Clarke Mercer: Leadership in a Pandemic

Listen to "Clark Mercer: Leadership in a Pandemic" on Spreaker.

Michael Pope
Welcome to Transition Virginia, the podcast that examines the transition of power from Republican to Democrat. My name is Michael Pope, and I'm joined via Skype with the co host of Transition Virginia, Thomas Bowman. Thomas, how you doing?

Thomas Bowman
I'm well, I'm coming at you from my bedroom this time. I have to pack my whole house up. We're moving down to Richmond. And my study, where I'm normally recording from, is a disaster zone right now. So that's what I've been up to. How about you, Michael?

Michael Pope
Well, I'm going stir crazy and I need a haircut, but other than that, I'm happy to be doing the podcast again and I'm really excited about the guests that we've got today.

Thomas Bowman
Who do we have?

Michael Pope
We have none other than Clark Mercer, the Chief of Staff to Governor Ralph Northam. Clark, how are you doing?

Clark Mercer
I'm doing well, Michael. I buzzed my son's hair this weekend so I'm happy to help you out and you make it done to Richmond, give you a haircut so.

Thomas Bowman
There we go. How old's your son, Clark?

Clark Mercer
I have an eight year old boy and a six year old girl.

Thomas Bowman
Oh, wow. Okay. So I'm sure you're having a lot of fun keeping them at home all the time. And you're, well who's watching the kids because you and Kelly are both busy?

Clark Mercer
Well, it's a joy spending so much time with them right now. We...I typically am in the office Monday, Wednesday and Fridays, and then Kelly is in the office Tuesdays and Thursdays, so that kind of coincides with the Governor's press conferences on the three days that I'm in, and the kids are here and they do a pretty good job of doing work and not driving us too crazy, but it's a it's definitely wearing thin at this point.

Michael Pope
How do you feel about doing those press conferences? We're going to talk about COVID later, but I feel like every time they don't know the answer to something, they say, "Let's bring up Clark and he knows the answers to everything." Sort of like the pinch hitter.

Clark Mercer
That is my role, is I kind of stand off to the side and if there's an oddball question that, you know, we don't have the right subject matter person, therefore, I you know, the Governor's communication style is unique. It's different than mine. And so a lot of time and energy goes into getting everything ready for each one of those and we have a 7:30 meeting every morning to go over the COVID numbers, to go over COVID data, depending on what specific thing that week we're focused on. We have different folks come in and brief the Governor. So our day start out at 7:30, The Governor gives us a break on Saturday and Sunday, it's 9am. But on Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays were, typically the night before, we kind of have the outline for the press conference. It takes a lot of time. And sometimes I'd prefer to be digging into other things, especially, you know, post General Assembly Session and Reconvene, the Governor had 1292 bills. It was a record number of bills that the General Assembly had passed and even without COVID, the average for our policy staff and council was something between 50 and 75 bills a day that they had to do a legal review of in a policy review and recommended the Governor sign, veto, amend. Then also the budget, we had a record number of amendments with this on allotment strategy, so you add all that into COVID, it's made for some some long weeks.

Michael Pope
Well, let's get into those bills. Let's talk about each and every one of those 1292 bills. No, just kidding. So this is Transition Virginia, we would like to talk about the transition of power, normally for our previous episodes, that's been the transition of power in the General Assembly. You, though, Clark, were around for the transition of power at the Executive Mansion, the transition from former Governor, Terry McAuliffe to our current Governor, Ralph Northam. This is a process that goes on kind of beyond, you know, the realm of public sight. And people don't really know what this looks and smells like. Explain for us what the transition of power was like in the Executive Mansion.

Clark Mercer
Sure. Well, the morning after the Governor was elected, he's in Richmond, gives his transition press conference, and then you basically are given the keys to an office building that's empty, and some IT support for your email and laptops, and that's it. You have from that weekend, November to January to hire an entire administration. Every agency head, every deputy agency head, a policy advisor at each agency, all your secretaries deputies, your comm staff, your council. And you don't have any money. The Commonwealth doesn't provide any money for staffing or any type of HR help to identify folks you might need for those positions. And the legislature in Virginia, you know, balance of power, they're very hesitant to give any power to the Executive Branch and so you start your administration after they've already begun their Legislative Session, they've filed all their bills, the previous Governor has introduced a budget that you can't amend. And all that is designed for the new Governor to start out a little bit slower behind the eight ball with with the legislature.

