VIVIAN J. PAIGE

The Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington DC was the setting for Wednesday’s gathering of some 1,500 women (and a few men ) who support Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid. I had not originally planned to attend this event but when contacted about it Saturday evening, I decided to go. After all, what better way to spend my birthday than hanging out with women from all over the country who shared a common goal? (Continue reading)

I’ve got a full day today with the funeral. More to come.

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Hanging out with 1,500+ Clinton supporters yesterday certainly was the spirit boost I - and probably all of us - needed. What was even more awesome was the opportunity to meet and chat briefly with Senator Clinton. And yes, she wished me a happy birthday

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Yesterday’s event raised over $1 million for Senator Clinton. Way to go women!

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I’m disappointed, but not surprised, at the defection of Del. Jennifer McClellan. Welcome aboard, Congressman Heath Shuler!

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I haven’t watched the AI results show but I am stunned that Jason was voted off. Not that he didn’t deserve it, mind you, but I just didn’t think that it was going to happen.

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The surprise in the local elections battles was the near-defeat of Portsmouth mayor James Holley. Have to agree with the challenger Martha Ann Creecy and Councilman Steve Heretick on this one: expect a crowded field in 4 years.

Applications are now being accepted for the Norfolk Real Estate Tax Relief program for seniors and/or the disabled. To qualify:

• You must be 65 years of age or totally and permanently disabled;
• You must live in the property to be exempted;
• Your combined income of owners and all relatives living in home cannot exceed $62,000 per year; and
• Your net worth, exclusive of the home, cannot exceed $350,000

The deadline for filing is June 1st. The application form can be found here (pdf) and the renewal form can be found here (pdf). If you have questions, contact Cheryl Spencer at (757) 441-1502 or by email.

OK, so I’m not going to be able to do my results post at a reasonable time tomorrow so I’m sitting here watching tonight’s show. Each of the contestants performed two songs from the Rock ‘N Roll Hall of Fame catalog. You’d think that, given the size of that catalog, there would be some awesome performances. Well, that wasn’t the case. (Continue reading)

With the local polls closed, the results are just starting to roll in. The Norfolk results can be found here, the Chesapeake ones here, and the Portsmouth ones here. (Sorry, Peninsula - three cities for me to follow is enough )

Early results in Norfolk show both incumbents - Daun Hester and Barclay Winn - comfortably ahead.

Over in Chesapeake it looks like the new mayor will be Alan Krasnoff. With 53 of 54 precincts in, he is leading Rebecca Adams by about 1,200 votes. I think there are going to be some folks in Chesapeake who are disappointed in this outcome.

For City Council, there will be 6 winners from the 15 candidates. Leading are Debbie Ritter, Rick West, Suzy Kelly Dwight Parker*, Patricia Willis*, Gene Waters and Cliff Hayes*.

For Chesapeake School Board, there were 6 candidates vying for 4 seats. Top vote getters are Thomas Mercer*, Jeff Bunn, George Van Laetham Tina Pullen and Brenda Johnson*.

Over in Portsmouth all 32 precincts have reported. James Holley has been re-elected mayor by a very small margin - less than 300 votes.

There were three seats up for Portsmouth council, with eight candidates. The top three were Charles Whitehurst, Elizabeth Psimas* and Steve Heretick*.

Seven candidates ran for the 5 seats available on the Portsmouth School Board. Garnering the most votes were Costella Williams, Elizabeth Daniels*, James Bridgeford*, Ned McCabe and Keith Nance*.

*-incumbent

Thanks to all of the candidates who put themselves out here and ran for office. My hat’s off to you.

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What’s really weird is that I can’t find any local TV coverage of these races. In the past, the local stations would have a crawl at the bottom of the screen with the info but I’ve checked the channels several times and found nothing. What’s up with that?

After working 15 hour days, 7 days a week since January 2nd, I was really looking forward to some time off this week. Typically, I try not to do anything strenuous and mainly just catch up on some sleep, especially since my birthday is this week.

To say that a restful week isn’t happening would be an understatement. (Continue reading)

Local elections are being held in Chesapeake, Portsmouth, and Norfolk today. In Chesapeake and Portsmouth, the elections include the mayor, some city council members and some school board members. In Norfolk, council members from superwards 6 and 7 will be elected.

The Virginian Pilot has put together a voter guide with links to the candidate’s bios and answers to certain questions. Video interviews of the mayoral candidates in Chesapeake and Portsmouth are also available. The polls are open from 6am to 7pm.

