2020: A year in review with Bold Dominion
What were the biggest stories of 2020? What big stories did you miss? What do we have to look forward to in 2021? Now that it's in the rear-view mirror, 2020 is officially the worst year ever, but our friends at Bold Dominion help to make it a little better with a year in review.
Michael Pope
Welcome to Transition Virginia, and Bold Dominion, two podcasts that launched in 2020. And we're now ending the year on a high note doing this end of year crossover episode, where we dive deep into the year that was and look ahead to what's next. I'm Michael Pope.
Thomas Bowman
And I'm Thomas Bowman. Today on the podcast: 2020. A year that seems like it's been on pause since March and yet also feels like it's dragged on and on for a decade. We're gonna end the year with our friends from Bold Dominion Podcast, so we're joined by the host of Bold Dominion, Nathan Moore. Thanks for joining us.
Nathan Moore
Thanks for having us on.
Michael Pope
We're also joined by the producer of Bold Dominion, Aaryan Balu. Thanks for joining us.
Aaryan Balu
Thanks for having me as well.
Michael Pope
Well, let's get right into it guys. I think there was one story, the most obvious story that dominated everything, that is the Coronavirus, and I want to start the discussion by making a confession. Very early in the crisis, before the Governor issued his executive order shutting everything down, Thomas and I were discussing what we wanted to do for our upcoming episode. I said to Thomas, "I am so bored of all this Coronavirus talk. I- can we just skip it?" And Thomas said, "Well, we have to do something about it. We should at least acknowledge it at the top of the show or something." So I said, "Okay, yeah, whatever." And then we had some sort of bit about, you know, wash your hands and stay six feet apart or whatever. But I mean, clearly, this has been the story that has just dominated everything, and what do we make of Coronavirus? I think one thing, that was perhaps a positive for Virginia, is that we've got the only governor who's also a medical doctor. And I think it's possible, I think it would be fair to say that actually helped Virginia in this crisis. Does anyone agree or disagree with that assessment?
Nathan Moore
Yeah. I think Ralph Northam, early on in this thing, you know, he took some lumps here and there for how things were handled. But all in all, I do think that having that medical background certainly helped inform his decisions from kind of a public health perspective. And partly, we got lucky, right? But Virginia consistently has not been the site of some of the worst surges around. I mean, those were New York and Seattle early on, and then out in the Great Plains state in the Midwest after that, but it's not like we had no cases, right, it's been still not good. But it has not been the sort of complete disaster of some other areas. And you know, I think his leadership as a doctor, partly, but I think also just having a clear, consistent person who's communicating well about the stuff, you know, and you can contrast that very obviously, with DC, where the response was was, I mean, everything from conspiracy theories, to pretending it didn't exist to, you know, all the other sort of disastrous communication that Trump was involved with. And Northam was just steady hand at the wheel. And that in this kind of crisis is actually who you want.
Thomas Bowman
So this is the one thing that I've been studying in my consultancies since the pandemic began. And I do have a little bit of shade to throw, not so much at Northam, but in the entire process, and a few really heavy criticisms, frankly. One, pulled us out of lockdown way too soon, succumbing to pressure from the business community, who mistakenly believed that we could reopen the economy, and anybody who was paying attention to the science could tell you that wasn't going to be the case. And Nathan, you hit the nail on the head with the extent to which we've just gotten lucky from a lot of this. Northern Virginia had a lot of cases early on, and thankfully they had consistent messaging from their public officials to stay home, wash their hands, etc. But no, I actually have a few bones to pick with the administration. For one, they should have had a public mask order this whole time. We would not necessarily be where we are today if they had done that. And also, indoor dining and allowing that to continue is ridiculous. That's the number one highest risk activity, including keeping gyms open, houses of worship open. These account for over 50% of Virginia's cases, and strong leadership on that front and not convening a team of businessmen and women to tell the administration how to do public health, would have been a lot better, frankly. Some of the arbitrary numbers on fire marshal capacity, there's never any place filled to fire marshal capacity aside from, you know, stadium venues and bars when a concerts playing, that was an arbitrary metric. And also, the most recent one is the curfews. There is no science behind curfews, and there is a lot of science, that it's not the time that matters, it's the activity that matters, right? So I actually, doing messaging in my day job, have a really big issue with arbitrary and capricious public health orders. I think that the Governor would have been far better served just from doing the things that the CDC has recommended from day one and sticking to the science, and letting the results speak for themselves. Because you can't negotiate with a virus, it's just looking for hosts to infect. It doesn't care the words that come out of your mouth, or your rhetoric, or who you vote for. In history, and looking back, you'll just be far better served, doing what you need to do from the start. So that those are my bones. But, I would say, Virginia, of course, has fared better than many of its southern neighbors. But at the same time, we could have done better.
Aaryan Balu
So I want to push back a little bit. I mean,far be it for me to spend a lot of time defending Ralph Northam for anything, but I have a lot of sympathy for governments that have reopened, especially now in these latest months of the pandemic, rather than the earlier ones. But without any sort of top down money coming into individuals and businesses, you want to talk about indoor dining, like there's no doubt that indoor dining is a significant spreading event for Coronavirus. But, if small businesses closed down now after, you know, a paltry $1200 and then you know, now we're getting $600 apiece, they will shut down permanently.
Thomas Bowman
Oh yeah.
Aaryan Balu
And so like, I find it hard to fault a state government for keeping those sorts of businesses open. Because I mean, livelihood is important, especially for business owners.
Thomas Bowman
So there's a guy named Andy Slavitt, who is Obama's top doctor. And he's been going around probably since the summer at least once a lot of people figured out that reopening from the lockdowns too early was a mistake, and saying governments should use their bonding authority to pass what he calls, "bar bonds," but essentially, these are small denomination bonds that we could be purchasing, or investors could be purchasing, that would go to small businesses to effectively pay these small businesses to stay closed. And this would be something of course, that you could pass in all 50 states separately, because you're right, there's no leadership coming from the federal government. But I look at the self inflicted economic pain as a measure of lack of creativity and just reacting to events, rather than having a strategic plan to stay ahead of the curve.
