Local
Ray stays out of interim Council race
12 seek temporary appointment to Kwame Brown’s seat
Clark Ray, the gay candidate who lost his race for an at-large D.C. Council seat in the September primary, has chosen not to enter a preliminary contest for another at-large seat that will become vacant on Jan. 1.
The 82-member D.C. Democratic State Committee is scheduled to vote Jan. 6 to appoint an interim replacement for Council member Kwame Brown (D-At-Large), who won election Nov. 2 as Council chairman.
Ray did not file as a candidate for the State Committee appointment process by the Nov. 6 deadline. He did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
Some political observers say the winner of the State Committee appointment for interim Council member will have the advantage of incumbency and greater name recognition in a special citywide election expected to take place in spring of 2011. Twelve candidates filed papers to compete for the interim appointment, including former Ward 5 Council member Vincent Orange, who is considered the frontrunner.
Earlier this year Ray said he would consider running for Brown’s seat in the 2011 special election if he lost his race in September for the seat held by Council member Phil Mendelson.
Mendelson, who has a strong pro-LGBT record, won the primary with 63 percent of the vote, beating Ray in precincts with high concentrations of gay voters. D.C. Shadow Sen. Michael D. Brown came in second, with 27 percent of the vote. Ray finished third with 9 percent of the vote, losing in every precinct.
Gay Democratic activist Peter Rosenstein, who served as a Ray campaign adviser, said Ray would have a decent chance of winning in the special election despite his poor showing in the September primary. Rosenstein noted that special elections are known for yielding a low voter turnout. He said Ray could win with 10,000 votes — which he received in the primary — in a multi-candidate contest.
“He could pull this off if the gay vote unifies behind him, which I think it will,” Rosenstein said.
At least two other candidates said to be considering entering the race for the special election have strong pro-gay records and could take LGBT votes away from Ray. Adam Clampitt received gay support as an at-large candidate in the 2008 Democratic primary before withdrawing from the race and backing Michael A. Brown, who won the primary and general election.
Republican Patrick Mara, an early supporter of same-sex marriage, stunned the political establishment when he defeated longtime Council member Carol Schwartz in the 2008 GOP primary. Mara lost in the general election to Michael A. Brown but came back to win a seat on the D.C. school board in Ward 1 earlier this month. Mara is said to be weighing whether to run in the special election for the at-large Council seat.
“Clark spent over $200,000, ran for two years, knocked on doors throughout the city, hung signs everywhere and got less than 10 percent of the vote,” said gay activist Bob Summersgill, who campaigned for Mendelson in the September primary.
Summersgill noted that Ray and several candidates competing for the interim appointment for the vacant at-large seat, who also ran and lost in Council races this year, “need to explain why we should give them any consideration in the special election.”
District of Columbia
Mayor Bowser signs bill requiring insurers to cover PrEP
‘This is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS’
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on March 20 signed a bill approved by the D.C. Council that requires health insurance companies to cover the costs of HIV prevention or PrEP drugs for D.C. residents at risk for HIV infection.
Like all legislation approved by the Council and signed by the mayor, the bill, called the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act, was sent to Capitol Hill for a required 30-day congressional review period before it takes effect as D.C. law.
Gay D.C. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5) last year introduced the bill.
Insurance coverage for PrEP drugs has been provided through coverage standards included in the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. But AIDS advocacy organizations have called on states and D.C. to pass their own legislation requiring insurance coverage of PrEP as a safeguard in case federal policies are weakened or removed by the Trump administration, which has already reduced federal funding for HIV/AIDS-related programs.
Like legislation passed by other states, the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act requires insurers to cover all PrEP drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Studies have shown that PrEP drugs, which can be taken as pills or by injection just twice a year, are highly effective in preventing HIV infection.
“I think this is a win for our community,” Parker said after the D.C. Council voted unanimously to approve the bill on its first vote on the measure in February. “And this is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS.”
District of Columbia
Blade editor to be inducted into D.C. Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame
Kevin Naff marks 24 years with publication this year
Longtime Washington Blade Editor Kevin Naff will be inducted into D.C.’s Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame in June, the group announced this week.
Hall of Fame honorees are chosen by the Society of Professional Journalists’ Washington, D.C., Pro Chapter. Naff and two other inductees — Seth Borenstein, a Washington-based national science writer for the AP and Cheryl W. Thompson, an award-winning correspondent for National Public Radio — will be celebrated at the chapter’s Dateline Awards dinner on Tuesday, June 9, at the National Press Club. The dinner’s emcee will be Kojo Nnamdi, host of WAMU radio’s weekly “Politics Hour.”
“I am tremendously honored by this recognition,” Naff said. “I have spent a lifetime in the D.C. area learning from so many talented journalists and am humbled to be considered in their company. Thank you to SPJ and to all the LGBTQ pioneers who came before me who made this possible.”
Naff joined the Blade in 2002 after years in print and digital journalism. He worked as a financial reporter for Reuters in New York before moving to Baltimore in 1996 to launch the Baltimore Sun’s website. He spent four years at the Sun before leaving for an internet startup and later joining the mobile data group at Verizon Wireless working on the first generation of mobile apps.
He then moved to the Blade and has served as the publication’s longest-tenured editor. In 2023, Naff published his first book, “How We Won the War for LGBTQ Equality — And How Our Enemies Could Take It All Away.”
Previous Hall of Fame inductees include luminaries in journalism like Wolf Blitzer, Benjamin Bradlee, Bob Woodward, Andrea Mitchell, and Edgar Allen Poe. The Blade’s senior news reporter Lou Chibbaro Jr. was inducted in 2015.
Maryland
Supreme Court ruling against conversion therapy bans could affect Md. law
Then-Gov. Larry Hogan signed statute in 2018
By PAMELA WOOD, JOHN-JOHN WILLIAMS IV, and MADELEINE O’NEILL | The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled against a law banning “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ kids in Colorado, a ruling that also could apply to Maryland’s ban on the discredited practice.
An 8-1 high court majority sided with a Christian counselor who argues the law banning talk therapy violates the First Amendment. The justices agreed that the law raises free speech concerns and sent it back to a lower court to decide whether it meets a legal standard that few laws pass.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the court’s majority, said the law “censors speech based on viewpoint.” The First Amendment, he wrote, “stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country.”
The rest of this article can be read on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
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