Local
LGBT vote expected to split in special election
Silverman, Mara, Bonds hold LGBT ‘meet and greet’ events
Interim Council member Anita Bonds (left), GOP candidate Patrick Mara (center) and Elissa Silverman (right) have attracted prominent LGBT support in their race for Council. (Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
The LGBT community appeared to be dividing its support between what pundits say are the top three contenders in the city’s April 23 special election in which six candidates are competing for an at-large seat on the D.C. City Council.
With all of the candidates expressing support for LGBT equality, including support for the city’s same-sex marriage law, LGBT voters appear to be assessing the candidates on non-LGBT issues, according to activists following the campaign.
“As has been the case for a long time in our city, we are blessed to be in a position of choosing among friends,” Rick Rosendall, president of the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance, said earlier this year.
A large number of LGBT activists have come out in support of Democrats Anita Bonds and Elissa Silverman as well as Republican Patrick Mara. Each has held several LGBT “meet and greet” events, with some of them held in gay bars. A smaller number of activists have expressed their support for Democrat Matthew Frumin.
The only publicly released poll so far, conducted by the Public Policy Polling Company, showed Bonds in the lead among likely voters, with 19 percent, followed by Mara and Silverman, who each had 13 percent. Frumin had 8 percent, with Democrat Paul Zukerberg and Statehood-Green Party candidate Perry Redd each with 2 percent.
But political observers were quick to point out that the most significant finding of the poll was that a whopping 43 percent of those polled said they were undecided less than two weeks before the election. The large number of undecided voters makes it difficult to predict a winner, political observers have said.
One of the first signs that LGBT voters were divided over the field of candidates came in March, when the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, the city’s largest LGBT political organization, was unable to make an endorsement because no candidate received a required 60 percent of the vote among club members.
However, Silverman received 55 percent of the Stein members’ vote, with Bonds coming in second with 37 percent.
Mara received the endorsement of the D.C. Long Cabin Republicans. His supporters point out that a number of prominent LGBT Democrats are backing Mara, who also won the endorsement of the Washington Post, and that Mara won in city precincts with large numbers of LGBT residents in two previous elections in which he ran for a Council seat.
Frumin, meanwhile, received the highest rating from the non-partisan Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance — a +7 on a rating scale of -10 to +10. Bonds came in second with a GLAA rating of +6.5. Silverman and Redd each received a +5.5 rating, with Mara receiving a +5 and Zuckerberg receiving a +2.
The candidates’ answers to separate GLAA and Stein Club questionnaires show that each of them indicated overall strong support on LGBT issues, with some losing points for not providing what GLAA says were detailed enough responses to the questions. Others lost points for disagreeing with GLAA on some issues.
Bonds, a longtime Democratic Party leader who has worked in the city government in the past, was appointed to the Council seat on an interim basis earlier this year by the D.C. Democratic State Committee, which she chairs. The appointment lasts until the time of the special election. Bonds is being backed, among others, by former Stein Club presidents Kurt Vorndran and Lafeefah Williams and current Stein Club treasurer Barry Daneker.
Silverman, a former journalist with the Washington City Paper and Washington Post, has worked as a budget analyst in recent years for the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, which advocates for reforms in the city’s tax code. She is being backed by a number of LGBT activists, including many of the Stein Club members who voted for her in the club’s endorsement meeting in which no endorsement was made.
Mara, an elected member of the D.C. school board from Ward 1, has been a longtime supporter of LGBT rights and boasts of being the only candidate in the at-large Council race who testified in favor of the city’s same-sex marriage law when it came before the D.C. Council in 2009. Gay Democratic activists Joel Lawson and John Klenert are among the LGBT activists supporting him.
In a sometimes heated debate among LGBT activists, some, including gay Democratic activist and commentator Peter Rosenstein, argue that LGBT people should not vote for Mara because he was a GOP convention delegate and supporter of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who opposes nearly all LGBT rights initiatives, including gay marriage. Mara’s gay backers say Mara is the only “true” reform candidate who promises to fight corruption and cronyism in city government.
Frumin is an attorney in private practice and a Ward 3 Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner.
The remaining two candidates, Democrat Paul Zuckerberg, an attorney and longtime advocate for decriminalizing marijuana; and Perry Redd, a Statehood-Green Party candidate and community activist, have received less traction among LGBT activists. The two have raised far less money for their campaigns than the other four candidates.
Mara, Silverman and Frumin have each portrayed themselves as reform candidates and have pointed to city corruption related investigations that led to the arrest and indictment of two D.C. Council members during the past two years.
Although Bonds strongly disputes critics’ claims she is part of the entrenched political establishment, impartial observers say she has a good shot at winning because Mara, Silverman and Frumin are likely to split the so-called “reform” vote.
Observers also believe Bonds benefited from a decision earlier this month by former D.C. Council member and Democratic contender Michael Brown to drop out of the race. Brown would have been in direct competition with Bonds for voters in Wards 5, 7, and 8, according to political observers.
Virginia
Gay Va. State Sen. Ebbin resigns for role in Spanberger administration
Veteran lawmaker will step down in February
Alexandria Democrat Adam Ebbin, who has served as an openly gay member of the Virginia Legislature since 2004, announced on Jan. 7 that he is resigning from his seat in the State Senate to take a job in the administration of Gov.-Elect Abigail Spanberger.
Since 2012, Ebbin has been a member of the Virginia Senate for the 39th District representing parts of Alexandria, Arlington, and Fairfax counties. He served in the Virginia House of Delegates representing Alexandria from 2004 to 2012, becoming the state’s first out gay lawmaker.
