Latest news with #Helmer
Yahoo
06-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Republicans fight to restore party-run primaries, challenge new state law
Voters at a polling station in Buckingham County. (Photo by Parker Michels-Boyce for the Virginia Mercury) Republican leaders in Virginia's 6th Congressional District have voted overwhelmingly to challenge a new state law they say strips political parties of their right to control their own nomination process. On March 1, members of the district's GOP committee by a 22-1 margin agreed to file a lawsuit seeking to overturn what has been dubbed Helmer's law, named after Del. Dan Helmer, D-Fairfax, who sponsored the legislation in 2021. The law effectively forces parties to nominate candidates through state-run primary elections rather than their own party-run contests. The lawsuit, which Republicans said will be filed by Staunton attorney Jeff Adams, argues that the law — which went into effect in January 2024 — violates both the U.S. and Virginia Constitutions by removing a party's ability to determine how it selects its own nominees. Republicans have long expressed concerns that because Virginia does not require voters to register by party, the law allows Democrats to participate in Republican primaries, and vice versa, potentially influencing the outcome. John Massoud, chairman of the 6th Congressional District Republican Committee, made it clear that the legal challenge is not aimed at any specific Republican elected officials, all of whom the committee continues to support. Instead, he framed the legal challenge as a fight for the party's fundamental rights. 'We believe that the law in question, which went into effect in January of 2024, is a civil rights lawsuit in which something was stolen from us. And that is our right to select our nominees by a method which we choose, not a process which is imposed on us from Richmond,' Massoud said at the committee meeting last week. Massoud's sentiments were echoed by nearly every district committee member who spoke on the issue, with the overwhelming vote demonstrating broad Republican opposition to the state-mandated primary system in the 6th District, which leans strongly Republican. The law in question, which received bipartisan support, was originally introduced by Helmer ahead of the 2021 legislative session. It mandates that all absentee voters — including those 'serving overseas in the military, studying at higher education institutions, temporarily residing outside the country, living with disabilities, or exposed to communicable diseases' — must be given an opportunity to participate in the nomination process. This requirement has effectively eliminated firehouse primaries, mass meetings, and conventions as nomination methods in Virginia, as these processes would make it impossible to accommodate absentee voters. Last year, Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares weighed in on the law, issuing a legal opinion that cast doubt on whether firehouse primaries remain a valid nomination method under the new restrictions. 'A political party may not select a nomination method that de facto requires covered voters to be physically present to participate or that otherwise has the practical effect of excluding their participation,' Miyares wrote in response to a request by Del. Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah County, the House Minority Leader. The opinion came as Lynchburg Republicans attempted to hold a firehouse primary for an upcoming city council election — an effort that raised concerns about whether such a contest would be in violation of state law. A spokesman for Miyares did not comment on the lawsuit by the time of this story's publication. By mandating state-run primaries, Helmer's law effectively prevents political parties from holding closed nomination contests, a practice many Republicans favor. The 6th District GOP's lawsuit follows a successful legal battle to overturn the Incumbent Protection Act, and party leaders see this latest challenge as a continuation of their fight to preserve party autonomy. Helmer on Thursday pushed back against the Republican effort, arguing that the lawsuit against his 2021 election law misrepresents its intent and undermines the rights of active-duty military members, students, people with disabilities and Americans living overseas to participate in the nomination process. 'The Trump administration taking jobs away from thousands of thousands of veterans is no surprise, but now Republicans in the 6th District are trying to take away their ability to vote in elections, too,' Helmer said in a phone interview, condemning the GOP's legal challenge. Helmer insists that the law does not mandate state-run primaries, despite Miyares' interpretation, but instead requires political parties to provide access for absentee voters who might otherwise be excluded from party-run nomination processes. He dismissed Republican claims that the law infringes on party rights, describing it instead as an 'accommodation bill' rather than a restriction on free speech or party autonomy. Helmer also rejected concerns from some Republicans that Virginia's lack of party registration allows Democrats to vote in GOP primaries, arguing there is little evidence to suggest widespread crossover voting is a significant problem. 'The evidence of that happening in large scale is basically nil,' Helmer said, adding that if Republicans 'wanted to fight that battle,' they should focus on passing legislation to enact closed primaries statewide. 