Local
David Catania forms mayoral exploratory committee
Five-term Council member could be nation’s capital’s first gay mayor
Council member David Catania (I-At-Large) (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
D.C. Council member David Catania (I-At-Large) filed papers on Wednesday to create an exploratory committee for a possible run for mayor, raising the possibility that he could become the first openly gay mayor of the nation’s capital.
As a 16-year veteran on the Council, Catania has been credited with taking the lead on many far-reaching legislative initiatives; including the city’s same-sex marriage law, the expansion of health insurance coverage to nearly all city residents long before Obamacare, and sweeping reforms at the Department of Health and the AIDS office.
In a letter to city residents posted on his exploratory committee’s newly launched website, Catania said improving the D.C.’s public education system is currently his top priority as a Council member and would be his highest priority as mayor should he choose to enter the already crowded mayoral competition in 2014.
Mayor Vincent Gray and four of Catania’s Council colleagues are among the 11 candidates that have entered the Democratic mayoral primary. A Statehood Green Party candidate and Libertarian Party candidate have also entered the race and are expected to be on the ballot in the November general election along with Catania should he decide to run.
“In 1997, as a political outsider, I ran for the Council of the District of Columbia,” he said in his open letter. “I believed that through hard work and standing up for what’s right, I could contribute to a brighter future for our city and its residents. Since then, we have made incredible progress as a city, and I am proud to have played a part in it,” he said.
Catania won his first race for the Council in 1997 as a Republican running in special election to fill a vacant at-large seat. He won re-election the following year followed by election wins in 2002, 2006, and 2010.
In 2004, Catania withdrew from the Republican Party in response to the support by then-President George W. Bush and the Republican Party leadership of a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. He has remained an independent since that time.
Should he decide to run for mayor next year he would have to give up his Council seat since that seat is also up for election in 2014. But as an independent, Catania would have the advantage of knowing who wins the Democratic primary scheduled for April 1 before the deadline for filing as an independent mayoral candidate in June.
And if he chooses to run, he would be considered a significant challenger to the Democratic nominee in a city where the mayoral contest has almost always been effectively decided in the Democratic primary. No non-Democratic candidate has ever won election as mayor since D.C.’s first home rule election for mayor in 1974.
Although Catania has wide name recognition and has won a citywide election for the Council six times, he has always competed for one of the two at-large seats up for grabs every two years that by law must go to a non-majority party or independent candidate. While Catania has won his races by large margins he – along with all other non-Democrats competing for the non-Democratic seat – has received about half the votes that the Democratic candidate running for the other at-large seat.
Political observers say the drop off in the vote for the non-Democrat may be due more to the fact that many voters don’t realize they can vote for two candidates rather than one in the at-large race, with the top two vote-getters winning the seat. Even with the so called “drop-off” vote, Catania has always received strong support from Democratic voters, a factor that could make him competitive against a Democratic mayoral candidate.
Catania said in a telephone interview on Wednesday the fact that the Blade was the only news media outlet so far to ask him about his sexual orientation out of more than a dozen interviews throughout the day was indicative of the “extraordinary progress” the city has made on LGBT equality.
“16 years ago when I was first elected to the Council in every sentence in every report, every story that came out in the weeks following my election there was always a comma – openly gay,” he said. “It was a label that no matter what I was talking about it always included my sexual orientation. And 16 years later we don’t see that anymore.”
Catania said he had no objections to being labeled as openly gay then or now. But he said the apparent disinterest in his sexual orientation as he launches a mayoral exploratory committee this week shows that the city has progressed to a point where someone’s sexual orientation is no longer a big deal.
“I think it underestimates the independence of all of our voters to suggest that they will vote for someone simply by virtue of their sexual orientation, or their gender or their color or geography,” Catania said. “I think we are entering an era where people no longer feel that they have to or are inclined to support a person who may demographically be similar to them.”
He added, “We have a smart and sophisticated electorate that will make a decision based on who they believe best represents their value system and that they trust. And in that debate I think I’m going to do well across all demographics.”
Catania said he’s optimistic that if he decides to run his record as a Council member and a concerned city resident will likely be how he will be judged.
“I’m very proud of what I feel I’ve contributed to over these last 16 years,” he said. “The renaissance of the city and particular initiatives I’m proud of includes things like marriage equality, smoke-free D.C. I’m proud of offering the medical marijuana initiative. I’m proud of the work I did to bring health insurance to 40,000 people. I’m proud of the work I did on HIV/AIDS and on so many other subjects.
“But an enduring challenge remains, and that is the quality and the state of our public education system,” Catania added. “And that is the singular focus of this exploration at this point. How to set our kids up to succeed. We are never going to tackle the income inequality in this city if we continue to do things as we have done them. And at the moment, while our schools are showing a modest improvement, that improvement is uneven and is leaving vast portions of our city behind because we do not have excellence in every school for every child. We do not. And until we make it a top priority of this city we are not going to be the city that we can be.”
District of Columbia
Gay priest credited with boosting church support for LGBTQ Catholics
Fr. Tom Oddo’s biographer speaks at Dignity Washington event
The author of a biography of a U.S. Catholic priest said to have advocated for support by the Catholic Church of gay Catholics in the early 1970s has called Father Thomas ‘Tom’ Oddo a little known but important figure in the LGBTQ rights movement.
