Local
Stein Club president withdraws from consideration for new club election
Special meeting on Wednesday to consider invaliding Dec. 3 election of new slate of officers
A Gertrude Stein Democratic Club endorsements meeting from October of this year, prior to the leadership shake-up. (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)
Lateefah Williams, the president of the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club who lost her race for a second term in the club’s Dec. 3 election, announced on Sunday that she won’t be a candidate if the club decides to invalidate the balloting for her seat and calls a new election.
Her announcement comes in the wake of an uproar among many of the club’s longtime members over the successful campaign by three young activists who won control of the club by defeating Williams and two vice presidential candidates running on Williams’ slate.
Gay political consultant Martin Garcia, 27, who beat Williams by a vote of 47 to 45, is credited with playing the lead role in organizing the upset victory by arranging for at least 46 mostly young LGBT activists to join the club less than a week before the election and vote for him and his vice presidential running mates.
Angela Peoples, 26, a policy analyst for the U.S. Consumer Financial protection Bureau, and Vincent Villano, 26, communications director for the National Center for Transgender Equality, won the two vice presidential seats on Garcia’s slate.
Club treasurer Barrie Daneker and club secretary Jimmie Luthuli were not challenged by Garcia’s backers and won re-election unopposed. But in winning three of the club’s five officer’s positions, Garcia, Peoples, and Villano were expected to gain control of the club when they take office Jan. 1.
Last week, several longtime members, including transgender activist Jeri Hughes, called for an official challenge to Garcia, Peoples, and Villano’s election. The club’s existing officers responded by calling a special meeting for Dec. 19 to decide whether the election should be invalidated based on the challenges.
Daneker, who is in charge of maintaining the club membership list, said a review of the online application forms for 17 of the new members raised questions about whether some qualified for a lower priced special membership category.
Daneker said the review of the application forms also indicated some of the new members did not submit a valid home address, which could be a violation of club rules.
Those challenging the election say the election should be invalidated if the club determines some of the new members should be disqualified due to membership “irregularities” and the number of disqualified members exceeds the margin of victory of Garcia, Peoples, and Villano. All three won by a margin of between two and seven votes.
The longtime members who called for the special meeting, which is to decide whether the election should be upheld or invalidated, are believed to be supporters of Williams and her slate of officers who lost the election.
Williams announced her withdrawal from consideration for retaining her seat after her current term expires on Dec. 31 in an open letter sent by email on Sunday to the club’s membership.
“While I am deeply humbled and profoundly grateful for the support of these longtime members and I believe that it is important to investigate potential election irregularities, I am also very concerned about the future of the club,” Williams said in her Dec. 16 email.
“It is imperative that the Stein Club move forward into the future as a unified organization, so that we may continue to focus on effectively advocating for the District’s LGBT community,” she said. “To that end, I am removing myself from consideration as the 2013 Stein Club president.”
Williams noted that she recused herself from the vote by the club’s officers, who make up the group’s executive board, to call the special meeting.
“While the decision to hold the special meeting and to possibly invalidate the election results is, and always has been, a different matter than my candidacy, I want to state my intentions unequivocally, so that it’s clear that any decision that is made by the membership at the special meeting should be made independent of me,” Williams said in her email.
Daneker said the club had a total of 190 members prior to the effort by Garcia and his supporters to recruit new members. According to Daneker, 46 new members, including Garcia, Peoples, and Villano, who had not appeared on the club’s membership rolls before, joined the club in the week prior to the Dec. 3 club election.
Although some of the new members have said their recruitment effort doubled the club’s membership, Daneker said the new members appear to have increased the membership from 190 to 236, which is about 24 percent.
Confusion over the membership totals surfaced, Daneker said, when the balloting at the Dec. 3 election showed that a total of 92 ballots had been cast, with Garcia beating Williams by a razor-thin two vote margin. He said some people incorrectly assumed that the 92 people who voted in the election made up most or all of the membership.
When asked why he thought as many as 145 of the 190 existing members didn’t show up for the election, Daneker said, “Historically, we don’t get all the members to come to every single meeting.”