Nathan Moore
I kind of hear both of you on this, really. I think this is one of those times, you know, we're doing a podcast on state politics. And we do, we want to find out how Virginia works, why Virginia does the things it does. But this is one of those where the role of the federal government was really, really critical and it completely fell down on the job.
Thomas Bowman
Oh, yeah.
Nathan Moore
Without a coordinated national response, the states are going to do their best. But you know, I mean, the only entity with the power of the purse, the financial muster to pull this off in a way that would have kept people from hurting really badly, economically, is the federal government. And it was I mean, you know, Mitch McConnell's GOP just basically held the aid package hostage until they've turned it into a defense spending bill with tax deductions for three martini lunches. I mean, you know, it's really, without that role, without actual leadership, that's for people, and not for the, you know, the profits of the biggest coffers, at the national level, I don't know what Virginia could have done that much better. Yeah, I agree, Thomas, a few things, but, but you know, really, it's a complete falling down on the job and the Trump regime.
Michael Pope
So COVID, of course, was the top story. But it wasn't the only story. There was another thing that was on the ballot in November, that passed, the very controversial constitutional amendment creating a redistricting commission, a bi partisan redistricting commission. Importantly, not an Independent Redistricting Commission. I think for many years, lots of people were saying all these political boundaries, for the House of Delegates, and the State Senate, and even Congress should be drawn by a quote unquote, independent group of people, you know, like retired judges, that sort of thing. And that did not happen. Instead, we got this crazy hybrid system that involves lawmakers and citizens working together to draw these maps and this carefully designed process to balance the commission equally between Republicans and Democrats. Thomas, I know that you were critical of the amendment as it was going through the process of the election. What do you think is going to be the end result of this thing now that it's passed?
Thomas Bowman
Well, one, I think the end result is that nobody is going to be happy. And by the way, I do not believe that's necessarily the mark of a good compromise. Look at all the applicants to this redistricting commission, they are overwhelmingly wealthy and white, which presumably, would have basically come up with the same result is the legislature itself. And, you know, they've got a very compressed timescale, and they don't have maps yet. So we'll see. I, I'm not hopeful that we'll get a satisfactory result.
Michael Pope
Well, you say you're not hopeful that we're going to get a satisfactory result. But like, what would be satisfactory? I mean, well Nathan, I'll put the question to you. What would be a satisfactory result for this commission?
Nathan Moore
I mean, as far as what would be satisfactory, I think, an actually independent commission, that didn't end up being essentially run by lawmakers still, but just a smaller number of lawmakers. Yeah, I don't know. I don't have like a great alternative to this. And I know talking to various journalists and lawmakers and sort of party activists about it, there was, you know, the definitely difference of opinion, some people said, "Oh, hey, it's a step in the right direction, but definitely has problems, but at least it's a step in the right direction." Others were like, "You know, it actually doesn't really improve things that much at all. And now, we're never going to come back to it. So, you know, what's what's actually better?" And cynically, I know, some Democrats too who were like, "Hey, we've been stuck with the gerrymandered districts against us for a long time. Why are we giving this up when we're actually in charge?"
Thomas Bowman
Amen to that.
Michael Pope
Yeah totally. Democrats will say that in private, they won't say that when you turn on the microphones. Thomas thinks that if no one is happy, that's not necessarily a sign of success. I'll turn that into a question for Aaryan. So like, if the Democrats are unhappy with what comes out of this commission, and the Republicans are unhappy with what comes out of that commission, is this a sign of success for the commission? Or is Thomas right, that's not a sign of success?
Aaryan Balu
I do agree with Thomas for the most part. I think whether lawmakers of a particular political party are happy has very little to do with whether this is actually a good thing or a bad thing. I'm sure that Democrats or Republicans in the legislature will have plenty of reasons to dislike whatever the districts end up looking like. But we just...I don't know if those districts are going to be fair or unfair, or how they're going to turn out. Like Thomas was pretty critical of the amendment, kind of right at the end, I realized this was not something I was a fan of. And I think it is just consolidating power in a group of people who aren't necessarily any better or more independent than what the legislature would look like.
Michael Pope
But we don't quite know that yet. Because the citizens have not been named yet. So we don't know who the citizens are going to be or what the role is going to be either. I mean, one of the interesting things about this thing is it's never happened before. So we don't have any way to gauge this, other than look at what they give us and make determinations about it.
Nathan Moore
Well, it's kind of funny about this, in a way is that there are other states that have done fully independent redistricting commissions. And we could have learned from that example, but instead, we've got this strange Frankenstein version of it. And so I mean, let's cross our fingers, right? But we could have simply seen what others...in Virginia, you know, we've talked about this before a little bit, the four of us, it seems to me that like ever since Loving v. Virginia, Virginia doesn't like to be the last at anything. That was maybe the last time we were really the last at something, the sort of desegregation order from Supreme Court. But we also really don't like being the first, at least the Richmond lawmakers. But in this case, we've sort of like adopted this weird Frankenstein that is unique in the country, far as I can tell, and it's not an independent commission, like do exist in what, a dozen other states or so?
Michael Pope
Yeah, it's actually really important that we not call it an independent commission. It's a, I mean, I think the best way to talk about it is it is a bipartisan commission. In fact, if you look at all of the many rules that have been created to name the individuals who will serve on the commission, it was very carefully orchestrated, to balance Republicans and Democrats. So I think really the best way to talk about it, and think about it, is that it is a bipartisan commission, right?
Nathan Moore
Yeah, that makes sense to me.
