Carey Mulligan as Felicia Montealegre and Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein in Maestro. Courtesy Jason McDonald/Netflix.
A decade-spanning love story, a curmudgeonly prep school teacher’s Christmas break, a musical documentary—the 2023 Virginia Film Festival features a variety of moving, lyrical, and laugh-out-loud cinema across its 120-plus programs.
The festival takes place from October 25–29 at various theaters around Charlottesville, opening with Bradley Cooper’s highly-anticipated Maestro, which focuses on the relationship between Leonard Bernstein (Cooper) and his wife Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan).
“Opening with Maestro is deeply meaningful,” says VAFF Director and UVA Vice Provost for the Arts Jody Kielbasa, who staged Bernstein’s Mass in 2018 as part of a UVA creative team that included Michael Slon and Bob Chapel.
Riley Keough. Photo by Jeff Vespa/@portraits.
Challenged by the strikes in Hollywood, the VAFF team faced limitations in terms of bringing in big name actors, but you’d never know it from the stellar lineup of speakers and performers, which includes director Ava DuVernay (Origin), actor and director Riley Keough (War Pony), and acclaimed poet Nikki Giovanni (Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project).
The Festival concludes with American Symphony, a documentary that follows musician Jon Batiste for a year, during which his longtime partner, bestselling author Suleika Jaouad, learns her leukemia has returned after ten years in remission.
Batiste, who Kielbasa describes as “an extraordinary artist on every level,” will briefly perform following a post-screening discussion.
Jon Batiste in American Symphony. Courtesy of Netflix.
Other documentary highlights include the world premiere of Argentine filmmaker Ricardo Preve’s Sometime, Somewhere, an exploration of the journeys and struggles of Latino immigrants in Charlottesville, and The Space Race, a deep dive into the untold experiences of the inaugural Black pilots, scientists, and engineers of NASA. Astronaut, UVA alum, and film subject Leland Melvin appears.
A conceptual site plan depicts the location of the
Center for Politics and its proposed layout. Image by the UVA Office of the Architect.
At this point in the community’s development, nothing happens in isolation. A forthcoming renovation to the home of one of the University of Virginia’s most well-known institutions could lead the way toward providing a new pathway in a congested area.
“While the Center for Politics has been very successful in developing and running its extensive roster of programs, the size and layout of the existing house hampers the Center’s daily operations, and prevents them from fully engaging students and community in hosting larger seminars and events,” said Alice Raucher, architect for the university, at a recent meeting of the Board of Visitors.
That house is Montesano, a mid-19th-century structure that was expanded in 1907. More than a century later, the 4,700-square-foot building is nestled within an area that will transform as the 21st century unfolds and UVA continues to grow.
“The project includes modest renovations to the main house, including converting the first-floor conference room to a collaboration hub and combining small rooms on the second floor into an open office space,” Raucher said.
The renovation will also be among the first redevelopment projects within the geographic scope of a master plan for the redevelopment of Ivy Gardens. UVA’s real estate foundation purchased the 17-acre site in 2016, and plans to convert it from a 20th-century apartment complex to a mixed-use area with more housing, academic space, and room for businesses.
Vehicular access to the Center for Politics is currently via Old Ivy Road, which is within the scope of a Virginia Department of Transportation pipeline study to determine ways to address current and future congestion. Over the past two decades, the university has built multiple office buildings along a stretch of two-lane roadway constrained by a narrow railroad underpass at the eastern end.
UVA has not been the only source of the gradual addition of new neighbors for Montesano over the years. The multistory University Village was built in the early 1990s, and has room to up its existing 98 units.
In March, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors approved a rezoning that will add 525 apartments next door. The board did so after being told about the pipeline study of potential ways to address the less-than-urban quality of the roadway.
University Village is accessed by Crestwood Drive, a road that is owned by the homeowners association, and the Center for Politics’ use is by permission. The new schematic design for Montesano shows a new connection to Leonard Sandridge Road.
L.F. Payne is a local developer and former congressman who sits on the BOV’s Buildings and Grounds Committee. He’s also a member of the task force that’s overseeing the pipeline study.
“One of the big issues there is going to be how do the people, between the two, many of whom are UVA employees, get out of there,” Payne said. “I think the connection between Old Ivy Road and Leonard Sandridge Road is going to be really important.”
