Local
Money race underway in Maryland
Up to $7 million needed for marriage fight; O’Malley to host beach fundraiser
Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley and House Speaker Michael E. Busch are scheduled to co-host a June 26 fundraiser in Ocean City for Marylanders for Marriage Equality. Tickets for the event start at $1,000. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
Marylanders for Marriage Equality is confident it can run a “winning campaign” to defeat a voter referendum seeking to kill Maryland’s same-sex marriage law on a budget of between $5 million and $7 million, according to the organization’s campaign manager, Josh Levin.
“We feel good about that budget,” Levin told the Blade last week. “We feel like we’ll be able to do the things we need to do thanks to the effort of our coalition and our partners who are going to be talking to voters, who are going to be helping us in ways that I’m not sure are always the case in other campaigns.”
Levin’s comments came at a time when virtually all of the state’s political observers believe opponents of the marriage equality law will obtain far more than the number of petition signatures they need to place the referendum on the ballot in the Nov. 6 election.
The referendum language, which the Maryland State Board of Elections won’t draft until August, is expected to ask voters to approve or overturn a law passed earlier this year by the Maryland General Assembly legalizing same-sex marriage. The law also allows churches and religious organizations to refuse to perform such marriages.
Both sides have begun raising and spending money to wage their respective campaigns for and against the same-sex marriage law. But Maryland’s election law doesn’t require the campaigns to publicly disclose the amount of money they have raised or spent until Oct. 12, when the first of three campaign finance reports for a state referendum is due to be filed, according to Jared DeMarinis, a spokesperson for the election board.
He said the second campaign finance report must be filed on Oct. 26 and the third on Nov. 27, 21 days after the election.
DeMarinis said the election law requires organizations seeking to place the marriage equality law on the ballot in a referendum to file finance reports during the petition gathering process, which began earlier this year and continues through June 30. Those groups were required to disclose the receipt and expenditure of funds linked solely to the petition process during the past several months.
In what may come as a surprise to advocates of campaign finance disclosure laws, Marylanders for Marriage Equality isn’t required to disclose the amount of money it raises and spends and the names of its first round of donors until Oct. 12. The identity of its donors that contribute money between Oct. 26 and Election Day on Nov. 6 won’t have to be disclosed until 21 days after the election.
When asked last week by the Blade how much the campaign has raised so far, Levin said, “I don’t think I’m going to comment on that one.”
Some LGBT rights advocates in Maryland and elsewhere have expressed concern that Marylanders for Marriage Equality will need as much as $10 million to $12 million to wage an effective campaign to defeat the referendum and allow the same-sex marriage law to take effect.
These advocates, most of whom spoke to the Blade on condition that they not be identified, said Maryland’s marriage equality campaign will be competing for big donors and other contributors with the marriage equality campaigns in Maine, Minnesota and Washington State, where similar marriage referendums will be on the ballot in November.
The big donors, both gay and LGBT-supportive allies, are also being lobbied heavily to make large contributions to President Obama’s re-election campaign, placing further strain on the pool of funds needed by the pro-same-sex marriage campaigns.
“I don’t see Maryland having a very easy time pulling $10 million out to run this,” said Andy Szekeres, a professional fundraiser from Denver, who’s gay.
Szekeres is the former partner in a Denver-based fundraising company that raised more than $37 million for various political campaigns over the past several years.
“I think they’re grossly underestimating the resources that they’re going to need,” he said of Marylanders for Marriage Equality.
According to Szekeres, who was hired last year to help the statewide LGBT group Equality Maryland boost its fundraising efforts, the marriage equality side in Maryland must purchase TV ads in the expensive Washington, D.C. and Baltimore media markets.
He said he sees no evidence so far that the campaign has begun to buy and reserve TV ad time now, when the cost is lower than it will be in September and October, when the referendum campaign heats up and the Obama campaign and Maryland congressional candidates flood the airways with TV commercials.
Evan Wolfson, executive director of the national marriage equality advocacy group Freedom to Marry, said his group is “deeply embedded” in the marriage referendum campaigns in Maine, Minnesota, and Washington State and is helping those campaigns raise money. He told the Blade that the money needed to win marriage equality in those three states “will well exceed $25 million.”
He said Maryland’s marriage equality campaign will need “$10 million plus” to successfully fend off the referendum seeking to kill the state’s same-sex marriage law.