Garcia and his supporters have argued that their election recruitment effort brought in energetic new members who will reinvigorate the club.
“We are disappointed that the Stein leadership intends to challenge new members who want to contribute to Stein’s growth,” Garcia said in a statement released last week.
“These new members are young people, people of color, and people from low-income backgrounds who were otherwise not engaged in Stein’s activities…We should be having a special meeting celebrating these new members and finding ways to engage them.”
In a series of Facebook messages and a commentary in the Blade, Hughes has emerged as the lead advocate for invaliding the election and holding a new election for president and the two vice president’s seats.
An attorney who reviewed the question of whether the Stein Club election can be invalidated has said such an action could only take place if it can be shown that new members gave a false address or joined at the $15 membership rate rather than the standard $35 rate when they were not qualified or the lower rate. The $15 membership is limited under the club’s bylaws to students, senior citizens, and “limited income” members.
Hughes, while saying the issue of possible membership irregularities should be resolved, has called the election a “farce” because the new members stacked the meeting with their supporters.
“It became a farce when a group of new members – most of whom have never attended a Stein Club meeting or participated in the local issues affecting the District – attended the election night process with the sole intention of usurping the Stein Club leadership,” she said in her commentary.
“They are strangers,” she said. “By their own admission, none had been Stein Club members for more than a week.”
Not all of the club’s longstanding members agree with Hughes that the election should be challenged.
Gay Democratic activist Rick Rosendall, who won election last week as president of the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance, is a longtime Stein Club member.
“Jeri, they won according to the rules,” he told Hughes in a Facebook posting. “They represent the biggest influx of talent and energy into the group in a long time. Forcing them out in a special meeting which itself violates the rules is not legitimate,” he said. “Nor does it advance our cause.”
D.C. transgender activist Julius Agers, the club’s vice president for political and legislative affairs, who did not run for re-election, said he, too, considers the influx of new members to be beneficial to the club.
“Let us all strive as hard as we can to be open minded, and not let old thoughts and old prejudices and old loyalties blur our vision,” he wrote in a Facebook posting on Saturday. “These young people have earned their respect from many circles. In fact, they have done amazing things and I for one am thrilled that they are bringing their passion in our direction.”
The special meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 19, in Room 120 of the John A. Wilson D.C. city hall building at 14th Street and Pennsylvania Ave., N.W.
District of Columbia
Activists praise Mayor Bowser’s impact on city, LGBTQ community
‘She made sure LGBTQ residents knew they were seen, valued, loved’
Members of D.C.’s LGBTQ community offered their thoughts on the impact Mayor Muriel Bowser has had on them, the city, and LGBTQ people in statements and interviews with the Washington Blade in the week following Bowser’s announcement that she will not run for re-election in 2026.
Bowser’s Nov. 25 announcement came during the third year of her third four-year term in office as mayor and after she served as a member of the D.C. Council representing Ward 4 from 2007 to Jan. 2, 2015, when she took office as mayor.
The LGBTQ activists and mayoral staffers who spoke to the Blade agreed that Bowser has been an outspoken and dedicated supporter on a wide range of LGBTQ-related issues starting from her time as a Council member and throughout her years as mayor.
Among them is one of the mayor’s numerous openly LGBTQ staff members, Jim Slattery, who has served in the Cabinet-level position as the Mayor’s Correspondence Officer since Bowser first became mayor.
“As Mayor Muriel Bowser’s longest serving LGBTQIA+ staffer – dating back to her first term as the Ward 4 Council member – and a proud member of her Cabinet since day one of her administration, I have had the opportunity to witness her at work for the people she serves and leads,” Slattery said in a statement. “Noteworthy is that throughout the entirety of my 27 years in District government, I have always been able to do so as an out and proud gay man,” he stated.
Slattery added that he has witnessed first-hand Bowser’s “absolute belief” in supporting the LGBTQ community.