Raucher said there’s no current plan to make a road connection to Old Ivy Road, and reminded Payne and the committee that Crestwood Drive is privately owned.
That pipeline study is expected to be completed next summer, and will result in potential alternatives for transportation solutions for all modes of travel.
James Freas plans to bring new draft language for the zoning ordinance to the next Planning Commission work session. Photo by City of Charlottesville.
After hearing feedback from supporters and opponents at its September 14 public hearing, the Charlottesville Planning Commission held a September 19 work session to consider the draft zoning ordinance. The commission, which hopes to adopt a new zoning ordinance by the end of the year, continues to consider changes to key elements of the law, including the anti-displacement overlay.
Formerly called sensitive community areas, the anti-displacement overlay is an effort to identify and protect areas particularly at risk of displacement and displacement pressures in the city.
Director of Neighborhood Development Services James Freas, who introduced the question of whether to include the overlay in the ordinance, highlighted some potential pros and cons.
“Anything we do that reduces the potential for development in the areas certainly reduces that potential for displacement, but also reduces that potential for additional value in those homes and those properties,” he said. Additionally, Freas noted the inability of the overlay to address single-unit flips, which are a significant contributor to displacement.
“I don’t think that we need an overlay in a certain section of the city,” said Planning Commissioner Hosea Mitchell at the beginning of the discussion. “But I do think that some sort of protections need to be in place in separate or different timelines.”
During the commission’s discussion of the anti-displacement overlay, concerns about adjacent corridors, interim protections for at-risk neighborhoods, and the Dairy Market expansion and Stony Point Development Group were highlighted. After completing the ordinance, the commission plans to create Small Area Plans for each of the identified sensitive areas. However, commissioners worry about the lack of protection while creating these plans, which could take more than a year to develop.
With few interim solutions identified that could be achieved through zoning, the commission reconsidered the anti-displacement overlay.
Acknowledging the urgent need to address displacement, the commission ultimately decided that the overlay, and zoning more broadly, was not the best solution, but should be an element in the ordinance.
“Zoning isn’t the strongest tool in the toolbox,” said Freas. Despite the limitations of the anti-displacement overlay, Mitchell emphasized the importance of keeping a visual reminder of at-risk areas. “We want to keep the overlay on the map just as a guiding light to keep us focused on protecting those neighborhoods,” he said.
Though much remains up in the air with the draft zoning ordinance, what is clear from jargon-filled discussions is the need to address displacement in the city and its contribution to the housing crisis, and the need to involve communities experiencing high levels of displacement in discussions.
The exact timeline for the Planning Commission sending the draft zoning ordinance to City Council is still unknown. At press time, items still under consideration by the commission include additional dwelling unit ordinances and a land trust.
The Live Arts season opens with Uncle Vanya and Life Sucks in rotating repertory for 11 performances each through October 29. Photo by Will Kerner.
The theme of Anton Chekhov’s 1898 play Uncle Vanya is captured by two words in the title of Aaron Posner’s 2015 adaptation: life sucks.
That message won’t have audiences leaving the theater downhearted, however, when Live Arts kicks off its 33rd season with a concurrent run of Uncle Vanya and Life Sucks.
Even if the journey of life is sometimes a slog for the characters in Chekhov’s and Posner’s plays, they learn to get as much out of the trek as they can. “It should not leave people with a heaviness,” says Live Arts Artistic Director Susan E. Evans, who directs Uncle Vanya. “It should leave people thinking, but not feeling that life sucks. Life Sucks is tongue-in-cheek, even the title.”
A Chekhov fan since she was a teenager who related to Three Sisters, Evans noticed a lack of the Russian playwright in Live Arts’ repertoire and decided to change it. In order to help Charlottesville audiences connect with a show originally meant to resonate with Russians in another era, Evans is running the classic play in repertory with a living American playwright’s comic take on it.
“We’ve had feedback from the community about definitely wanting classics in the mix,” Evans says. “To me, this is a nice way of making connections between a contemporary playwright who’s actually right next door, because he’s based in D.C., and also being able to present a classic I love.”
