with police.
Republicans quickly ended the special session that Northam called to address the gun control measures, accusing the governor of trying to use the shooting for political gain. Instead they ordered the state’s crime commission to study the issue and present recommendations that lawmakers will take up after Election Day.
Virginia Beach voter and retired professor Janet Meyer said she was disappointed the special session went nowhere and said she fears the shooting has already been forgotten. Meyer said gun control is a top issue for her and that she’s likely to vote for the Democratic candidate in her state Senate race.
“My husband is a gun owner, so I’m not opposed to guns,” Meyer said. “But I don’t think people should be allowed to commit mass murder because the Second Amendment gives them the right to own a gun.”
Republicans and gun-rights advocates have said Democrats’ gun control proposals are too extreme for most voters and punitive to responsible gun owners, whom they are counting on to help GOP candidates on Election Day.
“They’re really misreading the public on guns,” said Philip Van Cleave, president of the gun rights group Virginia Citizens Defense League.
The NRA, which relies more on member advocacy than large campaign contributions, hasn’t come close to matching what gun control groups are spending. But it did recently give $200,000 to a top Republican House member.
Not all GOP candidates have been staunchly against gun control, however. Mary Margaret Kastelberg, who is running for an open House seat just outside Richmond, issued a news release saying she supports mandated background checks at gun shows, limits on high-capacity gun magazines and a “red flag” law.
“I know this problem is complex and that we cannot prevent every tragedy,” Kastelberg said. “But we must take action and try.”
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RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — As Carol Jenkins sees it, a nearly 100-year push to add the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is closer to reality now than it’s ever been.
That’s why there’s a “tremendous effort” underway to elect supporters of the long-stalled gender equality measure in Virginia’s elections next month, says Jenkins, co-president and CEO of the nationwide ERA Coalition. Advocates hope if they can pick up a few seats from Republican opponents, the once solidly conservative Southern state that’s voted down the ERA time and again might instead be the critical 38th to approve it.
Virginia voters “have the future of girls and women in their hands,” Jenkins says.
Initially proposed in Congress in 1923 and passed in 1972, the Equal Rights Amendment would ban discrimination on the basis of sex, explicitly enshrining equality for women in the U.S. Constitution. Thirty-seven states have ratified it; supporters say having 38 would meet the constitutional threshold for approval.
There’s a hitch: A 1982 ratification deadline set by Congress and other thorny questions are bound to hold up the efforts in court, many legal experts say.
ERA opponents criticize the measure as unnecessary, in part because of the 14th Amendment, which guarantees all U.S. citizens “equal protection of the laws.” They say the long-passed deadline means the ERA amendment isn’t eligible for ratification now, something proponents say Congress could resolve.
Critics also point to the five states that ratified it in the 1970s, then later moved to rescind their support.
Still, women’s advocates are eyeing victory for a movement that has outlived many of its members. They say the amendment has a good chance of advancing in a state that has undergone seismic political shifts due to increasing diversity and the growing activism and political power of women.
“We want this done,” said Kati Hornung, campaign coordinator for the grassroots VAratifyERA. “Badly.”
Hornung’s group has an ice cream van touring college campuses around the state to educate students who weren’t yet born when the amendment was a hot topic. Volunteers from all 50 states have participated in the group’s get-out-the-vote postcard campaign, according to Hornung.
National groups have pitched in with fundraisers and outreach, Jenkins says. Many Democratic candidates — men and women — have made the ERA part of their campaigning. Celebrities have joined the cause.
“Women don’t have equal rights in the US Constitution? That’s insane!” Actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus tweeted earlier this month, along with an appeal to donate to a slate of 10 women candidates.
At the state level, some Republicans are pushing back.
“I think it’s just a significant waste of time and it’s a significant waste of political capital,” said Colleen Holcomb, an attorney competing for an open state House seat.
Holcomb, who used to work for the conservative interest group Eagle Forum, founded by the late ERA opponent Phyllis Schlafly, says the ERA is an ineffective tool to tackle the issues of sexual violence and the exploitation of women that have surfaced during the #MeToo movement.