His announcement says he submitted his resignation from his Senate position effective Feb. 18 to join the Spanberger administration as a senior adviser at the Virginia Cannabis Control Authority.
“I’m grateful to have the benefit of Senator Ebbin’s policy expertise continuing to serve the people of Virginia, and I look forward to working with him to prioritize public safety and public health,” Spanberger said in Ebbin’s announcement statement.
She was referring to the lead role Ebbin has played in the Virginia Legislature’s approval in 2020 of legislation decriminalizing marijuana and the subsequent approval in 2021of a bill legalizing recreational use and possession of marijuana for adults 21 years of age and older. But the Virginia Legislature has yet to pass legislation facilitating the retail sale of marijuana for recreational use and limits sales to purchases at licensed medical marijuana dispensaries.
“I share Governor-elect Spanberger’s goal that adults 21 and over who choose to use cannabis, and those who use it for medical treatment, have access to a well-tested, accurately labeled product, free from contamination,” Ebbin said in his statement. “2026 is the year we will move cannabis sales off the street corner and behind the age-verified counter,” he said.
Maryland
Steny Hoyer, the longest-serving House Democrat, to retire from Congress
Md. congressman served for years in party leadership
By ASSOCIATED PRESS and LISA MASCARO | Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the longest-serving Democrat in Congress and once a rival to become House speaker, will announce Thursday he is set to retire at the end of his term.
Hoyer, who served for years in party leadership and helped steer Democrats through some of their most significant legislative victories, is set to deliver a House floor speech about his decision, according to a person familiar with the situation and granted anonymity to discuss it.
“Tune in,” Hoyer said on social media. He confirmed his retirement plans in an interview with the Washington Post.
The rest of this article can be found on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
District of Columbia
Kennedy Center renaming triggers backlash
Artists who cancel shows threatened; calls for funding boycott grow
Efforts to rename the Kennedy Center to add President Trump’s name to the D.C. arts institution continue to spark backlash.
A new petition from Qommittee , a national network of drag artists and allies led by survivors of hate crimes, calls on Kennedy Center donors to suspend funding to the center until “artistic independence is restored, and to redirect support to banned or censored artists.”
“While Trump won’t back down, the donors who contribute nearly $100 million annually to the Kennedy Center can afford to take a stand,” the petition reads. “Money talks. When donors fund censorship, they don’t just harm one institution – they tell marginalized communities their stories don’t deserve to be told.”
The petition can be found here.
Meanwhile, a decision by several prominent musicians and jazz performers to cancel their shows at the recently renamed Trump-Kennedy Center in D.C. planned for Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve has drawn the ire of the Center’s president, Richard Grenell.
Grenell, a gay supporter of President Donald Trump who served as U.S. ambassador to Germany during Trump’s first term as president, was named Kennedy Center president last year by its board of directors that had been appointed by Trump.
Last month the board voted to change the official name of the center from the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center For The Performing Arts to the Donald J. Trump And The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center For The Performing Arts. The revised name has been installed on the outside wall of the center’s building but is not official because any name change would require congressional action.
According to a report by the New York Times, Grenell informed jazz musician Chuck Redd, who cancelled a 2025 Christmas Eve concert that he has hosted at the Kennedy Center for nearly 20 years in response to the name change, that Grenell planned to arrange for the center to file a lawsuit against him for the cancellation.
“Your decision to withdraw at the last moment — explicitly in response to the Center’s recent renaming, which honors President Trump’s extraordinary efforts to save this national treasure — is classic intolerance and very costly to a non-profit arts institution,” the Times quoted Grenell as saying in a letter to Redd.
“This is your official notice that we will seek $1 million in damages from you for this political stunt,” the Times quoted Grenell’s letter as saying.
A spokesperson for the Trump-Kennedy Center did not immediately respond to an inquiry from the Washington Blade asking if the center still planned to file that lawsuit and whether it planned to file suits against some of the other musicians who recently cancelled their performances following the name change.
In a follow-up story published on Dec. 29, the New York Times reported that a prominent jazz ensemble and a New York dance company had canceled performances scheduled to take place on New Year’s Eve at the Kennedy Center.
The Times reported the jazz ensemble called The Cookers did not give a reason for the cancellation in a statement it released, but its drummer, Billy Hart, told the Times the center’s name change “evidently” played a role in the decision to cancel the performance.
Grenell released a statement on Dec. 29 calling these and other performers who cancelled their shows “far left political activists” who he said had been booked by the Kennedy Center’s previous leadership.
“Boycotting the arts to show you support the arts is a form of derangement syndrome,” the Times quoted him as saying in his statement.
Reports say woman killed by ICE was part of LGBTQ community
U.S. in midst of ‘genocidal process against trans people’: study
Gay Va. State Sen. Ebbin resigns for role in Spanberger administration
Steny Hoyer, the longest-serving House Democrat, to retire from Congress
Just say no to the felon in the White House
Safer Ways to Pay for Online Performances and Queer Events
Two pioneering gay journalists to speak at Thursday event
Blade travels to Colombia after U.S. forces seize Maduro in Venezuela
Queer highlights of the 2026 Critics Choice Awards: Aunt Gladys, that ‘Heated Rivalry’ shoutout and more
LGBTQ groups to join Spanberger inaugural parade
-
Sponsored4 days agoSafer Ways to Pay for Online Performances and Queer Events
-
District of Columbia3 days ago
Two pioneering gay journalists to speak at Thursday event
-
Colombia3 days ago
Blade travels to Colombia after U.S. forces seize Maduro in Venezuela
-
a&e features3 days ago
Queer highlights of the 2026 Critics Choice Awards: Aunt Gladys, that ‘Heated Rivalry’ shoutout and more
