Del. David L. Englin (D-Alexandria) announced Monday evening that he would not seek reelection in 2013 because he wants to rebuild the relationship with his wife and son after having an extramarital affair.
A fourth-term Democrat, Englin,37, did not indicate if he would resign from office.
Today I’m announcing that this will be my last term in elected office, so I will not seek reelection to the House of Delegates. Serving the people of the 45th District has been one of the great honors of my life, and I hope they are proud of the work we have done together. But political life has affected me in ways I never expected. In my public role, I have worked hard to serve my constituents and to be an effective, progressive voice in Richmond. But in my personal life, I let down my family and was unfaithful in my marriage, so Shayna and I recently separated.
Shayna has always been the true source of my strength and happiness, and we have been a team in my political work. I will leave political life to put Shayna and Caleb first and to focus on rebuilding what is and always was most important to me: my marriage and my family. I am deeply sorry for hurting the people I love the most and for letting down so many others who put their faith in me. This will be my only public statement about our marriage, and Shayna and I both ask everyone to respect our family’s privacy as we work through this immensely difficult, painful, and personal time.
*It's election day in Maryland and D.C. today and voters heading to the polls will be voting for the GOP presidential nominee and nominees running for positions on the state and local levels.
Maryland voters can check here for their polling location and voting information. DC voters check here.
In case you don't yet know who you are voting for in all the races, the Baltimore Sun has a comprehensive primer on the Maryland primary.
And here is a guide for D.C. voters courtesy of The Washington Post.
* Mitt Romney may not have clinched the nomination yet, but President Barack Obama definitely foresees the former Massachusetts's governor being his opponent in the general election.
For the first time this election cycle, the Obama campaign aired an ad that specifically mentions and attacks Romney by name.
In the ad, which is airing in Virginia, Obama defends his energy policies and says big oil companies are against him because he is trying to get rid of their tax breaks, raise mileage standards and double renewable energy.
In contrast, the ad says Romney supported their tax breaks and was against raising mileage standards.
* Virginia legislators are hoping to complete the state's two-year, $85 billion budget by the end of the week.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that while some progress has been made in negotiations between the House and Senate, key differences still persist—most notably with transportation, where the Senate proposal calls for more than $400 million in toll mitigation for projects in Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia.
* Leaders of Virginia’s largest counties—Fairfax, Prince William, Loudoun and Chesterfield counties—are asking legislators who are negotiating the budget to remove language that calls for a study to shift the cost of transportation funding to local governments, according to The Washington Post.
VIA The Post:
“Because of the poor state of so many secondary roads and the lack of state funding to localities to upgrade and maintain these roads, our initial financial analysis of devolution shows unequivocally that devolution will require a significant real property tax increase for residents and businesses in our counties,” they wrote in a letter last week.
Gov. McDonnell wants the state to study the possibility of having counties pick up the cost for maintaining secondary roads.
The House of Delegates included the cost of this study in its version of the budget, but the Senate did not.
* Maryland lawmakers met Monday to hash out budget differences, but did not get far in their opening deliberations, according to The AP.
The biggest differences between the House and Senate budgets deal with a shift in who pays for teacher pensions and complicated tax proposals.
The House version of the plan generates less tax revenue than the Senate’s proposal but would affect fewer taxpayers.
* The Occupy D.C. movement claimed victory Monday after successfully protesting a woman’s eviction from her D.C. home.
A few dozen demonstrators from Occupy D.C., according to The DCist, rallied outside Dawn Butler’s Maryland Avenue NE home to prevent her from getting evicted.
Demonstrators held a large mesh banner with the phrase “Eviction Free Zone” and a judge in D.C. Superior Court gave her a stay.
The DCist reports that Butler started renting the single-family house in March 2006, but its owner foreclosed on it in 2009. As per her agreement, she placed a bid on the property in 2010, but the offer went without a response for a year.
Instead of getting a response, she says she got a 30-day notice to vacate the property.
The case went to court but she said the judge ultimately refused her testimony and did not accept her status as a tenant.
The eviction day had been scheduled for Monday, so Butler contacted a hot line operated by the Occupy movement and, after a few hours of protest, the eviction was called off.
* President Obama and former President Bill Clinton will make their first joint fundraising appearance in Maclean, Virginia at the home of former DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe on April 29, according to Politico.
This is expected to be the first in a series of three fundraising events featuring the current and former presidents together.
* Maryland Democrats turned to Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown—the nation’s highest-ranking elected politician to have served in Iraq—to criticize Romney’s support of Rep. Paul Ryan’s proposed federal budget.
According to the Post, Brown blasted Romney for supporting a spending plan that would “leave out” veterans on a conference call with leaders of the left-leaning Truman National Security Project and promoted by the Democratic National Committee.
“Even for Mitt Romney, who we all know will say anything to get elected, this statement was particularly troubling,” Brown told reporters. “American exceptionalism means standing up for those who are the backbone of our great nation — veterans, seniors, the middle class – and Mitt Romney continues to fail that test at every turn. His endorsement of the Paul Ryan budget shows that Mitt Romney isn’t concerned with fighting for those who are the true economic engines of America.”
* Democratic Virginia Senate candidate Tim Kaine announced that his campaign raised more than $2.2 million in the first quarter of 2012 and has more than $4.4 million cash on hand.
Kaine has raised more than $7.4 million since his campaign launched a year ago.
The former governor of Virginia is the lone Democrat competitor in the highly anticipated race. His presumed opponent in the general election, George Allen, also a former governor, faces three competitors in the GOP primary.
Allen has been campaigning heavily and last week publicly criticized Obama’s new EPA regulations.
In a press release the Allen camp said:
Last week George Allen stood up for Virginia against the Obama Administration’s proposed costly EPA regulations on new coal-fired power plants, making them nearly impossible to build and amounting to a regressive stealth tax on American households. Those regulations would eliminate significant numbers of good-paying jobs in Virginia, devastate our economy and bring to Americans’ monthly electric bills the same pain we’re now feeling at the gasoline pump.
