The Progressive Virginia Project
Round 3
Yasmine Taeb (SD-35)
We’ve previously urged you to support Yasmine Taeb in her primary against Senate Minority Leader Dick Saslaw. Twice. Saslaw remains the biggest impediment to progress within the Virginia Democratic Party, and beating him is no less urgent than it was the last two times we asked you to donate.
Andres Jimenez (HD-38)
Environmental activist Andres Jimenez is challenging incumbent Kaye Kory from the left in this deep-blue Northern Virginia district. Jimenez has an impressive list of endorsements, including many unions, environmental groups, and immigrant advocacy groups. He outraised Del. Kory in the first quarter of 2019 by about $10,000, and he’s running on a pro-labor, pro-environment progressive platform. Kory is a septuagenarian white woman in a very diverse district, and she’s recently gotten notice for appearing to think that Hispanics are all day laborers and that a caller with a Spanish accent must have been Jimenez. HD-38 deserves better.
Sally Hudson (HD-57):
Sally Hudson is a UVA professor and a great progressive who wants a “clean energy future”. At the last moment, after the incumbent she was challenging dropped out, she was joined in the primary by Charlottesville City Councilor Kathy Galvin.
Galvin is a Democrat, and calls herself a progressive, but as local political observer and diligent local government watchdog Molly Conger put it ”[I]f kathy galvin can call herself a progressive, the word should be abandoned. it's lost all meaning.” An op-ed of Conger’s points out, among other things, Galvin’s shocking memo attacking an audit suggesting the city’s racial achievement gap needed to be closed, with Galvin offering up choice opinions such as “White parents make it work for them through persistence and volunteer involvement. Black parents on the other hand expect the schools to look after their needs and tell them what needs to be done.”
At a candidate forum in which Galvin mostly offered up platitudes and buzzwords, Conger noticed that Galvin said she’d like to serve on the Virginia House of Delegates’s housing committee. There’s just one problem with that, though.
The House of Delegates does not have a housing committee.
Michael Wade (HD-91)
A Republican-held district may seem like an unusual place for us to get involved, but this district was recently redrawn by a federal court to be a compact blue district rather than a Republican racial gerrymander. Republican incumbent Del. Gordon Helsel, faced with a district that voted for Hillary Clinton, retired. 2017 nominee Michael Wade, a democratic socialist, has the support of Run For Something, and the local pipefitters’ union, and he’s sworn off campaign money from the state’s predatory utility monopolies. His opponent, Martha Mugler, has not done so, and she has the support of Ralph Northam’s blackface PR PAC. We know Michael Wade will be a reliable progressive vote, and we can’t say the same of Martha Mugler, whose issue positions are painfully vague. (One of her positions on healthcare is--and I’m quoting directly from her website--“women’s health.” That’s it. Just those two words.) She does seem to be somewhat anti-abortion, appearing to oppose the Virginia abortion rights bill that had Republicans falsely accusing Democrats of supporting infanticide, so that’s a bad sign.
Once again, we’re asking you to support two progressive candidates for Commonwealth’s Attorney. Here’s our statements from the last round of the Progressive Virginia Project explaining why:
Parisa Dehghani-Tafti (Arlington-Falls Church Commonwealth’s Attorney)
Another signatory of the brief opposing McAuliffe’s voting rights restoration initiative was Arlington-Falls Church CA Theo Stamos. Stamos has never been particularly liberal, once backing anti-tax conservative and de facto Republican John Vihstadt for the Arlington County Board. She supports the death penalty and attempted to stave off meaningful bail reform by instituting her own toothless reform so bad that local public defenders took the unusual step of going to the press to call her out over it. The reformer in this race is Georgetown law professor Parisa Dehghani-Tafti, a longtime public defender and criminal justice advocate. Dehghani-Tafti, like Descano, supports ending prosecution of marijuana possession, ending the death penalty, and reforming discovery practices; she also seeks to end cash bail for low-level offenses.
Steve Descano (Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney)
Incumbent Ray Morrogh made news when he signed a brief opposing then-Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s restoration of voting rights to felons who had completed their sentences and opposed federal sentencing reforms such as the repeal of mandatory minimums. It wasn’t surprising to those familiar with him. He’s long been an opponent of moving on from the “tough on crime” policies of the 90s.In 2005, Morrogh, then the chief deputy CA, was accused of attempting to strike a man from a jury because the man was black. Morrogh responded to the accusation by saying that actually, it was because the man’s wife was a member of the Democratic National Committee. No, seriously:
“I see where his wife is on the Democratic National Committee, and that’s basically the reason I struck him,” Morrogh said, according to the transcript. “I think their policies towards criminal justice seem to be kind of left-handed, and that’s the only reason I voted no.”
A reminder that this was in 2005. In 2005, Ray Morrogh thought Democrats were too liberal on criminal justice. We think that says it all.
Challenger Steve Descano is running on a progressive platform that includes ending cash bail, declining to prosecute marijuana possession, ending the death penalty, and ending Fairfax County’s use of Virginia’s trial discovery practices (which disadvantage defendants by depriving them of key information about what evidence the prosecution will be using.)