“She has led on HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment, on shelter for vulnerable members of our community, housing for older members of the community, and has been a reliable and constant presence at events to LGBTQIA+ residents,” Slattery said. Among those events, he said, have been World AIDS Day, the D.C. Pride Parade, the 17th Street LGBTQ High Heel Race, and WorldPride 2025, which D.C. hosted with strong support from the mayor’s office.
Ryan Bos, CEO & president of Capital Pride Alliance, the D.C. group that organizes the city’s annual LGBTQ Pride events and served as lead organizer of WorldPride 2025, praised Bowser for being a longtime supporter of that organization.
“She played a very supportive role in helping us as an organization grow and to be able to bring WorldPride to Washington, D.C.,” Bos told the Blade. “And we commend her years of service, And our hope is that she helps us to continue to advocate for the support from the D.C. government of the LGBTQ+ community, especially during these times,” Bos said.
Bos, who was referring to the Trump administration’s hostility toward LGBTQ issues and sharp cutbacks in federal funds for nonprofit organizations, including LGBTQ organizations, said Capital Pride Alliance appreciated Bowser’s efforts to provide city funding for events like WorldPride.
“She provided support through the event process of WorldPride and ultimately along with the D.C. Council provided necessary funding to ensure WorldPride was a success,” Bos said. “And we are proud that we are able to show that Capital Pride and WorldPride had such a large economic impact for D.C. and the D.C. government,” he added.
Marvin Bowser, Mayor Bowser’s gay brother who operates a local photography business and has been active in the D.C. LGBTQ community for many years, said he has also witnessed first-hand his sister’s support for the LGBTQ community and all D.C. residents since the time she became a Council member and even before that.
Among his vivid memories, he said, was his sister’s strong support for the marriage equality law legalizing same-sex marriage in D.C. that the Council approved in 2009 under then-Mayor Adrian Fenty.
“I remember the first time she was standing up and giving clear and unequivocal support to the community when that law passed,” Marvin Bowser told the Blade. “And she was front and center in speaking very strongly in support of marriage equality,” he said.
Marvin Bowser also credits his sister with expanding and strengthening the then-Mayor’s Office of GLBT Affairs, among other things, by appointing advocate Sheila Alexander Reid as the office’s director in 2015.
Reid, who for many years prior to becoming director of the GLBT Affairs office was founder and publisher of the national lesbian publication Women In The Life, had the reputation of a “rock star,” according to Marvin Bowser.
He recalls that Mayor Bowser also played a lead role in D.C.’s bid to host to the quadrennial international LGBTQ sports competition Gay Games for 2022.
D.C lost its bid for the 2022 Gay Games after the Federation of Gay Games selected Hong Kong to host the event in an action that Marvin Bowser says was unfair and based on the effort to hold the Gay Games for the first time in Asia even though D.C. had a stronger bid for carrying out the event.
“Everything she’s done for the community has been very visible and from the heart,” he said of Muriel Bowser. “And in my personal relationship with her, she has also been nothing but absolutely supportive of me and my partner over the years,” he said.
“And we were just at her house helping her put up Christmas decorations,” he added. “And so, it’s been wonderful having her as a sister.”
Veteran D.C. LGBTQ advocate Japer Bowles, who serves as the current director of the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs, discussed the mayor’s record on LGBTQ issues in his own statement to the Blade.
“Mayor Muriel Bowser has been an unwavering champion for D.C.’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual community and movement,” he said. “Her more than 20 years of leadership brought consistent and historic investments for our LGBTQIA+ youth, seniors, veterans, and residents experiencing homelessness as well as impactful violence-prevention initiatives,” he added.
“Under her leadership, the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs grew into a national leader, delivering more than $10 million in community grants for LGBTQIA+ programs and managing 110 Housing Choice vouchers,” Bowles said in his statement.
“Because of her work, we are stronger, safer, more visible, and, proudly, ‘the gayest city in the world,’” he said in quoting Bowser’s often stated comment at LGBTQ events about D.C. being the world’s gayest city.
In a statement that might surprise some in the LGBTQ community, gay D.C. small business owner Salah Czapary, who served from 2022 to 2024 as director of the Mayor’s Office of Nightlife and Culture as a Bowser appointee, criticized some of the city’s non-LGBTQ related polices under the Bowser administration as being harmful to small businesses.
