Progressives for Cville – C-VILLE Weekly

In brief: PACmen and women, Pharrell weighs in, Long checks out, and more

Special interests

If you’ve got an agenda, you’ve gotta have a PAC. A political action committee is the device of choice for individuals, corporations, developers, teachers, and many others to further their interests by funneling money or other support to political candidates. While a PAC is limited by state and federal law on how much it can directly contribute to a campaign, because it’s not run by a political party or individual candidate, on its own it can spend an unlimited amount of money on elections. Charlottesville is home to several PACs that have raised— and contributed—millions for causes ranging from electing progressive candidates to keeping Delegate Rob Bell in office. Here’s our roundup:

Progressives for Cville

Founded in 2018 by UVA prof and Black Lives Matter organizer Jalane Schmidt and Jefferson School African American Heritage Center staffer Olivia Patton, Progressives for Cville wants small donors to support candidates who will work for affordable housing and against racial inequity. The PAC supports City Council candidate Michael Payne.

Progressive Change Campaign Committee

Charlottesville native Stephanie Taylor and UVA Law grad Adam Green co-founded Progressive Change in 2009, the largest locally founded PAC, with a million-member grassroots organization that’s raised $29 million. Its website is boldprogressives.org, and this national PAC was a fan of Senator Elizabeth Warren’s platform long before she became a presidential candidate.

Virginia First PAC

House Minority Leader David Toscano’s PAC has donated more than $1 million to help elect Democrats to the House of Delegates.

Clean Virginia Fund

Investor Michael Bills has poured over $2 million into state elections. Last year he founded a PAC to promote clean energy and thwart the influence of Dominion Power on the electoral process by supporting candidates who refuse to accept money from utilities they would regulate. Bills has put $205,000 into the PAC, according to the Virginia Public Access Project, and donated $166,000 to candidates.

Road Back/Democratic Road Forward PAC

The late delegate Mitch Van Yahres, who held the 57th District seat for 24 years, founded the Road Back PAC in 2002 to help other Dem candidates. The PAC was dormant for several years after his death in 2008, and was reborn as the Democratic Road Forward PAC in 2013 to train Democratic hopefuls and their staffs. “We don’t give them money,” says former vice-mayor Meredith Richards, but this year 19 candidates the PAC schooled in fundraising and fieldwork are running.

Virginia’s List

Former Charlottesville School Board chair and 17th Senate District candidate Amy Laufer’s PAC has raised almost $125,000 since 2015 to support Democratic women running for state office, according to VPAP.

Virginians for Rob Bell

This committee was formed in 2012, ahead of Bell’s unsuccessful run for the GOP attorney general nomination in 2013. It’s received $560,000 in contributions, and is currently sitting on $294,000, says VPAP.

Forever Albemarle

Maintaining the county’s rural areas and supporting farmers is the goal of Forever Albemarle, which donated to Republican Board of Supervisors candidates Duane Snow and Rodney Thomas in 2009. The PAC has been less active since then, but it made a $545 donation to the White Hall Ruritans in 2017, according to Virginia Department of Elections.

Quote of the week

“To me, any legitimate conversation about reparations starts with education.” —Pharrell Williams, May 17 at UVA’s Valedictory Exercises

In brief

Trick-or-treat

Police Chief RaShall Brackney asked City Council on May 20 to repeal the 57-year-old ordinance that prohibits kids over the age of 12 from knocking on neighbors’ doors and demanding candy on Halloween. She’s also calling for a 10pm curfew on October 31, and council will vote on the matters in June.

Another A12 lawsuit

Bill Burke came to Charlottesville in August 2017 with a plan to protest a white supremacist rally, and left with a string of mental and physical injuries from being hit by James Fields’ car. Now, in a federal lawsuit filed in his home state of Ohio, he’s asking for $3 million in compensatory damages.

Free advice

The Charlottesville Albemarle Bar Association and Legal Aid Justice Center have hired their first pro bono coordinator. Kristin Clarens has already racked up “countless hours” of pro bono work on immigration, human rights, and refugee resettlement, according to a press release.

Long goodbye

Two-time Super Bowl champion with deep Charlottesville roots Chris Long is hanging up his helmet after 11 NFL seasons. The UVA and St. Anne’s-Belfield grad chosen as the league’s 2018 Walter Payton Man of the Year is also known for his humanitarian work: Since starting his Waterboys charity, he’s funded approximately 60 wells (and counting) in Africa.

Body found, arrest made

Police say 24-year-old Cody Jason Cappel, whose body was found on the Rivanna Trail behind Peter Jefferson Parkway May 16, was shot multiple times. He appeared to have been living in a tent along the river near 49-year-old Allan Ray Via, who has been charged with second degree murder and possession of ammunition by a convicted felon.

Signs of change

Vincent Kinney was the first black student to graduate from Albemarle High. staff photo

Despite the landmark 1954 Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, which found public school segregation unconstitutional, Albemarle County didn’t integrate for another nine years.

In 1963, 26 black students enrolled in three county schools for the first time: Stone-Robinson Elementary, Greenwood, and Albemarle High. And on May 17, county administrators unveiled new signs at each location that honor the first black attendees of those schools.