Michael Pope
Now, you say it was designed for the Governor to be behind the eight ball. Do you know that's the reason it was designed that way? Or is it-

Clark Mercer
That's a good question. I don't know if that was originally why. If you ask folks now, "Could we swear the Governor in before the Legislative Session starts?" The answer would be a resounding, "No." And, you know, they don't allow amendments to the budget. There's a lot of things that are tilted, for whatever reason, whatever the impetus was for that, the result is that it favors the Legislative Branch. And so the Governor came in that first Session, with with Republican majorities in both the House and the Senate. And, you know, the point that I make that remind folks that were Democratic majorities is that it doesn't matter if it's a one seat majority are a 20 seat majority, your committees are stacked against you and it's very difficult to move legislation out of those committees to ever get into the Floor. And so, you know, Medicaid expansion was the Governor's top priority, working with the Republican legislature at the time. And so that's one transition that we've worked through and kind of talk about how we worked with the Legislature on a set of issues. And then, of course, this past November, when the Legislature flipped, it's presented a whole new dynamic in terms of what's possible, new challenges, new opportunities to one party having all three of those bodies in control.

Michael Pope
So you mentioned the transition of power that happened this year. I'm wondering how you would describe the difference from your office in the Executive Branch? How did it look and feel differently with the Democrats being in the majority versus how it was when Republicans were in control of the entire Legislative Branch?

Clark Mercer
Yeah, I mean, you know, we got the Driver's License Suspension issue, the Felony Larceny Threshold for 200 to 500, we got Medicaid Expansion. Those were three really big wins that were Democratic priorities done with Republican majorities, and you have to compromise. You know going into it, that Medicaid Expansion, the Senate was pretty resolute in their opposition to it, with the exception of really Emmett Hanger and a couple other Republicans came along, but he was a real leader from day one on that. And in the House, I think, you know, their Republican leadership, I think they decided to to maybe take that issue off the table for future elections and work with us to get Expansion. I think that was their motivation. And we had a pretty reliable and strong staffer elected in Chris Jones at the time, he's no longer the Legislature and Kirk Cox supported that, but they didn't have uniformity in their in their Caucus. And you know, we ended up getting the House Republicans on board to support Expansion, the Senate Republicans really weren't there. So we ended up kind of the House and the Executive Branch kinda teamed up on the Senate to try to leverage them to get there and we were able to. Senator Norman was opposed, very, very loudly so, in the leadership of the Senate. On the Felony Larceny Threshold, you know, we wanted it to get to $1,000, we weren't gonna be able to get there, so the compromise was $500. There was some restitution legislation that was passed for victim rights, which was seen as a compromise, although it's important that victims and restitution, that's an important topic. With Medicaid Expansion, there was a work requirement. That conversation issue has matured and evolved when you see all these lawsuits throughout the country. But originally, that discussion was part of the package and then the the Driver's License Suspension in the Senate, we had a Republican champion of that in Bill Stanley. So those were three things we were able to do. There's a lot of, you know, with a Democratic control, you know what the Democratic priorities are, you know you're going to be able to move those pieces of legislation much more easily. And you have staff that that you know, the staff kind of work for the leadership. So, a lot of the same staff are around, but now they're working for Democratic leadership, the Democratic leadership have different priorities. So, you know, good staffers are able to work and be responsive to their members. And we've got really great staff in the House and Senate Budget committees, and much more easy to work with now, because we know that their priorities are aligned with ours. You know, we had things in the amendments to the previous budgets, and you always had to think, you know, "Okay, this isn't something that the Republicans are going to support. How do we place this in the budget in a way that doesn't call attention to it or compromises?" I mean, there's legislation, the Governor's been a big supporter of LARC, so Long Acting Reversible Contraception, and that's been an item in the budget that's caused, you know, concern for Republicans. And this time around, we knew we have Reproductive Choice champions in the Legislature. So it was a lot easier this time around. And some people say, "Be careful what you wish for, you're going to have all these Democrats with all these new ideas, and some of them are going to push the Commonwealth too far left." I mean, those aren't problems that that that I don't view those problems at all. I mean, that yes, there may be pieces of legislation or ideas that people have that that we might not be on board with or we might not be all the Democrats might not be there. But those are much better problems to have than having a body that's fundamentally opposed to some of the worker rights, some of the some of the, you know what you mentioned minimum wage before we started the show, things that we knew were just non starters. Minimum wage is a great example. You know, for years and years and years, folks would would advocate for minimum wage and response, you know, let's tie it to CPI. Let's tie it to inflation. Let's do this. Let's do that. And the answer was always "No, no, no." And now this time around, you know, the same folks that had shut shut the door to any discussion of a minimum wage increase, kind of came to the table and said, "Well, let's compromise. Let's find something that we can all compromise on." And it was, it was kind of, not fell on deaf ears, but I don't think it was genuine, that they had decades to have these conversations that they didn't entertain and so you know, the Governor, obviously with COVID 19, there's a couple of these bills that have fiscal impact to small businesses, hugely supportive of wanting to see these things move forward, not debate them again, next General Assembly Session. And so he put a delay clause on a couple of those that the Legislature agreed with, you know that the minimum wage, they weren't going to start that until January of next year anyway. So there already was a delay built into it, which was a little bit of miscommunication when the Governor proposed going to May, folks that will people need the minimum wage increase right now. And that was never envisioned by the General Assembly, it was always January. And the idea there was to give some of these small businesses a few more months to get up and running, post COVID, and also for us to figure out where these federal dollars are going to be spent, and how we're going to structure the budget, but it was, um, you know, stuff like, you know, I've been a big proponent of getting rid of Lee Jackson Day, and that has taken a whole new dynamic. We have 100,000 people in our workforce that work for the Commonwealth, and to tell anybody that works for me, whether they're white or Black, you're required by law to stay home today and when you look at the code it doesn't say, "Honor these individuals for their long histories and their military prowess." He said, Tthey were defenders of lost causes." That's all the code says about it. And you know, particularly to employees of color, to tell them, "You're forced, tell your children you're gonna be at home today, because you're supposed to be honoring someone that fought to enslave you." It made me sick to my stomach. And you know, with Republican majorities, that issue went nowhere. And we were able to not only jettison Lee Jackson Day, but replace it, make Election Day a holiday, so so to not you know, some folks "Oh, you're punishing state employees by not giving them another day off" And we said, "We'll give them Election Day off and that certainly allows folks that work blue collar jobs, where they're not able to take off and, and go vote in the middle of day, the opportunity to do that. And so there was some things kind of built into the this Legislative Session that got me really excited that I've been waiting on, frankly, for years to do and so it's the transition, you know, the Democratic leaders, you know, I'm originally from Alexandria, so I know Senator Saslaw well, I know Delegate Herring well, Speaker Filler-Corn, and we can pick up the phone and call these folks and say, "Hey, here's an issue that we have. Let's work through it." And, you know, COVID is a good example of whether folks are really genuine in their desire to work through issues. We get press releases set, almost every time the Governor has a press conference, it is followed by a press release by Republican leadership. And we have calls with Republic with all the members of General Assembly a couple times a week, and open the Floor to questions, and we don't get a single question or comment, and our cell phone numbers are all readily available and they don't get used. And then there's a press release, calling on the Governor to do X,Y, and Z or criticizing him for doing X, Y, and Z. And we have some Republicans that pick up the phone and will call and say, "Hey, here's an issue that I'm having. Can you work with me?" And we do. But with our Democratic leaders, it's we have a much more...they're much more willing to pick up the phone and say, "Hey, I've got a concern. Can we work this out?" Rather than sending out a press release and just try to make an example and be political.

