Adrian Fenty is expected to win easily in his bid to become D.C’s mayor in next week’s election. (Photo by Lauren Victoria Burke/AP)
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LOU CHIBBARO JR
Friday, November 03, 2006
Democratic mayoral candidate Adrian Fenty and seven gay-supportive candidates for D.C. City Council — six Democrats and one independent — are poised to win easily in the District’s general election Nov. 7.
Among them are gay Councilmembers Jim Graham (D-Ward 1), who is running unopposed, and David Catania (I-At-Large), who faces token opposition from three candidates with little name recognition.
With little suspense remaining in the mayoral and Council races, some gay activists have turned their attention to the city’s school board and Advisory Neighborhood Commission races, where the outcome for several gay-supportive candidates is less certain.
Four openly gay candidates are running in hotly contested races in ANC 2C, which covers the city’s Shaw neighborhood. The gay candidates are backing Kevin Chapple, a straight civic activist who is attempting to unseat ANC 2C Chair Leroy Thorpe, a controversial figure who led an unsuccessful effort to prevent a gay bar from opening in Shaw.
Meanwhile, the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, the city’s largest gay political group, announced plans to broaden its get-out-the-vote campaign appearances in Washington gay bars this weekend to include support for pro-gay Democratic candidates in Maryland and Virginia.
Stein Club President Mario Acosta-Velez said club members would also remind Virginia residents to vote against the proposed state constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, civil unions and domestic partnerships in Virginia.
“We know a lot of Maryland and Virginia residents come to the D.C. gay bars and clubs,” Acosta-Velez said. “Our main concern is to reach D.C. GLBT people,” he said. “But this is a very important year for Maryland and Virginia.”
Log Cabin Republicans of D.C., which represents local gay Republicans, has endorsed GOP candidates running for mayor and three Council seats. The club’s president, John Tobias, said the Republican candidates expressed support on gay and AIDS-related issues during appearances before the club last month.
Tobias and Bob Kabel, the gay chair of the D.C. Republican Party, have called the D.C. party one of the nation’s most gay-supportive Republican Party organizations. But the two acknowledge that in a city where 74 percent of the voters are registered as Democrats, the Republicans have had few opportunities to win elections.
In the mayoral race, Republican David Kranich and Statehood Green Party candidate Chris Otten are challenging Fenty. The D.C. Gay & Lesbian Activists Alliance, a non-partisan group, gave Fenty an 8.5 rating on gay and AIDS issues, compared to a 2 rating for Otten and a 0 rating for Kranich. The GLAA rating is based on a scale of -10 to +10, and uses the candidates’ record as well as answers to a questionnaire.
GLAA said Kranich and several other candidates running for Council and school board received 0 ratings because they did not return the questionnaire. Unless the group finds out about their positions for or against gay rights, the group automatically assigns a 0 rating to those who don’t return the questionnaire, GLAA spokesperson Rick Rosendall said. Kranich was among those who did not return the questionnaire.
In the Ward 3 Council race, Republican Theresa Conroy received a 0 rating even though she completed the GLAA questionnaire. Her opponent and expected winner, George Washington University Law School professor Mary Cheh, received a 7.5 rating from GLAA.
Rosendall and other GLAA members have said Conroy and other candidates receiving low ratings on the positive side of the rating scale generally have dodged questions or have declined to support gay rights proposals. Conroy, for example, did not state whether she supports same-sex marriage in response to a question on the GLAA questionnaire that asks, “Do you support legal recognition of marriages between partners of the same sex?”
Without saying yes or no, Conroy replied, “The legal issues regarding the family and marriage are the responsibility of the states and should not be addressed in the United States Constitution.”
Cheh expressed strong support for legalizing same-sex marriage, as has Fenty and all of the other Stein Club backed candidates. Catania also supports legalizing same-sex marriage.
Independent candidate Antonio “Tony” Dominguez, who is running against Catania, told the D.C. Current newspaper that he opposes both same-sex marriage and domestic partnerships.
At the urging of GLAA and other local gay groups, most incumbent Councilmembers, along with the candidates expected to win on Nov. 7, have said they would wait until strong opposition to gay marriage subsides in Congress before they would risk approving a gay marriage bill in the D.C. City Council.
With most public opinion polls showing that Democrats are likely to win control of the House and could win control of the Senate, Fenty and his fellow gay-supportive councilmembers might have to revisit the gay marriage question next year.
Fenty will also be faced with a decision on whether to release a memo prepared in 2005 by then-D.C. Attorney General Robert Spagnoletti that reportedly says the city has legal authority to recognize same-sex marriages performed in Massachusetts. Mayor Anthony Williams has refused to release the memo, saying he was concerned it would antagonize Congress. Fenty pledged to release the memo during the campaign.
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