Wolfson has declined to comment on why Freedom to Marry has not joined the coalition of groups that that formed Marylanders for Marriage Equality. Campaign finance reports filed in Maine, Minnesota, and Washington show that Freedom to Marry has contributed thousands of dollars to the marriage equality campaigns in those states.
Levin and other officials with Marylanders for Marriage Equality dispute Szekeres’ and Wolfson’s assessment of the campaign’s fundraising needs, saying they believe they will have the resources to run an aggressive and effective grassroots campaign throughout the state.
“I’m not worried,” said Levin. “We’ve got a lot of folks around the country who are working on this issue and we’ve got four states where it’s on the ballot. And I think that supporters around the country are going to look at all four states. Hopefully they’ll support all four.”
Levin pointed to a poll last month commissioned by the campaign and conducted by the firm Public Policy Polling showing support for the same-sex marriage law leading among likely voters in Maryland by a margin of 57 percent to 37 percent. The same poll showed the marriage equality side leading among black voters in the state by a margin of 55 percent to 36 percent.
The poll findings, released on May 24, showed a dramatic increase in support of same-sex marriage by black voters following President Obama’s announcement that he and first lady Michelle Obama believe gay and lesbian couples should be allowed to legally marry.
Although the Public Policy Polling poll was commissioned by Marylanders for Marriage Equality, officials with the group note that a separate ABC News-Washington Post poll released around the same time found that 59 percent of blacks across the country expressed support for same-sex marriage.
“I think we’ve opened some eyes and changed some minds about Maryland here in the last couple of months,” Levin said. “Our poll numbers are probably the best in the country of the states where we are looking at this issue on the ballot right now.”
He added, “I know that I’m learning from my fellow campaign managers in the other states about what’s working there. We’re talking. We’re trying to work together. It’s not a rivalry. It’s a partnership. We all want to move this forward.”
Marylanders for Marriage Equality spokesperson Kevin Nix also points out that the group’s coalition partners are especially influential and knowledgeable on Maryland politics. They include the NAACP of Maryland, the ACLU of Maryland, Equality Maryland, the Human Rights Campaign, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) of Maryland, among other organizations.
LGBT advocates say the marriage equality side is likely to benefit from Maryland’s status as a solid Democratic state expected to vote strongly for Obama in the presidential election taking place at the same time as the marriage referendum. With polls showing that Democratic voters in general and Obama voters in particular tend to support same-sex marriage rights at higher levels than other voters, the presidential election will likely be a major boost to the campaign in favor of Maryland’s marriage equality law.
Polls conducted earlier this year also showed that as many as 30 percent of Maryland voters saying they plan to vote for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney also support same-sex marriage.
LGBT advocates in Maryland are also hopeful that Gov. Martin O’Malley, who enjoys widespread popularity throughout the state, will follow through with his promise to campaign vigorously in support of the same-sex marriage law and help raise money for the campaign. O’Malley has been credited with playing a key role in persuading the legislature to pass the law.
O’Malley’s chief fundraising consultant, Colleen Martin Lauer of the fundraising firm Martin-Lauer Associates, is working with the campaign, Lauer told the Blade. She declined to provide details on what her firm is doing, deferring inquires to the campaign.
O’Malley and Maryland House Speaker Michael E. Busch (D-Anne Arundel County) are scheduled to co-host a June 26 fundraiser in Ocean City for Marylanders for Marriage Equality. According to the Washington Post, tickets for the event start at $1,000.
Szekeres said he’s rooting for the success of the Maryland campaign as well as the pro-marriage equality campaigns in Maine, Minnesota and Washington. But he said other states have had similarly strong coalitions, with polling numbers showing the same-sex marriage side ahead. He notes that same-sex marriage has lost in each of the 32 states that have had ballot measures on the issue.
The 2008 approval of California’s Proposition 8, which overturned that state’s gay marriage law, and the 2009 defeat of a same-sex marriage law approved by the Maine legislature that year were especially heartbreaking, Szekeres and others familiar with those ballot measures said.
California voters approved Proposition 8 by a margin of 52 to 48 percent following polling numbers showing the marriage equality side was ahead. Polls showed that Maine’s same-sex marriage law would survive the referendum vote shortly before voters rejected the law by a margin of 53 to 47 percent.
