Local
‘Incumbent’ slate wins Stein Club elections
New officers emerge under banner of diversity
Angela Peoples won election as the Stein Club’s president Monday night in a hotly contested race. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
The Gertrude Stein Democratic Club’s vice president for legislative and political affairs, Angela Peoples, won election as the club’s president Monday night in a hotly contested race against transgender activist and longtime club member Jeri Hughes.
Peoples ran on a slate that she and Stein Club President Martin Garcia organized after the two decided to swap positions, with Garcia stepping down as president to run for the vice presidential position currently held by Peoples.
Peoples won by a vote of 49 to 24. Garcia ran unopposed and was declared the winner of the vice president’s position by acclamation.
Stein Club members supporting both Peoples and Hughes said both candidates were well qualified to serve as president but a majority chose Peoples as part of a new, younger leadership team that won control of the club in its 2012 election on a platform of reinvigorating the organization by aggressively building a larger, more diverse membership.
“This year we saw a lot of energy and enthusiasm and I think we’re going to carry that into 2014,” Peoples said after the election results were announced. “We’re going to continue to raise money, we’re going to reach out and hold candidates accountable to move our community and our issues forward,” she said, referring to next year’s D.C. mayoral and City Council elections.
“The Stein Club will be fine,” Hughes told the Blade in a statement after the election. “It was a fair election. I truly appreciate the support that I received.”
The Stein Club, which celebrated its 37th anniversary in October, is the city’s largest LGBT political organization.
Peoples and Garcia earlier this month invited three new members of the club — Diana Bui, Terrance Laney and Bobbie Strang — to join their slate of candidates for vice president for administration, treasurer and secretary respectively. Laney and Strang won in uncontested races after incumbent treasurer Barrie Daneker chose not to run for re-election and incumbent secretary Jimmie Luthuli ran for vice president for administration.
Shortly after Luthuli announced her intent to run for the vice presidential post Bui entered the race for the position as a member of the Garcia-Peoples slate.
During a candidate discussion period on Monday, Bui described herself as a “Vietnamese-American queer” who has worked in the fields of public relations, media and social justice advocacy. She said she would become a “fearless” advocate for LGBT equality if elected to the position.
Luthuli, who was not part of the Garcia-Peoples slate in the 2012 club election, said her status as a longtime club member and LGBT rights advocate would bring continuity and more experience to the club’s leadership team.
Bui beat Luthuli in the race for the vice president for administration post by a vote of 40 to 31.
Biographical information on members of their slate released by Garcia and Peoples says Bui serves as co-chair of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum D.C. Chapter. She also heads the immigration advocacy work for the Asian Pacific Labor Alliance in the role of membership and chapter coordinator, according to the biographical information.
Laney, the club’s treasurer-elect, recently worked on the successful marriage equality campaign in Rhode Island and previously served as special assistant to the CEO at the LGBT advocacy group National Black Justice Coalition.
Strang, who will assume her duties as Stein secretary in January, has been active with the D.C. Trans Coalition, Gays and Lesbians Opposing Violence (GLOV), and the D.C. Center, information released by the club says. It says she has also worked at the D.C. Office of Latino Affairs and currently works as the first openly transgender employee at the D.C. Department of Employment Services.
Monday night’s election came just under a year after Garcia, Peoples and Villano organized a successful challenge to a slate organized by then-Stein Club President Lateefah Williams, resulting in the ouster of the club’s established leadership.
Supporters credited Garcia, a political consultant, with helping to recruit as many as 50 new members in December 2012 to back his slate, prompting Hughes and other longtime members of the club to complain that the new group “stacked” the election.
But Garcia and others, including many of the club’s longtime members, acknowledged that signing up new members immediately prior and up to the time of the election meeting was permitted under the club’s bylaws.
Earlier this year the club voted to change the bylaws to require that people be members of the club for at least 30 days to be eligible to vote in a club officers election.
Members of the Stein Club cast ballots for their 2014 leadership. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
Correction: This story originally reported that the vote for president was 73-24 instead of 49-24. We regret the error.
