In a development that may be surprising to some, Senator J.D. Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate who voted against LGBTQ rights legislation, has been living on a quiet street in the Del Ray neighborhood of Alexandria, Virginia, which has a significant LGBTQ population, for just over a year.
Public property records show that Mr. Vance and his family live on a side street two blocks from Delray’s main commercial strip, Mount Vernon Avenue, where a gay pop-up bar called Pride on the Avenue opened in June.
According to The Washington Post, Vance’s home in Delray, purchased for $1.6 million, is in the district of Virginia Sen. Adam Ebbin (D), who is gay, which includes all of Alexandria and parts of Arlington and Fairfax counties.
“Being a resident of a district as diverse as mine gives J.D. Vance the opportunity to experience the true greatness of America,” Ebbin told the Washington Blade. “With a bilingual elementary school and LGBTQ meeting center nearby, I would encourage Vance to visit some of my constituents and hear how the anti-immigrant, anti-LGBT policies proposed in the Republican Party Platform and Project 2025 will negatively impact them,” Ebbin said in an email.
Ebbin was referring to a 900-page far-right policy document prepared by the conservative Heritage Foundation as a plan of action for the new administration if Trump wins the November presidential election. The Project 2025 document, among other things, opposes LGBTQ rights initiatives and calls for the repeal of existing LGBTQ rights laws.
Bill Blackburn, co-owner of Pride on the Avenue, recalls that members of the gay community, as they were then called, moved to Delray in large numbers in the early 1990s and even earlier, and played a leading role in buying and renovating old, run-down homes.
“It’s interesting that Delray became gentrified in the ’90s with a lot of the gay community,” Blackburn said. “And Delray still has a lot of the residents who made Delray vibrant from those early days,” he said. “So it’s interesting to see how the area has developed and become so popular that there are even right-wing Republicans who see the value in living here.”
Blackburn said Vance “lives about 100 yards from Pride on the Avenue.”
People familiar with Delray say many of the stores and shops along Mount Vernon Avenue will fly pride flags during Pride Month in June. Blackburn said Pride on the Avenue, currently Alexandria’s only gay bar, has been “very well-received” by local residents and visitors to the neighborhood.
Voting records from past elections show that Delray has elected more Democrats than Republicans than Alexandria as a whole, and it also favors Democrats in statewide elections. In the 2020 presidential election, President Joe Biden defeated President Donald Trump in Delray by more than 80% of the vote, according to The Washington Post.
Washingtonian magazine reports that after news broke last year that Vance and his family were moving into their Delray home, a local artist staged a solo protest by installing rainbow-striped fabric and Pride flags in the area, including on a tree across from Vance’s home.