'That's a fight they can fight, people can put forward a bill, but that's not what people wanted to do in Virginia,' he said. David Richards, a political science professor at the University of Lynchburg, sees the 6th District GOP's lawsuit as another attempt to bring back firehouse primaries — a nomination method that, he argues, disenfranchises many voters who would otherwise participate in a primary election. 'This includes not just people out of the state serving in the military but anyone who wants to pop by the polling place and vote in a primary but does not want to spend four hours on a weekday night at a firehouse-style meeting,' he said. Richards also noted that the lawsuit puts Miyares in a politically precarious position. While Republicans have historically used firehouse primaries to ensure their nominees are selected by party insiders, Miyares' role in enforcing Helmer's law could strain his standing within the party. 'Republicans have often used the firehouse primary system to ensure only GOP insiders get nominated. If Miyares continues to enforce the current law, it could possibly alienate him from the state GOP,' Richards explained. With Miyares seeking re-election as Attorney General rather than challenging Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears in the gubernatorial race, the lawsuit could open the door for a GOP challenger to emerge. According to Richards, Republicans looking to unseat Miyares might seize this moment to align themselves with party activists who oppose Helmer's law. 'Right now, Miyares does not have any serious GOP rivals for the nomination to serve another term as attorney general. Republicans thinking of challenging Miyares might see this as an opportunity to court the GOP and get their support if Miyares does not support the GOP effort to skirt Helmer's law.' Massoud, however, doesn't want the pending lawsuit to be understood as an attack on Miyares. 'I think Attorney General Miyares is doing a great job, and I look forward to voting for him in 2025 and working together to get him reelected,' Massoud said in a phone interview Thursday. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Washington Post
14-02-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
Del. Helmer sues fellow Va. Dems over groping claim ahead of primary
RICHMOND — Virginia state Del. Dan Helmer (D-Fairfax) has filed a $15 million defamation lawsuit against fellow Democrats, alleging they falsely accused him of sexual assault and harassment in public statements made just days before he narrowly lost a bid to represent Northern Virginia in Congress. Members of the Loudoun County Democratic Party released a statement last June, days before the Democratic congressional primary, alleging that Helmer had engaged in harassment of a committee member in 2018. The statement did not detail that conduct, but a Virginia woman and her lawyer later claimed Helmer had groped her at a political event that year.
Yahoo
10-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Dan Helmer sues for $15 million over sexual assault allegations
Del. Dan Helmer, D-Fairfax, in May 2024. (Photo courtesy of Dan Helmer campaign) Del. Dan Helmer, D-Fairfax, is hitting back. Months after facing sexual assault allegations that surfaced just days before his congressional primary, Helmer has filed a $15 million defamation lawsuit, claiming the accusations were politically motivated and knowingly false. Helmer, who came in second in a crowded nomination contest to represent Virginia's 10th District last June, was accused of groping a woman six years ago — allegations first reported by NOTUS and linked to members of the Loudoun County Democratic Committee (LCDC). The report suggested that the claims led the local party to implement a sexual harassment policy. At the time, Helmer dismissed the allegations as 'baseless' and 'with no specific details.' 'They have been made for the first time a week before an election by people who have endorsed my opponents,' Helmer told NOTUS last summer. 'I'm proud of my record standing up against harassment.' Now, Helmer is taking legal action. His suit names Lissa Savaglio, the former LCDC chair, as the woman referenced in last summer's allegations. Also named in the suit are Avram Fechter, a former LCDC member, lawyer Charles King, who represented Savaglio, and two unnamed defendants listed as John and Jane Doe — all of whom Helmer claims conspired to harm his reputation. The suit accuses the defendants of publishing 'known falsehoods' about Helmer for a mix of 'personal, political and financial motivations.' It claims that in early May 2024, Savaglio reached out to Helmer to warn him that a 'grassroots activist' had asked her about rumors of sexual misconduct involving the two. According to the suit, she gave no further details but allegedly admitted the rumors weren't true, likening them 'typical Republican tactics.' As evidence, the lawsuit includes a screenshot of text messages purportedly between Helmer and Savaglio, as well as an image of Savaglio at a different event on the night of the alleged incident — suggesting that she wasn't with Helmer when the misconduct allegedly took place. The suit also alleges that Fechter, who publicly backed Savaglio's claims, contributed to a political action committee that funded attack ads against Helmer over the accusations. Additionally, it points out that both Fechter and Savaglio had supported a state Senate candidate who could have benefited politically if Helmer's primary rival, Suhas Subramanyam, had won the congressional seat. A staff member for Helmer declined to comment on the pending litigation, which was filed in Fairfax County Circuit Court. The campaign also did not provide further details about the unnamed individuals listed in the lawsuit. The other defendants in the suit did not respond for comment by the time of this publication. With Helmer now taking the battle to court, the fight over these allegations – and their political fallout — is far from over. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