Michael Pope
So another very important thing that's happened this year is all of the criminal justice reform, the policing reform that's come out of the Black Lives Matter movement, which includes removing Confederate monuments. You know, there was so much legislation to come out of the General Assembly, it's actually impossible to even talk about it at all, but I will just sort of name the top line thing that for me, anyway, I think it's the most, one of the most significant things is the ban on pretextual policing. So, you know, it used to be that a police officer could pull you over because they smelled marijuana. Well, guess what? They pulled over Black people because they smelled marijuana, or they could pull you over because there was something dangling from your rearview mirror. I think if people are listening to this podcast right now, as they're driving, it's likely they've got something dangling from their rearview mirror like a parking pass. Well, guess what? Police used to be able to pull you over and use that as an excuse, and guess what, they pulled over Black people. So the fact that they changed the laws on pretextual policing so that's no longer a primary offense where they could pull you over, it's now a secondary offense, so they can no longer pull you over because of the smell of marijuana, they can no longer pull you over because you have something dangling from the rearview mirror. That's a significant step. The Lawmakers also changed the way jury trials work. So you can now have a jury trial, but not be sentenced by the jury. You can have the judge issue you a sentence. And this is a very important development because juries are notorious for having ridiculous sentencing. And so people would avoid having a jury trial because they didn't want to be sentenced by a jury. So this is a change that will have far reaching consequences for the criminal justice system for many, many years to come. Some failures that are worth talking about, the most significant is chokeholds. So one of the big things the Black Lives Matter movement was very concerned about was banning choke holes. Well guess what? Lawmakers did not ban chokeholds, they want to tell you that they ban chokeholds, but they created a limitation for chokeholds that allows police officers to use a chokehold if they feel like their life is in danger or anybody else's life is in danger, which means they've got an out, and they're going to use that at every opportunity. So this chokeholds thing was not nearly as strong as it could have been, or advocates wanted it to be. And then there's also the issue of expungements, where the House, and this the Democrats in the House and the Democrats in the Senate could not agree on how to do expungements. And so they didn't do it. And that actually happened during the regular Session, before the pandemic. And then they came together in a Special Session. And they had the same disagreement, and they could not figure it out. And so they once again punted. And so we still have no action on expungements. Hopefully, we'll see something in 2021. But I guess we'll have to see. There's a lot to unpack here with criminal justice reform and Black Lives Matter and even Confederate monuments. What do you guys think the highlights were?
Nathan Moore
Well, certainly the the reforms you mentioned are probably the most concrete things to come out of it. I actually was wondering what you all thought about how the Black Lives Matter movement, in Virginia, will- that's one, you know, your podcast covered that, our podcast covered that. What can we look ahead to 2021 in terms of some of the demands of that movement? And what comes of them?
Aaryan Balu
I think that's something that, I mean, we're gonna get an answer to that relatively quickly with the Legislative Session coming up in January. I know Sally Hudson talked on the podcast about how what we got done in the Special Session was kind of like a downpayment, or a promise or, you know, a holdover until we could get some boots on the ground in January. So I don't know what it's gonna look like, I am hopeful that we get something a little more progressive than that first step that we got this August, but I mean, we'll have to see in the next month or two.
Thomas Bowman
My guess is that it comes back up in the, at least in the Democratic primaries, with right now two Black women, and Justin Fairfax, also running for Governor. Terry McAuliffe put somebody to death, right, when he didn't necessarily have to. This is going to be something that is going to be a clarion call in the Democratic primary, if they want the support from the Black community, especially if that nominee is not Black. So, I think we've got more to hear on it. And on criminal justice, one thing I was really disappointed in, is that, you know, if you call 911, in a mental health crisis, they should not be sending out a cop who isn't trained to deal with mental health. It should be behavioral health crisis counselors, people that aren't bringing guns into the situation, and making things way more dangerous for everyone. Once again, I was kind of disappointed by our policymakers lack of imagination, and/or political will.
Michael Pope
So looking ahead to 2021, I think one of the major things that we're going to see happen is the same debate on expungement, where the House is pushing for an automatic process. So if you have something on your record, that is a charge or a conviction for like, let's say possession of marijuana, that it might be automatically expunged after eight years. So eight years, you know, you you show yourself to be a good citizen, and the charge is automatically expunged and you do not have to hire a lawyer, you don't have to miss a day of work to go to court, and get yourself wrapped up in the judicial system, it automatically goes away. That's what the House wants. The Senate does not want that. They want you to have a petition to have it expunged from your record, which likely means that you're gonna have to shell over money to hire a lawyer. And oh, by the way, also, you're gonna have to miss at least a day of work, so you can go to court. And so the issue there is the senators are concerned about anything automatic. And here, we've been making all these changes in Virginia law so that we don't have mandatory minimums. And yet, we're going to have automatic expungements. And so there is a concern there that that's probably not how the judicial system should work. So we see this tension here between House Democrats and Senate Democrats, and they have shown no willingness to make a compromise on this. We're going to see this debate transpire yet again in 2021, and we've got no clue how that's going to work out right now.
Nathan Moore
Yeah. And that's something Sally Hudson talked with us about on Bold Dominion as well, several times really, that, you know, the the House of Delegates, Democrats in the House of Delegates, will will float, and push, and pass fairly progressive measures, and the Senate is kind of what's putting the brakes on things in Virginia.
Michael Pope
Well, the senators would take issue with that, that they're not necessarily putting the brakes on things. And in fact, there are issues where the House has stood in the way of things, and the Senate is not particularly happy about it. So I recognize that's Delegate Hudson's perspective, but if you talk to senators, they will say that the House has also stood in the way of some things. And so it's not just the Senate standing in the way of things.
