Month: October 2022

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News

Domestic murder

On October 25, Shawna Marie Natalie Murphy was arrested for the murder of her boyfriend, Matthew Sean Farrell, a locally-beloved publisher, writer, and connoisseur of the arts. PC: Rich Tarbell

On October 25, the Albemarle County Police Department arrested Shawna Marie Natalie Murphy for the murder of her boyfriend, Matthew Sean Farrell, at his home.

Shortly before 8:30am, the ACPD and Albemarle County Fire Rescue responded to a domestic disturbance report on the 2100 block of Stony Point Road. When officers arrived, they found Farrell dead from a gunshot wound.

Murphy, 38, was charged with second-degree murder and using a firearm in the commission of a felony. She had dated and lived with Farrell, 53, for several years, reports The Daily Progress.

The ACPD did not publicize the victim’s identity until October 27, citing investigative efforts. “A need for additional resources was determined by responding officers due to explosive materials found at the scene. Bomb technicians … cleared and disposed of explosives that were on the property. These materials posed no threat to the public or surrounding properties prior to their disposal,” read a press release.

Farrell, who grew up near Farmville, moved to Charlottesville in 1990 after college and a brief stint in the military. It was here where he became a locally-beloved publisher, writer, and connoisseur of the arts—or, as he told C-VILLE in a 2011 interview, “an arts person, a fop, and a dandy.” 

In 1991, Farrell, who earned a master’s degree in philosophy, founded Hypocrite Press, which published works by “local writers who are writing about Charlottesville,” he told C-VILLE. Published books include street to forest: a scattered guide for the charlottesville unresidenced, which Farrell described as a guidebook containing tips, commentary, and entertainment “for local homeless street persons, slackers, and train-hobo kids.” After publishing street to forest in 2010, Farrell handed out 100 free copies of the book, which involved around 30 local collaborators, to people experiencing homelessness downtown, and did not take profits from it.

In 1992, Farrell also opened a short-lived art gallery called Galerie Oktoberfaust inside the Jefferson Theater, and created a cable television variety show called “Let’s Get Lost,” reports The Daily Progress. 

In a 2002 letter, he requested C-VILLE and The Hook refer to him as “Downtown Charlottesville’s Leading Public Intellectual,” and support him in his effort. 

“I had been casting about for something I could be or do to continue my pattern of selfless and committed service to this town and its people I love more than anyone or anything. It was then this sweet yet low voice last night … made me to know the path,” wrote Farrell. “I realized then at its urging that I must rise to fill an urgent void … I must needs for the good of this community stretch myself as a coat to cover the puddle, that Charlottesville might cross unsoiled.”

“Brevo, I am now ‘Downtown Charlottesville’s Leading Public Intellectual,’” he continued. “I will make occasional vague cultural proclamations, occasionally challenge the proclamations of leading public intellectuals from elsewhere, occasionally meet with other leading public intellectuals from elsewhere, and otherwise uphold the distinction to the best of my abundant or adequate ability, with appropriate pomposity, loftiness of purpose, self-significance, and amorphous/ambiguous opining.”

Murphy is currently being held without bond at the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail.

Read C-VILLE’s 2011 interview with Farrell here.

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Arts Culture

Pick: The Great Rotumpkin

Jeff Dobrow's spooky projections transform the Rotunda at The Great Rotumpkin. Publicity photo.

Spooky, scary images send shivers down your spine at The Great Rotumpkin. The seasonal celebration blends the architecture of the Rotunda with pop-up projections to create a variety of haunting scenes featuring new designs from multimedia artist Jeff Dobrow. Eerie music accompanies visceral vignettes of dancing skeletons, ghostly graveyards, bubbling cauldrons, ghoulish pumpkins, and more.

Through 10/31. Free, 7pm. The Rotunda, UVA Grounds. arts.virginia.edu

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Arts Culture

Something borrowed

Selected pages from Studies of Ancient Masters (Gakko-jˉo), Kanˉo Tsunenobu (Japan, ca. 1695) Ink and color on silk and paper. Photo: The Fralin Museum of Art at UVA.