While Evans helms Uncle Vanya, Fran Smith, co-founder of Live Arts, is returning after a three-year hiatus to direct Life Sucks. After directing more than 60 shows at the theater since its founding in 1990, she says this production “might be my swan song.”
“I’ve been waiting to do one more, and I just really love Life Sucks,” Smith says. “It’s about love, longing, and loss, but it’s also about hope. I think people will relate to it.”
Uncle Vanya takes place in an estate in the Russian countryside, where a group of people lament lust, unfulfillment, and ennui as strained relationship dynamics and arguments over the management of the estate threaten to disturb the boredom of everyday life. Life Sucks surrounds a similar gathering of seven people in the United States, 126 years later.
Running these plays at the same time presented a challenge for scenic designer Tom Bloom, associate professor emeritus of scenic design in the UVA Department of Drama, who was tasked with designing one set for two shows taking place over a century apart.
Audience members who come to the Founders Theater on consecutive nights this fall will notice a pair of different settings on the same stage. Uncle Vanya takes place in period-specific costume on a porch, and includes a working swing and real trees. In contrast, Life Sucks focuses on its actors as they revolve around a spare stage that features just a table, two chairs, and a stairway.
Like the foundation of their sets, the bedrock of the plots in Uncle Vanya and Life Sucks are recognizably similar, but distinguished by embellishments, such as the Chekhov character who shows up as a puppet in Posner’s adaptation. Where a missed gunshot causes panic and fury in Uncle Vanya, it leads to mockery of the shooter in Life Sucks. Where one character soliloquizes on her loneliness in Uncle Vanya, she turns to the audience and asks for a show of hands as to who wants to sleep with her in Life Sucks.
“That’s the thing I love about Posner,” says Smith. “He’ll take a situation that could be very intense and serious, and make it funny.” As talks of estate management and deforestation in Uncle Vanya turn into characters lamenting student loans and climate change in Life Sucks, the two shows remain connected by similarities that run deeper than the ever-present drinking of vodka. Both plays challenge their actors, thanks to Chekhov’s disinclination to define characters as good or bad. He similarly does not make a judgment about the overall mood of Uncle Vanya, which is labeled as neither tragedy nor comedy, but rather as “scenes from country life.”
Although that country life takes place in a distant location and time, many of the problems the characters face in Uncle Vanya, from unhappy relationships to environmental destruction, remain surprisingly relatable to 2023 audiences. “It’s very accessible,” Evans says. “It’s like a midlife crisis play, in a way, and a lot of us can identify with that.” Posner then takes those conflicts and makes them instantly recognizable through Life Sucks’ seven characters, who grapple with timeless issues, like the fear of aging you feel when you find a gray nose hair.
“Everybody in the audience can relate to one of these characters,” Smith says. “That’s what I find really fun about this show. It doesn’t need a lot. It really relies on the actors to carry it.”
Three Notch’d Road opens its 13th season with Genius of Bach, a program celebrating two masterworks by the great German composer. The baroque ensemble is joined by cellist René Schiffer for the Goldberg Variations arranged for strings and the fifth Brandenburg Concerto. Also performing are David Ross on baroque flute, Fiona Hughes on baroque violin, and harpsichordist Jennifer Streeter. They join Schiffer for a pre-concert discussion on transcribing and playing period instruments.
Embrace your inner punk and ship out for a night of headbangin’ tunes with Dropkick Murphys. The Boston rock ‘n’ roll outfit has been steadily building its discography since 1996, with chantable songs like “Rose Tattoo,” “The State of Massachusetts,” and “I’m Shipping Up to Boston.” Its recent records, This Machine Still Kills Fascists and Okemah Rising, offer Irish instrumentation in a new acoustic format, and use unpublished Woody Guthrie lyrics, which were curated for the band by Guthrie’s daughter.
Sunday 10/1. $40–49.50, 7pm. Ting Pavilion, 700 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. tingpavilion.com
With the November election just around the corner, residents can now vote early in-person across the Charlottesville region. In addition to state Senate and House of Delegates races, which may determine party control of the state legislature, there are a number of other highly competitive local races in our area.
To vote early in person, city residents should visit the Office of Voter Registration and Elections in the City Hall Annex at 120 Seventh St. SE, Room 142, Monday through Friday between 8:30am and 4:30pm, or during extended Tuesday hours until 7pm. Unless a write-in candidate manages an upset, both the school board and City Council at-large races were effectively decided in the primaries, but are still on the ballot.