Thomas Bowman
Yeah, especially during COVID, it strikes me as something that's in particularly bad taste, where there is no rulebook on how to respond and the game is just make sure as few people die as possible, right?

Clark Mercer
Yeah the last couple of weeks have gotten overtly partisan. And it didn't start out that way. It started out, I think, much more collegial and folks really recognizing that Virginia is a huge state, it's very diverse. There's a lot of things to factor in. But for whatever reason, and maybe that's coming out of DC, maybe that's coming out of Congress, I think folks have decided that they're gonna make it into more of a partisan issue and it's, it's, it's disappointing. I'll get calls sometimes, "Hey, heads up. We got to send this press release. It's going to be crappy, but we got to do it." Okay. And then, you know, the press corps blind copied in the letter to the Governor, oftentimes we don't even get get letters, they'll be a press release sent that to the Governor that we don't even get sent. It just gets sent to the press, and we read about it, you know, in the press. So it's, um, you know, it's tough. You know, Virginia, and I commented to someone yesterday about this, you know, Virginia is physically located right in the middle of the Eastern Seaboard. We're not the South, we're not the North or the Mid Atlantic, we're not a hugely blue state, we're not a hugely red state, we're blue, to be clear, but we're not super majorities in either body. I went to an NGA, National Governors event, a year and half ago and with Chiefs of Staff and we were not in Session. There were several states that were in the middle of Session, their Chiefs of Staff were there. And I thought that was like, completely bizarre. I asked them like, "How can you be here while your Legislature is in Session? And the response was, "Well, we got super majorities where Republicans in our state to get to... we get whatever we kind of want, like, I don't have to be there," You know, and I was like, completely flabbergasted. I couldn't leave Richmond when when we're in Session. So, yeah, I mean, there still are plenty of Republicans that do pick up the phone and call sometimes when leadership sends things that are just overtly political. It just, it just makes it more difficult to, you know, move together as one Commonwealth, which which we're trying to do the best we can.

Michael Pope
I'm wondering about anything else you can tell us about the transition of power? Is there anything maybe that you didn't expect when Democrats took power there in leadership there? It's their committees, they're the Chairman. I mean, was there anything that came out of left field or something you didn't expect to happen or a scenario that you hadn't planned for?

