In this year-end retrospective, Thomas and Michael discuss some clips from the top ten episodes of Pod Virginia aired in 2022--everything from elections to lawmaking to education policy and campaign finance. Here's to another great year of Pod Virginia!

#10: David Toscano: A Tell-All on Virginia Politics
#9: Brian Moran: what's a caucus leadership coup?
#8: Lauren Burke: Election Day Special: Guns, Cameras, and Sample Ballots at Polling Places
#7: Chaz Nuttycombe: who will win elections in Virginia's new House districts?
#6: On a JLARC: The Latest Data on Virginia Casinos, More Progressive Tax Brackets, and Affordable Housing Struggles
#5: Dr. Stephen Farnsworth: Jen Kiggans, Abigail Spanberger, and Virginia's Midterm Results
#4: Chaz Nuttycombe and Bold Dominion: What To Look For In the Midterms
#3: Shruti Shah: Why is Virginia ranked so poorly when it comes to corruption?
#2: Early Voting October Surprises, and a Corrupt Contract for Fairfax County's Sheriff's Office
#1: Chris Piper: How Virginia Protects Election Integrity

Episode Transcript

Michael Pope 

We take a look at 2022.

Thomas Bowman 

The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly.

Michael Pope 

It's our annual review of the top 10 most popular pod Virginia episodes.

Thomas Bowman 

You're listening to pod Virginia stick around.

Michael Pope 

I'm Michael Pope.

Thomas Bowman 

I'm Tom Bowman.

Michael Pope 

And this is Pod Virginia, a podcast that's taking a look at the year that was.

Thomas Bowman 

It's time for our annual Top 10 list of our most popular podcast episodes this year.

Michael Pope 

Yeah, this is gonna be fun. We did this last year. And so this is our second annual look at our most popular episodes. Okay, so starting with number 10, the 10th most popular podcast as measured in downloads. It's our episode from May 31, featuring David Toscano, that's the former House Democratic Leader; he was on to talk about his new book, Bellwether. So here's a bit of our conversation when we asked him about the part of the book that dealt with the blackface scandal.

David Toscano 

We were very sensitive to the positions of the Legislative Black Caucus because, you know, this was a very important issue. And our sense was, we were going to back them. And so people were asking, what was happening, what what was their position, and we were told on the call, their position was that he should resign. Well, that's all it took for us. We adopted a resolution that said he should resign, and then all hell broke loose because other people and other entities started making similar resolutions saying he should resign. The problem was there was no vote in the Legislative Black Caucus. And it appears like it was only a couple of people who were making a representation that was not supported by an actual vote. In fact, I'm not even sure that they took a vote later.

Michael Pope 

So on this call, you say the sort of unanimity of the legislative Black caucus was misrepresented. So who was on the call doing that misrepresentation?

David Toscano 

Yeah, no, it's. I don't know who was on the call. Because we have these calls. And we don't take a role where people say, you know, this person's here, that person's there. All we know is that there were people on that call who represented the Black Caucus and made the statement that the Black Caucus wants him to resign.

Michael Pope 

That's what I'm asking, like, who was making that representation?

David Toscano 

You know, I don't remember who the person was; I think I wasn't a leader at the time. So I wasn't inside of it. I hadn't thought to ignore them. I was kind of there, just like a regular delegate listening to all this. But based on what people were saying, it seemed to me that we had to vote to have them resign. And, as it turns out, you know, there were a number of members of the Black Caucus who didn't want to resign. But it didn't look like that Friday night. I don't know whether the trajectory of this would have changed. But it could have, and we'll I guess we'll never know.

Michael Pope 

So, Thomas, I guess we'll never know. That was so fascinating because Toscano put this in his book, and so we're kind of cross-examining him about what was in his book. He tried to dodge and not answer the question that I brought him back around to it, as you heard, and then he said he didn't remember, which seems unlikely. But clearly, he's trying to accuse some member of the Legislative Black Caucus, probably Bagby or probably Bourne. We don't really know who of misrepresenting unanimity in the Legislative Black Caucus, which led to many calls for resignations. So that's actually a pivotal point in history. Because if that hadn't happened, you might not have had that cavalcade of calls for resignation.

Thomas Bowman 

These caucus discussions and calls are obviously private. So I'm guessing he does know and is not interested in disclosing the individual because it would break the confidence of the private discussion and not just for the blackface call, but all of their private discussion.