Nathan Moore
Yeah, you know, when we look at the the demands of today's Black Lives Matter movement, now, it's a wildly disparate movement. It's not as if there's one organization that you can look to, but a lot of those demands are encapsulated really nicely in that movement for Black Lives website has a platform that's published. It's a remarkable political document. There's a lot in there about policing and criminal justice, also a lot about symbols of racism. Okay, so that's something that we've certainly tackled here in Virginia, Richmond has removed a lot of its Confederate monuments. And the Lee statue was, I think, still languishing in court, back here in Charlottesville feels like statues have been talked about to death for the last four years, or five years even. And, you know, we've got one removed, the others are basically scheduled to be removed. And you know, it's...I was talking with Don Gathers about that, he's a preacher here in town, and sort of one of the leaders in Charlottesville's Black community. And he and I have talked about this a couple times where it is important that symbolism of these things as you approach, as you walk downtown, as you enter the like legal space where things have to happen, you know, in a court, to have these figures looming over you, as you do that is really a scar and a stain on our community. And so yeah, it's a cause for celebration to have them removed, it's a...it makes you feel buoyant, he said, and from a live broadcast we did from the removal of the Johnny Rib statue. At the same time, other things that are desperately needed, other demands that are in that movement for Black Lives platform, we haven't even scratched the surface yet. Things like self determination, economic empowerment, the stuff that's going to really affect the material lives, you know, the sort of bread and butter jobs, and healthcare kind of conditions of Black Virginians, that still has an awful long way to go. I mean, we're not even having conversations about most of that stuff yet.
Michael Pope
You know, one thing that's head turning or head spinning about 2020, was all of the many, many things that happened, it's difficult to keep track of them all. Like, for example, predatory lending was severely curtailed. There are all these new restrictions on guns, and closing the gun show loophole, and where you can take your gun. And one of the many things that happened, that would have been a major headline in any other year that was not 2020, was the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. So I'll throw this to our friends down in the Charlottesville area, what was going on with the Atlantic Coast Pipeline? And what does it mean for the future of the region?
Nathan Moore
So the Atlantic Coast Pipeline is a project that Dominion was pursuing for some number of years, and they invested billions of dollars getting the land, and clearing the land, and getting the rights away for this thing. It was basically going to be a big old pipeline to transport natural gas from the fracking fields of West Virginia and Appalachia, out to Hampton Roads. And, presumably, point south and possibly international. Dominion was always a little bit fuzzy on exactly where all the gas was going to go. But it met pretty stiff opposition in some areas, in particular out here and Nelson County population like 12,000, or whatever, right next to Albemarle County in Charlottesville. Those folks really put up a fight and there were court fights and court fights. And what was really interesting about it was the environmental justice folks, the kind of usual suspects, you would expect, you know, the Southern Environmental Law Center and a number of other environmental groups that were taking the lead on that. Also, though, a lot of sort of more conservative arguments about land rights, right? And I remember seeing a flyer for a fundraiser event for pipeline opposition, and the flyer was "Rally for Land Rights." I was like, "Huh," that's not how I would personally frame it. But that's something else, that you get the kind of rural folks who just kind of want to be left alone, also got involved in this. And then this sort of coalition of groups opposing Dominion, also brought in a racial justice component to it, because that pipeline was going to practice essentially a version of environmental racism, putting big pump stations right smack in the middle of historically African American communities like Union Hill, down in Buckingham County. And so when you brought together the racial justice folks, and the environmental justice folks, and the sort of like private property folks, they managed to drag it out for a long time. And that was really all they could do is just put barrier and barrier and barrier in the way until Dominion just got tired of it, and was losing too much money from carrying costs, and would give up, and that's exactly what happened. Dominion gave up, and it was this announcement, not long after Dominion has been trying to do a pretty thorough greenwashing and show "Oh, no, look, we've got wind, we've got solar, we're a green company now." You know, it's like, okay, guys. Yeah. Well, you know, for the last decade, you've been trying to, to bring a, you know, millions of gallons of natural gas and other non renewables, you know, across the state, but all right, yeah, sure. Fine. Yeah. Point to what you want to there. Yeah. I mean, you know, somebodies over at Dominion are gonna be super have been, I'm sure, incredibly unhappy about the amount of money that was lost on that. But then at the same time, it's a regulated monopoly. So all of us ratepayers are just going to pay for it, presumably, which kind of sucks.
Aaryan Balu
Well, I think what's funny is he talked about the sort of greenwashing of Dominion, trying to make their image seem more environmentally friendly. And like we did that episode several months ago now. And the kind of consensus, at least among us was like, okay, whatever. Sure. But, you know, we talked with Peter Galaska a couple weeks ago, and he was talking about how, you know, with Virginia's burgeoning tech sector, a lot of those companies do want green energy, and Dominion, whether their incentives are pure or not, and I think we can assume they're not, still genuinely seems to be moving toward that end, which is on the whole, a net positive.
Thomas Bowman
You know, what's really interesting, especially about the money that you mentioned, on the pipeline. So full disclosure, at one time in my life, it feels like a whole lifetime ago now, but in 2018 and 2019, I was the Virginia lobbyist for one of the sub organizations under the laborers union. Now, I was not touching anything to do with the pipelines, but many people in the organization were. So you pick up things here and there. And one thing I learned is that Dominion was spending over a million dollars a day, just on like, for every day that they weren't building the pipeline, just on paying their workers, they were union contracts, so they had to pay them. And so when we sat and did the math back in 2018, somewhere in like July of 2018, assuming now correctly, that the stop orders would have prevented them from working until everything was resolved, we've realized that the pipelines were dead in July of 2018. And so it's hard to hard to overstate just how much of a role the money played in making it not profitable for them way earlier than they thought it was going to be at all. And the other thing too, if you just look at it, from the point of view of a company trying to make money, there is way more money to be made in the renewables and alternative energy sectors right now than there is in the fossil fuel sectors. And so you can be cynical about the motivations or not, it's really interesting that, you know, they sold off their natural gas distribution assets to now Warren Buffett, who is comfortably, you know, big daddy Buffett is now the number one like fossil fuel company, in America, at least, and everybody's just pretty quiet about it.
Michael Pope
Okay, so there were a lot of big headlines for 2020. And things that people talked about that were at the top of the conversation. But there were other things that were going on in Virginia, that might be underreported, or things that you might not have caught as they were going on. We're going to talk about that in our next segment. So we'll be right back.
