Great stuff by Lt. Governor-elect Ghazala Hashmi on WAMU’s Politics Hour yesterday:
- Ghazala Hashmi: “I think there were two major factors at play [in the November 4 elections] throughout this election cycle. The first, of course, being the the terrible crisis that’s coming out of the Trump administration. You know, Virginia is home to the largest population of federal workers, and the DOGE cuts have significantly impacted so many of our families. And then on top of that, we have the crisis of the federal shutdown. And, the incompetency and the chaos of the Trump administration has been visible and has been hurting so many of our communities. So that was a major factor. But secondly, you know, by contrast, the the two tickets were running on very different issues. While we were focused on the concerns that we had heard from so many Virginians across the Commonwealth on the campaign trail – issues around housing affordability and, child care access, concerns about what’s happening to health care – the the other ticket was just focused on bigotry and rhetoric of division. That’s not a selling message – and that was quite apparent on Tuesday night. We got the results so early, and that’s because Virginians were sending a pretty clear signal as to who they thought were going to be competent and strong leaders to help us go forward.”
Ghazala Hashmi: “You know, that blatant Islamophobia and xenophobia is so ugly, and, clearly the voters rejected that. Our finance, contributions are open for public review. I’m so delighted to share. I think it was over 96% of my support came from Virginians. I had over 6,000, grassroots supporters, small dollar, supporters helping to propel this campaign. It was Virginians who made their choice known and, the ugliness of the bigotry that my opponent was targeting me with was soundly rejected on Tuesday night… you know, it was inexplicable that as a gay man, he he actually supported, when Winsome Sears said on the debate stage that it is not discrimination to oppose gay marriage and that it’s not discrimination to, for someone to lose their job simply because, they are a member of the LGBTQ community. I wish he would stand up for his rights, but I’m sure ready to protect his rights even though he isn’t.”
WAMU guest host Todd Zwillich: “John Reid was known to many of us journalists back in the day. He was a staffer to Senator George Allen in the United States Senate. Many of us knew him from those days in his career. And it was during those years when George Allen made national news and not in a good way with his racist comments about a Democratic campaign oppo tracker. I’m not gonna repeat what he called that young man, but it’s just that there’s a circularity to some of this…”
Ghazala Hashmi: “…the resolution, it’s the first step. And so the resolution does not change our nonpartisan redistricting commission that is supposed to navigate the drawing of the lines. It is very narrow in scope. And it’s focused only on the congressional districts, and it is an option that should Virginia voters decide to say yes to it in response to national politics, then Virginia voters will have an opportunity to impact what’s happening at the federal level…[the number of seats that Democrats could pick up] has not been defined. The language is such that it opens the opportunity for redistricting, and that’s something that will occur once, once the resolution is actually completed by passage by voters…”
Tom Sherwood: “Well, you know how powerful Senator Louise Lucas is, though. So if she says four, someone is gonna have to argue quite a bit for it to be something short of four. Would you agree with that?”
Ghazala Hashmi: “I think there’s gonna be a lot of perspectives and a lot of discussion in the next months ahead.”
UPDATE: Also, here’s VA Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell on redistricting.
Tom Sherwood: “Louise Lucas, your colleague, has said four seats. You guys will get to pick up four seats when you do this. Is that the right number, or is that premature?”
Sen. Scott Surovell: “I love Louise [Lucas], my president pro tem; she likes to stir things up…I mean, there’s first of all, we haven’t actually looked at any maps yet. Because we haven’t actually passed..”
Tom Sherwood: “You’re not going to endorse four today, but maybe two or three at minimum. Otherwise, why do it? If you don’t do enough seats, why even…?”
Sen. Scott Surovell: “Listen, there’s two seats…that are pretty obviously in play. And after that, you know, it probably gets pretty hard, but it’s, you know, anything’s possible…I actually have not had that specific of a conversation [with Dems in Washington]. The first task is to get the amendment passed and actually getting the mechanics of the amendment correct and getting it into a place where all my members would, the majority would support it. And then we have to talk about the election time frames. I heard you talking earlier, it’s a very tight time frame for next year. We have to readjust some primary deadlines and things if we do this. And we have to figure all that stuff out before we start talking about district lines.”