Michael Pope 

Well, he did put that anecdote in his book.

Thomas Bowman 

He did, and it's one of those things that, to me, sounded like it was a statement intended for a very specific subset of our listeners. Mainly people in elected politics in Virginia. But here's my takeaway from that episode; the other hats were running Resolute Strategies Group. While a crisis moment, you want to act swiftly. Sometimes, you need to pause and collect yourself because it's kind of like measuring twice and cutting once. Michael, you got to think through your actions. You gotta make sure to wait for a second; how do I know what I actually know? And there were assumptions made that led to a spiraling of that incident that made it, according to what Toscano says, just immeasurably worse than it necessarily needed to be. And that was one of the worst moments in my own career. I was out of government by then, but I was still lobbying, and, everybody's door was shut, hushed tones, somber whispers everyone was scared. In the General Assembly building, Michael. Everyone was scared that not only was Ralph Northam about to resign, but they were potentially going to lose all three statewide elected officials at the top of the ticket at one point, Mark Herring and Justin Fairfax, for other reasons.

Michael Pope 

I was around for that period. And what I remember most about that is the crush of media. So like, you've got your normal Virginia Capitol correspondents people there. And then you got everybody from 60 minutes to the NBC Nightly News to foreign correspondents. There were press conferences going on when you would have this huge mass crush of people all asking the same questions and trying to get answers to the same thing. And the media part of it was just insane.

Thomas Bowman 

Yeah, it was a circus, that's for sure.

Michael Pope 

All right, so number nine on our list is from June 6, when we asked former Democratic House Leader Brian Moran, so another Democratic House leader. So that episode, if your recall, came out right around the same time period that House Democrats had just ousted Eileen Filler-Corn for Don Scott. So we had Brian Moran on the show to talk about the 2007 vote and the Democratic caucus to oust Frank Hall for Ward Armstrong. So here's part of that conversation.

The vote in the caucus was 27 to 12, with one abstention. Many of the Armstrong supporters came from Northern Virginia; as you said earlier, the Black Caucus was split. Did that vote kind of come down to what you had expected?

Brian Moran 

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, you always, you know, people tell you one thing and vote another. Anonymous, just for example, I won't use any names, but one individual said they were going to support Ward. And then we went to caucus, and that individual got up and nominated Frank Hall for leadership. So that vote, we obviously had lost. But yeah, so you always want to err on the side of extra votes. I understand this latest one was by one vote. I didn't remember what the vote was back in 2007, so thank you for the history lesson. But this, this recent vote, I think, was very narrow in on when they get in, you know, and they can do it anonymously. If you know, you're pretty anxious until those votes are counted in. And so we did win now that you mentioned that 27 to 12. Clearly, we won well over the majority, and so I feel good about that. But though that was reflective of how people were feeling, it was time for a change.

Michael Pope 

Yeah, there's actually an interesting theme here between the last discussion we were just having this one, which is the former Democratic House Leader speaking about somebody without using a name, right? So we have. We don't know who he was talking about there, but he apparently made representations to Brian Moran that he was being an Armstrong supporter. And then, when the vote came around, he actually nominated Hall.

Thomas Bowman 

That didn't surprise me in the least. Votes are notoriously hard to count for leadership calls like this. In the caucus, there's a lot of wheeling and dealing going on at the last minute. You and I talked to one member who said that he had been promised a position or the same position by every single potential contender for his vote. Who listens to this podcast? So we won't name him either. And that is a very interesting glimpse of some of the dynamics in play when the Democratic caucus ousted Eileen Filler-Corn in favor of Don Scott.

Michael Pope 

Yeah, and my feelings are still raw about that. So I think in 2023, we're going to have lots of people looking over their shoulders in terms of feelings still being heard about all that. Number eight on our list is from November 7, right before the election, we were joined by Lauren Victoria Burke, and we got into an interesting discussion about the use of cameras at polling places as a way to do surveillance of voters, here's part of that discussion.

Lauren Burke 

This idea is that we need people, videotaping people, etc. I just think it's something that the disinfo and misinformed people want to put into the bloodstream and make people feel uneasy about going to vote. That's always their game, making people feel uneasy and getting fewer people to vote.