And we're back on Transition Virginia and Bold Dominion Podcast. It's our special crossover episode, the end of the year, we're going to talk about underreported stories, things that might have happened that went under the radar. And I'm going to start by throwing something out there, that I've been working on lately, involving the Electoral College. Now, just recently, the Electoral College met, and all the state capitals across the country, including in Richmond. And, of course, there is lots of unease with the Electoral College and how it works. And perhaps more to the point how it doesn't work. One thing that happened in 2020, but it never went anywhere, was an effort to join a popular vote compact, and essentially how this would work is your state would cast its electoral votes for whoever won the popular vote, and it kind of didn't matter who won your state, you as a state would cast all of your electoral votes for the winner of the popular vote. And so therefore, the winner of the popular vote would also win the Electoral College. Now, this is a compact that already exists, there are many states that have already joined this, not enough to make it significant in order of like passing that threshold of 270 electoral votes. However, this is an effort to join this national popular vote compact that passed the House of Delegates, but failed in the Senate Privileges and Elections Committee, that happened earlier this year in 2020. Since that time, there has been some movement. And Senator Adam Eben tells me he has been able to flip at least one "no" vote in the Senate Privileges Elections Committee, which means he feels pretty confident he can get it out of the committee and onto the Senate floor where he feels like it has a pretty good chance of passing. So in the year 2021, we might actually see Virginia join this National Popular Vote Compact. Any thoughts as to whether or not Virginia should or shouldn't join this compact and what it might mean for Virginia?
Nathan Moore
I mean, it makes sense to not have- the Electoral College is another one of these, sort of, Frankenstein systems that I don't even think it made a lot of sense at the time. It was a compromise. They came to, you know, framers of the Constitution because they were disagreeing about things. And this was just sort of what they came up with. It didn't make any sense philosophically, it was a sort of political compromise in 1791, or whatever. But the thing about it, though, is it'll take more than just Virginia. Right now, there's 196 electoral votes. So enough states that comprise 196 electoral votes, you got to get over 270 for that compact to actually make any difference, but they're close. They're getting closer. You'd have to have a Texas or Pennsylvania or an Ohio to also get in the mix, too, besides Virginia's 13. Then, you know, that'd be great, as far as sort of an end run around the Electoral College since sort of changing up our Constitution is an awfully difficult thing to do. That said, right now, Pennsylvania has a Republican Legislature, Texas, certainly does. Ohio, South Carolina, Missouri...I mean, it doesn't take a whole lot to see that this benefits Democrats these days, because we've had now twice in the last two decades elections where Democrats won the national popular vote, but not the Electoral College vote. Now, you know, historically, that wasn't always the case. Rural and urban issues were always a bit different. But states hadn't sorted quite the way we have now. I mean, this is a big story that you see think pieces about it in places like the Atlantic or whatever. But the degree to which Americans have really sorted into kind of like, like minded political communities, the only states that kind of remain toss ups are ones where you happen to have both types of communities within the state's borders. Virginia, for a long time, was kind of toss up because you had a lot more Democrats, a whole lot more Democrats, in Northern Virginia, and then expanding so and also Richmond and in Hampton Roads and a few college towns, and then the rest of the state was really really red. Georgia, now, is kind of your other the flip side where Atlanta and its suburbs are really, really blue. And a lot of the rest of the state is really, really red. But by and large, people have sorted and so the states that are more rural, largely are going red, and those states are over represented in terms of their electoral power and the Electoral College, because everybody has two senators, and so got three electoral college votes for a Wyoming population 600,000 or whatever. So you know, you've got like, less than a quarter million people represented by one, California with its millions and millions of people has 55 electoral votes, but each one represents a whole lot more people.
Michael Pope
But California has already joined this national vote compact, New York has joined the compact, New Jersey, Maryland, Washington, Oregon, so I think they're up to like, 196 or something. So they're pretty darn close. I think it's it's it's under reported that they're really close to passing that 270 threshold.
Nathan Moore
Yeah. So you know, Virginia comes in would be up to 209 that...you got to get 61 more though, I mean, you'd have to have like I say, Texas, or Michigan or Pennsylvania actually have to have all three to get up over 270. I just think it's gonna be a while coming. And those states aren't exactly itching to do it. But I think it's a great idea to sort of an end run around what's a really, really flawed Electoral College system.
Michael Pope
All right, maybe by 2024. Other underreported stories, I'll open the floor.
Nathan Moore
You know, one that was kind of interesting to me is, you know, the Special Session this summer. Now, granted, there were several things about the Special Session that were special besides the name. It was happening during COVID. It was responding to really acute issues raised by the Black Lives Matter movement, but it went on forever, right? It convened in August, it didn't officially end until November. And so I mean, it was actually longer than the regular Session.
Michael Pope
You know, one thing it's important to point out about that, is during a regular Session, the lawmakers meet every day, they don't meet on weekends, necessarily, although sometimes that happens, but even on like MLK Day, they will be meeting. So like on every weekday, they will be meeting, they didn't do that for the Special Session. There were some weeks when they would only meet one day a week. And even that was like a pro forma session. So it was a very leisurely paced for that Special Session. They did not have the schedule that they would normally have for a Session, which made it drag on way longer. It's actually, that's actually how Congress deals with it. And so it did have the sort of pace of a Congressional Session as opposed to a General Assembly Session.
Nathan Moore
Of course, of course, and I don't discount any of what you just said, at the same time, though, there have been some murmurings. And I've heard these conversations occasionally, about really a need for, I mean, Virginia is a modern tech economy with a lot of things going on. And more than 8 million people these days, it's not sort of an agrarian space where we're little changes, and we can meet, you know, for 30 days once a year to make a few little changes around the edges. I mean, there's some stuff that comes up that the state needs to address. And so yeah, there has been some talk about do we move toward a system with a more year round professional legislature? Or do we keep doing this kind of citizen legislature model, where everything gets slammed into just a few weeks, and then everybody goes home to some other job that they are somehow able to leave for six or eight weeks?