Delaware
Delaware fines Rehoboth bar $15,000 for discriminating against trans woman
Hideout told patron she had to use men’s room due to gender marker on driver’s license
The Delaware Human and Civil Rights Commission voted to fine Hideout Arcade Bar & Grille $15,000 last month due to a discrimination complaint filed by a trans woman over her use of the bathroom.
Katie Sorber, a transgender woman, said that on April 5, 2023, she was stopped by employees and told she could only use the men’s bathroom due to the “male” gender marker on her driver’s license. This occurred after Sorber presented her ID upon entering the bar and ordering a drink.
Sorber took to Facebook to complain about her experience at the bar after she was told to use the men’s bathroom.
On April 12, 2023, Sorber returned to the Hideout but was barred from entering due to her post on social media.
Following Sorber’s post, Bryan Derrickson, the owner of Hideout Arcade Bar & Grille, allegedly began enforcing a policy in which patrons had to use the bathroom that corresponded to the gender marker on their ID.
Derrickson was ordered to pay $10,000 to Sorber, $5,000 to the Special Administration Fund, as well as conduct anti-discrimination training with employees, remove the ban on Sorber from the establishment, and revise the bar’s bathroom policy.
The commission ruled that the bar and Derrickson had wrongfully discriminated against Sorber on the basis of her gender.
Derrickson’s explanations for the denial included safety concerns, a third-party patron complaint, and a reference to the health code. The panel found this to be inconsistent and lacking factual support upon cross-examination.
The case was evaluated under the Delaware Equal Accommodations Law, which explicitly prohibits discrimination and retaliation in places of public accommodation based on gender identity.
This was the second time that the bar has been fined for discriminating against a transgender woman. The bar received a $2,000 penalty in September of last year for denying a transgender woman entry in 2023.
Half of the fine went to Kathy Carpenter Brown, the trans woman who experienced the discrimination. Brown is the founder of TransLiance, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group in Delaware.
District of Columbia
Push to elect more LGBTQ ANC members yields results
31 of 43 known LGBTQ ANC members elected in 2024 seeking re-election
A 2026 list of candidates released by the D.C. Board of Elections shows that 31 of the 43 known LGBTQ candidates who won election in 2024 as Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners have filed the required petition signatures to be placed on the ballot this year to run for re-election.
The Washington Blade reported in 2024 that 43 known LGBTQ candidates won election to ANC seats that year in the November election
In a related development, the president of Capital Stonewall Democrats, D.C.’s largest local LGBTQ political group, said the group this year has recruited at least 39 LGBTQ candidates to run for Advisory Neighborhood Commission seats in the city’s Nov. 3 general election.
The group’s president, Stevie McCarty, an incumbent ANC member in the city’s Shaw neighborhood who is running for re-election, said the 39 candidates and possibly more responded to the group’s Queering ANCs campaign launched on July 7 that includes a website with detailed instructions for how best to run for an ANC seat.
“Since launching in early July, the site has drawn more than 20,000 views, and 39 candidates have used it to actually run,” McCarty said in a statement. He said he wasn’t sure if all the 39 candidates wanted to be identified as LGBTQ, and he was reviewing the list of incumbent LGBTQ ANC members who won election in 2024 to determine if any of the 39 candidates recruited were among those incumbents. He said he was not ready to release the names of the 39 candidates he said his group recruited to run for an ANC seat.
If none of the 39 candidates recruited by Capital Stonewall Democrats are among the 31 known LGBTQ ANC incumbents running for re-election, it would mean at least 70 LGBTQ ANC candidates will be on the city’s November election ballot.
McCarty said Capital Stonewall Democrats will send candidate questionnaires to the known LGBTQ ANC candidates as part of its process for endorsing candidates in the November election. He said he expects the group to help campaign for and provide financial support for the ANC candidates it endorses.
The D.C. local government is believed to be unique among U.S. cities in currently having 46 Advisory Neighborhood Commissions consisting of 345 single member districts in neighborhoods throughout the city in which unpaid Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners are elected for two-year terms.
The commissions are charged with considering a wide range of policies and programs impacting their neighborhoods, including traffic, parking, recreation, street improvements, zoning, liquor licenses, and economic development. Although ANCs do not have authority to set or reject policies or actions by city agencies, the agencies are required to give “great weight” to ANC recommendations, according to the law creating the ANCs.