Remixing, riffing, playing with memes: These are artistic modes that we sometimes think of as belonging to our own time, as though it was only in the 20th century, and only in Western countries, that artists began to knowingly recycle material. Think Roy Lichtenstein, Beastie Boys, and anybody who’s used the image of RBG’s lace collars. But artmaking has involved self-conscious imitation for a lot longer, and in a lot more places—including several hundred years ago in Asia, as revealed in “Earthly Exemplars,” a small exhibition of Buddhist art now showing at The Fralin Museum of Art at UVA.

“The exhibition features materials mainly from the 17th through 19th centuries,” says curator Clara Ma. “That was a time when there was lots of cultural exchange and diplomatic exchange between Qing China and Tibet, and also there are connections between China and Edo Japan through trade.” In choosing pieces to highlight—from elaborate paintings called thangkas to sculpture to an astonishing painting on the leaf of a Bodhi tree—Ma hopes to demonstrate that China, Tibet, and Japan were involved in a complex swirl of cross-influences. 

Walking into the show at The Fralin, that concept probably wouldn’t hit you immediately. Instead, you might be struck by the delicacy and precision of, say, a painting from Tibet, made in the 17th or 18th century, showing the Goddess of the Victorious White Parasol. She has a long name (Ushnisha Sitatapatra), a thousand faces, and a thousand arms, which are actually depicted in a dizzying, overlapping arrangement like a sunburst or a bullseye. Her ferocious power—maybe even greater than a Supreme Court justice—contrasts with the serenity of the deities around her, and the loveliness of flowers and leaves.

Or you might be drawn to a thangka, also Tibetan, showing the life story of Pindola Bharadvaja, an arhat—a disciple of the Buddha, that is, venerated in his own right. In this piece, he sits on a throne in the center of the painting, surrounded by vignettes from his biography. The piece is lush and rich, even with a constrained palette of red, green, blue, and white; it conjures a whole world and a lifetime. And Ma says its landscape, and the ornate Chinese-style throne on which the arhat sits, are elements a Tibetan artist would have borrowed from the art of the Qing dynasty. “There would be missionaries or diplomats the Qing sent to Tibet with gifts of paintings, or vice versa,” she explains. “So the style or the composition, they got influenced through these exchanges.”

She says we can think of these connections like souvenirs—bringing home a new idea for how an image could look or a technology for making something, like the woodblock print that closes the show. But maybe an even better analogy is fashion. To get dressed is to refer to any number of cultures and histories, making oneself a living library of clothes. A Japanese album from around 1695, made by a court painter named Kanō Tsunenobu, amounts to an artistic wardrobe: Tsunenobu used the album to demonstrate his mastery of different painting styles, including the loose, poetic look of the paintings Ma highlights.

“The way he created it was to study Chinese painting at the court,” she says. “At the time, China was the center of Zen, and lots of Japanese monks went to China. They’d bring back a lot of the Chinese paintings. He’s making the claim, setting up that lineage for his own art school: ‘We have these deep connections, our school has this long history.’”

It sounds very modern, like a 21st-century piano student learning Bach one day and Scott Joplin the next. “I guess one way to see that is that these artists, for them to establish their own identity is not to come up with something totally new, it’s to connect themselves to different traditions.”

There’s even another layer of borrowing going on here, she points out—one that she wasn’t able to represent in this show. “They are all making connections to India,” she says, “but I didn’t select any Indian artworks. It’s all about these regions trying to connect back to India.”

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News

Shots fired

An October 23 shooting at Lucky Blue’s bar on the Downtown Mall killed one man and injured two women. Staff photo.

During the past two months, shootings have spiked in Charlottesville—most recently on and near the Downtown Mall—further increasing concern among local politicians, law enforcement, violence interrupters, and other community members. 