Tyler Bieber, author of the recently published book “Against The Current: Father Tom Oddo And the New American Catholic,” told of Oddo’s life and work on behalf of LGBTQ rights at a March 22 talk before the local LGBTQ Catholic group Dignity Washington.
Among Oddo’s important accomplishments, Bieber said, was his role as a co-founder of the national LGBTQ Catholic group Dignity U.S.A. in 1973 at the age of 29.
But as reported in the prologue of his book, Bieber presented details of the sad news that Oddo died in a fatal car crash in 1989 at the age of 45 in Portland, Ore., where he was serving as the highly acclaimed president of the University of Portland, a Catholic institution.
“He was a major figure in the gay rights movement in the 1970s, an unsung hero of that movement,” Bieber told Dignity Washington members, who assembled for his talk in a meeting room at St. Margaret Episcopal Church near Dupont Circle, where they attend their weekly Catholic mass on Sundays.
“And Dignity U.S.A. saw intense growth in membership and visibility” during its early years under Oddo’s leadership, Bieber said. “The story of Father Tom and his contemporaries is a story largely untold in the history of the gay rights movement, but one worth knowing and considering,” he said.
As stated in his book, Bieber told the Dignity Washington gathering Oddo was born and raised in a Catholic family on Long Island, N.Y., and attended a Catholic high school in Flushing Queens. It was at that time when he developed an interest in becoming a priest, according to Bieber.
After studying at the University of Notre Dame and completing his religious studies he was ordained as a priest in 1970 and began his work as a priest in the Boston area, Bieber said. It was around that time, Bieber told the Dignity Washington audience, that gay Catholics approached Oddo to seek advice on how they should interact with the Catholic Church. It was also around that time that Oddo became involved in a group supportive of then gay Catholics that later became a Dignity chapter in Boston.
In a development considered unusual for a Catholic priest, Bieber said Oddo in 1973 testified in support of gay rights bill before a committee of the Massachusetts Legislature and collaborated with then Massachusetts gay and lesbian rights advocate Elaine Noble.
In 1982, at the age of 39, Oddo was selected as president of the University of Portland following several years as a college teacher in the Boston area, Bieber’s book states. It says he was seen as a “vibrant and capable administrator who delivered real results to his campus,” adding, “His magnetism was obvious. One student described him as ‘John Kennedyesque’ to the university’s student newspaper.”
Bieber said that although Oddo was less active with Dignity U.S.A. during his tenure as UP president, he continued his support for gay Catholics and what is now referred to as LGBTQ rights.
“For those that knew him prior to his term at UP, though, he represented something greater than an accomplished university administrator and educator,” Bieber’s book states. “He was a new kind of priest, a gay man living and ministering in a world set loose from tradition by the Second Vatican Council,” the book says.
It was referring to the Vatican gathering of worldwide Catholic leaders from 1962 to 1965 concluding under Pope Paul VI that church observers say modernized church practices to allow far greater participation by the laity and opened the way for sympathetic consideration of gay Catholics.
District of Columbia
HRC to host National Rainbow Seder
Bet Mishpachah among annual event’s organizers
The 18th National Rainbow Seder will take place at the Human Rights Campaign on Sunday.
The sold out event is the country’s largest Passover Seder for the Jewish LGBTQ community.
Organizations behind the event include Bet Mishpachah, a local D.C. LGBTQ synagogue that Rabbi Jake Singer-Beilin leads, and GLOE, an Edlavitch DC Jewish Community Center program that sponsors events for the queer Jewish community. The theme for this year’s Seder is “Liberation For All Who Journey: Remembering, Resisting, Rebuilding.” Rabbis Atara Cohen, Koach Frazier, and Avigayil Halpern will lead it.
The Seder will honor the late GLOE co-chair Michael Singer. Singer also served on the Edlavitch DC Jewish Community Center’s board.
“This Seder is both a celebration of how far we have come and a call to continue building a more just and inclusive world.” Bet Mishpachah Executive Director Joshua Maxey told the Washington Blade.
A gay man was murdered in Petersburg, Va., on March 13.
Shyyell Diamond Sanchez-McCray, who was also known as Saamel and Mable, was a drag queen who won the Miss Mayflower EOY pageant in 2015. Reports also indicate Sanchez-McCray, 42, was a well-known community activist in Virginia and in North Carolina.
Local media reports indicate police officers found Sanchez-McCray shot to death inside a home in Petersburg.
Sanchez-McCray’s brother, Jamal Mitchell Diamond, in a public statement the Washington Blade received from Equality Virginia and GLAAD, said Sanchez-McCray was not transgender as initial reports indicated.
“Our family has always embraced the fullness of who he was. He used the names Saamel, Shyyell, and Mable interchangeably, and we honor all of them. There is no division within our family regarding how he is being represented — only a shared commitment to preserving his truth with love and respect,” said Diamond.
“He was also deeply committed to community work through Nationz Foundation, where he worked and completed multiple state-certified programs to support marginalized communities,” added Diamond. “That work meant a great deal to him.”
Authorities have not made any arrests.
The Petersburg Bureau of Police has asked anyone with information about Sanchez-McCray’s murder to call Petersburg-Dinwiddie Crime Solvers at 804-861-1212.
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