Equality Fairfax

A campaign mailer sent by Virginia State Senator Jay O’Brien attacks challenger George Barker for his support of gay issues, distorting comments made by Barker at an Equality Fairfax sponsored candidate forum.  The mailer is attached to this posting.

It is a shame that a candidate is still use “gay-baiting” tactics to attack his opponent. I am especially disappointed that this happened in Fairfax County as I would have thought that Fairfax County was way past using gay people as a politcal whipping dog. 

This past month Equality Fairfax hosted two candidate forums for Virginia Senate and House contested races. These were the first ever candidate forums that EF sponsored, and we had good turnout from the candidates — attracting both Republicans and Democrats for truly non-partisan events. So, I’m even more disappointed that such a worthwhile public event organized to educate and inform the voters of Fairfax County about issues important to the GLBT community was usurped to be one of the sources attributable for the anti-gay comments contained in the campaign mailer. 

The supportive comment’s of one Senate candidate, George Barker, were taken out of context and twisted such that the flyer did not reflect Barker’s actual comments. Click on audio podcast for a recording of Barker’s comments at the forum.

Candidate Donahue and Delegate Rust

This episode is part 2 of the House of Delegates forum and covers the 86th district (Herndon, Oak Hill and the Sterling Park area of Loudoun County). This race is between the incumbent, Delegate Tom Rust and challenger Jay Donahue.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:53 — 28.1MB)

Candidate Simmons and Delegate Caputo

This episode is the first of two for the House of Delegates forum held on October 9, 2007 at the Greenbriar Community Center. This part contains the audio for the 40th house district (Delegate Tim Hugo vs. challenger Rex Simmons) and the 67th house district (Delegate Chuck Caputo vs. challenger Marc Cadin). Unfortunately Delegate Hugo and Mr. Cadin did not attend the forum and so Delegate Caputo and Mr. Simmons are answering questions together though they are not running against each other.

This was our first attempt at recording the audio ourselves and, unfortunately, Murphy and his infamous law struck causing us to lose the first 47 minutes of recorded audio. This included the opening remarks from EF president Sarah Gustafson and EF board member and forum moderator Doug Reimel as well as all the audio from the 34th house district (an open seat being run for by Dave Hunt and Margaret Vanderhye). Losing this audio was a major disapointment.

Because of this audio loss, the program audio begins with Delegate Caputo’s opening remarks already in progress.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:57 — 21.3MB)

Candidate Oleszek

This is part two of the Equality Fairfax State Senate Forum held on September 27, 2007 at the Metropolitan Community Church of Northern Virginia. This is for the 37th senate district. This race is between incumbent Ken Cucinelli and challenger Janet Oleszek. Senator Cucinelli did not attend, citing a prior commitment, nor did he choose to submit a written statement.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 17:16 — 7.9MB)

Senator Devolites-Davis and Candidate Petersen

This is part three of the Equality Fairfax State Senate Forum held on September 27, 2007 at the Metropolitan Community Church of Northern Virginia. This part is for the 34th senate district race between incumbent Jeannemarie Devolites-Davis and challenger Chap Petersen.

Mr. Petersen tended to wander away from his microphone as he spoke and so his audio quality at times is less than ideal. The audio was cleaned up as best as possible but a few sections still are fairly low in volume.

The direct-to-CD recording system used at the event reached the end of a CD during Senator Devolites-Davis’ closing comments so the last minute or so of her comments were not recorded.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 54:46 — 25.1MB)

Candidate Barker

This is part four of the Equality Fairfax State Senate Forum held on September 27, 2007 at the Metropolitan Community Church of Northern Virginia. This is for the 39th senate district and is between incumbent Jay O’Brien and challenger George Barker.

Senator O’Brien did not attend citing a prior commitment but he did submit a written statement which can be heard in this section.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:24 — 11.2MB)

Sarah Gustafson

This is part one of the Equality Fairfax State Senate Forum held on September 27, 2007 at the Metropolitan Community Church of Northern Virginia. It contains remarks from EF’s president Sarah Gustafson and EF board member and forum moderator Doug Reimel.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 8:59 — 4.1MB)

Well, last night was a very successful event for Equality Fairfax when we held our first ever state legislative candidate forum with our “Putting the ‘Fair’ in Fairfax” Senate Discussion Forum.

We were a bit nervous at first because we weren’t sure where some of our candidates were, but apparently according to a reporter from the Connection, that’s par for the course at these forums. Candidates apparently tend to come and go during these forums, which is understandable given the hectic nature of campaign seasons and the importance of voter contact events. As organizers, however, it is nice when the attendees give you a warning that they’ll be late!

We are so grateful to all four candidates who appeared, Janet Oleszek, Jeannemarie Devolites-Davis, Chap Petersen, and George Barker, for appearing at our group forum and discussing our issues.

