VUU vs. VSU
Faith helped her
Saturday Showdown A8
Richmond Free Press © 2014 Paradigm Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.
VOL. 23 NO. 45
RICHMOND, VIRGINIA
www.richmondfreepress.com
Senate bound
NOVEMBER 6-8, 2014
Steve Helber/Associated Press
Sandra Sellars/Richmond Free Press
Delegate Rosalyn R. Dance celebrates her election victory in the contest for the state Senate seat vacated by Henry L. Marsh III. Location: A restaurant on Richmond’s South Side.
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U.S. Sen. Mark Warner waves to the crowd with his wife, Lisa Collis, at an election party in Arlington.
Happy Dance moving to state Senate Warner to get new Washington term after nail-biter win By Jeremy M. Lazarus
Democrat Rosalyn R. Dance waltzed to victory in the special election to fill the 16th Virginia Senate District seat that General Assembly veteran Henry L. Marsh III resigned during the summer. A retired nurse and former Petersburg mayor, Delegate Dance, 66, received 73 percent of the vote to easily defeat her independent opponent, Richmond businessman Preston T. Brown. The unofficial count showed her winning 28,943 votes to 10,112 for Mr. Brown in the majority-black district, which stretches from eastern Richmond to Dinwiddie County and includes Hopewell and Petersburg. “I woke up yesterday as Delegate Rosalyn Randolph Dance and arose this morning as Senator-Elect, Rosalyn Randolph Dance,” she wrote in a post on her Facebook page.
“I am humbled by the magnitude of the responsibility the Voters of the 16th Senatorial District (have) placed on my shoulders,” Delegate Dance stated in thanking her supporters. “Each day I commit to always remember that you, the Voters, are my Bosses.” A member of the Virginia House of Delegates for nine years, Sen.-elect Dance is expected to be sworn in as soon as the state Board of Elections certifies her Mr. Jewett victory. That will result in a special election for the 63rd House District seat she now occupies. Sen.-elect Dance must run for reelection next year in order to gain a full, four-year term.
Edward F. Jewett, interim Richmond Circuit Court clerk, also easily won the special election to replace Bevill M. Dean, who resigned in late 2013. Mr. Jewett, a Democrat, won 77 percent of the vote to gain the post over his independent rival, tour operator Emmett J. Jafari. The next election for clerk will be in 2019. In other area races, Democrat Peter G. Dunnaville lost his bid to become the first black constitutional officeholder in Chesterfield County. He finished a distant second to Republican Wendy S. Hughes in the election for Circuit Court clerk. Ms. Hughes captured 62 percent of the vote to beat Mr. Dunnaville and two other candidates. In Henrico, Michelle F. “Micky” Ogburn easily won the race to fill the vacant Three Chopt District seat on the county School Board. She won 63 percent of the vote to defeat Surya P. Dhakar in the nonpartisan post.
According to unofficial results, Dr. Brat won 147,897 votes — or about 61 percent of the total votes cast — thrashing Dr. Trammell, who garnered 89,795 votes, or about 37 percent. James Carr, a Libertarian Party candidate, won more than 5,000 votes, or 2 percent of the total. The traditionally Republican-voting district stretches from Richmond’s West End through most of Henrico County, and includes a large chunk of Chesterfield County and all of Culpeper, Goochland, Hanover, Louisa, New Kent, Orange and Spotsylvania counties. One illustration of just how thoroughly Dr. Brat dominated the election: In Richmond, a traditional Democratic stronghold, Dr. Brat topped Dr. Trammell with 6,504 votes, or 49 percent of the total, compared with 6,457 votes, or 48.6 percent, for Dr. Trammell. Dr. Brat also won handily in surrounding Henrico, Chesterfield and Hanover counties, each by 15 or more percentage points. Less than an hour after polls closed Tuesday night, Dr. Brat was declared the victor. “We’ve shown the country that we can still make our voices heard and that we still have a government of the people, by the people and for the people!” an ebullient Dr. Brat told a packed ballroom at a hotel in western Henrico County filled with Republican state legislators, volunteers, family and friends. “Free enterprise, equal treatment before the law, fiscal responsibility, constitutional government, a strong national defense and faith in God are the keys to addressing the serious challenges facing our country,” he added. Dr. Brat won two elections in one — a special election to fill Please turn to A4
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Tea Party’s Brat to be sworn in Nov. 12 By Joey Matthews
Republican Dave Brat, a darling of the ultraconservative Tea Party movement, easily topped Democrat Jack Trammell in Tuesday’s 7th District House of Representatives race. The victory by the 50-year-old economics professor at Randolph-Macon College sends a representative to Congress who has pledged to oppose President Obama’s progressive agenda at every turn.