Opponents of a Maine same-sex marriage law passed by the state legislature initiated the 2009 referendum, which killed the law before it took effect. This year’s referendum in Maine was initiated by same-sex marriage supporters, who want Maine to become the first state to put a same-sex marriage law in place through a popular election.
“We lose these things 52 to 48 percent across the country,” said Szekeres. “I’ve been at these things and our polling showed we were much higher in Maine [in 2009] than we were. People lie to pollsters. They don’t want to be bigots to the pollsters but they are when they go vote.”
He and others familiar with same-sex marriage ballot campaigns have said TV ads by opponents that allege that gay marriage is harmful to children and the traditional family continue to succeed in persuading a majority of voters to turn against marriage equality.
“Again, if they think they can run this on a shoestring budget because 57 percent of the people six months out from the election tell pollsters they support us, that’s not going to happen,” said Szekeres in discussing the Maryland referendum. “There will be a lot of negative advertising and negative advertising works. And we just don’t seem to have an effective response.”
Nix said Marylanders for Marriage Equality retained the D.C.-based national advertising firm Dixon-Davis Media Group to prepare the campaign’s TV ads on behalf of the same-sex marriage law.
The firm’s website describes itself as a “full-service strategic communications company and advertising agency serving Democratic candidates, campaigns and causes.”
Nix said the campaign has also retained the Hart Research polling company to conduct internal polls to help the campaign develop the best possible messages for persuading voters to support marriage equality.
Matthew Crenson, professor emeritus of political science at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, said he has observed a “shift in the electorate” that is likely to break the gay marriage losing streak on ballot measures.
“I think there’s a better than 50-50 chance that Maryland will become the first state to approve gay marriage in a referendum,” he said.
“One decisive event was when the NAACP endorsed [marriage equality] because African Americans in Maryland, especially those closely attached to churches, have traditionally been opposed to gay marriage and gay rights,” he said.
“But the NAACP defined this as a civil rights issue, which is similar to the kind of issues that African Americans have raised in the past,” he said. “And I think that introduced a kind of shift in the electorate that makes it more than likely that [same-sex marriage] will pass.”
Maryland political observer Michael J. Wilson, a Montgomery County resident and former executive director of the national group Americans for Democratic Action, said he too senses a shift in the direction of voters upholding the same-sex marriage law.
“I think there’s reason to be hopeful,” he said, adding that the ability of the marriage equality side to turn out their supporters at the polls will be a crucial factor in the outcome.
“In Maryland, if you carry Baltimore City, Baltimore County, Montgomery County, and Prince George’s County by a big enough margin, you win a statewide election,” Wilson said. “If you carry those big counties you can win the state, even if the other counties go 60 to 40 against you.”
Michael K. Lavers contributed to this report.
District of Columbia
Fadi Jaber’s Middle Eastern background shapes Adams Morgan bakery
The Cakeroom is on 18th Street, N.W.
Fadi Jaber is the gay owner behind the Cakeroom’s bright pink facade on 18th Street, N.W. He combines his Middle Eastern background and American flavors to bring a nostalgic spread of desserts to Adams Morgan.
Born and raised in a U.S. compound in Saudi Arabia, Jaber first unlocked an interest in classic American desserts from his classmates.
“I was jealous that their moms would bring these delicious cupcakes to school when it was their birthdays, and my mom never made stuff like that. It was just grape leaves and hummus and very good Arabic food,” Jaber said.
After years of making boxed cake mixes in Saudi Arabia, Jaber tried a carrot cake from a friend’s wife from the U.S. He soon decided to make the recipe himself. When letting his parents sample the treat, Jaber’s mother suggested adding dates instead of carrots.
Now, Jaber sells the same date cake at the Cakeroom.
Jaber solidified his appreciation for American baked goods after a friend took him to Magnolia’s Bakery in New York. The visit inspired him to enroll in the Institute of Culinary Education.
“I just fell in love with the concept, and it was very much up my alley,” Jaber said. “I was already baking from scratch and making homemade style desserts that weren’t super chichi and elegant, but more just delicious and fun and nostalgic, and a throwback to people’s childhood.”
Upon leaving culinary school, Jaber moved to Jordan, where his parents relocated. He decided to leave his corporate job and open a bakery. According to Jaber, his father initially refuted the idea until he tried the desserts Jaber perfected in culinary school.
