Democrats aim high

Marrow, Curren face steep hills to climb

Story by Chris Graham

A candidate for public office needs to shake as many hands and slap as many backs as possible. A Democratic Party candidate in the bright-red Shenandoah Valley has to work twice as hard to have a shot on Election Day.

“You’ve got to beat the streets, pound the pavement,” 25th District Democratic Party candidate Greg Marrow said before a meet-and-greet with voters in Waynesboro earlier this month. “I’ve gone through two pairs of shoes already. You’re hot, sweaty, tired. You want to go home and play with your children. But you just know that it’s worth it. You have to believe that it’s going to happen.”

Marrow is trying to do the next-to-impossible - Republicans have held the seat in the 25th, which represents Waynesboro and portions of Augusta County, Albemarle County and Rockingham County, dating back to the 1960s, which is to say, dating back to when Virginia was a solid, solid Democratic Party state.

It’s to the point where seven-term incumbent Steve Landes hasn’t even had a Democratic opponent since his first run for the seat to replace his mentor, Pete Giesen, in 1995. But Marrow seems to be making some inroads. An agitated Landes made headlines at a debate in Waynesboro in September when he forcefully interrupted a Marrow answer to a question, then backed out of a second debate that had been proposed by the News Leader and WHSV-TV3 citing what he claimed were issues with editorial fairness on the part of the News Leader.

Democrat Erik Curren over in the 20th District, which represents Staunton, portions of Augusta and Rockingham and all of Highland County, is facing having to climb an even steeper hill, if that’s possible. The 20th was carved out of the Valley in the 2001 legislative redistricting by the majority Republican Party with the idea that it would be a solid GOP district. Curren’s task was made less daunting when Chris Saxman, who had represented the district since the ‘01 redistricting, decided against seeking a fifth term, but in Dickie Bell, Curren is facing a candidate who has won four elections to the City Council in Staunton, the only independent city in the district and the only real potential base of power for Democrats in the 20th. Read more

A parent’s right to choose

Story by Chris Graham

Dylan Owens-Wargo wasn’t enamored, to say the least, with his mom’s plans to send him to Fishburne Military School for eighth grade.

“I told her I was going to run away if she made me go to Fishburne,” said Owens-Wargo, whose mother, Heather Owens, for her part felt she had no choice but to pull Dylan out of the Waynesboro public-school system.

“He had just stopped caring. He either wasn’t doing his homework, or he wasn’t turning it in, trying to be cool like the other kids. I didn’t give him a choice. This was our only option,” said Owens, who was rolling the dice in more ways than one. Because Heather Owens isn’t the archetype for a private-school mom. She is in fact a single mother and small-business owner who takes on extra clients at her Natural Beauty Studios in Downtown Waynesboro to help pay the $15,000 annual expenses for tuition, books and uniforms for Dylan to be able to attend Fishburne. Read more

‘The secrecy thing’: Did ‘done deal’ appointment skirt law?

Wednesday, Jan. 23, 2008, 2:28 p.m. Waynesboro voter registrar Mary Alice Downs hits Send on an e-mail to Nelson County voter registrar Lisa Wooten.
“I thought I would just touch base with you and see if you still have an interest in a move to Waynesboro? My Board is trying to plan for the upcoming year and I need to give them as clear as possible ‘a picture’ of what might transpire,” Downs wrote. Read more

Online Extra: The e-mail exchanges

From: Downs, Mary Alice

Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2008 2:28 PM

To: Lisa Wooten

Subject: the year

Hello….. well how goes the Election of 08 year? I thought I would just touch base with you and see if you still have an interest in a move to Waynesboro? My Board is trying to plan for the upcoming year and I need to give them as clear as possible “a picture” of what might transpire. I am trying to negotiate with my current board to keep the option open for me to move to a Board position at the end of 08. My current Secretary is the Rep and she REALLY wants off…… Read more

Hart ready to make noise in 26th

Story by Chris Graham

Lowell Fulk was Al Weed. Gene Hart wants to be Tom Perriello.

“Lowell Fulk’s runs in 2003 and 2005 laid the foundation for what we can do this year. We couldn’t be successful if Lowell hadn’t run and lost in 2003 and 2005,” said Hart, 46, a Harrisonburg attorney and presumptive Democratic Party nominee in the 26th House District who will challenge Republican incumbent Matt Lohr in November.

