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Network NoVA with Stair Calhoun – Your Need to Know

(Dec 6, 2017) Catherine Read interviews Stair Calhoun, founding member Network NoVA. Dedicated to involving women in politics, Network NoVA was founded by Stair Calhoun, Katherine White and other activists who had participated in the Women’s March of January 2017. These grassroots activists organized women in support of Democratic candidates for the Virginia House of Delegates election of 2017.

Following the 2016 Presidential election local women, including Stair Calhoun, sought to find ways that they could make their voices heard in politics. Seeking to make the biggest difference possible, they organized themselves into Network NoVA. Their organization has since gone from strength to strength organizing a Women’s Summit in June of 2017 and backing Democratic candidates in the 2017 election. Dedicated to keeping local people involved, their summit was organized by a group of 7 women in less than 70 days, but still had hundreds of attendees, including 30 state delegates or delegate candidates and a number of sponsorships.

Stair Calhoun attributes their success to both their willingness to innovate and the inability to take no as an answer. Network NoVA’s newness aided them in providing a place to try new ideas without the inertia of the old. They agreed to back any candidate whom they believed best represented the women of their district, regardless of their perceived chance of winning, and tried new techniques to encourage women to vote. They involved children in making personalized reminder cards, which encouraged women to make voting plans in advance to support of their motto “When we vote, we win.” Further, they produced more than 17 different short videos in support of various candidates.

Currently, Network NoVa is working on contacting newly elected delegates to find out how to best support them, as well as creating plans to keep constituent pressure on legislators in Richmond on a range of topics including gun reform, the ERA amendment, Medicaid expansion and redistricting reform. To do this Network NoVa is creating VAPLAN, the Virginia Progressive Legislative Alert Network, a centralized way to keep people informed about what the state legislature is doing. They seek to create a system where people can check on what their legislators are doing on the issues important to them in an easy manner without being inundated with other information.

Network NoVA has partnered with a number of other organizations, including Democratic Promise, in order to try and reach out to rural Virginians. Democratic Promise is an organization based around the idea of reverse constituent services. They contact people in rural Virginia and seek to learn about the issues and problems they currently face, then put them in contact with the services that could solve them. They seek to keep politicians focused on local issues even between elections.

Going into the future, Network NoVA is seeking to expand their membership. They’ve already begun preparations for their 2018 Women’s Summit, and signups are already available. Topics at their June 23rd summit are planned to include how to get out the rural vote, Democratic Promise and the involvement of new technologies in elections. Network NoVA has also begun their initial planning for the 2018 congressional elections, where they seek to back Democratic candidates in the 1st, 2nd, 5th, 6th, 9th and 10th congressional districts, and even hope to support candidates in every district. Overall, they seek to get people involved in politics, while also seeking out the ways they can use Network NoVA to serve the needs of all Virginians.

To learn more about Network NoVA visit them at their website at networknova.org, you can follow them at Facebook, join their events via Meetup or email them directly at [email protected]

by Catherine Read

OneVirginia2021 with Brian Cannon – Inside Scoop

(Nov. 20, 2017) Catherine Read talks with Brian Cannon, Executive Director of OneVirginia2021, a non-profit that came together four years ago to address the issue of political gerrymandering in the Commonwealth of Virginia. While “gerrymandering” is named after Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry, the first documented evidence of redrawing lines for political gain was actually done in Virginia. Patrick Henry pushed to redraw lines in the 5th Congressional District that would pit James Madison against James Monroe. This historical fact and many other aspects of political gerrymandering are detailed in the documentary “GerryRIGGED.”

Brian Cannon details the many aspects of gerrymandering and how it has subverted the very idea of representative government. It’s mandated by law that voting districts be redrawn every 10 years based on U.S. Census data. This is to ensure that districts have similar numbers of voters within each one. Those include Congressional Districts, Senate Districts and House Districts. (It also applies at the county and city level as well.) The idea is that each district represents a roughly equal number of voters. The Virginia Constitution also stipulates that these districts must be “compact and contiguous.” The interpretation of “contiguous” might mean a single road, or a connection across water. And “compact” is not specifically defined at all. Over the centuries, and in the last several decades, legislators have taken a creative license – in both parties – to draw lines that protect incumbency.

Both Republicans and Democrats have engaged in incumbency protection. Efforts to promote “non-partisan redistricting” in modern times goes back to a bill introduced by Delegate Ken Plum, the most senior member of the House of Delegates, in 1982 when Democrats controlled the House. Regardless of which party controlled the two chambers of the General Assembly, there has been a resistance to fair redistricting based on the idea of “compactness.”