With all of the coverage of the national race, these local races have been pretty much under the radar, which is a shame. These are the folks who will be making decisions that effect your every day life. All politics is local. Sorry, but the next president isn’t going to be deciding what your real estate tax rate will be or what your water rate will be. The next president won’t be weighing in on a regional transportation authority. These women and men will. Given the dismal turnout for local elections, your vote really does matter. Don’t let the few make the decision for you. Go out and vote.

UPDATE: As NN Dem points out, there are races on the Peninsula, too! (Sorry) So check out the Daily Press voter guide and get to the polls!

The USS Wisconsin provided the backdrop for this morning’s campaign kickoff for Senatorial candidate Mark Warner. Here are some photos. As always, click to enlarge.

AP writer Bob Lewis did a decent job covering the event in his article here so I won’t repeat it. According to Lewis, there were about 350 people there, which seems a reasonable estimate to me. Elected officials from throughout the region were there as well, including at least a couple Republicans. I guess Warner’s “radical centrist” message is working.

We were treated to introductory speeches by Norfolk Mayor Paul Fraim, Sen. L. Louise Lucas, Congressman Bobby Scott, former Congressman Owen Pickett and two Admirals. The former governor met with a veterans’ group prior to coming on the stage. Accompanying him on this trip was his wife, Lisa, and two of his teenaged daughters.

All in all, it was a beautiful day in Downtown Norfolk and Warner got a great sendoff from Hampton Roads.

Just a bit over a month shy of the 41st anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court case, we learn that litigant Mildred Loving has died.

Loving and her white husband, Richard, changed history in 1967 when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld their right to marry. The ruling struck down laws banning racially mixed marriages in at least 17 states.

What the Richmond Times fails to mention was that the case originated in Virginia. The judge who convicted the couple was Harry L. Carrico, who served as Chief Justice of on the Virginia Supreme Court for 42 years, 22 years as Chief Justice, retired in 2003 and now has annual award issued by the Virginia State Bar in his “honor.”

The honor belongs to Mildred Loving and her husband Richard. Rest in peace, dear trailblazer.

Sunday’s Virginian Pilot had a story about a Norfolk State University professor who lost his job because he refused to increase the pass rates for his students.

At the end of this semester, Steven Aird will lose his job as an associate professor of biology at Norfolk State University for giving out too many F’s.

[...]

“It goes against our very mission, which is to provide an affordable high-quality education for an ethnically and culturally diverse student population,” [university spokeswoman Sharon] Hoggard said in an e-mail response. She pointed out that NSU is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, for which it must meet stringent standards.

Aird says he understands, and believes in, NSU’s mission. But he insists that too many of the university’s students are ill-prepared for college-level work. “I really care about my students,” he said. “That’s why I refuse to lower the bar. The objective should be competence, not grades.”

Having taught at ODU, I understand the professor’s frustration with dealing with students who are ill-prepared. I don’t see this as an NSU problem, but rather an overall problem that colleges and universities face. Far too many students are being taught to “take the test” and not to think critically. Poor study habits abound.

Yet I always felt that my role as a teacher was to try to get the students to understand the material. Different students learn differently, and when I was teaching, I’d say things different ways until I saw the lightbulbs go off over every head in the class.

So my question: should the professor have lost his job because he gave too many Fs?

An article written by my father, the Rev. C. Thomas Paige, as it appeared in the Tri-State Defender on the date shown.

“We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren.” – I John 3:14

BROTHERHOOD

How glorious it is that in this life we are able to see growth in ourselves that warrant us being the type of person that will enable us to move to a fuller realization of the real meaning of our existence here.

This week our thoughts are directed toward that time of the year known as “Brotherhood Week.” It is at this point that the whole thing shows up as a mass farce. Deep down within the heart of every normal individual should be - or is - that something that makes him want to be brother to all with whom he comes in contact.

Yet as one looks about, he see any number of forces at work which prevent him from actually being the person of which he is capable. Ofttimes as we look about ourselves we see within ourselves things with which we are deeply disturbed. We see ourselves being slaves to customs, cultures, social patterns and the like and ofttimes these do not lend to the fullest growth of the person. (Continue reading)

In the 6th Congressional district in Louisiana, Democrat “Don” Cazayoux is battling Republican Louis “Woody” Jenkins for the seat vacated by Republican Richard Baker. According to this AP story, Cazayoux has been leading in the polls. The seat has been in Republican hands for 34 years. Jenkins sounds a little bit like Virginia’s own Bob Marshall:

Mr. Jenkins, a champion of religious-right causes for decades, achieved notoriety in the State House 18 years ago when he brandished plastic models of fetuses on the chamber floor to bolster his anti-abortion arguments.

Cazayoux is a conservative Democrat and has distanced himself from national Democrats while his opponent has tried repeatedly to associate him with them.