Thomas Bowman 

In this specific instance, it's a group called True the vote that's been pushing this, and they are trying to find out how you're voting, and they are trying to get your identifying info, that means your images, that means in the case of your license plate, they're going to be able to potentially tie that to an address and other things that you own. And there's actually they've told us why they're doing that because it's come out as part of the various trials associated with January 6, right? And this isn't necessarily on the front page of the Washington Post every day, or in Fox News, or MSNBC on TV every day. But this is a prerequisite for these right-wing organizations to figure out who needs to be on their kill lists. This is a step to genocide, where we are on step six out of eight.

Michael Pope 

Step six out of eight, you know, after this episode aired, you sent me a text that had to do with another state that wasn't Virginia putting together a list of, I think it was Texas, a list of people who are transgender, raising some of the same alarms you were talking about at that episode.

Thomas Bowman 

Yeah, and I'm glad that this one came up because there are actually ten steps for genocide. And we are on step seven, which is preparation. So these list-building activities are part of the preparation. So their victims are getting identified and separated because of whatever their ethnic, religious, or identity is going to be. And so that is actually when you need to declare an emergency with full diplomatic pressure by regional organizations, including, you know, preparation to intervene to prevent it. So that's where we are. Some of the other steps that we've already had our dehumanization "own the Libs" might be one of them or the "DemocRAT Party ."Organizations where they have trained special army units or militias while we've got those. And some of them are interfering in these polls. Of course, polarization is number six. Hate groups that broadcast polarizing propaganda check, we've got that. So still to come. Of course, there's step seven of preparation, which we're on. There's a lot that could go into that. And that could take a while until they move on to step number eight, which is persecution; that's where they start forcing displacement. And that's where you see ghettos and concentration camps, nine exterminations, and then Ten denials. So we don't have that many steps to go down, though, with the Holocaust Museum has put this list out of the ten stages of genocide. And so stories like this get missed as far as the big picture goes, but they're very important to you and I and anybody else as well being because they come after marginalized groups.

Michael Pope 

That last step is denials interesting because of, you know, former President Trump meeting with a Holocaust denier. And then you got people who supported Trump, you know, failing to call him out for that. I'm thinking about our governor, who has not said anything about Trump meeting with a Holocaust denier; despite receiving support from him on the campaign trail. We will look out for that in 2023. So all right, number seven on our list is from our episode back in January of last year, so this is almost a year old, from January 17. This was an extremely popular episode; for a very long period of time, this was our most popular episode ever. So we were joined by Chaz Nuttycombe, and he joined us to go through all the House of Delegates districts in the State Senate Districts where we had two members or even three members who had been thrown into the same district because of these new maps. These redistricting maps were put together by the Commission, and the Commission, you know, made no effort to determine where the elected officials lived and what their addresses were. So that's why you got a lot of these double-member or triple-member districts. So we gamed out what might happen in a lot of these districts, so check out this part of our discussion about a Northern Virginia district.

Turning our attention to the newly created 24th district in Nova. We've got a pairing with Elizabeth Guzman and Luke Torian. Chaz, what do you make of that district?

Chaz Nuttycombe 

Now, this is going to be one that I think is interesting. Guzman is one of the more progressive members of the House of Delegates, whereas Torian is a pretty standard liberal, and it's mostly Guzman's constituents in this district. I'm not sure if you know, somebody will want to move or step up or what have you. But if both of them decided to run against each other, I think that would attract a lot of attention from progressive Virginians and progressive Virginian groups and outside progressive groups who would want to help Guzman stay in the chamber and beat Torian. It is mostly her constituents in this district. So you know what, we'll see what happens. But I would say Guzman would probably honestly win this primary.

Thomas Bowman 

Yeah, and there's also an empty district right next door that Guzman could move into if she didn't want to try to go up against the former appropriations chair. And Jeremy McPike now represents the senate district that she's in, and Guzman could also try to move up and run for Senate in a seat that is almost entirely her constituents. And what's interesting about this race, too, is Guzman is a favorite of some of the more progressive unions, and Luke Torian has positioned himself to also be very pro-union. If you recall, he sent out an email on Labor Day last year announcing his support for repealing Right to Work. That was a big deal. And the unions noticed. So because of that, Guzman's biggest backers, which are unions, don't want to get involved in this primary because it's too good friends of theirs. There might be less resistance for Guzman to move up and try to take out Jeremy McPike, who is not as pro-union.

Michael Pope 

All right, so this is why you listen to Pod Virginia because Guzman did not end up challenging Torian. The two of them, despite being in the same house districts, are not going after each other instead. Guzman is, in fact, challenging Senator McPike. So Score one for Thomas Bowman.