OneVirginia2021 is challenging this failure to meet the compactness test with a federal lawsuit that involves 11 Virginia Districts: 6 Senate districts and 5 House districts. The short term goal is to seek legal relief for these specific districts – and ultimately those districts that border them – for a possible total of 31 affected districts. The long term goal is to work toward the establishment of a non-partisan commission to redraw these lines every 10 years and NOT legislators. Asking the people directly affected by the outcome of redistricting to set aside their personal considerations in drawing these maps is like asking foxes to guard the hen house.

Other states are already pursuing non-partisan redistricting: California, Ohio & Arizona among them. It’s not a perfect science, but it’s goal worth pursuing. Political gerrymandering is corrupting the concept of a representative democracy. The Wisconsin case of Gill v. Whitford before the United State Supreme Court will be an important Constitutional test of the legitimacy of partisan “cracking” and “packing.”

In 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court decided a case that redrew the third and fourth Congressional Districts to “unpack” the African-American voters in the 3rd CD and put some of them in the 4th CD. That resulted in the election of A. Donald McEachin, an African-American Democrat, to Congress in 2016. Although the voters in Virginia were split nearly evenly in their votes in 2012 for Democrats and Republicans, the resulting Virginia Congressional Delegation was 8 Republicans and only 3 Democrats. THAT is gerrymandering. Representatives are selecting their voters – not voters selecting their representatives.

Brian also points out that Virginia has 224 split precincts. There are two precincts in Newport News that are split 3 ways. This has led to a critical issue in the 2017 election in 28th House District where approximately 88 voters may were given the wrong ballots. The mix-up involves voters on two streets in Fredericksburg and may end up in court or with a special election to determine who will win the seat.. The political control of the House of Delegates may well hang in the balance. This particular crisis serves to highlight why we need to have a better system of redistricting PRIOR to the lines being redrawn in 2021.

OneVirginia2021 is using the power of grassroots organizing as part of their effort to activate Virginia voters. They had more than 600 volunteers at the polls across Virginia for the June 2017 primaries asking voters to sign a petition demanding non-partisan redistricting by 2021. Those volunteers were at the polls again on Nov. 7, 2017, for the record voter turnout in the statewide elections asking voters to make their voices heard.

For more information about the work of OneVirginia2021, visit them at www.OneVirginia2021.org, follow them on Twitter at @1VA2021 or connect on Facebook.

by Catherine Read

Julie Jakopic – An Interview with the Chair of Virginia’s List

(Aug 30, 2017) Catherine Read interviews Julie Jakopic, Chair of Virginia’s List, a political action committee (PAC) whose mission is to support progressive pro-choice women candidates running for office in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The organization was originally formed in 2015 as Women Leaders of Virginia. During that election cycle, women candidates running for the House of Delegates received financial support for their general election campaigns in the very first year of the organization’s fundraising efforts.

In early 2017, the organization rebranded as Virginia’s List. They followed the branding model of other very successful organizations such as EMILY’s List, Annie’s List of Texas and Lillian’s List of North Carolina. They also committed to helping women fund primary races when they are running against one or more men in their own party. This is very much the core mission of EMILY’s List which is actually an acronym for Early Money Is Like Yeast (EMILY). The women who serve on the Virginia’s List Board (which includes host Catherine Read) are from various parts of Virginia and many have been candidates themselves. One of the founders of Virginia’s List, Amy Laufer of Charlottesville, is currently a Charlottesville City School Board Member and also a candidate for Charlottesville City Council.

In 2015, Julie Jakopic was a candidate in a five candidate Democratic primary for the 45th District House seat. Running in a field that included herself and four men, she came in third with 23.3 percent of the vote. Understanding that women were being defeated at the primary stage, Virginia’s List doubled down on funding the primary campaigns of many of the Democratic women running for office in 2017. There is an unprecedented 43 Democratic women running for a seat in the 100 person Virginia House of Delegates. Many were in primary contests and some of those races included more than one woman running for the nomination.

There is a process Virginia’s List has created for vetting candidates for endorsement and funding that includes a Candidate Questionnaire (CQ) and a number of other factors including their fundraising, doors knocked and the voting history of the districts in which they are running. The public has access to some of this candidate information through the Virginia Public Access Project (VPAP.org) which posts information about money raised and voting history of the district.

