And with that title, I come as a guest writer to launch DWT into the brave new world of explainer blogging. Howie's a long time friend, and asked me to write up the candidates. I live in the district, used to be a blogger elsewhere, and now I just keep pigeons and snark on twitter.
Last week I attended the Virginia eighth district candidate forum sponsored by the NAACP. Of course, all of the opinions expressed below are my own, which translated into English means they are perfect and you should receive them gratefully as sacred, revealed truth.
There are currently 13 candidates in the field. Only 12 attended. Mark Sickles of Fairfax County couldn't make it for whatever reason, and as a result I don't feel obligated to research him. Mark, I'm sure your family loves you, but you're nothing to me now. [Sickles dropped out of the race.- Ed]
Below, I'm going to list each candidate, offer my take on each, and say what I thought was each one's best and worst moment of the evening. I'm listing them as they appeared on the dais, roughly in alphabetical order. At the end, I'll offer my own conclusions. For the tl;dr crowd, feel free to jump down to there. If you want to see video clips and another review of the event, check out Blue Virginia's post.
I also want to shout out huge props to the NAACP and the moderators for managing to run such a great program with such discipline and all those microphone hungry people on the dais. I've never seen it done better.
Topic questions were wide ranging, including: support for workers and rights to organize, should Virginia adopt common core education standards, ex-felon voting rights, DREAM Act support, support for minimum wage hikes, gentrification and affordable housing, the digital divide/access to broadband, high student loan debt and access to higher education, public school achievement gaps, climate change, voter ID laws and ballot access, human trafficking, national immigration policy, high HIV infection rates in the eighth district, and high US incarceration rates. Note that there were no foriegn policy related questions.
Don Beyer (D):
Best Moment: His haircut prior to the event.
Worst Moment: Nothing really. He's very polished and practiced as an establishment Democratic capital-c "Candidate."
What He's About: Don is the candidate most likely to sip ancient scotch with Steny Hoyer. He's by far the best rehearsed issue checklist with ready stats candidate of the bunch. He's oozes wealth, and comfort with the wealthy, more than anyone else on the dais. I have no idea from listening closely to him what he really cares about or what he would fight for, as opposed to "fight" for. There are no holes in his game on the touchstone checklist liberal cultural issues, but there's not a whiff of Elizabeth Warren about him on economics, fighting the power, or calling out the system and whom it rewards. It wouldn't surprise me if he wanted the seat as a platform to get to Virginia governor, which would require him to maintain his viability with big money a la Mark Warner.
Lavern Chatman (D):
Best Moment: In responding to solutions for the high HIV infection rate within the district, she best articulated a comprehensive community based approach involving education, community outreach, health care organizations, government and churches.
Worst Moment: Nothing egregious, but she lacked depth on a lot of issues and poly approaches. Her weakness if her community organizer perspective is applied to everything. So, for example, she minimized the role of regulation in developing new housing in order to ensure the availability of affordable housing and promote mixed, integrated communities, as if developers would just buy in due to community moral suasion. That's not how the world operates.
What's She's About: Ms. Chatman is a local community leader with a genuine passion for women's health, reproductive choice, access to capital for marginalized communities who may want to start businesses, and is against the "extreme tea party agenda." She brings the needed perspective and experience of an African American woman to the party. She cares. On the other hand, she's way behind on depth and breadth of understanding national issues, and offers no critique of our current social, economic and political systems of sustaining existing power structures.
Adam Ebbin (D):
Best Moment: Hard to pick one. He was very disciplined and effective in branding himself as an effective legislator with many specific accomplishments to back it up. Not a flashy presenter, but more of a legislative bulldog.
Worst Moment: No worst moment.
What He's About: I love Adam, and have known him a long time, as has my husband. Adam's most known claim to fame is being the first out gay Virginia state legislator. His is not a charismatic figure or visionary speaker but he is a very hard worker and a bulldog on legislative tactics and strategy. Adam knows how to charge a hill, and he knows details of policy and issues. Does he understand how steep each hill is when it comes to power in America, and which ones to charge to have the greatest systemic impact? I don't know. I didn't hear much of the grand vision thing from him.