Clark Mercer
That's a good question. No, we try to be really sensitive. I mean, it doesn't matter if Democrats are in power Republicans, the legislature has their roles and responsibilities and they're protective of what they're in power to do, and they don't want the Executive Branch telling them what to do. And so we're pretty sensitive, to engage when they want us to engage, if they want our opinion or help, we'll provided it. Our staff all knows that if they're asked by a legislator to engage on something or help on something, to drop what they're doing, and to do that, and to be responsive, but they don't want our office telling them what to do. They run their own committees. We offered every committee, every legislative committee, some of them like this, some of them don't. The respective secretary will pre-brief them before meetings, because we've got a lot of folks that work on these issues full time. And we, as an Executive Branch, I think it's 800 reports that the Legislature requires us to produce for them every year. I mean, it's it's incredible the amount the volume of work, and so we do have a lot of folks who are pretty smart on the issues and no, I mean, it was a ton of responsibility. Chairman Torian on the budget did a fantastic job, Senator how in the Senate, and our budget staffs work really closely together, I would say those leaders on those committees getting to know their own staff, and those staff developing relationships with their new bosses was a dynamic that takes a little bit of time to develop. We've kind of observed that. There's been some growing pains all over, folks getting used to their new roles. But But no, I mean, if someone opposed something, if we oppose someone's bill, if a Delegate has a bill that we're going to oppose, you know, we have a rule that you don't get up in Committee and oppose that bill, unless you've spoken with the sponsor of that bill. It's tremendously bad form to to get up and as administration Governor opposes your bill, if you haven't communicated that to them ahead of time, and vice versa. I think, you know, there's some Delegates and Senators that they'll sound off on Twitter or say something or, you know, you know, they don't they don't give us a heads up about it. But most of the Democrats, if they're going to oppose something we're doing or they're not on the same page, they will call us and let us know, but I think they did a great job. I was pleasantly surprised. I mean, the Speaker, I thought the Speaker did a fantastic job. I think with a number of new Delegates, there was an open question as to how they were gonna be able to manage that Caucus to be you know, no one really knew if it was going to move at 100 different directions or who was going to move together as one unit and Kevin O'Holloran was my counterpart as Attorney General Herring's Chief-of-Staff, and he took that position and I thought he was a great choice, but I didn't know how that would all work out. And I gotta tell you, they did an incredible job. And the Speaker, I will tell you, there was not a time that a vote came up where and Alfonzo Lopez is their whip on in the House and within a vote, they were always right on the money where the votes would be and, and the Senate, you know, we had Governor Northam used to be a Senator, had very good relations with the Senators. They have closer margins, you know, in the Senate, so you can't lose as many folks on votes. But but we typically knew where folks were going to be at, what their concerns were, and to pass 1292 bills, your first Session, and deliver on the number of things they delivered on, from workers rights, to the environment, to reproductive choice. ...And you see the whole numbers bear it out. I think folks thought they did it responsibly. So it's there weren't any wild and crazy things that happened that we didn't see happen. Obviously the leadership elections we stayed out of, that was something that we instructed all of our staff not to get involved in, you know, you're going to have folks running these committees, you're going to have, you know, obviously Speaker Filler-Corn's doing great, but you know, the elections for those offices. It did not behoove any of the Executive Branch to get involved or offer their opinions on what they thought should happen. That was purely a Legislative function.

Thomas Bowman
Well, let's take a break real quick. And when we come back, we're going to talk about some of the specific policies that the Governor pushed with the new Democratic majorities.

Michael Pope
And we're back on Transition Virginia. We're talking with Clark Mercer, who was the Chief of Staff to Governor Ralph Northam. And let's get right into it. Let's talk about the the key points of agenda items that happened this General Assembly Session starting with guns. So in the Governor's State of the Commonwealth Address, he listed several items on gun reform that he wanted. I think it was eight, eight specific bills. All of them passed with the exception of one, and that's where I want to talk about the Assault Weapons Ban. This was introduced on the Senate side by the Majority Leader, the new Majority Leader, Dick Saslaw, who Clark, you've known for many years as an Alexandrian. And on the House side by another Alexandria guy, Delegate Mark Levine. This crashed and burned and it's probably going to be on the agenda for next year. Clark, take us inside. What went wrong with the Assault Weapons Ban?