Bowser appointed Czapary, a former D.C. police officer, to the nightlife office position shortly after he lost his race as an openly gay candidate for the Ward 1 D.C. Council seat held by incumbent Brianne Nadeau.
“Mayor Bowser led D.C. through turbulent years and major growth, and we can all be proud of her leadership on many fronts,” Czapary said in a statement to the Blade. “She is also setting an example that more leaders should follow by stepping aside to allow a new generation to lead,” he said. “But as we turn the page, we must be honest about what the next mayor should deliver,” he says in his statement.
Without mentioning Bowser by name, he went on to list at least four things the next mayor should do that implied that Bowser did not do or did wrong. Among them were treating the D.C. Council as a “true governing partner,” not letting residents and small businesses “feel the weight of outdated, slow, and unresponsive systems,” and the need for leadership that “values competence over loyalty.”
He added that a “reversal” by the city of the city’s streetery program that was put in place during the COVID pandemic to allow restaurants to install outdoor seating into street parking lanes, was a “roll it back” on progress for small businesses.
He concluded by stating, “LGBTQ rights and inclusion are among the many fronts on which we can be very proud of the mayor’s leadership.”
The mayor’s office did not immediately respond to an offer by the Blade to give the office an opportunity to respond to Czapary’s statement.
A significantly different perspective was given by Sheila Alexander Reid, who said she was proud to serve as director of the Mayor’s LGBTQ Affairs Office during the first six-and-a-half years of Bowser’s tenure as mayor.
“I watched her evolve from a newly elected mayor finding her footing into a confident, seasoned leader who met every challenge head-on and time after time slayed the competition,” Alexander Reid said in a statement to the Blade.
“With each year in office, her voice grew stronger, more grounded, and more fearless,” her statement continues. “And she needed that strength, because being a Black woman mayor is not for the faint of heart, But Mayor Bowser never backed down. Instead, she showed the city what courageous, compassionate leadership truly looks like.”
Alexander Reid added that Bowser funded a new LGBTQ Community Center facility, expanded a workforce development program for the transgender community, and “made D.C. the first jurisdiction in the nation to require LGBTQ+ cultural competency training for healthcare providers.”
She also pointed to the mayor’s LGBTQ “safety nets” through low-barrier shelters and housing vouchers and her support for LGBTQ celebrations like the 17th Street High Heel Race.
“But what inspired me most was this,” Alexander Reid stated. “At a time when some elected officials across the country were retreating from LGBTQ support, Mayor Bowser was doing the opposite. She leaned in, she doubled down. She made sure LGBTQ residents knew they were seen, valued, protected, and loved by their city.”
District of Columbia
HIV/AIDS activists block intersection near White House
World AIDS Day provided backdrop for calls to fully fund PEPFAR
Upwards of 100 HIV/AIDS activists on Monday blocked an intersection near the White House and demanded the Trump-Vance administration fully fund PEPFAR.
Housing Works, Health GAP, Treatment Action Group, AIDS United, ACT UP Philadelphia, and the National Minority AIDS Council organized the protest that took place at the intersection of 16th and I Streets, N.W. The activists then marched to Lafayette Park.
(Washington Blade video by Michael K. Lavers)
(Washington Blade video by Michael K. Lavers)
Activists since the Trump-Vance administration took office in January have demanded full PEPFAR funding.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio Jan. 28 issued a waiver that allowed PEPFAR and other “life-saving humanitarian assistance” programs to continue to operate during the freeze on nearly all U.S. foreign aid spending. HIV/AIDS service providers around the world with whom the Washington Blade has spoken say PEPFAR cuts and the loss of funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development, which officially closed on July 1, has severely impacted their work.
The State Department in September announced PEPFAR will distribute lenacapavir in countries with high prevalence rates. The first doses of the breakthrough HIV prevention drug arrived in Eswatini and Zambia last month.
