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In brief: Carter joins race, Dewberry gets sued, and more

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The 2021 race for the governor’s mansion in Virginia got a little more complicated last week, when northern Virginia Delegate Lee Carter declared his candidacy for the office.

In his campaign announcement, Carter emphasized economic stratification as the driving force of discontent in the commonwealth. “[Virginia] is not divided between red and blue. It’s not divided between big cities and small towns. Virginia is divided between the haves and the have-nots,” he said.

Carter identifies as a democratic socialist and was a Virginia co-chair of Bernie Sanders’ campaign. He made headlines last year when he spearheaded a bill to cap insulin prices at $50 per month. With the 2021 General Assembly session approaching, Carter has already introduced a bill to abolish the death penalty.

Outside the halls of the state capital, the former Marine and electronic repairman has been active on social media. He’s got more than 100,000 followers on Twitter (six times as many as House Majority Leader Eileen Filler-Corn), and just before his 2018 election he made headlines after tweeting out a memorable self-initiated “oppo dump,” sharing that he was “on divorce number 3” and that “just like everyone else under 35, I’m sure explicit images or video of me exists out there somewhere,” though “unlike Anthony Weiner, I never sent them unsolicited.”

Carter joins former governor Terry McAuliffe, current lieutenant governor Justin Fairfax, state senator Jennifer McClellan, and state delegate Jennifer Carroll Foy in a crowded Democratic field.

McAuliffe, a career Democratic Party insider, announced record-breaking fundraising numbers this week—“the Macker” raised $6.1 million as of December 31. The rest of the candidates will share updates as a campaign finance filing deadline approaches in the coming weeks, but The Washington Post reports that McAuliffe’s haul surpasses any previous total from a candidate at this point in the race.

Spending hasn’t always translated to victories for McAuliffe, however. In his first run for governor in 2009, he outspent primary opponent and then-state delegate Creigh Deeds $8.2 million to $3.4 million, but wound up losing to Deeds by more than 20 percent. In 2013, McAuliffe beat Ken Cuccinelli in the general election, outspending him $38 million to $20.9 million.

The Democratic primary will be held on June 8.

PC: Supplied and file photos

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Quote of the week

He said that in his many years of doing executive searches, he had never seen a level of dysfunction as profound as what he was seeing here.

City Councilor Lloyd Snook, in a Facebook post, relaying the comments of the firm retained to find a new city manager

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In brief

State senator killed by COVID

Virginia state senator Ben Chafin passed away last Friday at age 60 after contracting coronavirus. The southwestern Virginia Republican served in the legislature for six years, and was one of four GOP state senators to break rank and vote in favor of Medicaid expansion in 2018. Governor Ralph Northam ordered state flags lowered in Chafin’s honor over the weekend.

You Dew you

The steel and concrete husk of a skyscraper that’s been languishing on the Downtown Mall for more than a decade is now facing further legal trouble, reports The Daily Progress. Last year, the Dewberry Group, which owns the building, changed the building’s name from the Laramore to Dewberry Living—but the Dewberry Living name violated a trademark agreement between the Dewberry Group and a northern Virginia firm called Dewberry Engineers, Inc. Now, Dewberry Engineers is suing the Dewberry Group for copyright infringement. The building itself remains empty.

The Dewberry Living building continues to stir up legal drama. PC: Ashley Twiggs

Eyes on the road

As of January 1, it is illegal for drivers in Virginia to hold a phone while operating a vehicle. If you’re caught gabbing while driving, or skipping that one terrible song, you’ll be subject to a $125 fine for a first offense and a $250 fine for a second offense. Opponents of the law are concerned that it will open the door for more racial profiling by law enforcement, while the law’s backers cite the dangers of distracted driving.

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In brief: PrezFest, Monticello High news, and more

Presidential address

Following a brief introduction by UVA President Jim Ryan—where Ryan mentioned he’d gotten food poisoning from the White House the first time he met Bill Clinton—the former leader of the free world then took the lectern in Old Cabell Hall to close out the Miller Center of Public Affairs’ first-ever PrezFest, aka Presidential Ideas Festival.

A few lines caught our attention during Clinton’s lengthy address on the role of the presidency. Whether they’re shots at Donald Trump, or generally just good advice for any commander in chief, we’ll never know.