Thomas Bowman 

Yeah, Oracle of Richmond here. I love it when I get it right like that. Yeah, she just announced it on  December 13. If you missed it in the holidays, there's a great article on Inside Nova about it. But Guzman's going to challenge McPike in 2023. And McPike is between a rock and a hard place because his options are to stay where he is and potentially lose to Guzman or try to move into that empty district that Danica Rome is now going to run for. It's a tight spot for Senator McPike and could be the end of his elected career, at least in the State Senate.

Michael Pope 

All right. And you heard it here first on Pod Virginia. So number six on our list is an episode from October 24. When Aaryan Balu, our producer, he and I did a deep dive into three new JLARC reports. Man, is this a nerdy podcast or what? We're going through JLARC reports. So this is part of our discussion about a new JLARC report about how to make the income tax more progressive. At one end of the story, this is about laziness. Lawmakers could have handled this problem a long time ago, they're lazy, and they didn't do anything about it. The other part of this is that it harms low-income people. So who gets slammed when you haven't updated your income tax bracket, low-income people? They end up sharing a hugely disproportionate share of the burden, and this benefits wealthy people. So the laziness of lawmakers here benefited the rich.

Aaryan Balu 

It's funny how that works out; inertia and the status quo tend to always favor those with power and money. And you know, this JLARC report is an important start, an important step to fight that inertia and create a more progressive income tax bracket. But that's an uphill climb.

Michael Pope 

So update to that discussion. The governor, of course, came up with his recommendation for a budget since we had that episode. And he did include one suggestion in terms of making the income tax more progressive, which was to increase the standard deduction. In the last budget cycle, the governor wanted to double the standard deduction that didn't make it through the full process. And so now he wants to get the rest of the way there and double the standard deduction. So score one for Governor Youngkin. And that actually is making the income tax more progressive. And that's a bipartisan solution to a problem, so everybody wins there. But there were a whole lot of other things in that JLARC reports that Governor Youngkin totally ignored and threw in the trashcan and did not include in his budget, including increasing the filing threshold; that would make it more progressive. Creating new tax brackets, there are only two tax brackets. I mean, this is totally ridiculous, with a very small number of tax brackets. Replacing the Flat Tax with a graduated rate. So the people paid amounts commensurate to what they actually make. And probably the most controversial would be a surtax for high-income filers. None of that made its way into the governor's proposal. And I mean, I kind of doubt it's actually going to make, be raised during the General Assembly session. But I don't know; maybe it could be.

Thomas Bowman 

Probably not in the short session, Michael, but potentially for the long session. Tax reform is something that, when I was an aide, we knew was something that needed to happen. And also, it's such a big project that you're talking about something that's going to take multiple sessions two, and you need a stable climate. So you need the same party in power and elected at all of the various levels of government. You also pretty much need to have the trifecta with the House, the Senate, and the Governor, in order to do it the way you want it without having to make such substantive compromises that it becomes effectively meaningless. And the real question is not how to get more pennies out of you and me, and it's how to get Jeff Bezos to pay his fair share to Virginia. And that's the real challenge, which is doubling the standard deduction shirt. It is great for a lot of people. But when it comes to a percentage of the state budget, that's not useful to their revenue.

Michael Pope 

It is tax relief for most taxpayers.

Thomas Bowman 

Individuals, yes. And from that perspective, it's great. And Republicans may or may not get rewarded for Glenn Youngkin doing that. It's an easy sell politically. Harder, though, is going after powerful interests and money.

Michael Pope 

Yeah. But when you think about it, when you think about something like tying the tax rate to inflation. I suspected Youngkin might actually pull the trigger on that and do it and sort of benefit people in the future. There's no downside to doing that now. The only downside is in the out years, the revenue becomes a little bit more difficult, but there are ways around that. So Youngkin chose not to do that. But he could have, and, in terms of this discussion going on, everybody knew that this had to be done. However, it was going to be difficult. I kind of thought this JLARC report would be the map for having that discussion and making it happen. But it doesn't look like that's going to be the case.