Albemarle residents can vote early at the Fifth Street County Office Building, Room A from 8:30am to 5pm Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 7am to 5pm on Tuesdays, and 8:30am to 7pm on Thursdays. One contest to keep an eye on is the school board at-large race between Allison Spillman and Meg Bryce, in which both candidates have raised a substantial amount of money.
In Fluvanna, Greene, and Nelson counties, residents are voting for sheriff, clerk of court, and school board seats, among others. The addresses and hours of operation for each county are: Fluvanna: 265 Turkeysag Trl., Suite 115, Palmyra, Monday through Friday from 8:30am to 5pm; Greene: 32 Stanard St., Stanardsville, Monday through Friday from 9am to 5pm; and Nelson: 571 Front St., Lovingston, Monday through Friday from 9am to 5pm.
Saturday voting will be held in each county on October 28 and November 4. For more information on early voting hours, including holiday closures and extended hours, visit your county’s website or elections.virginia.gov.
Between the lines
In a September 25 press release, Albemarle County Public Schools announced the formation of a committee made up of teachers, administrators, academic coaches, parents, and community partners to consider a new K-5 reading curriculum. Under a 2022 Virginia law aimed at improving literacy outcomes, all divisions must adopt one of six programs approved by the state for the 2024-2025 school year.
By the end of October, the committee will consider each of the approved curricula and is expected to select two semifinalists. All programs will be evaluated on their quality, relevance, and fit. The materials for the semifinalist programs will then be sent to every ACPS elementary school for further review, and the committee will meet with representatives of each program.
“Our timetable includes having our assistant superintendent for instruction, Dr. Chandra Hayes, make a presentation on January 11 to our school board on the program we are recommending, with a school board decision the following month,” said Executive Director of Elementary Education Michele Castner.
Before moving to the school board for approval, program information and materials will be available for public review and comment for 30 days.
In brief
Good on shutdown
Ahead of the deadline to prevent a government shutdown, Rep. Bob Good continues to oppose appropriations and stopgap funding bills. Part of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus, Good argues that Republicans should renege on earlier spending agreements and must significantly cut federal spending. At a press conference earlier this month, he said, “If Schumer wants another Schumer shutdown, let him have it and let him defend it to the American people. So I stand here with my colleagues today in solidarity to fight for the American people.”
Bob Good. Supplied photo.
For the record
Charlottesville Police are expected to release body camera footage later this week from an incident that reportedly occurred between police and an unhoused individual Saturday, September 16, at Market Street Park. While the details of the incident are currently unknown, City Manager Sam Sanders has indicated he is working on a plan to help unhoused individuals who sleep in the park overnight, which he will present at the next City Council meeting. As a result of the incident, the park is now open 24/7 rather than closing at 11pm.
Rain delay
After rain threatened to dampen its original celebration, the Charlottesville Emergency Food Network has moved its 50th-anniversary event to September 30. Since its founding, the EFN has helped countless families across Charlottesville and Albemarle access balanced meals. Those in need can contact EFN at 979-9180 from 9am to noon on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, with same day pickup occurring from 1:30 to 3:30pm.
Blues guitarist Kenny Wayne Shepherd brings his Dirt on My Diamonds Tour to The Paramount Theater on October 3. Photo by Jim Arbogast.
Blues guitarist Kenny Wayne Shepherd made his first hit record when he was only 16 years old. Now, almost 30 years later, the child phenom is relishing the past while looking toward the future.
Shepherd completed an exhaustive tour promoting the 25th anniversary re-release of his breakout album Trouble Is… in May. He’s back on the road, drumming up support for his newest effort, Dirt on My Diamonds, an LP he’s releasing one track at a time for the next several months.
Ahead of his October 3 date at The Paramount Theater, Shepherd talked to C-VILLE Weekly about music’s past, his present, and the blues’ future.
C-VILLE: I don’t remember you playing Charlottesville recently. Have you been?
Kenny Wayne Shepherd: I’m sure we have. I feel like I’ve been everywhere. But with the way my brain works—I’m more of a visual person and am really bad with names.
