Local
Gay Alexandria City Council candidate loses primary
Sean Holihan was among 14 Council candidates on the Democratic primary ballot
Sean Holihan and his partner Danny Barefoot. (Courtesy of Sean Holihan for City Council)
Gay Alexandria City Council candidate Sean Holihan on Tuesday did not receive enough votes in the contentious Democratic primary to advance to the general election.
Unofficial election results show that former Councilman Timothy Lovain received 9.09 percent of the vote. Former Councilman Justin Wilson came in second with 8.75 percent of the vote. Gay incumbent Councilman Paul Smedberg came in fifth with 8.35 percent of the vote.
Smedberg and the other five winners will square off against three Republican candidates in November.
“The voters decided to go with an established group of great candidates who have had good bases of support and have lived in the community for a very long time,” Holihan told the Blade. “I’ll be happy to work with them in November.”
Holihan, who is NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia’s communications director, declared his candidacy in January. He stressed to the Blade earlier on Tuesday that he was optimistic going into the primary.
“It’s been a pretty intense primary and I hope we can turn out on top,” he said. “We ran a pretty good race.”
Holihan pointed to what he described as long-term development of the city as one of the issues that prompted him to run.
“D.C. is one of the top growing job areas in the country because government and health care are the two fastest growing job sectors, and we can’t build a wall around the city,” he said. “We need to figure out how to handle the need for more housing as well as grow our commercial tax base in order to pay for all the things we need like better transit, schools as well as our infrastructure like sewer systems.”
Holihan, who chairs the Equality Virginia Political Action Committee, criticized incumbent Republican Councilman Frank Fannon last month for suggesting that marriage rights for same-sex couples is a “divisive issue.” Mayor William Euille is among the more than 200 mayors from across the country who have joined Freedom to Marry’s “Mayors for the Freedom to Marry” campaign.
Holihan added that the gay Richmond prosecutor Tracy Thorne-Begland’s failed nomination as a General District Court judge is among the issues about which voters have spoken with him.
“When I go knocking on doors people often bring up Richmond as far as [Attorney General] Ken Cuccinelli and ultrasound [bill] stuff,” he said. “During that whole week with Tracy Thorne-Begland, that came up numerous times; [they were] just kind of shaking their heads in disbelief that they didn’t think Richmond couldn’t get any worse. And of course they managed to find a way to do that.”
Holihan also responded to a Washington Post article on Monday that reported his partner, Danny Barefoot, donated $3,000 to a PAC that attacked fellow Democratic Council candidate Boyd Walker.
“We’ve run a really progressive race and a positive tone,” he said. “Danny is a campaign professional. He’s a consultant. We are two separate people. We live in the same house. We’ve worked together on many things, but he’s a separate person. We have separate bank accounts so what he does in his own professional manner is not something that he’s ever had to ask my permission for.”
Holihan said he has no plans to run for office again.
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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