Local
Gay candidate elected president of D.C. Young Democrats
Toby Quaranta ran as outsider against ‘inbreeding, conflicts of interest’
Openly gay Democratic activist Toby Quaranta — former field organizer for the Human Rights Campaign — beat Brandon Todd to become President of the DC Young Democrats by a vote of 80 to 54. (Courtesy photo)
Quaranta, 28, is an account executive with a company that provides election related services to Democratic members of Congress and former field organizer for the Human Rights Campaign. He beat Brandon Todd by a vote of 80 to 54.
Todd is operations managers for the re-election campaign of D.C. Council member Muriel Bowser (D-Ward 4) and a former member of Bowser’s Council staff.
“I’m honored and humbled,” Quaranta said in a statement. “I thank all of my supporters and I thank everyone who came out and participated in the election. I look forward to bringing together folks from all 8 wards and working with all Young Democrats in D.C. to re-elect the president,” he said.
The Young Democrats of D.C. and similar groups in other states are recognized as official arms of the D.C. and state Democratic Parties. Most state parties, including D.C.’s Democratic State Committee, include leaders of the Young Democrats as members of party committees.
Quaranta ran in an election in which eight other candidates who won election to officer and board positions for Young Democrats of D.C., including three vice presidents, each backed Todd over him as part of a slate. Seven of the eight candidates ran unopposed.
The election was held between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. on a Saturday morning at the J.W. Marriott Hotel in downtown D.C. Quaranta expressed concern that holding an election on a Saturday morning at a time when many of the city’s college students were busy preparing for final exams would make it difficult for his student supporters to turn out.
But when the voting started it became clear that Quaranta, who bills himself as a skilled political organizer, turned out more supporters than Todd.
His supporters said they were hopeful that the other officers and board members would work with Quaranta as a team to move the organization forward following a decision last year by the national group, Young Democrats of America, to revoke the D.C. group’s charter and declare invalid the election of all of its officers.
Rod Snyder, president of Young Democrats of American, presided over the election on Saturday. Snyder told the Blade YDA revoked its recognition of the D.C. Young Democrats due to “improprieties” related to its officer and board election in April 2011. He said YDA acted after investigating a complaint that the D.C. group did not follow its own constitution and bylaws in carrying out the 2011 election.
Snyder said YDA also reviewed an allegation made by the United States Attorney’s Office that the D.C. Young Democrats’ former president in 2008 allegedly helped former D.C. City Council member Harry Thomas (D-Ward 5) launder money by accepting a $100,000 wire payment to the D.C. Young Democrats’ account.
The former D.C. Young Democrats president, Ayawana Chase, worked on Thomas’s Council staff at the time. Thomas resigned from his Council seat earlier this year after he pleaded guilty to a felony embezzlement charge. He was sentenced to 38 months in jail last week.
According to information released by the U.S. Attorney’s office, Thomas arranged for Chase to disburse the $100,000 to another organization, which paid for a “51st State Inaugural Ball” in 2009.
While making it clear that he was not linking Todd to the Thomas scandal, Quaranta issued a statement in the days prior to the D.C. Young Democrats election that Todd’s affiliation with Council member Bowser would create a conflict of interest if he were elected president of the Young Democrats of D.C.
Quaranta said Todd would be beholden to Bowser if the organization considered taking a position on a matter before the Council.
“Last year’s laundering of city funds through the D.C. Young Democrats on behalf of Harry Thomas Junior was a direct result of the conflicts of interest that arise when a Council member’s staffer does double-duty as a DCYD party officer,” Quaranta said.
“This isn’t about my opponent – this is about a broader culture of corruption that undermines our pursuit of home rule and is an embarrassment to our city and to the Democratic Party,” he said in a campaign email. “There is simply too much inbreeding and too many conflicts of interest. It’s time for new leadership.”
Todd disputed Quaranta’s claim that he would have a conflict of interest due to his role on Bowser’s campaign staff or if he were to return to Bowser’s Council staff, calling the claim “absurd.”