You gained popularity at a really important time in this city’s musical history.
I was listening to all kinds of music when I was a kid. My dad was a disc jockey and program director for a radio station. If it was a hit, I was listening to it, and that definitely included Dave Matthews Band. Dave and I have crossed paths a few times over the years. I remember the first time, I spent like an entire day with him in the ’90s for one of Bill Clinton’s inaugurations. Before the main event that night, we spent the afternoon watching people like Stevie Wonder rehearse. I also spent some time with him doing Farm Aid and for a few other events over the years. He’s just a really nice guy—and obviously tremendously successful.
Out of all the music you were listening to as a DJ’s kid, what drew you to the blues?
It is just the kind of music that I connected with on the deepest level. And I would rather be happy playing my music than be unhappy playing music just to be more successful. People like Dave have both, but the blues chose me and I chose the blues. I never wanted to abandon the music I love, to try to pursue a genre that would net me more success. And I feel like I took a genre that wasn’t commercially out there and put it in a more commercial way. We had a lot of radio success and a lot of singles that charted very well.
What’s the current state of blues?
It hasn’t had all that much mainstream success because of the radio format today. Back then, I would put a single out and we would run it up the charts at rock radio. Now there’s no mainstream rock radio that supports this kind of music. I would release an album, and we would sell tens of thousands of them. I have multiple gold and platinum albums hanging on my wall because of it. But the way the business is set up now, album sales just aren’t there. I don’t know that that is in the cards ever again. Success is measured differently today.
What do you think about commercially successful post-blues bands like The White Stripes?
I think nowadays, more people talk about The Black Keys. But yeah, Jack White—both of those bands drew very, very heavily on blues. But they took it in a direction that connects with a younger fan base. You look at the older blues fans, they don’t think of any of those bands as blues. Some of those people don’t put me in the blues category either. But I think it’s great. At the end of the day, you have to have new people come along and take stuff like that and incorporate it into new music. If you don’t, eventually this connection is going to be severed between new listeners and that music. There aren’t going to be any dots to connect.
And what about your own music—how has it changed over the years?
I incorporate all kinds of things I grew up listening to. If you listen to my most recent albums—I have a new one coming out in November—you hear so many different genres sprinkled in there. Blues is the foundation, and we build on that. That’s how the evolution of music works, period. You take one thing, start experimenting with it, and create different things. As a guitarist, I think I’m actually faster now than when I was young. It just comes with practice, and there’s no better practice than being out on the road and being on stage in front of people. You play at a completely different intensity level.
I would imagine the intensity also changes as the years go by.
What I had then was a drive to prove myself. When you’re young and you get an opportunity, you have to take it. It was my moment to kind of establish to the industry that I am here for the long haul—why I deserve to be here. Every time you pick up that instrument, you want to show them why you belong. Now I‘ve been doing this so long, I’m just trying to make the best music I can make. There is a certain amount of maturity and satisfaction that comes along with that.
You wasted no time going from your Trouble Is Tour to the current tour. How’s that transition been?
There are some songs on Trouble Is… that we rarely played live, ever. We launched the tour not knowing how long it would last—maybe three months—but it ended up doing so well and selling out in almost every market. Now we are shifting gears, but we’re still doing some Trouble Is… . We generally don’t play a show without “Blue on Black.” But we’re also revisiting some of the songs on our first album and doing some of the more recent music. We want to remind the fans that we’ve been making music this entire time—30 years of music.
Vertical portrait of mature man standing at podium while giving speech to microphone against black background
In an odd way, the handsome 36-year-old at Vinny’s Italian Grill is a bit of a hero.
Philip Andrew Hamilton, a divorced legal process server who’s reasonably new to Charlottesville, got crushed by Sally Hudson two years ago in a delegate race. Now, in the local state Senate “race,” the Republican is challenging central Virginia’s best-known Democrat, Creigh Deeds, who beat Hudson in June’s Democratic primary.
“Race” is in quotes because if American gamblers set odds on political races, as in the U.K., a Hamilton victory in November would fall in the long, longshot category.
With little support from the Virginia GOP, no campaign staff, and a summer bank account that’s less than a 20th of Deeds’, he is facing a 2023 drubbing in the 11th state Senate District, which Virginia Public Access Project already rates as “strong Democrat.”