  • Says Clinton, “I think the best presidents have sought to define ‘We the people’ in a way that broadens both the idea and the reality of who counts in this country.”
  • On those who have already served: “So far, they’ve had enough humility to know that no one is right all the time and power must be exercised with some care.”
  • On reputations: “Look, we can all act pious…everybody that’s ever been in politics who wanted to make change has had to feed the beast.”
  • On President Thomas Jefferson: “When he thought of slavery, he trembled to think that God is just, but he didn’t tremble enough to go sign the paper freeing all the slaves.”
  • On the fear that if President Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, they’d take everyone’s jobs: “Sound familiar?”
  • On immigration: “There shouldn’t be a Republican or Democratic way to process people at the border.”
  • On being investigated: “I used to have fun with the people that were investigating me. I’d rag ’em and make fun of ’em and try to keep everybody in a pretty good mood.”
  • On significance: “[The recently photographed black hole] is so big, and it’s magnetic pull is so great, that if our entire solar system went by close enough, it would be sucked in and disintegrated immediately into a pile of dirt that could fit in a thimble. Now think of that. If that’s true, it’s not so important to be on Mount Rushmore, is it? But it does not make the life of any public servant less significant. It makes the trappings, the image, the b.s. less significant.”
  • On division: “We should not be despairing if we’re worried about America dividing. …There have never been permanent gains or permanent losses in human affairs, and we’ve got a lot of hay in the barn. We just need to saddle up.”
  • Bonus quote, on August 12, 2017, when then-Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe told white supremacists and neo-Nazis to get out of the state and not come back, while Trump called them very fine people: “The governor of Virginia, on that day, was my president.”

Quote of the week

“I wouldn’t be surprised if the next guy’s like: ‘You know, I still have a slave. He’s been in our family for years. Sorry.’”—Comedian Wanda Sykes, on Governor Ralph Northam’s apparent inability to remember if he was in the blackface photo in his medical school yearbook.


In brief

National champs

The UVA men’s lacrosse team took down defending champs Yale May 27 to secure its first NCAA championship since 2011. The No. 3-seed Cavs outscored the No. 5-seed Bulldogs 13-9 in Philadelphia, and will bring home Virginia lacrosse’s sixth national championship.

DMB death

When Jasen Smith went to find his wife’s misplaced souvenir T-shirt at a Dave Matthews Band concert in St. Louis, she says he never returned. She then found him unconscious, with blood dripping from his ear, after suffering a skull fracture from blunt force trauma to the back of his head. He died the next day, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The mysterious death is still under investigation.

Dramatic

Madeline Michel

Monticello High drama teacher Madeline Michel will receive a special Tony for excellence in theater education at the awards show June 9 in New York. The award includes a $10,000 gift for the school’s theater program.

Inappropriate

Former Monticello High coach George “Trae” Payne III will serve 30 days of a five-year sentence for sending a 17-year-old female student three inappropriate photos on Snapchat in 2018. Payne entered an Alford plea and said the teen did not deserve to be in the middle of his depression, the Progress reports.

The Cooch is back

Former AG Ken Cuccinelli Zuma Press

Former Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli, best known locally for demanding documents from UVA climate researcher Michael Mann in 2010, has been tapped by President Trump to head U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The Washington Post reports Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell opposes the nomination of the conservative firebrand.

Emmy winners

UVA student journalists Yahya Abou-Ghazala and Robby Keough won the school’s first Student Emmy Award for video they created as third years covering the March for Our LIves student walkout March 14, 2018, a month after 17 students were mowed down in Parkland, Florida.

*Shrugs*

After Governor Ralph Northam’s blackface scandal, Eastern Virginia Medical School launched an independent investigation to determine whether he appeared as the man in blackface, Ku Klux Klan robes, or not at all, in the now-infamous photo on his 1984 yearbook page. Its conclusion: They don’t know. Also on the list of things investigators couldn’t determine is how the picture was ever printed in the first place.


Killer’s cancer

The man serving four life sentences for abducting and murdering UVA student Hannah Graham and Virginia Tech student Morgan Harrington now has stage four colon cancer.

Monticello High grad Jesse Matthew was transferred from Red Onion State Prison, a supermax facility in Wise County, to Waverly’s Sussex I State Prison last week to receive treatment.

“This is justice and perhaps karma,” said Harrington’s mother, Gil Harrington, to a reporter from Richmond’s CBS 6.

Albemarle Commonwealth’s Attorney Robert Tracci says under the terms of Matthew’s 2016 plea agreement, he is not eligible for release or parole.

In a rare, post-diagnosis interview with the same Richmond channel, a reporter asked the convicted killer whether he was sorry for the 2009 and 2014 murders.

Said Matthew, “I don’t think I can answer that question right now truthfully.”