“The overall message is that it’s not so much tying him to a particular person, it’s tying him to the overall big picture. People across the country are campaigning on solutions. Whose solution do we want? Nancy Pelosi’s or the Republican Party’s?” said Jason Dore, Jenkins’ campaign manager.

Some have seen this race, along with the 5/13 special election in Mississippi, as a bellweather on the strength of Obama at the top of the ticket.

NRCC Chairman Tom Cole, a GOP congressman from Oklahoma, this week said Republicans would rather run with Obama at the top of the Democratic presidential ticket than Clinton. That represents a change in attitude for Republicans, many of whom had argued earlier that Clinton would likely energize Republicans against her and thus help down ticket Republicans.

But now, some Republican strategists say, any connection between Democratic candidates, even conservative Democrats such as Cazayoux and Childers, and Obama will erode their support among blue-collar voters. And they say that since the ads began running, the Democrats’ leads have shrunk.

Obama “is by any definition very liberal, to the left of Hillary Clinton, in a center-right country,” Cole said. “That is very, very helpful to us.”

But in Louisiana, Jenkins appears to be a pretty bad candidate, perfect for a Democratic pickup:

“If you’re the Democrats, you’ve got the candidate you can beat,” [Baton Rouge-based pollster Bernie] Pinsonat said. “If you can’t beat Woody Jenkins, I don’t know who you can beat.”

Well, we’ll see how this plays out. As I type this, Jenkins is ahead 49% to 46% with 354 out of 512 precincts reporting. (Election data is here.)

UPDATE @ 10:48: With 404 of 512 precints reporting, Cazayoux has pulled ahead for the first time, 49% to 46%

UPDATE @ 10:50: Now 508 of 512 precincts in. Cazayoux maintains his 49% to 46% advantage.

I guess I should also mention that there is another special election in Louisiana tonight, in the 1st Congressional district. In that race, the Republican candidate is leading by over 50 points - 75% to 22%. Guess that district is pretty red.

UPDATE @ 11:17: All 512 precincts are in. Cazayoux won 49.2% to 46.27%. The margin of victory is a little less than 3,000 votes out of about 100,000 cast.

via Corrent:

A previously unknown PAC is distributing pre-marked ballots identical to those used in the North Carolina primary. They aren’t marked as “Sample Ballot” but actually carry a header that says “Official Ballot”.

They’re so convincingly real that some voters have turned up at early voting sites and tried to submit them as-is. Complaints to the State election board and DOJ have been ignored.

The PAC is so new that it hasn’t made any filings with the state, so there’s no way to know who they are or where their money is coming from, but a quick look at the fake ballot may provide some clues. Just guessing, but this is probably not from Hillary’s people.

More here.

This Sunday’s On the Record will feature Suffolk Mayor Linda Johnson, who will discuss the recovery efforts in her city in the aftermath of Monday’s tornado.

In the other segment, host Joel Rubin will be joined by RPV chair John Hager. I hope Rubin asks him about the challenge from Jeff Frederick for the party chairmanship and doesn’t just chat about the upcoming wedding of Hanger’s son to Bush’s daughter.

In his My Minute segment, Rubin gives his take on the Wright controversy.

Catch OTR at 11:30am on WVEC. If you miss the airing, it will be available on the website on Monday.

In 2001, if memory serves, I accompanied then-Delegate Thelma Drake to a hearing before one of the General Assembly banking committees regarding credit card practices. Speaking before the committee, I provided proof that credit card companies were engaging in unfair practices. My beef was that one company in particular was changing the payment address each month. In doing so, if the bill arrived late (a rather common occurrence) and you tried to make the payment timely anyway, the payment would be late as it had to be re-routed to another address. After hearing from Capital One, the lone credit card issuer based in VA at the time, the committee failed to act.

Today, the Federal Reserve and other regulators have decided to take on the credit card companies. According to this AP report, changes are coming.

The proposed new rules would prohibit:

-Placing unfair time constraints on payments. A payment could not be deemed late unless the borrower is given a reasonable period of time, such as 21 days, to pay;

-Unfairly allocating payments among balances with different interest rates;

-Retroactively raising interest rates on pre-existing balances;

-Placing too-high fees for exceeding the credit limit solely because of a hold placed on the account;

-Unfairly computing balances in a computing tactic known as double-cycle billing;

-Unfairly adding security deposits and fees for issuing credit or making credit available;

-Making deceptive offers of credit.

Of course the industry is against these proposals and no doubt the final rules will be less stringent. But this is a step in the right direction. The article points out that 58% of card-holding households carry balances on their credit cards. Even though I generally don’t carry balances on my credit cards, the proposed changes would be beneficial.