Superintendent Matt Haas thanked local historian and filmmaker Lorenzo Dickerson, who spearheaded the project.

In attendance at the unveiling were multiple members of the Albemarle 26, including the first black AHS graduate Vincent Kinney, who donned his cap and gown in 1964.

“I get a little bit of angst at things like this because it focuses attention on us and it does not emphasize the fact that we were overcoming something in the community,” said Kinney. “By the time I came to Albemarle [High], I had already been scarred…by the white privilege that existed and still does to a lesser extent today.”

When students see the new sign, he says he hopes they don’t take it for granted.

Adds Kinney, “I hope they see that the level of near equality that’s shared by all now has been fought for.”

Slight snag: City Council candidates, new PAC launch campaigns

It wasn’t your typical launch party. Supporters of local activists Don Gathers and Michael Payne gathered at Kardinal Hall January 8 for the official tossing of the hats into this year’s City Council races. But Gathers made a different kind of announcement: A doctor’s visit three hours earlier had convinced him to postpone his campaign start.

Gathers still has recurring issues stemming from an October 14 heart attack, and said that because of those, he needs to delay the announcement of his campaign, to focus on taking care of “the temple the Lord blessed me with.”

The health advisory threw a bit of a wrench not only into the already printed “Payne Gathers” signs, but also into the unveiling of a new PAC, Progressives for Cville, led by Jalane Schmidt, a UVA professor and Black Lives Matter organizer .

“My concern was for Don,” says Schmidt, citing Gathers’ contributions to the community through his church, the Blue Ribbon Commission on Race, Memorials and Public Spaces, and the Police Citizen Review Board—from which he resigned following the launch. “I want him to thrive and be healthy.”

The political action committee came about because “there’s a lot of money that flows into a lot of races for entities that have business before City Council, like developers,” says Schmidt. “We can trace a line between donors and their businesses getting favorable hearings,” both on a local and state level, she says.

Progressives for Cville is looking for small donors to support candidates who align with progressive policies and goals, specifically racial inequity and affordable housing, says Schmidt. She’s not sure how much it’s raised so far, but on the ActBlue page set up last week, there was one $500 donor.

And the PAC is looking at candidates by platform rather than party, says Schmidt. Both Payne and Gathers are running as Democrats. And although Mayor Nikuyah Walker won in 2017 as the first independent to get a seat on council since 1948, Democrats “are the biggest platform in town,” says Schmidt.

There have been other offshoots from the main Democratic party trunk. Kevin Lynch and Maurice Cox were elected to council In 2000 as members of Democrats for Change. “It was frustration with the status quo” that had made the party the establishment, recalls Lynch. Dems for Change had a lot of living wage supporters, environmentalists and architects like Cox, who thought the city’s growth plan was “antiquated.”

And in 2017, a group of Dems that included two former city councilors launched Equity and Progress in Charlottesville, which supported Walker’s independent run.

Payne, 26, grew up in Albemarle and graduated from Albemarle High. He’s is a frequent commenter at City Council meetings—he recently asked the city to divest from fossil fuel holdings—and says the affordable housing crisis spurred him to run. Payne works for Habitat for Humanity Virginia.

And while he refrains from saying who he’d like to see replaced on a council where Wes Bellamy, Kathy Galvin, and Mike Signer are all at the end of their terms, he says, “Given the events of the past three years, new leadership is needed.”

Gathers, 59, points out that a “high level of toxicity” existed in the city well before 2017, when white supremacists targeted Charlottesville with the KKK and Unite the Right rallies.

“That poisonous tree of racism just branches out into so many areas,” he says.

Gathers says he hopes to get his health concerns worked out before the March 11 deadline for filing signatures with the party for the June 11 primary.

Another candidate came forward the next day. Sena Magill may be best known as the wife of Tyler Magill, the UVA librarian and WTJU radio host whose confrontation with Jason Kessler became a meme, and who suffered a stroke after being assaulted that weekend. She announced her run January 9 at City Space, at an event attended by Councilor Heather Hill, former councilor Dede Smith (who denies rumors that she’s running), and yet-to-announce candidate Lloyd Snook.

Sena Magill says her experience working at Region Ten will help her work anywhere, even City Council. Photo by Eze Amos

Magill, 46, grew up here and spent 16 years working with Region Ten and PACEM. She says she’s running because “I’m tired of seeing my home in the news for all these negative reasons.”

She listed climate change first on her platform, and wants to tackle it on the local level with solar panels on government buildings, electric buses, and better bike paths to make the city “carbon negative,” which drew applause from attendees.

Schools and affordable housing are also on Magill’s platform. She cites Maslow’s hierarchy of needs that puts food and shelter foremost before any other issues can be addressed.

The question many have asked her is, who in their right mind would want to sit on City Council given the current tenor of the meetings where those standing before—or on—council can be jeered by attendees and sometimes by those on the dais.

Magill compares the meetings to a pressure cooker where steam needs to be released and says she won’t take it personally. “I expect to cry if I lose the election and I expect to cry more if I win,” she jokes.

So far, none of the council incumbents have revealed their plans for reelection, but the race seems destined for a Democratic primary June 11, when councilors traditionally secure their seats—unless there’s a wild-card independent like Walker.