Virginia’s List works collaboratively with a number of other organizations including Emerge Virginia, which recruits and trains progressive women candidates interested in running for office. Each of these organizations is a crucial part of fielding successful women candidates. Virginia has a low percentage of women in our legislature, less than 20%, and we’ve never had a woman Governor, Lt. Governor or U.S. Senator. Only one woman has ever served in a statewide office, Mary Sue Terry, who was Attorney General for two terms from 1985 to 1993 and who co-founded one of the earliest women’s political candidate organizations in Virginia, The Farm Team.

Women bring a different lived experience and perspective to many of the issues being addressed through public policy making – paid leave, child care regulation, campus sexual assault, violence against women, disability benefits, payday lending, public assistance for children and families, medicaid expansion, education policy – and much more. Men continue to predominate in every branch of government in the Commonwealth of Virginia and Virginia’s List is committed to putting more women into elected office who are representative of the people who actually live in our communities.

Find more information at www.VirginiasList.com or on Facebook and @VAListWomen on Twitter.

by Catherine Read

Emerge Virginia – Training Democratic Women Candidates – Inside Scoop

(Aug 21 2017) Catherine Read talks with Emerge Virginia Board Members the Hon. Kate Hanley and Atima Omara about this affiliate of Emerge America. Emerge Virginia is a program designed to recruit and train Democratic women who are interested in running for office – local offices as well as statewide and federal offices. They do not endorse candidates or fund their campaigns, but they work in cooperation with Virginia’s List which does both.

In 2017, Emerge Virginia has 24 alumnae running for office – in both the House of Delegates and in local offices like Charlottesville City Council (Amy Laufer) and Fairfax County School Board (Karen Keys-Gamarra.) In total, there are 43 Democratic women running for the Virginia House of Delegates, a record number of women candidates. This effort in recruiting and training women is in response to the dismal level of representation of women in Virginia’s General Assembly – where they make up only 17% of the legislators. Virginia has never had a woman in the office of Governor, Lt. Governor or U.S. Senator. Only ONE WOMAN has ever been elected to statewide office – Mary Sue Terry was Attorney General from 1986 to 1993. She is the only woman to ever run for Governor and she lost to George Allen.

The Honorable Kate Hanley, Chair of the Emerge Virginia Board, started out on the Fairfax County School Board, was elected to the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors from the Providence District in 1986, and represented that district until being elected Chair of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors in 1995, where she served until 2003. Governor Tim Kaine appointed her as Secretary of the Commonwealth in 2006 where she served until 2010. She has been instrumental in launching and building Emerge Virginia to serve women running at every level – including the election of Fairfax County Sheriff Stacey Kincaid in 2013, the first woman to serve in that position in the Fairfax County’s 275 year history.

Atima Omara distinguished herself early in her political career by running and winning a national campaign to be the President of the Young Democrats of America in 2013– the first Virginian to hold that office and the first African-American woman to hold that office in it’s 81 year history. That same year, she made Jet Magazine’s 40 under 40 and Ebony Magazine’s Power 100. A native of Richmond with a BA from the University of Virginia and a Masters Degree in Public Administration from George Mason University, she is on the Board of Directors of Emerge Virginia as well as Virginia’s List. She is a regular speaker/panelist at NetRoots Nation each year, and a sought after political media commentator at major news outlets across the country.

Emerge Virginia has a powerhouse Executive Director, Julie Copeland, and distinguished Board of Directors that includes women from every part of Virginia. They include First Lady of Virginia Dorothy McAuliffe, Delegate Kathleen Murphy, Maggi Luca, Doris Crouse-Mays, Cianti Stewart-Reid, Gaylene Kanoyton, Sandra Brandt, Alexsis Rodgers and the late Mary Ann Hovis. Every Board Member has brought their unique talents and expertise to the task of increasing the number of elected Democratic women in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Mary Ann Hovis was instrumental in helping to launch the DPVA’s Pat Jenning’s Project, and regularly opened her home to both Democratic women candidates and nearly every other Democratic candidate running in Virginia. Mary Ann was the daughter of Congressman Pat Jennings of Marion, VA. She was a graduate of Radford College and a long term member of the Radford University Board of Visitors where she served two terms as Rector. In 2000 she received the University’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Her commitment to electing more Democrats in Virginia is legendary.

There is much work to be done in supporting women running for public office in Virginia at every level. Emerge Virginia is focused on finding women in this Commonwealth with the passion for public office at every level of elected office. If you want to be a part of this movement, find out how you can help at www.EmergeVA.org