Local
Levine loses Lt. guv and delegate races in Va. primary
Three other Va. LGBTQ delegates secure nomination for re-election
Virginia House of Delegates member Mark Levine (D-Alexandria) lost his bid to become the state’s first gay lieutenant governor on Tuesday by finishing in third place in the Democratic primary with 11.2 percent of the vote in a seven-candidate race.
In a development that surprised some political observers, Levine also lost his primary race for the Democratic nomination to keep his House of Delegates seat to Alexandria Vice Mayor Elizabeth Bennett-Parker by a margin of 59.3 percent to 40.6 percent of the vote.
Under Virginia’s election law, Levine was allowed to run for the two offices at the same time, enabling him to secure renomination for his delegate seat if he won the primary for that seat while losing his race for lieutenant governor.
Virginia Del. Hala Ayala (D-Prince William County) won the primary for the lieutenant governor’s race with 37.3 percent of the vote. She had been endorsed by Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D), a strong LGBTQ rights supporter.
Former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, another longtime supporter of LGBTQ rights, was the decisive winner in the Democratic primary for governor, finishing with 62.1 percent of the vote in a five-candidate race. Under Virginia’s constitution, governors cannot run for a second consecutive term but can run again after leaving office for four years. Northam also endorsed McAuliffe.
Levine, an attorney, has been an outspoken supporter of LGBTQ rights issues in the House of Delegates, where he has served since 2016. He currently holds the seat for the 45th District, which includes most of the City of Alexandria and parts of Arlington and Fairfax Counties.
Although he lost his bid for renomination for his delegate seat, Levine came in first place in Alexandria in his race for lieutenant governor, capturing 30 percent of the vote in that seven-candidate race.
Meanwhile, three other LGBTQ members of the House of Delegates, all Democrats, easily secured renomination for their seats and will be running in the November general election against Republican nominees.
However, in what may have been yet another surprise to some LGBTQ activists, gay Virginia State Sen. Adam Ebbin (D-Alexandria) endorsed Bennett-Parker over Levine in that House of Delegates race. Ebbin, who is not up for re-election this year, told the Washington Blade he considered Bennett-Parker an excellent candidate who is highly qualified to serve in the Virginia General Assembly.
Levine couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
The other LGBTQ candidates who won renomination include Danica Roem (D-Prince William County), who four years ago became the nation’s first transgender person to win election and to be seated in a U.S. state legislature. Roem was not challenged in the Democratic primary this year.
Similarly, gay House of Delegates member Mark Sickles (D-Fairfax County) was unchallenged in Tuesday’s primary, securing his nomination to run against a Republican in the November general election.
Lesbian Del. Dawn Adams (D-Richmond) did face an opponent in the Tuesday primary, which she won decisively by a margin of 61.1 percent to 38.8 percent against challenger Kyle Elliott.
In the hotly contested race for six at-large seats on the Alexandria City Council, 13 candidates, including two gay men, competed for the seats. One of the two gay candidates, Kirk McPike, who currently serves as chief of staff for gay U.S. Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.), won the nomination for one of the seats by finishing in 6th place with 7.2 percent of the vote.
Gay civic activist James Lewis, who serves as vice chair of the Alexandria Traffic and Parking Board, finished in 8th place with 5.9 percent of the vote, disqualifying him from being nominated for one of the six seats up for election.
Under election rules for the primary in the Alexandria City Council race, the highest six vote getters are declared the winners. The candidate who finished in first place, John Taylor Chapman, received just 12 percent of the vote.
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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