Bill Euille (D):
Best Moment: Nothing exceptional.
Worst Moment: Ditto.
What He's About: His resume. Bill's been Mayor of Alexandria for a long time, no mean feat. He talked a lot in generalities about the past, and much less about the future. His personal arc of achievement as one who grew up in the projects is admirable and impressive. His perspective is local and not really national. He speaks in vague generalities about what he would do in the future if elected.
Micah Edmond (R):
Best Moment: Highlighted his support for the minimum wage, and perhaps a rate hike, in spite of opposition within his party.
Worst Moment: "What would you do to support workers rights to organize?" "Argle bargle derp grooper guggle muggah bubba wump wump."
What He's About: African American free market Republican with big business aerospace industry tendencies. If you're reading DWT, you most likely don't want to hear more. Was on the execrable Simpson-Bowles make the old and poor suffer budget commission.
Charniele Herring (D):
Best Moment: Her opening statement with her personal biography of having been a homeless teen, gotten student loans, earned a law degree, all leading her to dedicate herself to being a voice for those left behind. She's real on this, she gives a genuine shit.
Worst Moment: Pretty much any other policy question that required her to show depth of awareness and understanding. Lots of vague aspirational generalities, "congress is broken, etc." ZZzzzzzzz.
What She's About: That pretty much covers it.
Patrick Hope (D):
Best Moment: His shout out to Elizabeth Warren's proposals to cut student loan costs and get the federal government out of the business of making money off these loans, which Howie wrote about last week.
Worst Moment: Nothing, really.
What He's About: Patrick is the founder of the Progressive Caucus in the legislature down in Richmond, and is the candidate who probably most completely understands the systemic issues DWT readers care about when it comes to confronting power and promoting change. He's not the most polished orator but he's not at all bad as a communicator. He's genuine about reaching out to those who are left behind, understanding them and standing up for them. Just one example: when asked about how to combat high HIV infection rates in the district, he's the only one who brought up expanding access to Medicaid, drawing applause. He also talked about legislative protection for the newly diagnosed from catastrophic potential bankruptcy due to the financial costs of the drugs. That shows real understanding of how the disease impacts people and how to use government and systemic change to address the problem.
Derek Hyra (D):
Best Moment: I dunno, maybe describing how we've taken steps backwards on voting rights and ballot access since the Civil Rights Movement.
Worst Moment: In his opening, he went a bit awkwardly out of his way to talk about the friendships he made with black players when he played basketball in college, a contorted "some of my best friends" pander to the NAACP sponsored event. Well meaning in that hapless white dude way but kinda cringe worthy.
What He's About: Seems like a pretty good guy. A bit academic in his approach, talks like a professor (he has Virginia Tech faculty history of some kind). Got under my skin by prefacing nearly every answer with a mini history lecture. Didactic and intellectual in the way of some liberals who are high on education and low on how to build and exercise political power.
Paul Haring (R):
Best Moment: More than one: he made people laugh. However, they were laughing at him in a kind of flabbergasted shock.
Worst Moment: More than one big-red-dome-on-an-old-white-guy rant from his right wing Catholic you're-all-going-to-hell dystopia.
What He's About: One hour of religious education per day in public schools. Full fetal personhood, abortion is murder. Planned Parenthood is evil and black people get so many abortions they are going to make themselves extinct. Wake up, people! Chastity education in the schools to prevent sex outside of man-woman marriage. And so on. Not even kidding about all this. The guy is angry and he's fucking nuts.
Satish Korpe (D):
Best Moment: None.
Worst Moment: Address the achievement gap in public schools by incentiving employers to encourage employees to spend more time with their school aged children. The achievement gap is the parents' responsibility. End of story.