“I would have a board of directors, other officers,” he said. “Everything has to be voted on by the board, by the membership. Everything that happens with the Young Democrats if I’m elected will be very open and very transparent.”
Among other things, Quaranta said he would push to have Young Democrats of D.C. organize a “massive” contingent of volunteers to work on President Obama’s re-election campaign in Virginia, where a close race is predicted between the president and presumed Republican nominee Mitt Romney.
District of Columbia
Mayor Bowser signs bill requiring insurers to cover PrEP
‘This is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS’
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on March 20 signed a bill approved by the D.C. Council that requires health insurance companies to cover the costs of HIV prevention or PrEP drugs for D.C. residents at risk for HIV infection.
Like all legislation approved by the Council and signed by the mayor, the bill, called the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act, was sent to Capitol Hill for a required 30-day congressional review period before it takes effect as D.C. law.
Gay D.C. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5) last year introduced the bill.
Insurance coverage for PrEP drugs has been provided through coverage standards included in the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. But AIDS advocacy organizations have called on states and D.C. to pass their own legislation requiring insurance coverage of PrEP as a safeguard in case federal policies are weakened or removed by the Trump administration, which has already reduced federal funding for HIV/AIDS-related programs.
Like legislation passed by other states, the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act requires insurers to cover all PrEP drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Studies have shown that PrEP drugs, which can be taken as pills or by injection just twice a year, are highly effective in preventing HIV infection.
“I think this is a win for our community,” Parker said after the D.C. Council voted unanimously to approve the bill on its first vote on the measure in February. “And this is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS.”
District of Columbia
Blade editor to be inducted into D.C. Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame
Kevin Naff marks 24 years with publication this year
Longtime Washington Blade Editor Kevin Naff will be inducted into D.C.’s Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame in June, the group announced this week.
Hall of Fame honorees are chosen by the Society of Professional Journalists’ Washington, D.C., Pro Chapter. Naff and two other inductees — Seth Borenstein, a Washington-based national science writer for the AP and Cheryl W. Thompson, an award-winning correspondent for National Public Radio — will be celebrated at the chapter’s Dateline Awards dinner on Tuesday, June 9, at the National Press Club. The dinner’s emcee will be Kojo Nnamdi, host of WAMU radio’s weekly “Politics Hour.”
“I am tremendously honored by this recognition,” Naff said. “I have spent a lifetime in the D.C. area learning from so many talented journalists and am humbled to be considered in their company. Thank you to SPJ and to all the LGBTQ pioneers who came before me who made this possible.”
Naff joined the Blade in 2002 after years in print and digital journalism. He worked as a financial reporter for Reuters in New York before moving to Baltimore in 1996 to launch the Baltimore Sun’s website. He spent four years at the Sun before leaving for an internet startup and later joining the mobile data group at Verizon Wireless working on the first generation of mobile apps.
He then moved to the Blade and has served as the publication’s longest-tenured editor. In 2023, Naff published his first book, “How We Won the War for LGBTQ Equality — And How Our Enemies Could Take It All Away.”
Previous Hall of Fame inductees include luminaries in journalism like Wolf Blitzer, Benjamin Bradlee, Bob Woodward, Andrea Mitchell, and Edgar Allen Poe. The Blade’s senior news reporter Lou Chibbaro Jr. was inducted in 2015.
Maryland
Supreme Court ruling against conversion therapy bans could affect Md. law
Then-Gov. Larry Hogan signed statute in 2018
By PAMELA WOOD, JOHN-JOHN WILLIAMS IV, and MADELEINE O’NEILL | The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled against a law banning “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ kids in Colorado, a ruling that also could apply to Maryland’s ban on the discredited practice.
An 8-1 high court majority sided with a Christian counselor who argues the law banning talk therapy violates the First Amendment. The justices agreed that the law raises free speech concerns and sent it back to a lower court to decide whether it meets a legal standard that few laws pass.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the court’s majority, said the law “censors speech based on viewpoint.” The First Amendment, he wrote, “stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country.”
The rest of this article can be read on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
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