Miller out at VSU By Jeremy M. Lazarus
By Jeremy M. Lazarus and Joey Matthews
Whew! That’s how many supporters of U.S. Sen Mark Warner are reacting after he narrowly won re-election to six more years of representing Virginia in Washington. The 59-year-old former Virginia governor managed to escape the GOP avalanche Tuesday night, eking out a surprisingly close 16,000-vote victory over his main rival, Republican lobbyist and political strategist Ed Gillespie, according to the unofficial count of the nearly 2.2 million votes cast. Although he was expected to handily win re-election, Sen. Warner, a Democrat, was behind for nearly four hours before votes from precincts in Northern Virginia finally gave him a lead around 11 p.m. to the relief Sandra Sellars/Richmond Free Press of his backers. Mr. Gillespie Radio personality “Miss Community” is still hoping Clovia Lawrence, right, and Ebony Leach against hope, peruse poll results Tuesday night at an and refused to election night gathering at Southern concede as of the Kitchen in Shockoe Bottom. Free Press deadline Wednesday night. He is awaiting official results from this week’s canvass by the state Board of Elections. He could request a recount if his loss by less than 1 percent of the total votes cast proves accurate. Examination of the results by locality indicates Sen. Warner’s apparent win was the result of strong African-American support in Richmond and other urban areas, as well as his strong showing in the state’s largest population center, Northern Virginia. This is a victory Sen. Warner’s party desperately needed after a night in which Republicans generally swamped Democrats, picking up seven Senate seats to seize control of the upper chamber and gaining the largest majority in the U.S. House of Representatives in nearly 70 years. Sen. Warner’s victory Tuesday is a far cry from his 2008 win when, running down ticket during the initial presidential race of then-Sen. Barack Obama, he beat former Gov. Jim Gilmore by 1.1 million votes. Sen. Warner credited Tuesday’s win to his commitment to be the kind of legislator people want, someone wiling to “work across
“Great things are happening at VSU!” That slogan tops the university president’s page on Virginia State University’s website. It’s ironic because the president just announced his resignation. Dr. Keith T. Miller handed in his notice last Friday at the start of a closed-door meeting of the university’s board of visitors. His resignation comes four and a half years after taking the helm of the 132-year-old institution and more than two years before his contract was to expire. He negotiated a “golden parachute” ahead of the special meeting. Harry Black, the board’s rector, later disclosed that Dr. Miller, By Joey Matthews 59, will receive his base pay of $356,324 for an additional 12 The executive director of the Historic months while on sabbatical or Richmond Foundation is defending the leave. After that, he could return organization’s decision to rent the historic to VSU as a tenured professor church it owns and maintains in Downif he chooses. town to a Richmond-based national group “President Miller is to be that glorifies the Confederacy. commended for his integrity The nonprofit foundation, whose misand putting the interests of sion is to preserve, promote and protect historic places for the economic benefit and cultural enrichment of Richmond, Please turn to A5
Confederates to hold service at Downtown church is renting Monumental Church to the United Daughters of the Confederacy for the group’s annual memorial service for members who have died during the past year. The UDC was founded in 1894 by female descendants of Confederate veterans and purports to honor their memory and heritage. Others see them as a not-so-well masked purveyors of hate. “Though they are genteel and have good middle class decorum, the United
Daughters of the Confederacy advocate white racist history,” said Edward H. Sebesta of Luzerne, Pa., who has worked to stop churches in Richmond and around the country from hosting the Confederate group. Mr. Sebesta’s research has been published in peer-reviewed academic journals and university presses on neoConfederate groups since 1998. He told the Free Press the memorial service may sound innocent enough, but
“it lends the prestige of the (church) institution to the United Daughters of the Confederacy. You wouldn’t let the Ku Klux Klan rent that space. “And they are memorializing people that worked to glorify the Confederacy. They aren’t memorializing Confederates, but they are glorifying neoConfederates.” The UDC memorial service is schedPlease turn to A4