What He's About: Successful businessman born in India with challenges communicating through a heavy accent. Paternalsitic free market pro business generally laissez faire approach to government. Demonstrated no knowledge of national issues or policy from any political ideological perspective.
Mark Levine (D):
Best Moment: He served up a lot of liberal red meat at high volume, so he had a few applause moments. Hard to pick one.
Worst Moment: Getting on such a loud roll at once point that he blew right past the time buzzer and never heard it. Once the moderator caught up to him, he said, in a kind of shock, "I couldn't hear!" People laughed. While it's true that the buzzer had gotten somehow softer later in the evening, the laughter seemed like it was from a recognition that this probably happens to him a lot: being such a loud, breathless shouter must make it hard to hear, well, anyone or anything...
What He's About: Mark calls himself "The Aggressive Progressive," and he is that. He's a radio talk show host, and it shows. Lots of liberal red meat. He's also recently out as gay after a career in and around politics. I don't view that cynically, I came out a little late too, though not as late as he. He gets it on the issues DWT readers care about. And yet. . . something seems off to me about him. I think he lacks a certain amount of filter or judgment. He doesn't come across as someone who is all that socially effective away from a microphone.
Bruce Shuttleworth (D):
Best Moment: When he talked with passion about reorienting budget priorities away from buying unneeded jet military aircraft and toward investing in health and medical research through the NIH. Said diseases are more deadly than terrorism.
Worst Moment: Nothing, really.
What He's About: He's a veteran and former fighter pilot who's pitch is he has the credibility to take on budget priorities and try to cut defense spending to support liberal priorities. He is pretty well informed on the issues, and talks about the management class acting like "pigs at a trough." But what really animates him is cancer research, having lost both of his parents to cancer. This seems like his core animating issue, he really cares about fighting diseases and investing in cures. He generalizes that awareness to a posture of standing up for people left on the outside. I don't hear the more comprehensive understanding of the big national and economic picture that you get from Elizabeth Warren or Alan Grayson, but "Shuttle," as he likes to be called, does want to upset at least one major applecart. That's is more than I can say for Don Beyer.
Conclusion:
There's great diversity among the candidates. We have men, women, people of color and gay folks. This is a district that went 67% for Obama in 2012. It should be the home of a progressive lion who pushes the envelope in the House. The slate is mostly liberal-ish, but the field is crowded and it's going to come down in part to money and in part to how large a base each candidate can claim.
I see Don Beyer as a wealthy, coiffed, and polished avatar of the establishment who is practiced with his talking points and likely hopeful to be a Virginia Governor someday if he can pull off this election. I think he'd be a waste of the seat.
I see a field of others who mostly come from a base in Alexandria, who are likely to split support away from each other. The exception here is the Blue America endorsed Patrick Hope, who comes from Arlington County. The crew from Alexandria is strong in its diversity, and with the exception of Adam Ebbin, light on depth of policy knowledge on the national level.
Hope wants to be a fixture and leader in the Congressional Progressive Caucus, citing people like Elizabeth Warren, Keith Ellison and Alan Grayson. He seems to get it not only on an issue checklist basis but on a big picture level. I've long trusted Howie's candidate vetting process, but as this is my home district, I had to see these people for myself before deciding.
The field is going to narrow down as people without money bow out, but no one will have Don Beyer's money. With a base in Arlington, I think Patrick Hope can not only compete financially, but he's worth supporting and getting your friends to support, if you believe as I do that this district should send a progressive champion to Congress.
Dirty Hippies in Virginia don't often have a chance to push the envelope in a way that could really matter. Now, however, Jim Moran's seat is open. I just contributed $250 to Patrick Hope through Blue America. If you can, perhaps as your neighbor, I'm asking you to do something-- anything-- too. You can make your own donation here.
I have a ton of notes on people's responses during this forum, so if you have questions about anyone's answers on the questions asked, just let me know. I'll spot your questions most easily on twitter.
