Members of the Virginia State Senate:

When you establish a standard for another person, you should be prepared to face it yourselves.

Senator Louise Lucas has now been indicted. She is entitled to defend herself, challenge the government’s evidence, and insist that an accusation is not a conviction. I defend those rights for her without hesitation.

But I ask this chamber: Where was that conviction when you advanced SB 648 against me and Purcellville?

The chickens have come home to roost. The consequence now confronting you is the demand that you explain your own standard.

Senator Russet Perry sponsored legislation whose suspension provision applied to officers of towns in Planning District 8 with populations between 8,000 and 10,000—a description that singled out Purcellville. The Virginia Association of Counties itself described those provisions as applying only to our town. Geographic language did not make the target disappear. It supplied
the address.

I was under indictment, awaiting trial, and already on administrative leave. No jury had heard my defense. No verdict had established my guilt.

Yet Richmond intervened.

The Senate accepted the Governor’s recommended amendments by a vote of 21 to 18, and Governor Abigail Spanberger approved the legislation on April 22, 2026. Legislative power was brought to bear on a small town while the criminal proceedings remained unresolved.

After that intervention, Purcellville stripped me of access to my salary. My family experienced the consequences before I received my day in court. My name became the subject of another round of headlines, insinuations, and public condemnation.

You may describe the law as an administrative safeguard. I experienced its consequences as punishment before trial.

What public purpose required this extraordinary intervention when I was already on leave? What urgent danger justified singling out Purcellville while leaving the rest of the Commonwealth outside that suspension provision?

Those questions deserve answers grounded in evidence.

I regard what happened to me as a political lynching: the public destruction of a man’s standing while the proceedings that should determine his guilt remain unfinished. I use that expression to describe the machinery of humiliation—the reduction of a person to an accusation, the dismissal of his service, and the invitation to the public to treat suspicion as a verdict.

I served Purcellville as its mayor for four terms. The people who repeatedly entrusted me with that responsibility knew a public servant with a record, a family, and a name.

An indictment did not erase that humanity. Your legislation helped create a climate in which others could behave as though it had.

Now Senator Lucas faces criminal charges, which remain allegations to be tested in court.

Governor Spanberger has responded by affirming that people are “presumed innocent until proven guilty” and that Senator Lucas and her family deserve an opportunity to present their defense.

I agree.

I agreed when the accused person was me.

Does the Senate agree with that principle consistently, or only when the accused sits among you?

Senator Lucas supported the legislation directed at Purcellville. Now this chamber must confront the distinction between the treatment it authorized for people outside its walls and the treatment it considers appropriate for one of its own.

Will you advocate her suspension before trial? Will you support withholding her salary while the charges remain unresolved? Will Senator Perry propose an equivalent measure and ask her colleagues to embrace its consequences?

If your answer is that the offices are different and SB 648 does not govern senators, explain why those differences justify the disparity.

I understand that a town manager and a state senator occupy different positions. The moral question survives that distinction: Why did an unresolved accusation justify extraordinary legislative intervention against me, while an unresolved accusation against your colleague calls forth such emphatic declarations of restraint?

The narrow reach of your law makes that question more urgent.

If suspension upon indictment was an essential protection for public confidence, why did you confine that protection to a population bracket and a planning district? If individualized judgment matters now, why did you enact a mandatory rule then?
I seek an explanation. I also seek accountability.

Senator Perry should explain publicly why existing administrative leave was insufficient and why Purcellville required this exceptional treatment. The senators who supported the measure should explain the principle behind their votes and whether they would accept its equivalent for themselves. The Governor should reconcile her defense of Senator Lucas’s presumption of innocence with her approval of legislation that deepened the consequences of my unresolved charges.

And this chamber should revisit the law, address the unequal treatment it created, and support a fair accounting of the financial harm its implementation caused.

I will defend Senator Lucas’s right to due process because a principle has value when we honor it for everyone.

I expect you to defend mine with the same clarity.

The chickens have come home to roost in the form of a question you can no longer dismiss:

Will you live by the standard you imposed—or acknowledge that the standard was wrong?

Respectfully,
Kwasi A. Fraser
Former Four-Term Mayor of Purcellville, Virginia
Www.KwasiFraser.com