Thomas Bowman 

It might be, but also the federal government is taking a serious crack at this too. And you might get more opportunities from whatever the federal government puts out there. And it might actually simplify it even more just to conform to the tax codes, which is a measure that happens from time to time. On some of these more complicated tasks, just copy and paste federal regulations as appropriate. And creating new tax brackets makes a ton of sense. And also moving them up. Because at one point, the average income was like $30,000 and went up to $50,000-$70,000. But then you have a ton of people making well over six figures who are all taxed at the same rate, as people who are making like $80,000. And the two incomes are not the same at all. And so moving those rates up where $80,000 might bump down a couple of tax brackets actually would be helpful. More helpful to you and me than just doubling the standard deduction. All right, let's take a quick break because we are getting way too far in the weeds here. So we're gonna be right back.

Michael Pope 

And we're back on Pod Virginia; we're going through our top 10 most popular episodes of 2022. So at number five on our list is another episode from November. As a side note, November was a really good month for Pod Virginia; three episodes on the top 10 list are from November. So this one was right after the election when we were joined by a friend of the podcast, Stephen Farnsworth, from the University of Mary Washington. We had an interesting back-and-forth about the outcome of the race in the Seventh Congressional district, where Abigail Spanberger beat Yesli Vega after a campaign that failed to have a debate between the two candidates. So here's part of our exchange on that.

Thomas Bowman 

The reality is if you're Abigail Spanberger, and you're in this position, you don't want to do a debate, Not because you're afraid of your opponent, but because you're not interested in elevating the conspiracy theories and the outright lies that this person is going to say. Yes, Vega has lost, and that's prima facie evidence that Spanberger took the right approach there.

Michael Pope 

I would disagree with that. I totally hear what you're saying. I understand the logic of what you're saying. I disagree with that. I think that...

Thomas Bowman 

But you disagree as a reporter. The rest of the world aren't reporters.

Michael Pope 

I disagree as a reporter; that's the lens I look at the world. But also, just as a citizen who has an interest in the health of our democracy, I think it would have been better if they had a debate with each other.

Thomas Bowman 

Okay, well, as a political adviser, I would have advised her not to do that debate.

Stephen Farnsworth 

Let the record reflect that Spanberger said yes to the Mary Washington debate, and Vega did not.

Michael Pope 

Duly noted.

Thomas Bowman 

There you go.

Stephen Farnsworth 

But there's one other point to make on this question. One of the things that I find most discouraging about the political environment right now is that it is so focused on character assassination. Because so much of the campaign discourse focuses on attack ads, nasty flyers, and saying the worst possible thing you can think of about the other side. One of the things that's wonderful about debates is the opportunity for the candidates to spend at least that period of time an hour or ninety minutes in an issue-focused conversation. Any chance, in my view, to have a conversation about issues and what these people would do if elected is a net plus in our civic society, particularly given the volume of attack ads and nastiness that we see in all the other venues of campaign communication.

Michael Pope 

Yeah, I totally agree with what Stephen Farnsworth is saying there. And you know, perhaps it might have been bad for Spanberger. But it would have been better for democracy better for the voters in this congressional district if they had a debate where Spanberger and Vega were standing on the same stage and debating the issues. And Farnsworth is their moderating. I can understand why strategically, it might not always be in everybody's interest to have a debate. But it's always in the voter's best interest to have a debate.

Thomas Bowman 

Sort of, unless Donald Trump gets elected, because you put them on the same stage as Hillary Clinton, and you artificially elevate him and his credibility. This is one of the things that the Hillary Clinton team has gone back and said in their post-election analysis was a strategic error. But anyway, Michael, I really appreciate the instant fact check coming from Dr. Farnsworth. And the other thing I'd point out is that, at some levels, debates are just not as useful as they once were. We're not having Lincoln Douglas-style debates anymore. We have scripted soundbites. They are planned, and there's a lot of debate prep that goes into it. If your opponent says X, you're going to come back and say Y and Z., And it's more of a TV show than it is a debate.

Michael Pope 

I would 100% agree with that. I think people use the word debate. And that's the word that we use to describe these things. But they're not debates; they are. I'm always tempted to call them joint press conferences.

Thomas Bowman 

Yeah, that's a good way to frame it. Because the other thing is these debates aren't useful anymore for accomplishing the original purpose, which was helping people make up their minds. We're now in an environment where people have so much information at their fingertips, and they don't need it as bait to help them figure out how to vote. Sure, in a primary, potentially, that's very useful still when you're just trying to figure out who might have the edge for your vote over the other person.