On October 23 at around 1am, the Charlottesville Police Department responded to a shots fired report on the Downtown Mall, where they found a man and two women who had been shot. Two men had been involved in a fight at Lucky Blue’s, and one took out a gun and fired multiple shots inside and outside the bar. The injured man, later identified as Devonn J. Wilson, was rushed to the hospital, where he died of his wounds. The two women, who were bystanders, sustained non-life threatening injuries, and, as of October 24, are recovering at the hospital. No arrests have been made.

“We believe this is an isolated incident and not connected with previous acts of gun violence,” said the Charlottesville Police Department in a press release, urging anyone with information regarding the shooting to contact police. 

Just three days before the fatal bar shooting, Commonwealth’s Attorney Joe Platania announced that the CPD had arrested and charged three juvenile males, ages 14 to 17, in relation to a shooting that occurred near the downtown Omni Hotel parking lot on October 15. Two male juveniles were injured during the shooting, and the three teens in custody face felony charges.

While the commonwealth’s attorney’s office has partnered with “various law enforcement agencies” to respond to the increase in shootings, “it will take broad community partnerships to turn the tide and stem the violence,” said Platania in a city press release. “We have committed parents, teachers, coaches … that can intervene and guide our youth.”

The B.U.C.K. Squad says it has been mentoring local youth, in addition to intervening in conflicts before they turn into shootings—the group reports it has performed 48 successful violence interruptions this year. However, the squad needs more resources to offer programming, like sports and field trips, that can deter young people from getting involved in illegal activities.

“These kids don’t have no outlet. We want to get them off the streets,” says Assistant Director Bryan Page. “We need to rescue these kids before they get the gun in their hand. Jail and stuff like that do not work—it makes you worse.”

With extra funding, the violence interrupters want to start a junior B.U.C.K. Squad, in addition to other violence prevention programs. “If the kids that’s doing the shooting … if we could pay them to be violence interrupters among their peers, then we can address the problem,” says Page.

Last year, the squad, which also runs a re-entry program, received $70,000 from Charlottesville City Council, but Page and Executive Director Herb Dickerson say that funding has run out. This year, the group received a $100,000 grant from the Department of Justice, but Dickerson expects that money to be gone by spring. He hopes the city will provide additional funding before then, allowing the group to ramp up hiring, too—it currently has around 15 members, and needs around 45 more people in order to put a violence interrupter team in all of the city’s predominantly Black neighborhoods, says Dickerson.

According to acting field operations head Capt. Tony Newberry, the CPD is currently down 30 active duty officers, which he believes has led to an increase in shootings—over the past six months, the department has responded to approximately 162 shots fired calls, including another recent gun-related homicide. On September 17, police responded to a call on the 300 block of Third Street NE, and discovered a man who had been shot. He was later identified as 29-year-old Daquain Anderson, and was taken to the hospital, where he died of his injuries. No one has been arrested for his murder.

Police have yet to make arrests in connection to a string of other recent shootings. On September 10, the CPD responded to an incident on the Downtown Mall, but reported there were no injuries. On September 18, officers responded to a shots fired call in the area of Ninth Street NW and West Street, and found shell casings but no one injured on Hardy Drive. On September 28, police responded to an aggravated assault report on Anderson Street, and found two men who had been shot outside a home. (They were taken to the hospital in stable condition). And on October 16, officers responded to a call on Hardy Drive and found shell casings but no victims. 

To recruit more officers, Newberry urges the city to increase pay. “Our competition in this area primarily comes from the university or the county,” he told The Daily Progress.

Charlottesville Mayor Lloyd Snook says City Council is working with the CPD, City Manager’s office, and Platania to address the shootings—however, he stresses the limits of policing and encourages witnesses to assist with investigations. 

“Unless a police officer was standing outside [of Lucky Blue’s], I don’t think this could have been prevented by a different police presence,” wrote Snook in an email to C-VILLE. “Some of the shootings are going unsolved because eyewitnesses who saw what happened won’t talk to the police.”

