UVA Town Hall on May 4th Raid on Students; Descano Backs Jay Jones for AG; VA10 Candidate Travis Nembhard on WaPo; Zetas Meet in Suffolk
🚩 There are 42 days until the June 18, 2024 primary. Early voting 🏃🏼♂️ has begun
🚩 There are 182 days until Election Day November 5, 2024.
UVA President James Ryan to Hold Town Hall Today
Students, faculty and others are confronted by members of the Virginia State Police over the weekend on May 4, 2024. Today at 12:15 p.m. a virtual “town hall” will be held on the events over the weekend.
Descano Endorses Jay Jones for AG in 2025
The 2025 Campaign: After news was made over the last two weeks by State Senators Aaron Rouse and Ghazala Hashmi, who are running to Lt. Governor in 2025, former House of Delegates member and attorney Jay Jones received a big endorsement yesterday from Fairfax Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano.
“Jay Jones is the leader we need — to defend our fundamental rights, keep Virginians safe, and move us forward,” Descano stated in an endorsement video backing Jones for Attorney General in 2025.
“Steve, you are a tenacious public servant who has taken principled stands as Fairfax County’s Commonwealth’s Attorney, and I’m thrilled to welcome you as a co-chair of Virginians for Jay Jones,” wrote State Senator Lashrecse Aird on X.
VA10 Candidate Travis Nembhard Comments on The Washington Post
Travis Nembhard, a congressional candidate in Virginia’s tenth district, posted an observation on social media regarding the recent “voter guide” in The Washington Post. With so many candidates in the race for Congress in VA10 (and VA07), the possibility of an unpredictable outcome is high. The primary is on June 18.
Nembhard isn’t the only Black candidate who has complained about The Washington Post. In 2019, attorney Alicia Plerhoples, who was running for Chair of the Fairfax Board of Supervisors, wrote on Facebook on May 27, 2019:
Later on June 21, 2019, Plerhoples wrote The Washington Post Editorial Board’s Claims of “Identity Politics” Are Used to Silence Us. She wrote in part that, “for much of the race, I found myself battling the Post’s biases instead of my primary opponents’ who largely treated me, my identity, and my ideas as equal.” Though The Washington Post headquarters is in Washington, D.C., a city that is 41 percent Black, there were no Black members of the editorial board for about a year until late last year when Keith Richburg, who is apparently located in Hong Kong, was added.
By Travis Nembhard as posted on X on : Candidates are usually told to ignore certain things and it is not in my nature to focus on these sorts of distractions, but I want to take a moment to address what I view as a problematic situation. The recent @washingtonpost “voter guide” omitting at least 7 out of 12 candidates in the VA-10 race is a dangerous practice in which a news source, claiming to provide balanced coverage, is actually putting their thumb on the scale in a significant way.
This is not the first time, this also happened last year during my race for delegate, when the Washington Post chose to endorse all battleground democrats in Northern Virginia except me, despite me having identical policy positions to the other democrats
and having experience that relates to all three branches of government as a former judge, legislative counsel, and financial & tech regulator, and as someone awarded by the American Bar Association, Forbes, and the National Black Lawyers for my work in law and policy. Whatever their rationale, I chose not to say something and moved on from it back then, but I'm speaking up now because I see a pattern with this being the third occurrence with what the Washington Post has been doing.
I thank those, including @bluevirginia, @SenDaveMarsden, and @SusannaSGibson for speaking up and raising awareness about this. We need to do better, and despite the lopsided coverage by some, I will continue to push forward, because ultimately the voters choose and I still have faith they'll educate themselves on all candidates, by supplementing their reading/views with the news sources tagged below – to name a few.
These news sources mentioned below have typically given a balanced set of coverage to all who are in this race or past ones. It’s a frustrating reality to see certain actions like this occurrence with the Washington Post, exacerbating the impact of money in politics by elevating those who have already raised more, and then offering up free press coverage to only them. You do a disservice to the electorate when you unilaterally omit important information from voter consideration like was done here.
I only hope the Washington Post can do better moving forward and reference all candidates. It's of course disappointing, but I encourage my fellow competitor-candidates who are dealing with the same issue to stay positive and look past this oversight. The Washington Post doesn't choose who is competitive in this race, the voters ultimately do.
Photos: Zeta Scholarship Event on May 3 in Suffolk
SUFFOLK, VA — The Zeta Phi Beta Sorority held their annual scholarship event on May 3. Each member of the sorority donated $50 for the event and thousands in scholarships were given out this year.
Events
➡️ SUBSCRIBE TO BLACK VIRGINIA NEWS. “One had better die fighting against injustice than die like a dog or a rat in a trap.” —Ida Wells. 👨🏽💻 Send your press releases, submissions, tips, pitches, comments and corrections to BlackVirginiaNews@gmail.com.