Michael Pope 

I think it's important when you talk about getting people on the record about what their positions are. So I'll give you a good example from our last discussion in terms of tying the income tax to inflation. So that's the kind of thing where candidates should have a position one way or the other on that, and a debate is a perfect way to get them on the record about what their positions are.

Thomas Bowman 

Well, the underlying assumption in that statement, Michael, is that you would actually get a substantive answer from any of the candidates because when you actually...

Michael Pope 

Spanberger would probably have a fulsome answer on that particular topic. And who knows about Vega? Nobody asked that question. So we don't even know.

Thomas Bowman 

Perhaps. In my experience, though, this is really an exercise in organization, right? You want to get as many cheerleaders to that debate as you can. You want to activate your people. And so the debates become a campaign organization test, more so than anything else.

Michael Pope 

All right. So number four on our list is the episode from October 22, which was right before the election. So we did a crossover episode with Chaz Nuttycombe and the folks at Bold Dominion. Including producer Alana Bittner and Bold Dominion host Nathan Moore. In this clip, we talk about threats to democracy. So first, you'll hear from Chaz and then me and then Alana, and then Nathan.

Chaz Nuttycombe 

The only people that are going to be caring about the January 6 mission or the hardcore Liberals. The Washington Post subscribers, it's not an issue.

Michael Pope 

I like the idea of The Washington Post subscriber as an interest group. I hadn't really thought about that before. I think we should have more interest groups of people who subscribe to your local newspaper. In fact, I would encourage listeners of this podcast please subscribe to your local newspaper on the issue of the future of democracy. There is a really interesting contrast here between Luria and Kiggans because Kiggans voted for a $70 million forensic audit of the Virginia 2020 election. So this is, by the way, after Governor Youngkin is elected and Republicans sweep statewide. Kiggans voted for a $70 million audit of the 2020 election in Virginia. So all that January 6 stuff is reflected, actually, in this election in a way that you don't really see anywhere else in the Country.

Alana Bittner 

I feel like one thing that I found pretty interesting all of this is when Youngkin was going out to Arizona to campaign for Kari Lake. When asked about Lake's election and denialism, his rhetoric was kind of like, well, maintaining the unity of the Republican Party is more important than little petty differences between people running for office. And I think that's interesting, too, like the idea that the preservation of the Republican Party is maybe more important for Glenn Youngkin. Then when members of that party deny legitimate election results, so to think that someone who would like to present himself as a very reasonable Republican. But he can also allow that in his party and consider that something that can exist in his party as well.

Nathan Moore 

It is framing, though. I mean, framing is what it's all about, I suppose. But to hear that line, Alana, thank you for mentioning it because I'd missed that response. Preserving the unity of the Republican Party is more important and effective than believing in our democratic system. You know, that's, that's what I hear.

Thomas Bowman 

Michael, that's a good thing. I wasn't on this episode cuz I would have really pushed back against some of the characterizations that got made. For one, the January 6 Commission was one of the top three drivers to the polls. In fact, in the exit polling, it turns out that protecting democracy was the top issue for voters in Virginia. And the other thing, the dig at the Washington Post subscriber, Michael, The Washington Post, as you all know, is the local paper for millions of Virginians.

Michael Pope 

I bet you, Chaz, didn't mean it as a dig necessarily. He was trying to talk about different voting blocks. And he also mentioned MSNBC watchers, right? So I mean, I think that's kind of what he was getting.

Thomas Bowman 

The point I'm making is that the empirical evidence shows that that was not correct. That was actually the driving force for people going to the polls.

Michael Pope 

Anytime people talk about subscribing to newspapers, that gets me going because it's very important for people to subscribe to their local newspapers. So if you're listening to this podcast and you're not a subscriber to your local newspaper, do it right now. Okay, so number three on our list is the episode from June 27, when we were joined by Shruti Shah at the Coalition for Integrity when she explained why campaign finance laws are such a problem for Virginia.

Shruti Shah 

It does give rise to this perception that corporations influence public policy by giving money to legislators. So that really is the heart of the issue. And Virginia is again one of five states which have no limits whatsoever. So again, quite depressing.

Michael Pope 

So yeah, here is an update to that episode; the committee that was designed to look at this never met. We actually talked about this on a recent episode, Thomas, that there is a committee that was tasked with looking at campaign finance laws and suggesting potential reforms. And they never even we're in the same room at the same time to gavel into session and have a quorum and that sort of thing. So no changes to campaign laws in Virginia. We still live in the wild west with no limits on how much money you can give.