Downtown businesses are also working together to “keep their patrons and staff safe,” said Friends of Charlottesville Downtown Executive Director Greer Achenbach in an email. The CPD “is increasing officer presence on the mall … [and] we still believe that downtown is a safe place.”

“Our first priority remains for the safety of our guests and associates,” wrote Omni Hotel manager Paul Maher in an email, “and that is where we place our focus.”

Categories
Arts Culture

Pick: Nosferatu

Tom Teasley provides a live soundtrack at PVCC's screening of Nosferatu. Publicity image.

Dare to brave a spine-chilling screening of the 1922 silent classic Nosferatu. The once-controversial, unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula stars Max Schreck as Count Orlok, a vampire who preys on the wife of his real estate agent. Renowned percussionist Tom Teasley provides a live, tension-filled soundtrack using a variety of sometimes unexpected musical instruments to keep you on the edge of your seat. Teasley also performs the night before with improvisational violinist Stephen Nachmanovitch.

Sunday 10/30. $6-8, 3pm. PVCC’s V. Earl Dickinson Building, 501 College Dr. pvcc.edu

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News

In brief: City updates policy, and more

City employee Allen Groat, pictured here in a black hoodie and baseball cap behind the person wearing a U.S.A. shirt, participated in the January 6, 2020, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Photo: Department of Justice video.

Personnel policy updated 

The City of Charlottesville has updated its personnel policy months after controversy erupted over Allen Groat, a city IT employee who attended the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

The new policy offers guidance on city employees’ use of social media and prohibits off-hours behavior that undermines trust in the city government. It also allows termination of employees who have been convicted of crimes that could make their co-workers feel unsafe. 

Groat can be seen inside the Capitol in body-worn police camera footage obtained by activist Molly Conger. The footage shows him recording on his phone and declining to leave the Capitol when ordered to do so by police. Additionally, he posted photos of his insurrection foray on his personal social media accounts. In addition to his presence at the Capitol, Groat had been charged in 2020 with brandishing a gun and aggressive driving. 

Groat’s name became public after former Charlottesville police chief RaShall Brackney held a press conference filing a federal lawsuit against the city and numerous city employees and elected officials. She accused the city of failing to discipline Groat after his presence at the Capitol became known.

At a City Council meeting in August, interim City Manager Mike Rogers said Groat had written a letter of apology and said no action would be taken against him.  At that time, Mayor Lloyd Snook told C-VILLE that the city’s personnel policy prevented the city from taking action against him because he had not been charged with a crime.

Brackney said Groat had lied when he requested time off to take his wife to the doctor but instead attended the insurrection. The new personnel policy also offers the city the right to take action against an employee who makes “false statements that are intended or could reasonably be expected to damage the integrity or effectiveness of the city government, city programs, or city employees.”

Five years late

Massachusetts police officer John Donnelly resigned from the Woburn Police Department on October 18, after the Huffington Post contacted the department about his participation in the 2017 Unite the Right white supremacist rally, and the WPD placed him on administrative leave on October 13. Police Chief Robert Rufo has asked the Peace Officer Standards & Training Commission to decertify Donnelly, preventing him from joining another police department in the state.

John Donnelly. Photo: @unmaskutr

Donnelly, who had worked for the WPD since 2015, acted as a security guard for prominent white nationalist and UVA grad Richard Spencer during the rally, and played a major role in planning the deadly event, reports the HuffPost. For years, the former patrolman has made racist and anti-Semitic comments online, and advocated for violence against minority groups and leftists. He may have been a member of Identity Evropa, a now-dissolved white supremacist group. Anti-fascist group Ignite the Right, which has identified the majority of the August 11 and 12 attendees, provided the HuffPost last month with evidence connecting Donnelly to the rally.