“There’s always a possibility of winning against an incumbent,” Hamilton says at the end of an hour-long conversation about issues that motivate him. “Of course, I’m an underdog but it’ll definitely send shock waves across the state if it happens.
“If I lose, I’m not going to disengage. I’m 36 and I have, hopefully, a bright future ahead of me,” he continues. “If I am to lose, and Steve Harvey [a Republican running against Amy Laufer in a local, but more competitive, House of Delegates race] also loses, I’ll run for the 55th District next time.”
“It takes courage, absolutely, but win or lose, I’m glad I’m doing this.”
And so am I. And probably many other Virginians who are aware that uncontested races, especially at the top of the ticket as this Deeds-Hamilton contest is, underline the age-old issue of whether anyone’s vote actually counts and, therefore, produce long-term repercussions by decreasing community participation in the basics of democracy.
Today, when 38 states allow victors to be declared before the first ballot is cast and about two-thirds of most names in down-ballot elections are unopposed, it’s reasonable to ask: Why show up to vote at all?
In the 2022 election, 24 Republican congressional candidates ran unopposed across the United States, a factor in today’s tiny GOP congressional margin, while nationwide, according to Ballot Ready, 91 percent of district attorney contests and 85 percent of judge positions went to unopposed candidates.
In Virginia’s off-cycle 2023 legislative elections, locally both Democrat newcomer Katrina Callsen and Republican Tom Garrett—who was all but driven from Congress for threatening his staff and is undergoing a bitter divorce with accusations of abuse—are running unopposed for the House of Delegates.
Philip Hamilton (left) is the Republican challenger to Creigh Deeds in the race for the 11th state Senate District, but his odds of winning are slim. Katrina Callsen (right) is running as an uncontested Democrat in the 54th District’s delegate race, and is trying to reach across the aisle. Supplied photos.
Indeed, almost one-third of Virginia delegate seats are uncontested in November, the first election after redrawing all legislative districts to make them fairer. In addition, according to a Charlottesville Tomorrow spreadsheet, there are dozens of down-ballot, uncontested races across central Virginia.
Survey and Ballots Systems notes that uncontested and noncompetitive races have four primary long-term effects: one, it causes people to curtail voting; two, citizens feel inadequately represented; three, the officials themselves feel disengaged; and four, uncontested elections lead to poor governance.
One academic study of legislative actions, published a decade ago, discovered that uncontested candidates turn up less for roll-call votes and introduce or sponsor an average 10 percent fewer bills than those who survive contested races. Uncontested winners also, the study indicated, know and do less in the “sausage making” of committee work and team building. Cross-aisle dialogue especially declines, leading to more polarization and extremism in political life.
“Collectively,” the study concluded, “our results indicate that state legislators lacking serious political competition are less active in lawmaking.”
More recent work by UVA’s Batten School of Leadership, but focused on the U.S. Congress, underlines the point. Only one of the 10 most effective Republican congressmen in its Legislative Effectiveness Score came from a safely GOP district, and half of the effectives won by five points or less—two overcoming their Democrat opposition in squeakers.
“The data that we have for Congress shows that members from uncontested districts in their most recent election tend to dedicate less effort to lawmaking, and are about 10 to 15 percent less effective overall,” says Craig Volden, the Center for Effective Lawmaking’s director. “One of the values in running someone against them is that it helps the winner be more focused.
“Noncompetitive elections affect everything, including how winners behave once in the legislature, and it masks what voters are desiring versus what legislators are not giving them.”
Research from political analysts across the nation indicates that noncompetitive election winners are also less likely to meet as many actual voters, rarely reach across the aisle for co-sponsors of their desired bills, and are more prone to listen to their party’s extremists.
In Idaho, where only four House districts are competitive and GOP legislators outnumber Democrats by a five-to-one margin, battles between MAGA Republicans and traditional, small-government Republicans have led to censures, “no confidence” votes, and have caused the state’s GOP to teeter on splitting.
“I didn’t leave the party,” one Republican legislator told The Idaho Statesman. “The party may have left me when they started putting in these extreme policies.”
In Tennessee, where the Republican supermajority and gerrymandering are so entrenched that none of the state’s 33 senate districts are rated as competitive, even Republican politicians are worried that uncontested elections—over half in The Volunteer State—lead to policies that most Tennesseans eventually reject.