“He was part of the Palestinian diaspora. So, you know, given all the instability in his life having been forced out of their homes in 1948, it was really a very scary thought to add more instability by going out on your own and starting your own business,” Jaber said.
Jaber then opened Sugar Daddy’s, his first bakery, in Amman, Jordan, in 2007.
According to Jaber, the bakery was the first cupcake shop in the Middle East. He soon launched additional locations in Beirut, Lebanon, and Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
After six years, Jaber decided to return to the U.S. Jaber noted that he had “always longed” to live there, but he struggled to make his cakes a novel concept to an American audience.
“I’m kind of bringing pasta to the Italians, in a sense, where my cupcakes were very unique in Jordan, they wouldn’t be as unique in D.C.,” Faber said. “But my mom had confidence. She didn’t even bat an eye, and she was like, ‘I think you should do it.’”
Years prior, Jaber began visiting Washington while attending the College of William & Mary. Upon the move, he settled on Washington as a less competitive market than New York, citing his appreciation for the city’s international feel, architecture and nature.
After recruiting investors, Jaber opened Sugar Daddy’s in Adams Morgan in December 2013. However, upon being struck with a cease and desist letter from a bakery in Ohio with a similar name, Jaber experimented with 20 different names for the business.
Finally, he settled on the Cakeroom in the summer of 2014.
“I actually got some calls from D.C. government employees thanking me for the name change, because they said Sugar Daddy’s didn’t look good when they would Google it on their work laptops,” Jaber said, jokingly.
As for Jaber’s identity as a gay man, he notes that he hopes customers visit the Cakeroom because “they like our product” rather than due to his sexual identity. Still, he notes that operating the bakery in an LGBTQ-friendly city increases business opportunities to bake for LGBTQ weddings.
“A lot of people know me as the owner, I’m the face behind the brand. People in D.C. know that I’m gay, so I think we do get some business that way, but I would hate for people to just support my business because of my sexual orientation,” Jaber said.
Jaber manages the Cakeroom remotely, focusing on online orders, deliveries, scheduling, ordering, cash management, and more. He notes that while most days are routine, “at least two, three times a week there’s some firefighting that needs to happen.”
While Jaber does not intend on opening another location of the Cakeroom, he hopes to continue managing the business for another decade.
“I’ve been in this industry for 18 years,” Jaber said. “So if I can just keep it afloat, that would be my hope. It gives me purpose on a daily basis.”
Jaber’s top recommendations from the Cakeroom’s array of sweets include Nutella cookies, the date cake, and the carrot cake.
The carrot cake is based on the dessert that first inspired Jaber to pursue a career in baking.
“I think I altered it just a tiny bit, but for the most part, it is based off of the original recipe that I got from my friend’s wife,” Jaber said.
District of Columbia
D.C.’s LGBTQ bookstore moves to new location
Little District Books’ larger shop to host more authors, book club events
Little District Books, D.C.’s only LGBTQ bookstore, in early October moved its store from the Barracks Row section of Capitol Hill to a new, larger space at 631 Pennsylvania Ave., S.E. in a more prominent location on Capitol Hill less than a block from the Eastern Market Metro station.
The store, which describes itself on its website as a “queer owned and operated” independent bookstore that “celebrates LGBTQ+ authors and stories,” first opened in its previous location on 8th Street, S.E. in June 2022.
At that time it became the first D.C. LGBTQ bookstore since 2009, when the city’s famed Lamda Rising LGBTQ bookstore closed its doors after its owner Deacon McCubbin retired.
Little District Books owner, D.C. attorney Patrick Kern, said his main reason for moving was to find a larger space in which to provide a larger number of books and to host larger events. Among the events he said his store has hosted in the previous location were author book-signings and meetings of a number of book clubs.
“We started looking for somewhere that would allow us to do a lot more,” he told the Washington Blade. “So, in the old space we had like 2,800 different titles,” he said. “And in this new space we will be able to go up significantly. We are probably closer to 4200 titles at this point. We will likely get closer to 5000 next year.”
According to Kern, the old location was only about 700 square feet, with the new location providing nearly 2,000 square feet.
“We have a lot of plans,” Kern said. “We will launch a little café corner later this year, so we’ll have a more dynamic in-space experience,” he said. “We’re going to have a little tea counter where you can buy hot drinks” as well as cold non-alcoholic beverages, he said.