05-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Virginia lawmakers fumble bill to curb high school sports recruitment
A view of the Virginia House of Delegates Chamber in Richmond. (Photo by Nathaniel Cline/Virginia Mercury) Legislation aimed at cracking down on high school athletic recruitment tactics — specifically barring officials from using the 'homeless' designation to lure student athletes — hit a roadblock Tuesday, failing to advance at the session's midpoint. Despite the setback, the fight isn't over, according to Del. Dan Helmer, D-Fairfax, who sponsored House Bill 1656. The measure sought to prohibit school officials from accepting money or gifts intended to sway a student's decision to transfer schools for athletic reasons. The push for reform follows mounting controversies in high school sports, including in Northern Virginia, where a football team was found violating the Virginia High School League's (VHSL) transfer rule. Helmer said he's been in talks with lawmakers across the state who have encountered similar issues in their districts, signaling the potential for a revived effort. 'There's a real desire after the session to get a bunch of us together and work on a holistic policy that doesn't just take on one piece of this,' Helmer said. He added that while there's broad agreement on the need for reform, crafting legislation to put a stop to the practice remains critical. Helmer's proposal made it to the full House where it stalled after a close 11-10 party-line vote in the House Education Committee last month. Del. Mike Cherry, R-Colonial Heights, initially opposed the measure in an earlier subcommittee hearing, citing concerns. But after learning more about the issue's statewide impact, he acknowledged he may have voted differently. 'I talked to some of my colleagues who said it's definitely an issue in their area as well. So then it became apparent to me that it was not just a localized issue, that it was a wider spread issue, and probably needs a state-level fix,' Cherry said. A VHSL ruling last November found Hayfield Secondary School in Alexandria in violation of eligibility rules, raising questions about how multiple athletes from a successful Prince William County team ended up playing for Hayfield's football program. The fallout was swift — Hayfield withdrew from the playoffs after the first round, despite an impressive 9-1 regular season record. Meanwhile, Fairfax County Public Schools took action in another case, suspending the Edison High School varsity boys basketball coach for allowing players not enrolled at the school to compete in a VHSL-sanctioned summer tournament. Helmer said last month that these incidents highlight a broader issue in high school athletics. 'I am very excited to see accountability happening right now for some of the folks that have engaged in bad behavior, and I hope anybody in the state looks at that and says, 'I don't want that to be me,'' Helmer said. 'The focus of athletics ought to be learning leadership and learning life skills and enhancing academics and providing pathways for students to get those opportunities they want otherwise.' As concerns mount over the integrity of high school sports, lawmakers and officials are likely to take another look at how eligibility rules are enforced and where reforms may be needed. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
05-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Democrats move on from MeToo
Eight months after their sexual misconduct allegations doomed his congressional campaign, Virginia state legislator Dan Helmer is suing a group of Democratic Party activists for defamation, conspiracy, and $15 million in damages. The lawsuit, filed in Fairfax County court last week, resurrected a controversy that briefly panicked Democrats last year. Well into the early voting period for the June 18 primary, an then-anonymous activist accused Helmer of groping her, and four local party leaders claimed that 'Helmer's inappropriate behavior' inspired their own sexual harassment policy. Helmer denied the 'baseless claims,' as rivals and the state's chapter of the National Organization for Women called on him to quit the race. He stayed in it, and narrowly lost the nomination to now-Rep. Suhas Subramanyam. Helmer now says that the scandal badly hurt his reputation and mental health; Charles King, the attorney for the accuser and a defendant in Helmer's lawsuit, told Semafor that he'd provided 'an accurate narrative of the events told to me by my client.' Helmer's narrative was very different. In it, a party activist called him in early May, warning that people were spreading rumors that he had engaged in sexual misconduct with her. In a text, provided to the court, the activist called this 'typical Republican tactics,' to divide their party. One month later, the same activist was telling reporters that Helmer had groped her. Avram Fechter, one of the local Democrats who'd backed up the harassment story, funded a PAC whose last-minute ads claimed that Helmer was 'credibly accused of sexual assault.' Other Democrats have stayed quiet about the lawsuit, filed by a two-term state delegate who's running for re-election this year. In Virginia and D.C., they have been consumed by opposition to the second Trump administration, and by resistance to its decisions to freeze federal spending and push out government employees. But Helmer brought his case at a moment when allegations of sexual misconduct have lost some of their power to disrupt. Trump won his new term after losing a defamation case against E. Jean Carroll, who had accused him of sexual assault. Old allegations of impropriety against Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and new allegations against Pete Hegseth, did not pry off many Republican votes for either man's cabinet nomination. 