Video: Gov. Abigail Spanberger Says “the number of pro-labor, pro-worker, pro-Virginia bills that I have signed into law is substantial, consequential and I am deeply proud of my record”

See below for video and highlights from Gov. Abigail Spanberger comments, at today’s Center for American Progress IDEAS Conference event, with Jonathan Capehart conducting the interview with Gov. Spanberger. At the start of the interview, Capehart immediately asked Spanberger about her veto of collective bargaining legislation, noting that “union leaders in the Commonwealth are not happy” with her veto. Here’s her response.

• Gov. Spanberger: “So, I continue to support public sector collective bargaining. And I continue to look forward to a place where we’ll have a bill that I’ll sign into law. Importantly, I sent back valuable amendments…towards that legislation; they were summarily rejected. Those amendments were incredibly vital from an implementation standpoint and took the feedback of localities and community members about what it look like to implement collective bargaining in the public sector in Virginia…Standing up an entirely new system, as the chief executive who would be implementing it, is a big and substantial shift…state employees…would go first, so any hurdles, challenges, getting any of the practice/reps in…would be tested on the employees that I oversee. So by the point in time when our localities across…Virginia would be implementing entirely new system, we would have gotten through some of the hurdles; 18 months later was the delay…Now notably, unfortunately, in the conversation related to my one veto, is lack of recognition of the fact that we are the first state in the south…I signed into law paid family and medical leave…I signed a bill to raise the minimum wage for all workers…”

• Gov. Spanberger says 3 million Virginians voted, after a multi-step process, and the VA Supreme Court nullified those votes. That’s “extraordinarily frustrating, but my response to it has to be that now we have to prove the point by winning…we have 11 Congressional districts…six that are current held by Democrats…of those remaining five that are held by Republicans, I won two of them on the ballot in November…so two of those races are eminently winnable. And then arguably, when I won my first congressional race, my predecessor had won in 2015 by 15 points; I won in 2018 by 2 points, that’s a 17-point swing. By those numbers, and with a president who’s even more unpopular than he was the last time we faced a midterm for him, we can win 3-4 seats in Virginia. So while I have lots of feelings about the…Supreme Court decision, I am channeling all of that towards trying to encourage people to not feel defeated or to channel their worry, their anguish, their disappointment, their anger into volunteering for a candidate, supporting a candidate and making sure that we win 2-4 of those races. On the current lines, it will be rough, but things worth doing are not always easy, and we have to do it.”