An award-winning realtor, Donnelly has also been fired by Century 21, and removed as president of Irish Angel, a police support nonprofit. Middlesex County District Attorney Marian Ryan announced on October 14 that her office is reviewing pending and closed cases that Donnelly was involved in.

In brief

‘Utterly intolerable’

The Albemarle County Police Department is investigating an incident involving “a few members” of Albemarle High School’s junior varsity football team that occurred on October 11, according to a letter sent to parents by principal Darah Bonham. Due to the incident, the school canceled the October 12 JV football game, and “instituted disciplinary measures,” read the letter, but it did not provide additional details. “I would call the allegations that we’ve learned to be utterly intolerable,” ACPS spokesperson Phil Giaramita told CBS19.

(Another) hoax call

On October 20, the Charlottesville Police Department received a false report of a possible active shooter at Buford Middle School—exactly one month after the last swatting incident at the school. Officers did not find any threat after placing students on lockdown, and are investigating the call.

Interim fire chief selected

Deputy Chief of Community Risk Reduction Michael Thomas has been appointed interim Charlottesville Fire Chief, replacing outgoing chief Hezedean Smith. Thomas joined the CFD in June after retiring from the Lynchburg Fire Department. Last month, Smith, who led CFD for two years, announced he had accepted a position in Florida. 

Bag it up

Charlottesville City Council appropriated $20,000 to provide reusable bags to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program recipients during its October 17 meeting, in hopes of reducing the burden the city’s new plastic bag tax will put on low-income families. The city’s social services department will distribute the bags to eligible households before the tax takes effect on January 1.

Chime in

The City of Charlottesville is collecting community feedback on its Climate Action Plan until November 9. To submit a comment, visit charlottesville.gov/1085/Climate-Action-Planning.

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News

Fighting hate

Recent racist crimes at the University of Virginia, including a noose around the neck of the Homer statue, have sparked fear among Black students. Photo: Dan Addison.
By Lauren Dalban and Brielle Entzminger

A string of racist crimes at the University of Virginia this fall has sparked fear among Black students, and sowed further distrust between the student body and UVA administration. 

It started on September 7, when someone placed a noose—a weapon used to lynch Black people for centuries—around the neck of the Homer statue on Central Grounds. The next day, the University Police Department classified the incident as a hate crime due to the noose’s history as a violent white supremacist symbol, and, the following day, released security footage images of the suspect.

On October 25, the UPD announced that law enforcement had charged and arrested Shane Dennis, an Albemarle County resident, in connection with the hate crime. The Albemarle County Police Department arrested Dennis—who was charged with violating a state code that prohibits displaying a noose “on the property of another [or] other public place with intent to intimidate”—on October 24. The UPD also served Dennis, who has no known prior relationship with the university, a No Trespass Order, prohibiting him from entering UVA Grounds in the future. He is currently being held without bond at Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail.

Police also suspect Dennis is responsible for leaving two masks, a “civil peace flag,” a Christian cross, and a sealed envelope containing a letter near the Homer statue on October 22. According to The Cavalier Daily, the letter claimed the statue “glorifies pedophilia.”

“We are all so blinded by hatred and racial division [that we] refuse to see the truth that is hidden in plain sight,” read the letter, which did not contain any racial or religious references. “If you live in reality you will see an old man with a nude adolescent boy in between his legs.”

On October 14, the UPD received a report that the n-word and another version of the slur had been spray painted across a sidewalk at 14th Street NW and John Street. The Charlottesville Police Department and UPD are both investigating the incident. 

Because no federal statutes exclusively categorize hate speech as a hate crime, police have not classified the graffiti incident as a hate crime.

In the weeks following the discovery of the noose, student groups learned that the crime’s perpetrator, who appeared to be a white male, left documents at the foot of the Homer statue. Last month, UPD confirmed that the perpetrator had left items behind at the Homer statue, but provided no further details. In response, The Cavalier Daily published an open letter signed by “Black UVA” on September 17, calling the administration’s silence an “explicit [act] of collusion against the safety and well-being of Black students,” and listing a string of demands, including “full transparency regarding the letters released in connection with the noose” and “a significant financial contribution from [President Jim] Ryan’s Virginia Fund … to help remedy the emotional toll that campus racism has on the Black students.”