Clark Mercer
Sure. A couple of couple things. One, I mean, you got Governor Northam is uniquely qualified to discuss gun safety. I mean, he is a Virginia Military Institute graduate, served in the U.S. Army, took care of wounded soldiers that were killed and maimed by weapons of war. He has worked at a children's hospital for three decades and been a Hospice director, taking care of children who have been shot by their siblings picking up you know, weapons, loaded weapons, a bedside table, so he has a lot of experience with weapons and firearms, and he comes from a rural area himself and so he's not the person with his Southern drawl, his accent, the Army background that you necessarily expect in the Commonwealth of Virginia to come out and talk about gun safety. So I think that's a little bit and this isn't meant to be a pun, but disarming for folks that want to say, "Oh he's just some Northeast New York gun grabber." It's very disarming when Army doctor talks about this. And he talks about it, in my opinion, a very common sense sort of way. So from a policy and Legislative perspective, I've got a strategy that that drives my policy folks a little bit batty, which is, you could you could come out with one bill, the Assault Weapons Ban, so this is the thing we were pushing. And that's the only thing you could push, and you might not get it, and then you get nothing, right? And so my approach, rather than to put one or two bills out there as it's kind of a basketball court, is to flood the lane, and we went with a package of eight bills, and I felt pretty strongly at the beginning, "Governor, you're not going to get all eight of these, but I bet you you're going to get six or seven of them, because they're not going to be able to reject all of them." So from a strategy perspective, we put a lot of bills, a lot of Governor's bills on the table this last Session, we did it very intentionally, knowing full well that the Legislature being the Legislature, they're gonna, they're gonna drop one or two of those along the way, but you end up with a lot of wins. And so, you know, we didn't go into this thinking it's a slam dunk on every single one of these. The Assault Weapons Ban, I'm pretty confident we're gonna get there. The House, they referred us to the Crime Commission. They said they us want to study it more and we now have a Democratic majorities on the Crime Commission. We're gonna... I've encouraged the Senate and the House to put their best folks on the Crime Commission. And I would hope that the members of the Crime Commission to the folks that are willing to carry those bills next next Session. And so, you know, it wasn't one that I thought was gonna be- I think it's one of those that is a how you define an assault weapon. There's 1000 different ways to define it. There was a lot of kind of red herrings, but what if I want to let someone borrow a weapon at the range? You know, now I'm breaking the law. That that was an exception built into the law, but there were enough of those examples that folks gave that you know, that that that one bill didn't go through. But you know, Doug Wilder, when he was Governor, his biggest Legislative achievement was One Gun a Month. And that took a couple years to get through. That was one of seven bills we got through. Red Flag Law folks didn't think could get done, universal background checks got done, making sure we keep guns out of the hands of, you know, individuals who are abusing their spouse or their loved one in a relationship, making sure that guns are under lock and key so that your kids can't access them and accidentally shoot their siblings. We got a lot done this year. And when you poll each of these and poll it fairly and objectively, people support them. And you know, I live in Hanover County now, I've got rifles, I've got shotguns, I like to go shooting. You know, when you have folks that that are comfortable and understand firearms talking about these issues, it's a little bit harder to push back. And so yeah, the Assault Weapons Ban is the clearly that's got the attention national attention. I mean, President Trump talks about it every week. And he talks about in a very disingenuous, dishonest way, that we're grabbing guns or taking people's guns away, which people know when they actually hear what's going on, I mean, something like 70% of NRA members support background checks, and you got a backup from the Session and go to the Virginia Beach shooting, this mass shooting, and the Governor calls a Special Session to discuss these issues, and he puts it puts a background check on the table, which 90 there's not anything that you can poll that over 90% of Americans agree on, nothing. You could ask, "Is one plus one, two?" And I don't think you'd get 90% of Americans agree that it's two. And 90% of Americans support background checks. And not only were these issues not discussed and debated discussed and debated and voted down, you know, that's what you want to do, vote them down. They left in 90 minutes and they said, "Hey, we're going to refer this to our Crime Commission. They'll produce a report," It was three pages. It didn't go into any depth at all. It just said "There's a lot of discussion, debate on these issues, that there's not consensus," And I think voters saw that and quite frankly, from a political perspective, I don't understand why in that Special Session, they didn't take something like background checks, which 90% of the people support, they could have acted on that and they could have said, "Hey Republicans we we acted on common sense gun safety-"

Michael Pope
Or anything. Another another sort of mystery of that Special Session is they could have taken action on something that might have even been minor but they could have at least made the case, "Well we did something. Here's this something that we did," And then sort of spin that something as an important and significant thing. They didn't even bother doing that so it is kind of a mystery like, why what was their strategy?