'My playbook on these confirmations was to remind people of the Kavanaugh confirmation, and remind people that the #MeToo presumption of guilt is un-American,' said Mike Davis, a conservative attorney whose Article III Project organized tens of thousands of messages in support of the Hegseth confirmation. Helmer's experience found Democratic voters feeling differently about last-minute allegations of impropriety. The 12-way race for Virginia's 11th district had no clear front-runner; Helmer had a spending advantage, thanks to outside groups like the crypto-funded Fairshake PAC, but Subramanyam had the support of Jennifer Wexton, the first Democrat to represent the seat, whose struggle with an aggressive form of Parkinson's made national news. But in other races, Democrats have shown signs of #MeToo fatigue. In New York City, Democratic candidates for mayor are girding for the potential candidacy of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who resigned his last office over sexual harassment allegations but now leads in public polls. One of Cuomo's potential rivals is former city comptroller Scott Stringer, whose 2021 mayoral bid imploded after a former campaign aide accused him of sexual misconduct. Neither story has loomed large in the race against Mayor Eric Adams – who was himself sued last year by a woman claiming that he sexually assaulted her in 1993. ('Never happened,' Adams said of her allegation.) And the accusations against Stringer were challenged at the time, as progressive allies un-endorsed him. Four years later, none of his opponents have brought up the allegations in their candidate forums. Reached this week, none of the progressive endorsers who withdrew their support for Stringer in 2021 wanted to comment on the record; leaders of the Working Families Party, which pulled its 2021 support for him, told podcaster Ben Max last week that its endorsement was 'open to anyone who is running for mayor.'The simplest explanation of why misconduct allegations don't move voters or partisans like they used to is that Donald Trump won. There was no one day when Democrats decided that an allegation of misconduct was no longer a career-ending offense. They had second thoughts about the forced resignation of Al Franken; they didn't believe Tara Reade, a former Senate staffer who emerged in 2020 to claim that Joe Biden had assaulted her. But Democrats clearly thought differently about the #MeToo standard of evidence and public behavior after Donald Trump shook off multiple accusations of misconduct. The party quietly benched Bill Clinton during the 2018 midterms, a cycle when multiple members of Congress quit over personal scandals. He was back out on the trail last year, campaigning for the first female presidential nominee he wasn't married to. And when he made bad news for the party, it was about debating the particulars of Gaza with protesters. One cynical read: Democrats got tired of subjecting their candidates to a standard that Donald Trump never even tried to meet. Republicans adopted Saul Alinsky's fourth Rule for Radicals: 'Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.' Had Helmer won his primary, they were ready to pummel him over the allegations, while working to elect a president accused of worse behavior. The result has been a general desensitization. On Tuesday, the new administration announced that Sean Parnell, a Republican veteran who ended his 2022 Senate campaign in Pennsylvania after damaging revelations about his marriage, would become spokesman for Hegseth's Pentagon. There was some outrage at his political resurrection. But not very much. 'I avoid referencing it, because there were some small kids involved,' said Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, who won the race that Parnell abandoned. 'I won't add to the whole thing, and I hope their family is in a good way.' The shifting norms showed up in coverage of the Trump cabinet nominees' hearings, too. Since 2018, Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono has asked every nominee that comes before her whether they have made 'unwanted requests for sexual favors or committed any verbal or physical harassment or assault of a sexual nature,' and whether they 'faced discipline or entered into a settlement' for that conduct. She did this, she told the New York Times, because 'there was every potential for the #MeToo movement to be swept under the rug.' For a long time, Hirono's opening questions didn't need explaining. But when she asked them year, conservative media outlets asked what in the world was wrong with her. Did she think Pam Bondi had committed sexual harassment? Doug Burgum? 'I always ask the question as one of the ways that we gauge the fitness of anyone to serve,' Hirono told Semafor. 'And you know what? You should ask them why they don't seem to care.' But did the American people care less about these issues than they did four years ago? 'I hope not,' said Hirono. In the New Yorker, Doreen St. Félix whether the #MeToo era is over, in Hollywood and elsewhere: 'The standard of 'believing women' did not really become a standard. Stories of harassment and abuse now receive a curdled, cynical, and exhausted reception.'