She says such issues need a “serious solution. The ERA is not a serious solution to anything.”
Opponents also say the ERA could erode commonsense protections for women and girls — such as the Women, Infants and Children nutrition assistance program or workplace accommodations during pregnancies — limit abortion restrictions and force homeless shelters, bathrooms and other public places to be opened to both sexes. They also cite the cost of anticipated legal battles: The issue is widely expected to end up at the U.S. Supreme Court.
Advocates say passing the ERA, written by suffragist Alice Paul, would offer the strongest possible protection for women against discrimination.
“Unless it’s guaranteed in the Constitution, it’s not a guarantee,” said Lulu Meese, a women’s rights activist in her late 80s who was a leader in the fight for the ERA in Virginia during the 1970s and 1980s.
Pushing the amendment then was an uphill battle in Virginia, a state that refused to ratify the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote until more than 30 years after it became federal law. State lawmakers — the vast majority men — defeated ERA ratification measures 10 years consecutively, in what a Washington Post story from 1982 called “a political ritual in Richmond.”
“Most of the General Assembly members were men, and they were misogynists,” said Pat Fishback, a retired science educator and longtime ERA advocate in her 70s who was active during the fight in the 1970s and ’80s. “They simply did not believe that women should have equal rights.”
Virginia has become much more progressive over the past decade; Democrats have made big gains. In 2018, they flipped three congressional seats. The year before, they picked up 15 state House seats, including 11 won by women. It wasn’t enough to push the ERA through.
Advocates mounted an aggressive lobbying and advocacy campaign in January, at the start of this year’s legislative session, often packing Capitol hallways to greet lawmakers on their way to House or Senate chambers. But as in previous years, the pro-ERA legislation stalled in the GOP-led House after passing the Republican-controlled Senate with bipartisan support. Delegates in the House deadlocked 50-50 on a bid to force a full floor vote, with the tie vote meaning the effort failed.
Every seat in both chambers is on the ballot Nov. 5, with Republicans defending their razor-thin majorities.
“If we flip the House of Delegates, it will probably be ratified in the first week we’re back,” said state Sen. Scott Surovell, a northern Virginia Democrat who has been sponsoring ERA-ratification measures for years.
For advocates, after the nearly 100-year fight, that would be cause for massive celebration.
“I say let’s just do this,” said Jenkins. “We can continue to argue. We will. But let’s just make discrimination illegal.”
Virginia U.S. Senator Tim Kaine took to the Senate floor this week to discuss issues like the lack of sanctions brought against Turkey for buying a missile system from Russia. Kaine says the sanctions are mandatory, but there’s been no explanation why President Trump has not implemented the sanctions yet. WFIR’s Ian Price has more:
You wouldn’t know it our part of the state, but millions of dollars are flowing into this year’s General Assembly campaigns. The money is concentrated on a small number of House and Senate races considered most likely to determine party control of the General Assembly. Statewide, campaign spending already tops an unprecedented $55 million. WFIR’s Evan Jones has more:
BEDFORD, Va. (AP) Officials with the Bedford County School district say they recently reached an agreement with the U.S. Department of Education after the agency opened an investigation into allegations of a racially hostile environment at one of its high schools. The News & Advance reports the investigation stemmed from a February incident in which students at Jefferson Forest High School in Bedford County photographed themselves with Confederate battle flags. Bedford County Public Schools said in a statement late Friday that the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights opened the investigation earlier this year. The statement says the district believes it hasn’t violated any federal civil rights laws. But it says that instead of “devoting resources” to the investigation, it chose to enter an agreement with the Office for Civil Rights. The statement doesn’t give specifics about the agreement but says it will help the district “battle incidents of racial bias.”
Photo: AP
(from ABC News) President Donald Trump announced Saturday night that his administration would no longer consider his personal resort in Doral, Florida to host the 2020 G7 summit in Miami, and suggested he might consider Camp David. “Based on both Media & Democrat Crazed and Irrational Hostility, we will no longer consider Trump National Doral, Miami, as the Host Site for the G-7 in 2020,” the president tweeted. “We will begin the search for another site, including the possibility of Camp David, immediately. Thank you!”