Kern has said Little District Books carries books that cover a wide range of topics and stories, both fiction and nonfiction.
“We have books by LGBT authors about LGBT topics. We have books by LGBT authors about non-LGBT topics,” he said. “And then I have LGBT stories that are written by non-LGBT people as well,” he told the Blade in a July 2023 interview.
He told the Blade last week that he was hopeful that the new location’s larger space, that will allow more and larger events and more books, will continue to prompt people to come into the store to buy their books rather than buy them through online sites where most books are now sold.
District of Columbia
Second gay candidate announces run for Ward 1 D.C. Council seat
Miguel Trindade Deramo among candidates seeking Brianne Nadeau’s seat
Gay Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Miguel Trindade Deramo on Nov. 18 announced his candidacy for the Ward 1 D.C. Council seat being vacated by incumbent Councilmember Brianne Nadeau.
Trindade Deramo, 39, became at least the sixth Democratic candidate competing for the Ward 1 Council seat in the city’s June 16, 2026, Democratic primary. Among his competitors is fellow gay Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Brian Footer, who announced his candidacy in July.
Footer serves as chairman of ANC 1E, which represents the city’s Howard University, Park View, and Pleasant Plains neighborhoods in Ward 1.
Trindade Deramo serves as chairman of ANC 1B, which, according to its website, represents the neighborhoods of lower Columbia Heights, Cardozo, LeDroit Park, North Shaw, Meridian Hill, the U Street Corridor, and lower Georgia Avenue. The U Street Corridor is where multiple nightlife establishments are located, including at least 10 gay bars.
“I’m running for D.C. Council because I believe this community deserves a leader who will roll up their sleeves and turn progressive policy into action,” Trindade Deramo said in a statement announcing his candidacy. “Together we can unlock Ward 1’s full potential by tackling affordability, reimagining public safety, and addressing local neighborhood concerns,” he said.
His announcement statement says he was born in Michigan, where his mother immigrated from Brazil. It says he came to D.C. in 2012 to train as a U.S. Foreign Service Officer at the State Department. It says he chose to make D.C. his home in 2016 and says he “now lives at 14th and Chapin with his partner, Luis.”
A biographic write-up on his education and career posted on his campaign website states, “Miguel attended Northeastern University, where he immersed himself in LGBTQ+ activism and established himself as a student leader.”
It says that after graduating with a degree in international relations and political science, he became a Foreign Service Officer at the State Department. According to the write-up, after serving a tour in São Paulo, he pursued a graduate degree in Islamic studies at McGill University in Montreal and he later began another federal job as an intelligence analyst at the Department of Homeland Security.
“However, after witnessing the erosion of democratic norms under the Trump administration, the hyper-militarized response to the Black Lives Matter movement, and the insurrection of Jan. 6, Miguel acted on his deep sense of civic duty by leaving the federal government and joining the pro-democracy movement,” his campaign write-up says.
It adds that he soon became involved in electoral reform organizations and a short time later emerged as one of the lead organizers of the D.C. Initiative 83 campaign, in which D.C. voters overwhelming approved a ranked choice voting system as well as open D.C. primary elections.
The June 16, 2026, D.C. Democratic primary in which Trindade Deramo and Footer will be competing against each other and at least four other candidates will be the first time the city’s ranked choice voting system will be in place for D.C. voters.
Under the system, in elections where there are more than two candidates competing, voters can mark their first choice and their second, third, or more choices if they wish to do so. In the Ward 1 Democratic primary next June LGBTQ voters as well as all other voters will have the option of voting for Trindade Deramo or Footer as their first or second choice.
When asked by the Washington Blade what message he has for LGBTQ voters in Ward 1 who will be choosing among two gay candidates, Trindade Deramo said, among other things, he will point out that he has represented the U Street Corridor in his role as an ANC member.
“A huge mission of mine is to make that space for everyone,” he said. “And U Street unites everyone. All the different people from all over the city come there for theater, for clubbing, for thinking, for eating, whatever,” he added. “And that includes LGBTQ+ people.”
Footer didn’t immediately respond to a request by the Blade for comment on Trindade Deramo’s candidacy.
Trindade Deramo’s campaign website can be accessed here:
Brian Footer’s campaign website can be accessed here:
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Everything is Everything