On September 22, UVA Executive Vice President Jennifer Wagner and UPD Chief Tim Longo sent an email revealing that one of the documents left at the statue contained the words “TICK TOCK.” Wagner and Longo claimed that releasing this information earlier would have compromised “the integrity of the investigation,” but assured the community that “nothing recovered at the scene conveys a specific threat to public safety.”  

“Being able to denounce things—like [the Office of African American Affairs] being vandalized—early and consistently and urgently are important because I think when we let those things go without commenting on them as a university that it emboldens people to continue these acts,” said Ceci Cain, a UVA fourth-year, and a member of the University Student Council and of the Young Democratic Socialists of America. 

Two other incidents, initially suspected to be racially motivated crimes, also occurred at UVA this fall. In September, a flag depicting an owl and a check for $888.88, which community members feared represented a white supremacist organization, were left at the school’s Memorial to Enslaved Laborers—however, the UPD and FBI determined the items had been left by a UVA alumnus as a philanthropic act. And in August, someone threw rocks through one of the OAAA’s windows, but the perpetrator, who has been charged with vandalism, was determined by UVA to be “a student … who was motivated by factors unrelated to racial bias.” 

Still, some students continue to lack faith in UVA’s responses to acts of racism. A student who saw the racist graffiti earlier this month, before it was reported to police, “alerted his peers to avoid involving the police,” reports The Daily Progress.

“When we see increased policing, we not only see heightened fear and anxiety and interactions of police with Black students, but also with community members,” Cain says. “I think those things are really concerning.”

Categories
Arts Culture

Pick: Stray Fossa

Stray Fossa performs at The Southern Café & Music Hall on October 27. Publicity photo.

After years of pandemic-forced confinement, indie-rock trio Stray Fossa is ready to reemerge. Its sophomore album, Closer Than We’ll Ever Know, examines the intricacy of distance—which is no surprise considering the band was split across two continents during the album’s creation. “These songs have an urgency to them, as if they are on the brink of something,” says guitarist Nick Evans. Each track blends seamlessly into the next, marking a sonic evolution for the group.

Thursday 10/27. $10-12, 8pm. The Southern Café & Music Hall, 103 S. First St. thesoutherncville.com

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News

Good enough?

Republican Congressman Bob Good identifies as a “biblical conservative,” and has aligned himself closely with Trump’s politics and rhetoric. Supplied photo.

As Bob Good’s two-year term comes to a close, the representative for Virginia’s 5th Congressional District has reason to feel secure in a potential victory on November 8—VA-5 has elected Republicans for years, with the last Democrat winning by a hair in 2008.

For this article, C-VILLE Weekly wanted to hear Good defend his record in his own voice. However, after multiple attempts to speak with the representative, the candidate didn’t return our calls by press time. So, because Bob Good won’t talk to us, here’s what we dug up on him.

Raised in the Lynchburg area, Good, 57, paints a portrait of his early life that places his family at the edge of poverty.

“I knew what it was like to be in the free lunch line at school,” he said at a candidates forum in 2020, “or to walk a mile down the street to the grocery store because we didn’t have a car, and to buy groceries with food stamps.”

In order to attend his private Christian high school, Good accepted financial assistance, and earned a partial wrestling scholarship to cover his tuition at Liberty University, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in finance and his master of business administration degree. Wrestling became a fixture for him—his scholarship came after he won a state championship—and he eventually became a coach and administrator of the sport. After working for CitiFinancial for 17 years, he returned to Liberty as an associate athletic director.

