See below for video and highlights from this evening’s Politico “Transition of Power: What’s Next for Virginia” forum…specifically VA Speaker Don Scott. Great stuff as always from Speaker Scott (who, by the way, really ribbed Virginia Senate GOP Leader Ryan McDougle about Republicans’ refusal to even say the name of “Lord Voldemort,” aka Trump. Very amusing, but also very true!
Speaker Don Scott: “Have you been paying attention to the Supreme Court? I mean, they just rubber stamped Texas after a nine-day trial where the district court judges in Texas with Trump appointees said, ‘these maps are racially gerrymandered and we need to strike them down.’ And the Supreme Court said, ‘now, never mind, go ahead and go forward.’ So, I feel comfortable that we have an opportunity to do a number of maps here in Virginia to allow for us to level the playing field. I won’t be lectured, even though some of my buddies are Republicans. I won’t be lectured by Republicans while they stand quiet while Trump redistricts Texas, Indiana, Missouri, North Carolina. But then when it comes to Virginia, oh, they get holier than thou, get sanctimonious. When they start lecturing Trump about what they’re doing in Texas, Missouri, Indiana, North Carolina, I might listen to them and they may have some credibility when it comes to Virginia.”
Speaker Don Scott: “Republicans want [redistricting] to be decided by the courts too, and not by the voters, after that shellacking they took in November. The last thing they want to do is see a voter at the election box. We just won the House of Delegates 64 out of 100 seats, the largest majority since 1989. We won, we beat incumbents, Republican incumbents who have been in office…[30+ years]…[The last thing Rs] want to see is a voter. So, of course, they want to see a judge and not a a voter. But if we take this thing to the ballot and we have a fair election, once again, I believe that the voters are going to be with us, because the voters know that Republicans are rigging these national elections at the congressional level. The policies are so bad they can’t run them on the midterms and so they have to rig it. And so we have a responsibility, I think, and an obligation here in Virginia to do what we can to level the playing field. And that’s what we’re going to do. And we’re going to do it with the help of the voters. I know they don’t want to talk to the voters right now after that shellacking they just took, but there’s going to be voters that make this decision and not judges.”
Speaker Don Scott: [The election] was won on one of the issues, the biggest issues was affordability. Republicans and Donald Trump…Republicans, they treat him like Lord Voldemort from Harry Potter, he who must not be named. They’re too terrified to even say his name. Not one of them will say that his policies are wrong, that he’s driving prices up with these tariffs and it’s basically attacks on working families. And I would love to hear some Republicans talk about that. Another thing that I would love to hear that I we’re going to do is, I don’t know if Ryan remembers, but…the governor right now is aRepublican and he’s been a Republican for four years. So, all of these great ideas would have been nice to bring up during the time that he’s been here. But, I think we have an opportunity now with a new governor who understands what we can do. We really got an opportunity to unleash our economy. The current governor will be moving on. He’s been an impediment to some of the things that we wanted to do. He vetoed a bill to lower the minimum wage. He vetoed bills to make sure that healthcare is more accessible. He vetoed bills to make sure that housing was more affordable. We’re going to unleash this economy and allow to address all of those things. And I think that’s why so many voters…overwhelmingly supported…Democrats’ agenda this year…Well, specifically, we’re going to pass a bill to raise the minimum wage. That’s day one. We’re going to get that done. We’re going to pass a bill to make sure that we make sure healthcare is more accessible, lower the cost, and get more people enrolled in Medicaid. We’re going to probably have to do something to make up for the gap in the loss of the supplemental premiums that was being paid by the ACA. We’re going to have to take care of that. Basically, what the feds did was leave a poison pill behind for our new governor elect, Abigail Spanberger. They left this poison pill behind with a ball and chain and an anchor on her leg…with the health care cost. That price is going to go up and the state is going to have to take care of that. We’re going to have to come up with solutions to make sure we do that. And those are going to be specific things that we can do. I know Republicans believe in health care as well. I believe they know that we have to have health care be accessible, because if we don’t take care of the preventative care, that we need to take up catastrophic care late in the game is going to be super expensive. So we’re going to have to do more than we do. Republicans fought forever to prevent Medicaid from expanding in Virginia. They fought it forever. So eventually they came around in 2019, right before an election, and then we took the majority back then and lost it. And now we have it back and bigger and better this time, because people trust that Democrats actually care about getting things done. And it’s not only that we win majorities, is that we deliver when we get them.”
Speaker Don Scott: “I think that the one of the biggest things that we disagree on is I don’t think making the Clean Economy Act the boogeyman is the fix all. But I think we do need to have more energy options. And then we need more renewable energy. You know, that’s one of the things, we need more [renewable energy] – that energy comes on faster. I talked to my friends in industry. It takes a long time for a gas-fired or coal plant to come up. There’s a lot of things that we can do about the supply chain issues. There are things that we can do right now that I think we can pass to make it easier for businesses to do work here in the Commonwealth of Virginia. I think even the business community knows that we’re better on these issues right now. They have a president which they don’t want to talk about, Lord Voldemort, who is constantly raising tariffs, constantly raising the prices of things. He admits that he removes the tariffs on the bananas. So, I think those are things that we can agree on day one that we can lower the prices for people each and every day.”
