Local
Gay delegate candidate leads Barry, has highest vote count
Three gays expected to emerge at D.C. caucus to become Obama delegates
An openly gay labor official emerged as a dark horse candidate and was beating D.C. Council member and former mayor Marion Barry (D-Ward 8) for a first place position in Saturday’s Democratic caucus to select delegates to the Democratic National Convention.
Gregory Cendana, executive director of the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, an arm of the AFL-CIO, captured 130 votes compared to 122 votes for Barry among male candidates running in District 1.
D.C. Democratic Party spokesperson Bill O’Field said ballots cast on Thursday to allow voters who couldn’t participate in the Saturday caucus on religious grounds and provisional ballots cast on Saturday by voters whose registration couldn’t be confirmed would not be counted until Monday or Tuesday, preventing the final results of the caucus from being known until then.
The local Democratic Party divided the city into two voting districts for purposes of electing 13 delegates and one alternate delegate among the city’s registered Democrats. Under party rules, four male and three female delegate positions were allocated to District 1 along with one female alternate delegate slot.
In District 2, three male delegate positions and four female delegate positions were created. Eighty-nine people competed for the delegate and alternate positions.
In the District 1 male contest, D.C. Council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) was in third place, behind Barry, with 102 votes. Gay candidate Jeffrey Richardson, director of the Mayor’s Office of LGBT Affairs, was in fourth place, with 97 votes.
Just behind Richardson in 5th place was David Meadows, a former president of the Gertrude Stein Democratic club and staff member for D.C. Council member Michael Brown (I-At-Large), who had 96 votes. With a least 130 votes remaining to be counted, the fourth delegate slot for District 1 could go to either Richardson or Meadows, according to sources familiar with the caucus.
In the District 1 female category, lesbian Democratic activist Lateefah Williams, the current Stein Club president, was in second place, with 101 votes, just three votes behind Sheila Bunn, who had 104 votes.
Most caucus observers expect Cendana, Williams and either Richardson or Meadows to emerge as winners after all of the caucus votes are tallied on Monday or Tuesday.
Although Cendana’s lead over Barry could change when the remaining ballots are counted, his strong showing and lead over both Barry and Evans has raised eyebrows among the city’s political establishment. Some local Democratic Party activists criticized Barry and Evans for running in the caucus, saying they should have allowed grassroots party activists to fill the delegate positions at the caucus.
The critics noted that more than a dozen additional delegates will be selected to represent D.C. at the Democratic Convention by the D.C. Democratic State Committee and by the Democratic National Committee in the coming months.
“Tonight’s results reflect the power of the grassroots,” Cendana said in a statement released on Saturday. “This kind of energy is what powered Barack Obama four years ago – we were inspired then, and we are inspired now as this small movement for big change continues.”
Although Cendana’s supporters say he was helped by votes from LGBT Democrats, they acknowledge that he benefited greatly by the city’s organized labor activists, who reportedly helped turn out the “labor” vote for him. But political insiders also credit Cendana with organizing a highly effective campaign for the delegate post.
Eight more LGBT candidates competing in the caucus for delegate positions finished further down in the vote totals and are not expected to emerge as winner when the final tally is completed.
Here are their names and vote totals:
District 1:
Alexander Padro—65 votes
Adam Bink—32 votes
Kevin Scott Carroll—9 votes
Jonathan Degner—5 votes
District 2:
Alexandra Beninda—74 votes
Sterling Washington—21 votes
Aadit Dubale—4 votes
Phillip Skillman—2 votes
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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