Without getting into too much detail just yet, let me say, if you love political drama, you’re gonna love hearing about the exchange in the 34th District race forum. There’s already been a post about it over at Raising Kaine.

Stay tuned for some written recaps of the evening. Also, if we have suitable audio quality on our recording, we plan to put three podcasts on our web site for our members and friends who were not able to attend to listen, one for each race.

You may begin to see other reporting from the event in some area papers as reporters from the Washington Post, The Falls Church News-Press, the Connection newspapers, and the Richmond Times-Dispatch, at least, were in attendance.

Thanks again to MCC NOVA for allowing us to host the event in their sanctuary, and thank you to all the candidates who took the time to address our community. most importantly, thank you to the 50 or so members and friends of Equality Fairfax who showed up to hear what the candidates had to say to our community.

I wanted to jot down some quick facts on the records of the two candidates who will meet in person tomorrow night for the “Putting the ‘Fair’ in Fairfax” State Senate Candidate Discussion Forum. Both State Senator Jeannemarie Devolites-Davis and former state Delegate Chap Petersen are scheduled to attend the event. We thought it would be useful to present a few facts about the candidates’ histories prior to the event.

Candidates Janet Oleszek and George Barker in the 37th and 39th State Senate districts will also be in attendance, but their opponents in those races, Sen. Ken Cuccinelli and Sen. Jay O’Brien both will not be in attendance citing other commitments. Both campaigns not in attendance have been given an opportunity to submit statements that could be read at the forum.

In the 34th Distrct race between Sen. Devolites-Davis and former Del. Petersen, both candidates voted to pass the infamous “HB 751″ or “Affirmation of Marriage Act” in 2004, Devolites-Davis as a member of the State Senate, and Petersen as a member of the state House of Delegates. Petersen received a lot of criticism from within the GLBT community after his vigorous support of the measure in 2004 and during his subsequent unsuccessful run for the Lt. Governor nomination in 2005. Devolites-Davis received criticism for her support as well, within the GLBT community.

Devolites-Davis voted to support the so-called “marriage amendment” or the Marshall-Newman constitutional amendment in 2006. Petersen, although no longer a member of the legislature in 2006, was on record as supporting such an amendment during the 2005 session and during his run for Lieutenant Governor. However, prior to the 2006 election, Petersen announced (see his comments here) that he would be voting against putting the amendment into Virginia’s constitution in its sacred and long-standing Bill of Rights.

Both candidates have supported non-discrimination laws and policies. In fact, in the 2007 session, Senator Devolites-Davis was the chief patron of a public employment non-discrimination bill that would have codified Governor Kaine’s non-discrimination order in state public employment. The bill failed in committee by only one vote along party lines (7-8).

Also recently, Petersen’s membership in the Truro Parish congregation in Fairfax that voted to leave the US Episcopalian Church over the inclusion of gay & lesbian people and their relationships in congregational life, has been an issue discussed in the Virginia blogosphere.

Both candidates have a record of engaging on our issues and we are delighted to have them in attendance tomorrow evening. This is by no means an exhaustive synopsis of their records, but it’s a starting point.

Tomorrow’s forum will be an excellent opportunity for these candidates to discuss not only what they’ve done in the past on our issues, but what we can expect for them to do in the future if they are elected this November. We look forward to an engaging evening and hope the members and friends of Equality Fairfax will show up in force to engage these two candidates on important issues to our community!

What do candidates for the Virginia Senate and House races have to say about issues impacting the GLBT community? Come to the Putting the “Fair” in Fairfax Discussion Forum to find out. This is our chance to hear directly from the candidates about issues impacting our community. Candidates include:

• 34th Senate: Jeannemarie Devolites Davis and Chap Petersen (both attending)
• 37th Sentate: Ken Cuccinelli (unable to attend) and Janet Oleszek (attending)
• 39th Senate: Jay O’Brien (unable to attend) and George Barker (attending)

Equality Fairfax, Equality Virginia, Virginia Partisans and Log Cabin Republicans are sponsoring this non-partisan discussion forum to hear the views of candidates running for state-wide office for the VA General Assembly.

Candidates representing Fairfax, Centreville, Chantilly, Burke, Vienna, Oakton, McLean, Springfield, Clifton and Fairfax Station will be in attendance.

Bring all of your friends, family and other allies to these important community meetings. Turnout is important — elected officials in Virginia need to know that our issues DO matter.

Please take a couple hours out of your busy schedule to attend these worthwhile community events.

Senate Discussion Forum

Thursday, September 27

Social gathering time-6:15pm-6:45pm

Discussion Forum-6:45pm-8:45pm

MCC NOVA can be a little hard to find if you haven’t been there before. It is in the block on townhouses behind the Safeway. 

MCC NOVA
10383 Democracy Ln
Fairfax, VA 22030