“As an ANC member, I know firsthand how these seats shape our neighborhoods, from housing and public safety to sanitation,” McCarty said in the Capital Stonewall Democrats statement announcing the launch of the Queering ANCs campaign in July. “I’m proud to lead this effort to ensure more LGBTQ+ Washingtonians see themselves as leaders in their communities,” he said.
Some local LGBTQ activists, who asked not to be identified, said they were not aware of a significant boost in new LGBTQ ANC candidates from the Queering ANCs campaign. However, they praised the effort to recruit more LGBTQ ANC candidates and said the campaign could have yielded more candidates if it had started sooner than less than a month before the deadline for becoming a candidate.
McCarty said Capital Stonewall Democrats will continue to recruit LGBTQ D.C. residents to run as write-in candidates for ANC seats, especially in the 45 single member districts in which no candidate will be on the ballot. The Board of Elections candidate list shows many ANC single member districts that have just one candidate running without an opponent.
Following is a list of 33 known LGBTQ ANC candidates running in D.C.’s November 2026 election and the single member districts and neighborhoods in which they are running. All but two – Vita Rangel and J. Swiderski – are incumbents running for re-election. The Washington Blade will update this list if and when more LGBTQ ANC candidates become known.
1A04 – (Columbia Heights) Jeremy Sherman, he/him
1A10 – (Columbia Heights) Vita Rangel, she/ her [non-incumbent candidate]
1B03 – (Columbia Heights/U Street) J. Swiderski, they/he [non-incumbent candidate]
Jamie S. Sycamore, he/him
1B06 – (Columbia Heights/Meridian Hill) Miguel Trindade Deramo, he/him
1B07 – (U Street) Matthew Holden, he/him
1E01 – (Park View) Brad Howard, he/him
2B02 – (Dupont Circle) Jeffrey Rueckgauer, he/him
2B03 – (Dupont Circle) Vincent Slatt, he/him
2C01 – (Penn Quarter) Michael D. Shankle, he/him
2F05 – (Logan Circle) Christopher Dyer, he/him
2F07 – (Logan Circle) Kevin Cataldo, he/him
2G01 – (Shaw)Parker Griffin, he/him Howard Garrett, he/him
2G02 – (Shaw) Alexander ‘Alex’ Padro, he/him
2G04 – (Shaw) Steven McCarty, he/him
3B06 – (Wesley Heights) S. Robert Rodriquez, he/him
3F05 – (Van Ness/Cleveland Park) Adrian Jesus Iglesias, he/him
4B01 – (Takoma) Doug Payton, he/him
4B10 – (Lamond Riggs) Jinin Berry, she/her
4C06 – (Petworth) Christen Boss Hayes, they/them
4E02 – (16th Street Heights) Vince Micone, he/him
5B04 – (Brookland) Ra Amin, he/him
5B05 – (Brookland) Mónica Martínez López, she/her
5D05 – (Trinidad) Salvador Sauceda-Guzman, he/him
5F06 – (Eckington) Joe Bishop-Henchman, he/him
6B03 – (Capitol Hill) David Sobelsohn, he/him
6B09 – (Capitol Hill/Barney Circle) Karen Hughes, she/her
7C01 – (Deanwood) Brian Glover, he/him
7C03 – (Lincoln Heights) Carlos Richardson, he/him
7C04 (Deanwood) Anthony Lorenzo Green
7C08 – (Capitol View) Brandon M. Scott, he/him
8A01 – (Fairlawn) Tom Donohue, he, him
8B06 – (Garfield Heights) Marcus Thomas Hickman, he/him
Congress
Chris Van Hollen says the Democratic Party needs change. Is he the one to lead it?
Senator is backing anti-establishment Democrats across the country
By LEE O. SANDERLIN | The Democratic Party is having something of an identity crisis — losing to President Donald Trump twice in three elections will do that.
Should the party embrace anti-establishment figures who espouse progressive policy ideas like Medicare for all and rhetoric about unrigging the economy for the 1 percent? Or should Democrats try to appeal to moderates who want to return to semi-normalcy in a time of political upheaval?
Although he’s been in Congress since 2002, with key leadership roles throughout his tenure, Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, 67, counts himself firmly in the anti-establishment camp.
The rest of this article can be found on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
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