Thomas Bowman
Yeah, I think you really hit the nail on the head earlier, too. This counts for Virginia, although our Constitution has been updated more recently, but this counts for Virginia and the federal government, you know? If if I've learned one thing from 2020, it's that a piece of paper written in the Enlightenment Age is no basis for an adequate system of government and the Age of Information, like, life moves too fast. You can have computers identify smart policy now, right, and faster than humans, and like sitting and pushing pencils can come up with also, you know, I'll extend that to some of the bureaucracy and Virginia to the unemployment office was overwhelmed. It's still overwhelmed, and it's still not paying out what people are owed. And it's still processing claims from July. You know, this is humiliating, in my opinion, for any government, Republican or Democrat. And, you know, there's not really a partisan blame here. It's been neglected by both parties forever, since it was created. And nobody's gone to the mat over expanding unemployment benefits, right, and leading up to 2020. And so now, when we're in a crisis, we're realizing that yeah, in addition to a part time, unprofessional legislature not being adequate. By the way, there's no Congressional Research office or congressional budget office or equivalent in Virginia, right? So when you get a fiscal impact statement from an agency or the administration, generally speaking, you don't actually know if that's true. When the Governor doesn't want a bill to pass, and any governor doesn't want a certain bill to pass, they can spike the fiscal impact statement. It is just a thing that they can do and have always been able to do to prevent something from passing. And then the Leg just kicks things over to Appropriations to go die, just like they did with the Right to Work Bill, right? It had a bunch of Democratic vote,s and then just died without a hearing. So the bureaucracy as is, it's just completely inadequate.
Nathan Moore
Thomas, I just wanted to echo that, too, with with the unemployment claims. This has certainly been an exceptional year in all the ways, right? And I think what 2020 has taught me, or shown me, is that every trend that was already there, everything, every sort of problem or issue that we might have had, has just been brought into really, really stark relief. And so lagging on the administrative capacity to deal with this kind of thing that's playing out in unemployment. And just exactly the ways you said, the office is barely answering their phone now, because they've been so overwhelmed with like, literally millions of claims over the last nine months. But then other things too. I mean, in general, the economic inequality, minimum wage issues, poverty issues in Virginia, I feel like are incredibly underreported, and the other one that's going to blow up in our faces, honestly, pretty soon, I'm afraid is the eviction crisis that's going to happen. I mean, there's been a moratorium on evictions for the last ,what, half year, maybe? Eventually, it will not be there. Eventually, the moratorium on evictions will go away, and you'll have people who owe 5,6,7,8, $10,000 in back rent, where's that money gonna come from? You're gonna have a glut of people out on the streets really quickly. People who don't have work, people whose unemployment claims, sort of expanded unemployment benefits, are also going to hit their cap, and people who are going to be homeless. And so I mean, this is not going to be a small problem. It's going to be an awful lot of people having to deal with this at once.
Aaryan Balu
Yeah, I mean, I think we need to wrap this up anyway. But I mean, my main takeaway list, my underreported story, my main takeaway is that things were bad before, right? They were bad, they were bad under Trump, and they were bad because of the Coronavirus. But those those two things exacerbated existing issues. And I'm hoping we take this as an opportunity to deal with the underlying problems, and not just sort of react to whatever COVID has done.
Thomas Bowman
Amen to that. Well, let's take a break. When we come back, we'll get to our third segment where we look ahead.
Michael Pope
And we're back on Transition Virginia and Bold Dominion. We're going to look in our crystal ball now and look ahead to the year 2021. When we all get vaccinated and emerge from our houses, and the sun is shining, and things are happening again, where we're getting rid of our social distancing. And we're being actually social, I hope I hope that happens, anyway. One thing that I would look forward to in 2021, and this is actually returns to the General Assembly. And so I guess maybe this is before we emerge from our social distancing cocoons, I think we're going to see a fight in the General Assembly about expanding the Court of Appeals. This hasn't really received a lot of discussion yet. But this is about to blow up, where in the Governor's speech outlining his budget priorities, one of the things he talked about was setting money aside to increase the number of judges on the court of appeals from 11 to 14, which actually doesn't seem like a huge thing. But it has huge consequences, because Virginia is the only state in the country where you do not have the right to appeal in a case. In fact, in the criminal cases, the vast majority of petitions are denied. So you do not have a right to appeal. And Virginia is the only state where you don't have a right to appeal. And part of that is because how the Appeals Court is structured. So there is a proposal from the Governor qnd there are several sate state senators that are working on this, to not only expand the Appeals Court from 11 judges to 14 judges, but to also expand the jurisdiction of the Appeals Courts to guarantee a right to appeal. So this would actually have drastic consequences for how the court system works in Virginia. It also has lots of Republican pushback. Just as soon as the Governor put that in his speech, my inbox was flooded from all these Republicans talking about how Northam is emulating the Washington Democrats, and their plans to pack the court. And so Ryan McDougal, who's Chairman of the Senate Republican Caucus, talked about how Northam wanted to pack the court. The Chairman of the Republican Party in Virginia talked about the liberals and their plan to pack the court. Also, Delegate Jason Mijares, who's running for Attorney General, talked about how the Democrats wanted to put their, "soft on crime," judges in the court system. And so we are going to see a fight here happen in the upcoming General Assembly Session on expanding the Court of Appeals, which might seem kind of wonky and esoteric, but it has real actual influence over how the justice system works and whether or not you get to appeal your case from the judge that you think probably made a mistake. Any other predictions or looks ahead to the future?