Fulk is the chair of the Rockingham County Democratic Committee who challenged long-time State Del. Glenn Weatherholtz in ‘03 and then Lohr in ‘05 and came thisclose both times to turning the seat representing a portion of the county and the entirety of the city of Harrisonburg blue. “Lowell reinvigorated the Democratic Party in Harrisonburg and Rockingham, and those races and those losses were necessary for us to get to where we are now,” said Hart, like Fulk a centrist Democrat whose campaign is focused in ‘09 on crafting solutions on issues like education and particularly transportation that have been held up by the partisan gridlock in Richmond the past several years. Read more

Video Extra | Gene Hart on unemployment insurance

26th House District Democratic Party nominee Gene Hart speaks Thursday, April 23, 2009, at a Results, Not Roadblocks rally addressing the vote of House Republicans to block the receipt of federal stimulus monies for unemployment benefits at the Harrisonburg Virginia Employment Commission office. Read more

And then there were two: Marrow, Noel set to challenge Landes in 25th

  

Story by Chris Graham

Steve Landes hasn’t had a Democratic Party opponent since his first run for the 25th District seat in the Virginia House of Delegates since 1995. He’ll have a Democratic opponent this fall, though.

“It’s an uphill battle here. We have a lot of entrenched thought and belief systems here. But times have changed. Not only since 9/11, but also since this economic crisis. And it really is time to start rethinking the way we’re electing our public officials. Are they truly working for you? Are they truly doing what needs to be done to take care of their communities? I think not, and that’s a big reason as to why I’m running,” said Greg Marrow, 44, of McGaheysville, an optometrist and U.S. Navy veteran who has thrown his hat into the ring for the Democratic Party nomination.

“I have been here now for over 16 years and have seen a lot of changes over this time. Businesses closing, hundreds of people out of work, subdivisions going up. Most importantly where we are not being represented in this area. That is why I decided to run,” said Jim Noel, 42, of Mount Sidney, a facility planner with Perdue Farms in Bridgewater who will be challenging Marrow in the race for the Democratic nomination, which will be decided in a June 9 primary. Read more

Video | Meet Greg Marrow

  

25th District Democratic Party nomination candidate Greg Marrow sits down with New Dominion editor Chris Graham for a wide-ranging one-on-one interview. Graham and Marrow, 44, of McGaheysville, talk economic development, community involvement and the uphill battle that the eventual Democratic nominee will face in the 25th. Length: 7:34. Read more

Where all is bright and gay

Story by Chris Graham

When they lived in Verona, they had people throwing rocks at their house and leaving threatening notes on their vehicles in the driveway. They lost friends at work, long-time friends, close friends, when they got tired of lying about their “girlfriends” and using feminized versions of the other’s names when talking about their significant others.

One has been largely estranged from his family since coming out to them 20 years ago now - more than half his life spent in painful exile.

This is their story - though it’s not just their story.

Read more

A reasoned conversation

Web Extra by Chris Graham

There are a handful of issues that can get good friends to disagree to the core of their beings with each other. Religion and sexual orientation are among them, and when you put them together in a discussion among a pair of theology professors, well, just stand back.

“From the very beginning, we never said we were going to agree or come to a common position. We just it would be useful to go at it and keep talking. Because so often people get around this issue and then they can’t see past it,” said Ted Grimsrud, an Eastern Mennonite University professor who cowrote Reasoning Together: A Conversation on Homosexuality with fellow EMU professor Mark Thiessen Nation.

Read more

Valley marks Obama inauguration

Story by Chris Graham

An estimated 2 million people were in Washington for the inauguration of President Barack Obama. Many millions more were watching at home, at the office or at events like the one that our sister online publication, The Augusta Free Press, cosponsored in Waynesboro.

Gallup survey data had six in ten Americans watching the inauguration live. Which just blows my mind. I’m 36 years old, a politics junkie since I was old enough to talk, and I don’t remember any of the other eight inaugurations that I obviously had to have lived through.

Read more

Happy being second banana

Story by Chris Graham

Jon Bowerbank is good at math, sure, but 3+3=6 isn’t exactly advanced calculus. Political calculus, sure. “We get a threepeat in the governship Democrat, we get all three statewide offices in the Democratic fold, and by then, if we accomplish that, we’ll pick up six House of Delegates seats,” said Bowerbank, a Southwest Virginia energy magnate who is running for the Democratic Party nomination for lieutenant governor in the June party primary.

Read more

Catching Up With … Lexington Mayor Mimi Elrod

Story by Chris Graham

Mimi Elrod is used to explaining her unique elected office by now. Lexington voters elect their mayor, unlike what happens in other Valley cities that have their city councils select from among their members a mayor. But the Lexington mayor is not a strong mayor like the mayor in Richmond, who serves as the de facto CEO of the city government.

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The right to vote, taken: If you have a felony record, it’s not a right anymore

Story by Chris Graham

Virginia Painter had stopped watching the news a couple of years earlier. Her brother had done a tour of duty in Iraq, and the nightly-news reports from the front lines had just been too much for her.
But one day flipping through the channels she ended up at CNN, and saw this guy with a funny-sounding name giving speech in the Senate. “And I just knew. Something about him, I just said, He’s going to be the next president of the United States,” said Painter, a Greenville thirtysomething who had not even voted in a presidential election before she decided to drop everything and do what she could to help get this Barack Obama guy elected. Read more

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