Good’s faith is a focus of his life and his politics—he identifies as a “biblical conservative.” But his platform rests with the most far-right members of the Republican party. Before he announced his congressional candidacy, he served on the Campbell County Board of Supervisors from 2016 to 2019, where he elbowed his way to the front line of the culture wars. According to The Washington Post, Good joined his fellow county supervisors in condemning the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision legalizing same-sex marriage, and used his position to advocate for state laws denying gender-affirming bathroom use. He also sought to make Campbell County a “Second Amendment sanctuary.”

In his campaigning and during his first congressional term, Good has stayed in lockstep with former president Donald Trump and his ilk. Good has called the COVID-19 pandemic “phony,” and joined notorious GOP members like Marjorie Taylor Green in calling for Anthony Fauci’s firing.

While Good did condemn the storming of the U.S. Capitol Building in January 2021, he also was one of more than 100 Republicans who objected to the Electoral College votes submitted in the 2020 presidential election. Specifically, Good wished to reject EC votes from six states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, all of which Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won. When legislation was introduced to award Congressional Gold Medals to members of the U.S. Capitol Police and D.C. Metropolitan Police for their defense of the Capitol building and the lawmakers inside, Good voted against it.

Though the ’21 insurrection would result in the death of nine people, Good said just months earlier that the threat of violence could only come from one side of the political aisle. “They’re calling for revolution,” Good said about the “radical left” at a private campaign event in fall 2020. “So, the threat is clearly to our democracy, to our republic, to our freedoms is coming from the radical left. I don’t see any evidence of a threat from the conservative side.”

As of October 24, Good has sponsored 37 pieces of legislation, which he told Cardinal News earlier in the month made him “the leader among Virginia Republicans in this Congress with the most bills sponsored.” Many of his proposals attack hot-button issues, such as a September bill supporting a “private right of action” for parents to oppose the teaching of “racial discrimination theory” or “radical gender theory” in schools, and a January 2021 bill denying asylum to undocumented migrants convicted of a crime. None of Good’s bills have made it out of committee.

During Biden’s tenure, Good has only voted in line with the president 3.1 percent of the time, according to FiveThirtyEight. Specifically, Good has been in favor of just three things: repealing the 2002 authorization of military force against Iraq in 2021, extending pandemic-era Medicare telehealth flexibilities this past July, and modifications to merger filing fees and the disclosure of foreign merger subsidies.

Good has voted no on bills that appear to align with his platform, giving a thumbs-down to three September 2022 measures that would support law enforcement agencies across the country. One measure offered agencies funding to investigate unsolved homicides and nonfatal shootings, another aimed to financially assist governments in training mental health professionals to respond to appropriate emergency calls, and a third sought to provide grants for agencies with under 125 officers. (However, these votes are consistent with his fiscally conservative platform.) All three passed the House.

But Good loves to talk, and that may be a big appeal for his voters, especially in the more conservative South Side of the 5th District. “Good is basically a complainer,” says J. Miles Coleman, associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “You look at his Twitter feed, all he talks about is ‘This nation is going to hell under the Biden administration.’ He talks about cultural issues often.”

Sabato’s Crystal Ball has VA-5 as a safe Republican seat this year, says Coleman.

Read part one of C-VILLE’s election coverage here.

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News

Gone for Good?

Democrat Josh Throneburg, an ordained minister and small business owner, hopes to make 5th District Republican Bob Good a one-term representative. Photo: Hunter and Sarah Photography.

For nearly two decades, Virginia’s 5th District has been deep red—a Democrat has not won here since 2008. After last year’s redistricting process, the district is considered competitive, but remains Republican-leaning, according to FiveThirtyEight.

Democrat Josh Throneburg, an ordained minister and small business owner, believes he has what it takes to finally flip the district to blue, and make hardcore conservative incumbent Bob Good a one-term representative.

In 2019, Throneburg—along with his wife, Minhee, and their two daughters, Agnes, 7, and Lucy, 13—moved to Charlottesville from Massachusetts so Lucy, who has dyslexia, could attend a school that better fit her learning needs. Since last year, he and Minhee have owned Nooks & Crannies, an eco-friendly cleaning business.