Nathan Moore
You know, one thing that Transition Virginia and Bold Dominion both did episodes on this year, was legal weed possibly coming down the pike, and even likely coming down the pike. So basically, cannabis is already, not exactly decriminalized, but it's definitely been sort of downgraded to sort of like speeding ticket status. Next year, it might be straight up legalized. And I think that has a lot of ramifications for the industry players, how that industry grows in Virginia, whether it's just going to be the big players that have been consolidating and dominating, and if sort of big weed takes the place of like the big tobacco hold-
Michael Pope
Is 'big weed' a thing? Did you just coin a term?
Nathan Moore
I think somebody else already came up with 'big weed.' But yeah, I know, it's kind of fun, though, isn't it 'big weed.' But, you know, again, there, with criminal records, and that sort of automatic expungement, that really should be in place for people who've been convicted in the past or are currently serving time for nonviolent marijuana related crimes, it's seems like it should be obvious. And I know that the state lawmakers working on this are really trying to bring sort of an equity lens to how they go about legalizing cannabis. But it's a tough one, because you've got years and years and years of unequal enforcement and serious issues around it.
Michael Pope
And they don't have access to banks and banking either. So like, it's an industry that is going to have to rely on cash. And for entrepreneurial people that want to get into the business, they're gonna have a really hard time putting together the capital to, you know, open up a storefront location, or that sort of thing without access to Bank of America, or SunTrust, or sort of your major banking institutions don't want to have anything to do with this, because of how federal law works. And so I think we're going to see an industry try to emerge with both of its hands tied behind his back.
Nathan Moore
Well, and when both its hands are tied behind its back, there's no space for the small business owners, right? Nobody's gonna be able to set up just a small little shop, and you know, run a farm and do their Farmers Market weed business. I mean, it's not, maybe a little bit, but with all the cost, you have to have a storefront, you have to have like, you know, space in place in order to get the license, the license takes time and costs money. And you've got the carrying cost of the space, and you've got the supply, and you've got no access to banks or typical insurance. I mean, all that means is that the only capital that can help this industry emerge is going to be Venture Capital, VC money. And you know, who has access to that now? People who already have money in business acumen. It's gonna be really hard for new startup players, or people who've been involved in the cannabis industry as an illegal industry to get footing.
Thomas Bowman
Yeah, I agree. You know, the other layer to this is where half of the tax revenue is going, is to the cops. So, you know, I guess if you care about equity and justice, you should not be giving half of that tax revenue to the cops, it should be going to social programs or education or, you know, health care, maybe would be a great way to spend that kind of money. Giving it to the cops who are going to have less of a role moving forward, because they're not going to be spending as much time cracking down on people dealing pot is completely unjust.
Michael Pope
Thomas, what's in your crystal ball for 2021?
Thomas Bowman
Ah, well, you know, Nathan, you hit on the eviction crisis, which I've been watching closely. But poverty and food insecurity is in my crystal ball, in addition to the eviction crisis. So just to color it a little bit more, 35% of all Americans are having trouble or can't pay their rent, or they're behind on their rent, or they're in forbearance or something like that. This just came out on CNN the other day, and that number is higher in DC, by the way, which is not too far away, where it's in the 60% threshold. And that actually, you know, if you can't pay your mortgage, or pay your rent, that says that not only are you most likely unemployed, meaning that real unemployment is nationwide at 35%. But there are other problems that you have, like you're going to have trouble buying food, you're going to have trouble paying your electric and water bills. And the insecurity created by poverty is a national security concern. You know, we're already seeing it. And the political extremism happening right now. And giving people a stake in the economy, is the fastest way to decrease political extremism. And so I think that things get worse politically, not better in 2021, unless we can really attack poverty, and all of the things that it goes with.
Michael Pope
Aaryan, what's in your crystal ball?
Aaryan Balu
You guys have kind of covered the broadest issues, but I think one of the more interesting ones, or that's a bad way of putting it. One of the less terrible to think about ones, is the statewide office races we're going to be seeing in 2021, Lieutenant Governor and Governor in particular, are the ones that have like anywhere from five to 15 people running for them between both parties. So...
Michael Pope
That LG race man, it's just getting nuts like, especially on the Democratic side, but the Republican side too, to an extent, but I would have a hard time naming all of the candidates who are running for Lieutenant Governor. It's probably easier to name people who are not running for Lieutenant Governor at this point.
Aaryan Balu
There are eight people on the Democratic side and another four on the Republican side.
Thomas Bowman
And that's just who's declared right? By the time that June rolls around, that ballots gonna feel like a CVS receipt.
Aaryan Balu
Who would possibly declare now at this point, why would you do this?
Michael Pope
Well, we just had another declaration this week, my Delegate, Mark Levine, threw his hat into the ring.
Thomas Bowman
Be aggressive progressive.
Michael Pope
Be aggressive progressive, that's right. I say, "my" cause I live in this district. And I don't think he's the last, I think there's gonna be more Democrats. One thing that's very important to remember about all these General Assembly members that you see running in the statewide races, is that this election cycle works differently than most election cycles. So normally, if you remember the House of Delegates, and you want to run for Lieutenant Governor, you have to say goodbye to your House seat, you cannot run simultaneously for your House Primary and also for the Lieutenant Governor Primary, or any other race for that matter. But for this purposes of this discussion, you cannot run for your reelection in your House seat and also for Lieutenant Governor, under normal circumstances. That's how things work this year, though, things work differently because of redistricting. So you can run in that June primary and lose, and then keep your House seat or at least be able to run in the primary for your own House seat that you're currently an incumbent and and so this election cycle works totally differently, which is why we are seeing so many members of the General Assembly run in all these statewide seats.
Nathan Moore
Oh, interesting. I was kind of wondering, I mean, you know, you figure after the Trump era, there's gonna be a renewed interest in people thinking that they're the one to have the answer and lead the state. But there's also this funny little clause, I didn't realize that. Things I learned.
Thomas Bowman
Do we want to end on our predictions for the Governor's race?
Nathan Moore
Sure. Let's do it. Let's do it.
Thomas Bowman
All right. Bold Dominion, you guys go first.
