Delegate Joe McNamara and Donna Littlepage, candidates for the 40th District House of Delegates seat on the ballot in November, discussed Medicaid cuts, the right to an abortion, and responded to questions posed by audience members during a forum sponsored by Cardinal News on Tuesday night in Salem.
McNamara, the incumbent Republican, was first elected to the House of Delegates in 2018 after serving on the Roanoke County Board of Supervisors for 20 years. He currently serves on a number of House committees, including Finance, Labor and Commerce.
McNamara said he got involved in politics while his daughters were attending Cave Spring High School, after he saw what he called “insufficient” physical facilities. He said he’s “developed an expertise” and is “well known in the General Assembly as the go-to person for anything related to tax policy.”
Littlepage, the Democratic candidate, recently retired after working for Carilion Clinic for 35 years in Healthcare Finance and Administration. She’s a founding CFO for the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine, and has sat on a number of committees and boards related to healthcare and finance.
Her experience in healthcare and knowledge surrounding Medicaid, Littlepage said, is what compelled her to run a campaign. One in six people in the 40th District are on Medicaid, she said.
If Congress does not act on Medicaid by the end of the year, Virginia will have to pay nearly a quarter of a billion dollars annually to maintain health insurance premium tax credits for plans purchased through the state’s marketplace, Cardinal News reported on Tuesday.
“I thought it would be useful to have someone in the General Assembly who knew Medicaid to figure out ways to stretch dollars further and keep as many people covered with as many of the services we currently have, and keep the providers as intact as we can when this is all said and done,” Littlepage said.
When asked what the candidates’ plans were for providing assistance, like SNAP and Medicaid, to those that will lose that government assistance, McNamara said Medicaid was originally designed to “take care of the poor, the ill, the children.”
“It was not designed to be health insurance for perfectly able-bodied individuals,” McNamara said. He said it seems “perfectly reasonable” to “maintain the solvency and strength” of the program. He noted that there are exceptions for those who can’t work, have children, or are in college.
“Nobody’s losing coverage,” McNamara said. “There are some people that will choose not to work their 18 and a half hours a week, so they’re choosing to not be a part of that program.”
Littlepage said the new work requirements will result in more oversight that the state will need to pay for. She said a worst-case scenario is hospitals in Southwest Virginia closing, and that people will be traveling further for care.
“It’ll have a ripple effect we need to be careful about,” Littlepage said.
The right to abortion
A proposed constitutional amendment would guarantee the right to terminate a pregnancy in the Commonwealth.
“When a 50-year precedent is overturned, the voters should have the right to decide what to do about that,” Littlepage said, referring to the overturning of the national precedent established by Roe vs. Wade. She said that “the legislature does not belong in the exam room,” and that doctors need to be able to make decisions based on what they believe to be best for their patients.
McNamara said that “there’s no issue on the table right now” regarding any bill to deny the right to an abortion in the state.
“Now, what is being considered,” he said, “is a constitutional amendment that will make abortion legal up until the moment of birth. Any time a lady, or a person, would determine that this is troublesome for their mental or physical health, having that baby. Is that where we really want Virginia to be? That would be the most liberal abortion law…Is that what we really want?”
McNamara’s question incited a loud response from the audience — some yelling yes, some no, and some unintelligible shouts.
Littlepage argued that she does not know a single physician who would allow for termination up to delivery — which resulted in cheering from the crowd.
The proposed constitutional amendment, which must pass the General Assembly in 2026 before going to a referendum in November 2026, does not address the specifics of when abortion would be allowed or restricted.
Instead, it says “every individual has the fundamental right to reproductive freedom and that such right shall not be denied, burdened, or infringed upon unless justified by a compelling state interest, defined within the text of the amendment, and achieved by the least restrictive means.”
It also includes a provision that the state can “regulate the provision of abortion care in the third trimester when it is medically indicated to protect the life or health of the pregnant individual or when the fetus is not viable.” Republicans in the General Assembly have argued that language is so broad as to allow the scenario McNamara described; Democrats have disagreed.
Addressing rising electric rates
Littlepage said because data centers in the state require such a large amount of electricity, that the data centers and technology companies should be fronting the cost of building that higher capacity for energy.
“The way they ask for more money is broken into pieces and each one individually sounds OK, but we really need to look at it in totality,” she said.
McNamara said he once served on the Energy Subcommittee, and that “utilities could not buy [his] vote.”
He said at one point, two or three years ago, he was the only Republican in the House that “would not accept utility contributions to [his] campaign.” He also noted that he thinks the marketplace needs to be opened up, and there needs to be more competition.
The right to same-sex marriage
Another proposed constitutional amendment that the legislature will consider would guarantee the right to a same-sex marriage, regardless of what the U.S. Supreme Court decides. Currently, the state constitution bans same-sex marriage, but that ban was superceded by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2015.
Littlepage started by saying that she doesn’t think this issue belongs in the constitution in the first place, and would support the amendment.
“So if the federal government decides to undo it, I would like my state to not nullify my marriage.”
McNamara said he thinks the voters should have an opportunity to allow for same-sex marriages in the constitution.
“I voted that way, and we’ll see where it goes,” he said.
Legalizing retail sales of cannabis
McNamara said he does not support the legalization of cannabis, citing cases of increased emergency visits and psychosis.
“It’s another vice and I don’t see any reason to make it easier for children or adults to have cannabis,” he said.
Littlepage argued that there’s already a market for cannabis in the state, and that it should be regulated, just like how the sale of alcohol is regulated.
McNamara, in his rebuttal, said there’s not a “fair application” to the law, because someone with more land would have the opportunity to grow their own cannabis, whereas someone renting an apartment, he said, would not.
Both candidates say solar siting is a local issue
When asked what ideologies both candidates have in common, Littlepage said that both she and McNamara agree that solar siting should be a local issue, not a state one. McNamara said it sounds like both agree that “we shouldn’t have termination [of] pregnancy at a moment before birth.”
In his closing statement, McNamara said that both he and Littlepage are both capable and neighborly, but that they represent two very different philosophies.
“And when we get to Richmond, it’s very difficult to push back against a very strong speaker and vote [for] what you think you should vote for,” he said.
Littlepage said in her closing statement that she has “spent a career standing [her] ground when it was appropriate.”
“I’ll be damned if I let people tell me what to do when it is not the best thing,” she said.
For more on where the candidates stand, see their answers to our Voter Guide questionnaire. Find it on the Roanoke, Roanoke County and Salem pages of our Voter Guide.