The New York Times in August reported Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought “apportioned” only $2.9 billion of $6 billion that Congress set aside for PEPFAR for fiscal year 2025. (PEPFAR in the coming fiscal year will use funds allocated in fiscal year 2024.)
Bipartisan opposition in the U.S. Senate prompted the Trump-Vance administration in July withdraw a proposal to cut $400 million from PEPFAR’s budget. Vought on Aug. 29 said he would use a “pocket rescission” to cancel $4.9 billion for HIV/AIDS prevention and global health programs and other foreign aid assistance initiatives that Congress had already approved.
“Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, has defied the appropriations authority of Congress, slashing the budget for the program despite full funding enacted by lawmakers, stealing $1.6 billion despite the direction of Congress that PEPFAR be fully funded,” notes a press release that detailed Monday’s protest. “As a result, lifesaving treatment and prevention programs have closed across dozens of sub-Saharan African countries, while Vought has refused to release money ringfenced by Congress to save lives.”
Monday’s protest coincided with World AIDS Day.
The White House has not publicly acknowledged World AIDS Day. A State Department directive the New York Times obtained last week mandated employees and grantees “to refrain from messaging on any commemorative days, including World AIDS Day.”
“Trump thinks by banning commemoration of World AIDS Day, he can hide from the death and destruction that he’s causing around the world,” said Health GAP Executive Director Asia Russell in Lafayette Square. “But we’re here to say, we can see him. We see him stealing medicine, stealing support services, stealing HIV testing, stealing life-saving care from communities all around the world suffering and dying without access.”
The Clinton Health Access Initiative in a report it published last month said more people with HIV or are at risk of contracting the virus because of “HIV treatment and prevention cascades” during the first half of 2025. Specific figures include:
• 3.4 million fewer adults tested for HIV
• 24,000 fewer infants tested for HIV
• A 22 percent decline in new HIV diagnoses due to a reduction in testing among the most vulnerable, highest-risk people
• An 8 percent decline in people living with HIV receiving CD4 tests to diagnose advanced HIV disease
• 2,000 fewer infants and children with HIV started on life-saving medication
• A 37 percent reduction in PrEP initiations for people at risk for HIV
• 26,000 fewer infants and children on antiretroviral medications
• A 5 percent reduction in adults starting antiretroviral medications
• A 10 percent increase in people living with HIV disengaging from treatment
The Clinton Health Access Initiative also said more children around the world will die “due to undiagnosed and un- or under-treated HIV infection” if “these trends persist.”
The Human Rights Campaign Foundation in its 2025 Annual LGBTQ+ Community Survey notes more than 20 percent of adults said “policies the federal government have made accessing HIV prevention and treatment care more difficult in the last year.” The report indicates 30 percent of respondents identify as LGBTQ.
The Comings & Goings column is about sharing the professional successes of our community. We want to recognize those landing new jobs, new clients for their business, joining boards of organizations and other achievements. Please share your successes with us at [email protected].
Congratulations to RODRIGO HENG-LEHTINEN on his new role as Trevor Project Senior Vice President of Public Engagement Campaigns. On accepting the position, he said, “My mission has long been to stop LGBTQ, and especially trans, people from being perceived as political footballs and start getting us seen as real people – your friends, your families, your neighbors. Now I get to focus on that 100% at The Trevor Project.”
Prior to this, he was executive director, Advocates for Trans Equality (A4TE), where he co-led the merger of two national transgender rights organizations, NCTE and TDLEF, to create the new organization. He had served as executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, leading that organization through a period of growth, restoring organizational size and stability. He had served as deputy executive director prior to that. Previously he served as vice president of Public Education, Freedom for All Americans, where he led a successful campaign for transgender nondiscrimination protections in New Hampshire. He oversaw a full range of legislative lobbying, field organizing, and communications strategies and oganized a leadership coalition, established structure, and divided roles for key committees of 17 state and national partner organizations and local activists.
Heng-Lehtinen conducted English-language interviews with outlets such as The New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, and Politico. He planned a Transgender Leadership Summit for the Transgender Law Center and served as Development & Donor Services Assistant, Liberty Hill Foundation. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Latin American Studies from Brown University.
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