Thomas Bowman 

Before the break, we were talking about tax reform; I mentioned that one common strategy is to kind of copy-paste the federal regs and apply them to the states. And that would be potentially an option here for Virginia, where you just conform it to the federal campaign finance laws. But they're not foolproof. I mean, you have super PACs. And you don't really have a need for Super PACs in Virginia, although they're still allowed to operate. But there are no limits on campaign coordination, and there are no limits on money. It's really about just hiding people when you have a super PAC and are still influencing Virginia politics.

Michael Pope 

That's actually a really important point, which is the silver lining to Virginia's wild west attitude on campaign finance reform; is that things are actually way more transparent when there are no limits because people aren't creating six and seven and eight packs to try to hide where the money is going and where it's coming from.

Thomas Bowman 

Well, that's the working theory, at least. Really smart operatives can still find ways to hide it because, like I just said. You can still have super PACs in Virginia, messing around, and governments, and you can still do independent expenditures; there's not as big of a market for them because of the lack of campaign finance laws in Virginia.

Michael Pope 

The only reason you would need that is if you wanted to hide the money.

Thomas Bowman 

Wanted to hide the money or wanted to go around the official campaign communications. That's not necessarily a good or a bad thing; it's just a thing. It does cause a lot of problems. And campaign finance, though, is one of those really messy policy areas. People have so many ideas, and there are things that seem like they should be common sense. And then when you actually get into the meat and potatoes of it and start going into the code of the scalpel, there becomes a lot of gray areas. One of them on using campaign finances for personal expenses. Sounds like an easy bill to pass. However, the state government only pays Delegates and Senators about $17,500. That becomes supplemental income for a lot of people and especially from less wealthy areas. And if you did that, then all of a sudden there are elected officials, who are good elected officials that just don't have access to a lot of money that would not be able to afford to be an elected official. So I mean, you do need full-time pay for legislators and pay them like a modern wage for what they're doing. A fair wage for a fair day's work, I guess. But, yeah, campaign finance laws. Don't get me wrong. I absolutely think they need to get reformed and updated at the very least, but it is a really sticky wicket.

Michael Pope 

All right. Well, number two on our list is our episode from Halloween. So October was another really strong month for us. So in this episode, we talked about a bunch of stuff. We talked about early voting and the diminishing value of October surprises. This corrupt contract the Fairfax County Sheriff's Office had with telecommunications. Where a lot of people from the sheriff's office offered to go on Caribbean cruises, but we also talked about education policy. So this is part of the discussion that you and I had about education policy following the release of the National Assessment for educational progress.

Thomas Bowman 

The schools that struggled to meet the grade are the ones that need the resources the most. And what young kids are proposing is to return to a failed system that punishes schools that have struggling students. And we already know that doesn't work. And what's the definition of crazy doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result? We don't want to do that because we know it doesn't work. But what does work is when you meet the schools where they are when you acknowledge that they serve historically underprivileged and underserviced communities. And you say, okay, what is the relative improvement here? Is that worth rewarding? Then the answer can be yes. And you're not going to tie it to something like funding, which just creates a self-defeating doom spiral.

Michael Pope 

Yeah, the whole logic of No Child Left Behind just never made any sense to me, as someone who spent a very long time trying to figure out the details of specifically how it worked in specific schools with specific principles and that sort of thing. But the idea was you identify the schools that are not passing, and then you punish them by withholding money, like, how's that gonna help anybody? The whole logic of No Child Left Behind was just fatally flawed from the beginning. And it's worth pointing out people associate that policy with George W. Bush, but Senator Teddy Kennedy was also behind that, too. I mean, this is a bipartisan proposal.

Thomas Bowman 

Right? Yeah. Well, look, you live, and you learn, right? And the point is that you learn, and if you don't learn, then you probably shouldn't be making policy.

Michael Pope 

So after that episode aired, the Secretary of Education, Aimee Guidera, said that these NAPE scores on this National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as NAPE, score. That they showed a catastrophic decline. That was what she says was "a predictable outcome of the decade long, systematic dismantling of a foundational commitment to excellence in education." So there we got the Secretary of Education here, trash-talking the entire public education system in Virginia. This is part of their effort to open the door to vouchers and, essentially, privatize public education. So this is a debate that certainly will continue in 2023.

