Updated, Jan. 9: We now have video from this event through Blue Ridge Public TV. It will also stream on www.blueridgepbs.org/echo this Wednesday, Thursday and Friday at 8 pm.
The narrative surrounding the upcoming Virginia General Assembly session has been one of pessimism.
How, after all, will Republican statewide officials be able to reconcile with narrow Democratic majorities in both House of Delegates and state Senate when the legislative session begins next week?
Three leaders in the Virginia legislature who spoke in Roanoke on Wednesday said those fears are overblown. Sen. Mamie Locke, D-Hampton, and Mark Obenshain, R-Rockingham County, and Del. Israel O’Quinn, R-Washington County, took the dais in front of a crowd of roughly 100 at Roanoke’s Shenandoah Club at an event co-sponsored by Cardinal News and the Roanoke Collaboration Project, a nonpartisan civic volunteer organization. The forum was the first such event in a project called The Cardinal Way: Civility Rules, part of a nationwide project by the American Press Institute Project to encourage civil discourse.
All three highlighted the bodies’ history of traversing party lines to serve the commonwealth’s needs in addition to addressing key issues facing Virginians — education, transportation, mental health, redistricting — that they expect to be key components of both the discussion within and success of the upcoming session.
“The dirty little secret is we actually do get along, and we actually do get things done,” said Obenshain, who leads the Republican caucus in the Senate.
The senator estimated that 85% of their jobs as legislators is problem-solving.
“They’re not Republican problems or Democrat problems. They’re not liberal or conservative problems. They’re just problems that need to be fixed,” he said. “And we have a pretty doggone good track record of working together across partisan aisles to get those things fixed.”
The remainder are “cats and dogs issues,” Obenshain said, the ones that divide his party from their Democrat counterparts.
“But that doesn’t mean that we’re not going to get anything done,” he quickly added.
Locke began the forum by telling the crowd of her background and inspiration to get involved in politics. One of 11 children raised by a working single mother (Locke’s father died when she was young) in public housing in Jackson, Mississippi, Locke said she was pushed from a young age to seek education in order to find a better life. After she arrived in Virginia as a professor at Hampton University, Locke ran for city council and eventually became mayor and a state senator.
“I was supposed to be a statistic,” the Democratic Caucus leader in the state Senate said.
But Locke beat the odds.
“Why?” she asked the room. “Education. Because somebody back in that public housing project told me I could do it.”
Locke outlined the key issues facing her district: education, obviously, but also affordable housing, voting rights — she recalled having to register separately as a teenager in Mississippi for state and federal elections — and business.
“I care about those businesses in my community, and I want them not only to survive but to thrive in my community,” Locke said. “So it’s not that as a Democrat I don’t care about the business; I also care about the workers in those businesses, and I want them to also thrive.”
O’Quinn, the current deputy House majority leader who will take the same role for the Republican minority at the start of the session, stressed his perspective from Southwest Virginia during his introduction.
“It’s always good to be in Central Virginia,” he told the crowd in Roanoke to a round of laughter.
But the joke holds water back home, O’Quinn said, noting that in Washington County he lives closer to seven other state capitals than he does to Richmond and that many of his constituents feel their General Assembly members are often their only connection to the capital.
Despite the region’s isolation from Richmond and other more populous parts of the commonwealth, O’Quinn said, Southwest Virginia is thriving in its own right and by the beat of its own drum. He touted the public schools, which are among the best-performing in Virginia despite some of the hurdles his more rural district has faced.
“You tend to learn how to do a lot with a little when that’s the hand that you’re dealt,” O’Quinn said.
All three noted the marked impact that the Virginia Supreme Court’s redistricting map will have on the General Assembly. The map, originally assigned to the bipartisan Virginia Redistricting Commission, went to the state’s highest court after no agreement could be reached. The judicial ruling on the lines was not to either party’s liking, but confidence in the future of the idea remained high.
“That commission, when it is put together in 10 years, that they will have a different outlook on the nature of their job, and there will be, I believe, a successful effort in the commission and through the commission to redistrict the Commonwealth of Virginia in a way that maybe makes a little more sense and isn’t quite as disruptive,” Obenshain said. “I think it’s going to work out OK.”
One of the results of redistricting was the shakeup of current districts and their incumbents. Half of the most recent Senate’s 40 members will not be returning to Richmond, some due to redistricting. But Obenshain, who wound up in his newly drawn district with two other Senate incumbents, warned the crowd not to discredit the apparent inexperience of the group, noting that many had served in the assembly before and several other freshman senators served on other elected bodies in their careers.
“It’s not going to be a disaster,” Obenshain said.
O’Quinn echoed the optimism from the House perspective, saying the infusion of new and younger representatives will prove a good thing for the commonwealth.
“If we don’t figure out a way to ultimately pass the torch on some of these things,” the delegate said, “you walk off the edge of a cliff.”
He sees the upcoming session as a turning point for the Virginia legislature. Either the state government can land in stagnation throughout the session due to the partisan divide between legislative and executive branches, or they can take the opportunity to work together for the people of the commonwealth. O’Quinn expects collaboration to be the answer.
“Chances are, there’s going to be overlap in that area, and you’re going to find somewhere in there where you can actually make a real measurable difference on some of these big problems,” he said.
At the end, the floor opened for questions.
One: What can we as voters do to promote civil discourse?
Model that behavior, Obenshain said. “You’re opinion-makers in this community, and you have the opportunity to be that grown-up in the room.” He also invited people to come to Richmond and be involved. “You will see us every single day of the week working together in a civil fashion to try and address issues that are important.”
Another: Will we see a budget on time from the legislature?
“Yes,” Locke said immediately.
“Define ‘on time,’” Obenshain added with a laugh before adding his confidence in with his Democratic counterpart’s.
(By law, Virginia’s budget must be approved by the end of June. Legislators hope to have it done well before that deadline.)
For those in the room, the forum demonstrated the best of the American political system at work.
“I think that the speakers did a nice job of singing our song, of talking about working together constructively. I bought it. It seemed genuine,” said Dana Ackley, a Roanoke psychologist and co-founder of the Roanoke Collaboration Project.
Ackley said too often citizens see politicians on the fringes making “clickbait” headlines for things that “focus on dividing people based on emotion.” He was happy to see the issues at the front of Wednesday’s forum.
So, too, was Judy Jenks of Radford. The coordinator of Radford University’s nurse practitioner program and the operator of a medical cannabis clinic in that city, Jenks said she came to Roanoke on Wednesday due to her interest in statewide politics and her desire to speak to legislators about rural health care, noting the closure of many rural hospitals in recent decades and the lack of public transportation and other resources in those areas of the commonwealth.
“There’s 4 million nurses in the country and 1 million doctors, and the doctors can’t do it all,” Jenks said. “So if you give the nurses some autonomy, imagine how they could influence healthcare.”
Jenks did not get a chance to ask her question in front of the group, but she said she was excited to hear politicians from all over the state bring up other key issues, such as education and transportation.
Next week, the trio of legislators will head to the Capitol in search of addressing those issues. The state legislative session begins on Wednesday in Richmond and runs through March 9.