Nathan Moore
Aaryan, I'm gonna make you go first.
Aaryan Balu
Terry McAuliffe, see you all later.
Michael Pope
Drop the mic.
Nathan Moore
I mean, I think that's a, you know, you're just betting on the odds there. I think that's I mean, the political pundits have all been saying McAuliffe. He's got a lot of name recognition. He wasn't a terrible administrator for four years. He's got, you know, a metric ton of cash or access to it. Yeah, he's got things in his favor. I'll be really interested to see if Jennifer Carroll Foy, or one of the other women candidates running can beat him in the primary.
Aaryan Balu
Like Amanda Chase? Oh, no, the primary nevermind, the primary.
Nathan Moore
Amanda Chase is her own force nature. We can talk about the Republicans, too. But yeah, I'm curious to see if Foy can do it.
Michael Pope
It is interesting. You know, I was just speaking in a minute ago about how if you're a House member, under normal circumstances, you'd have to resign to run for a statewide seat. So under, you know, if this were any other election cycle, Caroll Foy would have to resign her House seat, so that she could run in the primary for Governor, but she doesn't have to in this election cycle. But guess what, she did anyway, which really makes her look like she's taking this a lot more seriously than many of the other General Assembly members who have not resigned their seat, right? So I also, I'm kind of curious about like, turning the prediction on its head. Okay. So Terry McAuliffe is like the odds on favorite. What would it take to beat a Terry McAuliffe?
Thomas Bowman
Class war. Burn it down.
Nathan Moore
I mean, it's like anything, right? You you you muster up the the interest groups and build a coalition. And I think Caroll Foy has a lot of the progressives behind her, she'll have a lot of the African American community behind her. But you know, McAuliffe has a lot of the other parts, you know, a lot of the sort of suburban voters as well. And, you know, Caroll Foy, on policy anyway, has tended to be a little bit more progressive. Terry McAuliffe is not exactly centrist. But, uh, but you know, I mean, at least he's perceived as not having quite the same progressive bona fides and chops, and he kind of comes out of that Clinton model of politics.
Thomas Bowman
You know, I'd point out that McAuliffe is the most liberal governor that we've ever had, you know, for all the progressive hate he gets.
Nathan Moore
Yes. I mean, sure. You know, where's the bar?
Thomas Bowman
Fair fair. I also and, you know, I am not working for any of these candidates. So I'll just, you know, say what I think. National security is probably going to be a huge concern and getting us out of the crisis. And one advantage that Terry McAuliffe has is he will be able to call up any one of these secretaries or cabinet members, or anybody in the administration, and either get through to get what he wants or get heard, which is an advantage that no one else running for Governor will have in Virginia.
Michael Pope
Okay, well, before we leave, let's turn our gaze over to the other side of the aisle and the Republicans have decided that, for their statewide candidates, they're not going to have a primary, they're going to have a convention. Now, Republicans love conventions. And the politics of conventions work, of course, very differently than the statewide primary where you've got all your voters voting on, you know, on Election Day. The convention is only the hardcore people who get in the car and drive to the actual convention site. And so what are we going to see emerge out of that Republican convention? We actually did an episode on this. And David Ramadan had a prediction about that, which was that if there's a convention fight in the nomination for Governor, and you've got former Speaker of the House, Kirk Cox, and businessman Pete Snyder going up against each other for the nomination, he predicted that Pete Snyder would emerge out of that. Now, you also have to throw in this wild card of Amanda Chase. There are lots of Republicans who feel like they can exclude her just based on the rules, because she is not a member of her local Republican committee. And so you could say, well, if you're not a member of your local Republican committee, you cannot be the Republican candidate. So just on the rules, we will exclude Amanda Chase from running. There is another train of thought that would say that backlash against doing that would be so fierce, that they wouldn't dare do that, because it would just give Amanda Chase more power. In other words, excluding her from the convention, just based on the rules, would actually give her more power, and she would be a greater threat. So maybe they will include her. And so what do we make of the potential for Amanda Chase totally up ending the Republicans in 21?
Nathan Moore
I mean, it's interesting, right? Because usually, when a party chooses a convention over primary, it's because you know, they kind of want the party activist to select somebody, and usually you end up with somebody who's more radical or more, you know, right or left than than centrist. In this case, though, I'm not really sure. It almost seems like the party leadership is afraid of its own voters choosing somebody like Amanda Chase, I don't know why else they would have taken this tack.
Aaryan Balu
I think that's exactly what is I mean, we saw the same thing with Bob Good and then with Riggleman in the fifth district, right? Where they went with a convention mainly to cut out the guy who probably would have won.
Nathan Moore
Right. So yeah, they edged Riggleman out, pushed him out in favor of a person who was Bob Good, who was, you know, really, I mean, he's a true believer, Christo Fascist, he's not just a sort of generic Republican, you know, he makes Mussolini look liberal. Um, in this case, though, they've got the convention statewide. And I'm wondering if if there's enough of the GOP leaders in the state who want to kind of get it back to this sort of, sort of centrist pro business, good governance kind of model, or at least that was the rhetoric for a long time, I just don't know kind of where the Virginia GOP is these days as far as how it's gonna go.
Michael Pope
Well, this has been tons of fun. We could go on and on. We've already gone on quite some time. I really appreciate you guys doing this special crossover episode to talk about all the many things that happened in 2020 and look ahead to 2021 so thank you so much.
Nathan Moore
Thank you all. Really glad to have this crossover episode as well.
Michael Pope
So that's it for this episode of Transition Virginia. But if you have any comments or questions about what you just heard, or maybe you want to drop us a line to tell us how much you really love our podcast, please write us an email at TransitionVApodcast@gmail.com. We might even read it on the air. Subscribe to Transition Virginia anywhere pods are cast follow the Transition Team on Twitter. You can find this also on Facebook or the website transitionvirginia.com. Don't forget to like and subscribe so you can enjoy the next episode of Transition Virginia.