Clark Mercer
And even if it was a little something, that would have given them the ability to come into this Session, saying, "We already acted on it, we're not gonna support these measures." It's kinda like the minimum wage, when you say no to everything for so long, then when you're no longer i power, you're you don't have as credible a seat at the table if you never engaged on these issues previously. So, you know, that that's the issue on on guns and it's you know, it's common sense gun safety and and the Assault Weapons Ban. You know, look, I get it. We've had an Assault Weapons Ban in this country before. It's not like this is something new. You know, it's always I always find it so hypocritical when I hear the Administration criticize this. There's a Red Flag Law in Mike Pence's Indiana. They got thrown in the books when he was Governor. The NRA supported Red Flag Laws just a year and a half ago and President Trump's own Gun Safety Task force supported background checks and Red Flag Laws and we pass them, and all of a sudden it's all these these these things about taking guns away. It's like, "Guys, you've supported these things." And so, you know, to be home to the NRA and to pass that package of gun safety reform was truly historic and, and the Governor is not shy, he's not he's not reticent to say something or do something that he believes in. And so the Assault Weapons Ban, we will absolutely refer that to the the Crime Commission. We're going to hold the Crime Commission accountable to study that and come up with some good recommendations and, and I expect that to be back front and center. You know, there was a protest on one of the days during Session that I think rattled some folks that I was talking to there's they said upwards of 20,000 folks and they wrecked- 10,000 of them weren't even from Virginia, and then what I was told they thought maybe a third were registered voters, so you basically have the equivalent of a high school football game in Richmond protesting something, versus the millions of people that voted for these policies. So you know, the majority of folks support an Assault Weapons Ban. How you define it is important. The common sense carve out so people can go to the gun ranges and things like that. Or you can go out shooting with your kid and hand him your shotgun, and all that stuff was accounted for. You know, the background check, you can transfer your your granddad's shotgun to your your nephew, all that stuff has been accounted for and built into the bills.

Thomas Bowman
Clark, you mentioned the Gun Lobby Day and it sparked a couple connections in my mind. I'm thinking that a lot of the same people who came to that Gun Lobby Day, at least the ones that live in Virginia, might be a lot of the same people who are pushing the Governor to reopen prematurely, because they're both things being pushed in Right Wing news outlets. And my question is how how does that impact you when you're trying to get a job done for the betterment of Virginia citizens and a very small but vocal minority, who had actually said on some of these forums that they wanted to reignite a civil war, we arrested multiple white supremacists leading up to Gun Lobby Day. So how does that impact you and your ability to do your job?

Clark Mercer
You know, it impacts our staff, our public safety folks, our state police, and that's who I feel the worst for. I mean, they, they get drawn into these debates over Second Amendment or whatever it is, and they're just doing their job. And you see some of the scenes from Michigan with some of the you know, police officers getting yelled at. And those are the folks that I feel the worst for that get, you know, folks have the First Amendment right. They can say whatever they want, then they say a lot about the Governor, this Administration and the policies that we support, and that's fine. They should be able to. Some of the symbols that one of these open VA protests, there were a lot of Trump flags, there were a number of Confederate flags, there's a lot of the, you know, "Don't tread on me." I don't know what what overlap there is of folks that were there. It seems to me that that yes, there's a lot of folks talking about the Second Amendment. You know, we didn't close any gun stores during this during this business shut down. Outdoor shooting ranges have remained open. You know, we were sued about indoor shooting ranges and that was an infringement upon the Second Amendment. I can't go play basketball tonight. My kids can't go to the trampoline park. My wife can't go to yoga. You can't go to indoor shooting range. It wasn't like picking on indoor shooting ranges. But you know, it's a good-

Michael Pope
You can't church though. That's another lawsuit that you're dealing with, right?

Clark Mercer
Well, you can go to church and you've got abide by the same social distancing. You can do drive thru church services which are being done and pretty successful. You can have 10 folks with social distancing. That's consistent with all the other gathering, but there's no discrepancy or inconsistency with how church services are being treated. I think that case was dismissed with a 30 plus page opinion without even hearing arguments. And it's not inconsistent with what other states are doing. I think you see the Trump Administration, you know, when President Trump tweeted about three states a couple weeks ago, he tweeted about three states that they see as swing states in the election, Minnesota, Virginia, and I think it was maybe Pennsylvania, but it's not lost on me that those are three Democratic states that that are critical, and Michigan, that the President needs to win to win re election and many many other states have the exact same policies. The Governor is going to talk about Phase One reopening this Friday and we're certainly going to treat places of worship consistently in that Phase One. So you know, it's it's it's not a distraction in terms of it doesn't change any of our thoughts about how we're going to pursue things. We know where the numbers are, we can read polls, we take our own polls that aren't public. And so if we want to know what the public thinks about something, we have a pretty good bead on that. But it's, it's all the staff that have to deal with that. And we have a big op center with our state police, and our emergency management folks, and that's thousands and thousands of threats that came in, threats to our police, the National Guard got pulled into that and they got threatened. The National Guard had nothing to do with it. So then one of our police and guard- I don't know if they're Democrat or Republican, I suspect many of them are Republican. They're getting called all sorts of names. They're getting death threats, the Governor gets death threats, I mean, my staff has gotten death threats, and all of those have to be investigated and run down. It's one thing to call us everything under the sun and, and that that's happened and it's ugly, and social media can be kind of an ugly place. But I don't think folks appreciate the amount of time it takes our folks that work for the state police and our local police and our sheriff's that have to deal with this and chase all this down. It's a daily thing and with social media, folks can can make death threats and they don't, they don't think they're gonna there's gonna be consequences to it. Each one of those has to be investigated and run to the ground. So that's what I feel the worst for, I mean, to be honest with you.