Thomas Bowman 

Yeah, and this is also one of the things that Democrats are gonna have to undo that the Republicans have been pushing to get back on track. Suppose they're able to take power again after the 2023 elections, and certainly in 2025, If they can take back the governor's house. That's really good sounds like my God. I don't know how much I have to add to that.

Michael Pope 

Well, hey man, it's our number two most popular episode of the year, so of course, it was pretty good.

Thomas Bowman 

Yeah. I'm glad I was bringing the fire on number two. Well, actually, my wife used to be a classroom teacher for many, many years in New York public schools, in New York City, public schools, DC public schools, and then Arlington, where we met; my mother was a first-grade teacher for 15 years in Fairfax County Public Schools. This is one of those issue areas that are very, very close to my heart. And of course, now, my wife is off doing amazing things with special education policies, while she's getting her doctorate at VCU. So she's the expert on Ed policy in this house and not me. But I have the benefit of being able to absorb by osmosis, some of her expertise, put it that way.

Michael Pope 

All right. So now we have come to the point of the show, where we will reveal our most popular episode of the year! Thomas, any guesses?

Thomas Bowman 

Man, I hit this one from myself. I have not looked at any of these. So they're all fresh. And this is a prize, and you even hit this one from me when you gave me the rundown today. So I'm gonna guess it was the primary nominating contests and discussion. Some of the evaluating the who's and what's wins with Chaz Nuttycombe again.

Michael Pope 

You're close, but it's not Chaz Nuttycombe. But it definitely was election-related. It was right before the general election when we heard from this fella.

Chris Piper 

Is it possible occasionally for somebody to get around the system here or there, perhaps? But it's very rare that instances of it are typically caught. But the kind of widespread fraud that is being alleged that would overthrow, you know, 10,000, 50,000, or 100,000 votes is simply not possible.

Michael Pope 

That is former elections Commissioner Chris Piper, who joined us to walk through how voting works in Virginia. I did everything that I could think of, to throw at him. Well, what about this? And what about that? What about the other thing? And, you know, I don't know about you, Thomas, but I'm always hearing from my neighbors here in old town who are just convinced that there are undocumented immigrants that are voting. And so I mean, there are lots of things. There are lots of reasons why that could never possibly happen. And Chris Piper really broke it down for us and explained how the system works and what the safeguards are. So if you haven't heard that episode, go back and check it out because it's our most popular episode of the year.

Thomas Bowman 

There's a lot of interest here in making sure that people have confidence in the elections, and we have worked. This is a multi-generational effort to protect the integrity of these elections and what you're hearing out of the MAGA types. I'm not gonna say Republicans are gonna say MAGA types. Their effort to destabilize the elections is really to roll back a lot of that progress that got made so that they can do the things that their parents and great grandparents before did when they would have machine-style political elections. And it is a great episode. Listen to it; chances are, you've probably already heard it if you're listening to this one. But go back and listen because Chris actually highlighted the real area of concern in these elections is not the outside game strategy of trying to rig the vote if you will. But it's the inside strategy, where you have an unfaithful elector, you have an unfaithful administration, and a disingenuous set of policymakers at the top, and that risk still pervades because if you had registrars from a few counties in Virginia doesn't have to be very many of them. It doesn't have to be very, and it doesn't have to be populous counties. Let's take Buchanan County and if there were a registrar or group of registrars in Buchanan that would not vote to certify or started making noise. And you had a disingenuous administrative body at the top and said, well, we can't trust the results from X, Y, and Z counties. Let's say Dickinson County, Washington County, Buchanan County. So like, because of that, we're going to refuse to certify more of the election. Now all of a sudden gets really messy. You're going to have the DOJ involved. You're going to have the federal government just breathing down everybody's necks. And what could they do, versus how messy could it be our two separate discussions, right? So they may not actually be able to change the outcome. But if it were happening at scale across the Country, that would be really bad because DOJ cannot be in all places at once.

Michael Pope 

Like Thomas just said, if you haven't already listened to it, you should definitely go back and check it out because it was a hell of an episode and our most popular of the year. So gosh, 2022 has been a blur, hasn't it? We've done some great episodes. So thank you for listening to Pod Virginia, and I'm looking forward to a really amazing one. 2023 So stay tuned.

Thomas Bowman 

Yeah, that was a really good list, Michael. But let's leave it there for now. And let's get to work on some of the next episodes for 2023. Thanks for listening, and Hey, Happy New Year.

Michael Pope 

Happy New Year.