Throneburg’s fear for his daughters’ futures pushed him to run for Congress.

“I think the trajectory of a lot of things in our country is unsettling—whether that’s our democracy, our climate, racism, and sexism,” says Throneburg. “As the father of two young girls, and both of them are young women of color, you want to make sure that they’re going to have a future that is happy and healthy … I don’t have confidence right now that their future looks that way.”

Throneburg touts his ability to bring people together and work on everyone’s behalf. He believes his years in ministry will help him “have compassion in all kinds of circumstances” in Congress.

“In the church, there’s lots of different people who come from a lot of different backgrounds. …  You don’t care about their politics or anything like that. You just try to serve them as well as you can,” he says. “My opponent has made it very clear that he’s not interested in working with Democrats.” 

As someone who grew up on a farm and as a Republican, Throneburg, who is from a small town in Illinois, has worked throughout his campaign to reach out to and discuss bipartisan issues with voters who may have never considered supporting a Democrat. 

“I’m hoping that there are enough independent and Republican voters who are tired of the toxicity in our political culture … and are looking for someone who will get stuff done,” he adds. “Mr. Good has brought no projects, no money back into the district, and has passed no bills.”

Addressing the climate crisis is among Throneburg’s top priorities. The federal government needs to not only significantly invest in renewable energy sources but also incentivize people to use fossil fuel alternatives, he says. He also wants to improve public transportation, create a progressive corporate tax on carbon emissions, and bring more green jobs to the 5th District and the entire state.

Additionally, Throneburg would prioritize bringing down inflation and getting broadband into every home in the district during his first few months in office.

Throughout his term, Throneburg says he would tackle a variety of pressing issues, most notably the affordable housing crisis and gun violence. He believes Congress should create more programs giving first-time homebuyers access to capital, and restrict large corporations from buying up the majority of the housing stock—“that prices local buyers out, and for renters it really increases the amount they have to pay,” he says. Particularly in the 5th District’s rural areas, he also vows to secure housing and business grants, and upgrade critical infrastructure.

To prevent shootings, “we should have common sense gun safety—that includes simple things like locking up your firearm and ammunition, universal background checks, [and] red flag laws,” says Throneburg. He also supports funding community-based violence intervention and prevention programs.

In the wake of 2020’s Black Lives Matter protests, Throneburg hopes to address the racial wealth gap, mass incarceration, disproportionate sentencing and use of force, and other racial justice issues. He wants to increase investments in minority communities, by, among other things, offering low or no-interest loans to entrepreneurs of color, as well as federally legalize marijuana.

“We have so many police officers in this country, and many of them do a wonderful job, but there have also been issues,” says Throneburg. We need to “[make] sure that our police departments are adequately funded and trained … to give them the resources they need to more equally dispose of that justice.”

In response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Throneburg supports codifying abortion rights into federal law. And to address the lack of affordable health care across the country, “I’m someone who would support a universal health-care solution,” he says.

To help solve the student debt crisis, Throneburg wants to make community college free for everyone, and expand eligibility for Pell Grants and the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, among other reforms. He also promises to push for pay raises for K-12 teachers and funding for school infrastructure upgrades.

As LGBTQ+ rights are attacked in Virginia under Governor Glenn Youngkin, Throneburg says he would work to pass the Equality Act, which would expand federal civil rights laws to protect LGBTQ+ people from discrimination in employment, housing, credit, jury service, public places, and federally funded programs.

Good and Throneburg will square off for the first time in a forum at Hampden-Sydney College on Wednesday, October 26, at 7pm, after Good denied or ignored multiple debate requests from his Democratic challenger. 

“I think Mr. Good was trying to make this as late and unseen as possible,” says Throneburg. “But certainly late is better than never.”

Read part two of C-VILLE’s election coverage here.