Thomas Bowman
Well, I want to be mindful of our time because we're running short on it. And I know you've got to get back to your job. So we want to talk a little bit about your COVID response and the Governor's COVID response when we come back.

Michael Pope
And we're back on Transition Virginia, we're with Clark Mercer, the world renowned Chief of Staff to Governor Ralph Northam. Clark, everybody in Virginia is eager to get back to whatever we consider a normal life. We want to go out to the restaurant and we want to get our haircut and we want to go to the baseball game. But none of that's happening right now. Walk us through how Virginia possibly pulls itself out of this mess.

Clark Mercer
Yeah, well, I mean, it's obviously an exceedingly tough time for everybody. And you know, the Governor, out of all 50 of our Governors, he's the only physician. So he's in a pretty unique spot and a very geographically diverse Commonwealth, with a lot of different opinions about how we should treat COVID. There's a very small sliver of people that are dismissive of the virus and think it's, you know, not even like the flu. And then we should all just tough it out. I think that's a very, very small percentage of when you see the polls, what people think. There's a, you know, the Governor was the first Governor in the country to close schools for the rest of the school year. And at the time, he was criticized for that and the internal dialogue that we had was, "We all know that they're going to be closed for the rest of the school year." And talking to other Chiefs of Staff, and I talked to Chiefs of Staff every day, and I've talked to every border state Chief of Staff, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland, I talked to D.C.s Chief, I talked to Delaware's and everyone recognized that that was going to happen. And the Governor said, "Look, we need to give people, we need to be honest with them. And we need to give them the ability to plan and we need to give our school systems, the ability to make sure they're getting meals to kids. They're planning their curriculum in a way that can access everybody. We can't do this piecemeal." And so there's not a state now in the country, that hasn't closed their schools for the remainder of the school year. And you know, we picked, some states decided to come out with a list of essential businesses and non-essential businesses. And if you look at the states that did that, a lot of states got into trouble when they started picking who they thought was essential because the list is , like Pennsylvania's list is seven pages long single space, and it's almost impossible if the guy who does sheet rock essential but the person who does who does aluminum siding, I mean, it gets so granular, right? And so the Governor has been driven by health and from a public health perspective, what makes sense in terms of closure? And what are the businesses where there's a lot of touching and physical interaction and the point of the business is to gather social gatherings, right? So theaters, bowling alleys, tattoo parlors, nail technicians, breweries, restaurants, everything but takeout we've closed those and that's consistent with other states. Non essential retail, it doesn't fall into that category, that's your little mom and pop store that sells clothes or sells toys, that was an area of discussion. Some states have decided to close those, other states have not. We decided, as long as you could abide by social distancing, and have 10 or under in your store, you can stay open. And we did that for a couple reasons. From a health perspective, if you close all those stores, close a toy store and I need to get a toy because it's my kid's birthday, and I think it's important to go out and get a toy which, which I would, I'd go to Walmart or Target and they sell toys. They also sell clothes, they also sell makeup, they sell a lot of things that we consider, quote unquote non essential. So you'd be picking and choosing specific businesses that sell the same product who can open and who has to close, perhaps never to reopen. And you also drive people into a confined space, more of them. So we haven't had any issues with our non essential retail most of them have closed. The 10 person limit is not a great rule of thumb, long term. You have Bass Pro Shops, and then you've got a little mom and pop store in the corner, they shouldn't be held to the same standard. We've looked at about six metrics all along when it comes to whether or not we'd be ready to reopen. It's really important that folks kind of understand what they are and where we are. Every morning at 7:30, we look at how many Virginians are hospitalized and we get that information working with the Virginia Health and Hospital Association. Out of those hospitalizations, how many people are hospitalized because of COVID? How many folks are in our Intensive Care Unit, our ICU, and how many of them are there because of COVID? How many ventilators do we have? And we worked early on with our hospitals, to get our anesthesiologist to offer up their ventilators and then also to double vent some of our ventilators. So take one ventilator and double that it so you can use it for to to maximize how many ventilators. We look at every day, how many folks are on ventilators and how many of them are on ventilators due to COVID. And that was obviously the concern for a lot of states, early on, was hospital capacity- would the hospitals be overrun, because if the hospital's overrun and you can't go to Inova Alexandria, it doesn't matter if you have COVID or heart attack if you can't get a hospital bed. So those metrics have all been steady now for a couple weeks. And