What Ralph Northam Actually Said [TRANSCRIPT]

While I wasn’t able to get audio/video from the forum with Northam and Chopra, I was able to get a transcript from someone who was in the room and got the audio of the answer that people have been talking about lately.  See below the flip for the answer in question.

When the Republicans took control two years ago with a 20-20 and a tie-breaker Lt. Governor, the first thing that they did was they came in and reshuffled the committees. It was unprecedented, it never happened like that before. And with that shuffling came their social agenda; their attack on women’s health care issues, the voter suppression, the discrimination against the GLBT community.

So, the first thing the Lt. Governor needs to do as a Democrat will be to put the committees back in charge of Democrats so we can push forward our principles and values. Now, there’s been some talk, “will the Democrats or will the Lt. Governor do power sharing like they did several years ago?” And the answer to that is, ‘no, we won’t, until they play fair.’ And when I say “play fairly”: we need to repeal the ultrasound bill, we need to repeal the TRAP laws, we need to make sure that things like the personhood bill, the discrimination against GLBT, and voter suppression bills–they need to stop. When they stop, and they start playing fairly, then we can talk about perhaps power sharing in the way they did it in the past, the way that we used to get along.”

And I can tell you–I mentioned this earlier–one of the reputations that I have in the Senate is to stand up for the Democratic principles and values that are important to all of us, but to also listen to good ideas. And at the end of the day, that’s the way things move forward. That’s the way the Commonwealth of Virginia moves forward. We have to sit down at the table and say, “we have a challenge or a problem that we agree on, now, how are we going to move forward and fix it?” You do that by working together. But until we get some cooperation from the other side of the aisle, we will take control of the Senate and that’s the way we’ll be until they play fairly.