“Honestly, I think I was a better state representative because my district was almost a 50-50 district,” former GOP House Speaker Beth Harwell told The Washington Post recently. “That made me more responsive, and I certainly listened to the other side more than I would have otherwise.”
In an August special session, gun-rights’ Republican legislators in Tennessee turned back weapon control measures sought by conservative Christian mothers whose children suffered in March’s Covenant private school shooting, in spite of a Vanderbilt University poll indicating 82 percent of Tennesseans want stronger background checks on gun purchases and 72 percent desire red-flag laws.
Today, half of American states have veto-proof legislative supermajorities that promote, anecdotal evidence indicates, not only more uncontested elections and less effective legislators but also more extremism and polarization.
Carah Ong Whaley, UVA’s Center for Politics’ civic engagement coordinator, who while working at James Madison University is credited with a 2020 program prompting 75 percent of JMU students to vote, notes that while a half dozen factors contribute to uncontested elections, for her the key bottom line is citizens rarely show up when there is no contest.
Turnout in Indiana and Kentucky dropped 12 percent when mayoral elections were uncontested, according to a 2018 study from Rice University’s Center for Local Elections.
“We could be on the downhill slide for democracy,” Whaley says. “Free, fair, and competitive elections should be the cornerstone, but, it seems, we are building the lack of competition right into the structure.”
“When a race is uncontested, you [candidates and parties] don’t have to educate voters so you don’t have to cultivate, or inform, the electorate; don’t have to present policy ideas. Plus, uncontested elections increase thoughts of ‘My vote doesn’t matter. I don’t need to turn out because I know my party is going to win,’ or ‘I’m not turning out because my party can’t win.’”
“If we want representative democracy to work, people need to know that they’re represented.”
For that reason, Katrina Callsen, the Democrats’ uncontested 54th District delegate candidate, isn’t taking her seat for granted.
“I’m still trying to make sure I’m getting out and communicating with people who didn’t vote,” she says across an insightful hour at C’ville Coffee. “It’s funny, the trajectory of the campaign, in that I’ve returned to the start [before she outpolled Dave Norris and Bellamy Brown in the Democratic primary], to meeting people and then always asking people who are two other people I should meet.”
The deputy Charlottesville city attorney and former Albemarle County School Board chair spent August contacting local leaders—including Republican Rob Bell—for tips on finding a solid legislative assistant and how to be a successful legislator. In September, she plans to restart her weekly C’ville Coffee listening hours, open to all, including, she hopes, Republicans. In October, she will again begin canvassing what is now “her” district, saying she’s determined not to lose focus on the issues.
One of those, she promises, is urging others to sign their names on the dotted line.
“Running for any seat is hard,” Callsen says, “and running for a seat where you don’t have a chance, it’s almost like a public service.”
I don’t agree with many of the concerns that motivate Philip Hamilton, especially his blaming the Appomattox School District for a transgender student getting sexually trafficked twice, but I’m glad he’s running for Virginia’s 11th District state Senate seat.
Too many of we the people can’t find even the time to submit an absentee ballot, yet Hamilton, who shuttles all over central Virginia to deliver subpoenas, putting miles and miles on his Ford, is sticking his neck out for another likely execution.
“What does a challenger gain in entering a race when they know they’re going to lose?” The Center for Effective Lawmaking’s Volden asks. “It does take a special person to say, ‘I know it’s a lost cause but I’m still going to fight it.’”
Editor’s note: The original version of this story described Katrina Callsen as running in the 55th District. Callsen is running in the 54th.The story has been updated to reflect this change.
Albemarle County has agreed to settle a lawsuit brought by eight African Americans against Andrew Holmes (above). The plaintiffs accused Holmes, then a police officer and now a detective, of racial profiling. Staff photo.
More than seven years after eight African Americans filed a lawsuit accusing an Albemarle police officer of racial profiling, the county has settled the complaint.
“Not with a bang, but with a whimper,” says plaintiffs’ attorney Jeff Fogel, who had prepared to go to trial several times over the course of the case. “It was an exhausting experience to spend seven years litigating a case.”
The lawsuit against then-officer Andrew Holmes, now an Albemarle County Police Department detective, was filed in February 2016.
On the second day of a jury trial in federal court in March 2018, Judge Norman Moon dismissed the case. Fogel appealed and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit remanded the case back to Moon in August 2019.
Plaintiffs Bianca Johnson and Delmar Canada said Holmes showed up at their residence at 11pm on a Friday with a search warrant for a DMV license suspension notice, which Canada said he’d never received. A warrant to search for a piece of paper was an unprecedented tactic, a fellow officer testified, and Holmes tried it in hopes of finding drugs during a time when he wanted to join the Jefferson Area Drug Enforcement Task Force, according to his lawyer during a 2017 hearing. No drugs were found.
“It seems a jury could say Officer Holmes saw an African American driving a very expensive, nice automobile and assumed he was dealing drugs,” noted Judge Glen Conrad at that same hearing.
Holmes stopped plaintiffs Rodney Hubbard and his mother, Savannah, on U.S. 29 in 2015 and claimed he smelled marijuana, a common probable cause pretext used by cops until it was outlawed by the Virginia General Assembly in 2021. He held the Hubbards for two hours while he searched their car—and Rodney’s groin.
Leon Polk and Malcolm Cook, a former UVA football player, alleged that Holmes pulled them over in the old Kmart parking lot, claimed he smelled pot, ordered them out of the car at gunpoint, and held them for nearly three hours while he searched the car—and found no drugs. Cory Grady and Sergio Harris were similarly stopped and searched by Holmes.
County police records show that 51 percent of the summons Holmes wrote in 2015 were to African Americans, although the population in the sectors he worked was 68 percent white and 18 percent Black. That same year, 22 percent of the tickets Albemarle cops wrote were to Blacks and 78 percent to whites.
“It was striking what a higher rate of stopping Blacks Holmes had over anyone else,” says Fogel.
The case was set to go to trial in September 2022 when Albemarle’s attorney, Jim Guynn, sought mediation. Fogel thought he had a settlement until Rodney Hubbard, who’d earlier said he wanted $45 million, refused to sign off on the county’s offer. Fogel moved to be removed as Hubbard’s attorney, and Hubbard found a new lawyer.
Meanwhile, Guynn filed a motion to enforce the settlement, having made clear that the county would only enter into a “global settlement” to which all the plaintiffs agreed. In January, Judge Moon agreed to rule on the motion, which he granted seven months later on August 29.
The size of the settlement is confidential, but according to court documents and testimony, Albemarle offered $35,000 to each plaintiff. Plaintiff Cook, now a police officer in Alexandria, testified that Hubbard and Harris said that $50,000 was as low as they’d go, and they didn’t want to pay attorney’s fees.
Fogel said he couldn’t confirm the amount of the settlement, but that Hubbard did receive more than his co-plaintiffs. And he acknowledged the irony of the undisclosed amounts because he’s now suing Charlottesville police over secret settlements on claims of police misconduct.
“The settlement should have been four times what we got,” says Hubbard, and he believes Holmes should have been fired. The lengthy legal proceeding was worth it, he says, because of the awareness it brought to racial profiling.
Hubbard, who lives in Lynchburg, says, “I think the case made an impact on Albemarle police and how they police Black people.” He says he hasn’t been pulled over on U.S. 29 since.
But it took a toll on him as well. “It was very stressful, with a lot of sleepless nights,” he says. And he still feels anxious when a squad car pulls in behind him.
Holmes, who was named Albemarle detective of the year in 2021, did not respond to phone calls from C-VILLE, and police spokesperson Abbey Stumpf said he was not available to speak at this time.
Fogel isn’t sure that the lawsuit made any impact on racial profiling.
Holmes received 11 complaints in 2014 and seven in 2015—after three, supervisors were supposed to use “early intervention,” says Fogel. Holmes testified that he’d never been counseled by superiors. “It’s disturbing because if the county knew about it, they should have done something,” Fogel says.
He notes that in the most recent report from the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services, Albemarle County remains high in the number of minorities stopped and searched. “Obviously it’s still a problem there,” observes Fogel.
C-VILLE reached out to Albemarle Chief Sean Reeves, who also was unavailable to speak at this time, according to Stumpf.