we're really, really comfortable where we are with those metrics and compared to some of our neighbors, we're in a lot better spot with our hospital capacity. We have a UVA, Carilian, we've got plans that if Inova were to have too many hospital beds, folks could go to UVA, could go to Chris- so we're lucky compared to some of our neighbors with hospital capacity. That personal protective equipment, PPE, you hear a lot about won't belabor everyone with what they've heard about the supply chain. It's been a mess with everyone competing against everybody else. But we, we we are starting to see one FEMA the feds produce some not a lot but some PPE to the states, and which states they've given to and why they've given to, I can't really tell you what rhyme or reason. There is a lotta hypothesis about about where they've directed that equipment. We have not gotten a lot from the feds, but we we've gotten a few different contracts and we're starting to get enough masks. Our Department of Corrections has made over 300,000 cloth masks, we've had breweries turn their assembly lines into making hand sanitizer. PPE, we feel good. Testing is is an area where a couple weeks ago, we were doing between three and 4000 tests a day, and statistically, a couple of papers looked into it and they said it's statistically insignificant where Virginia is compared to about 40% of the country. You know, we were ranked low in that in that 49th in that ranking and it got, you know, some of the Republicans weighed in on it. We have now cranked up to 6000 tests a day. So we're well out of that, we're on par with our neighbors and will exceed our neighboring states in testing. We'll be at 7500 by the end of this week, and then 10,000 by the 15th. And it's important, 10,000 is the goal because you can do two things with that number of tests a day. You can you can put your tests in areas that need them the most, your nursing homes, your correctional facilities, we've had issues at are poultry plants, congregate settings where people are, are working, are living closely to one another. But then you could also do more random, random testing in communities. And that gives you a better idea of how prevalent COVID is in our communities. And that testing, it's a percent of positive tests. And that's an important thing. "So, if you test more, of course you're going to have more positive cases. We're never going to be able to reopen." Well, that's not what the CDC recommends you look at. They recommend you look at a percent positive, relative to the number of tests you're administering. And we are starting to see that number, even out. And that's what you have to have a 14 day average. And if you have one blip one day, it's not like you restart the clock, it's a 14 day average, apply some common sense to it. And we had May 8 as the original date to enter Phase One. And Phase One is what the Governor will talk in more detail. It's not open up everything, it's not allow big huge crowds out and about, but it's with being responsible with some of our retail and restaurants. But we moved that from May 8th to May 15th because we knew on May 8th, we weren't gonna have that 14 day average. And we think it's important to articulate to Virginians, we've been very open with what grabs what data, we're looking at what data sets, and all the states are buying into some combination of those data sets. So they have an idea of when they think those 14 day averages will hit and and we we articulate that with our Executive Orders. And we say, "By this date, we think we'll be able to enter Phase One," and, and folks are critical of the May 8 pushing back a week and they say, "Oh, you told us it would be May 8th," and said, "Look, this isn't set in stone, we have to hit these metrics." And the Governor has been very clear to articulate that what we're going to talk about with Phase One is a floor for the Commonwealth. So everyone has to meet, no matter if you're an Abingdon or Alexandria, these bare minimum. So we'll talk about PPE, and cleaning, and capacity and, and that sort of thing and venues. But if there are areas that want to go further, or if there are areas that want to delay entering Phase One, we will work with them to do that. And you all are up in Northern Virginia, we're talking to the Northern Virginia Commission on Friday, we're talking to three of the larger counties on Friday, Prince William, Loudon, and Fairfax, and we're talking with VACO and VML, the Association of Counties the Municipal League on Friday, and if as a collection of jurisdictions in Northern Virginia, if they say, "Hey, we like Phase One, but we don't want to enter on the 15th. We'd rather do the 22nd. We'd rather kind of wait a little bit and see what D.C. does, they're close proximity." We not only are open to that, we're encouraging them to do that, and facilitating those conversations over the next few days. But, but five of the sets of six metrics we've looked at, we are hitting, and we've hit for a couple weeks. And it's that last metric, the 14 day average, that we that we still need to hit and that's why we pushed it back to the 15th.

Michael Pope
There's been a lot of talk about a potential Special Session to deal with revenue reforecast. And of course, if lawmakers come back to Richmond, that opens the door for all kinds of things, and people are talking about bills, for example, that would allow the state to share more data on Congregate Care Facilities like releasing the actual number of cases at specific nursing homes. Legislation that would expand availability of food stamps, changing the sort of Federal Poverty requirement. There's a long list of stuff. Now, what do you think the, assuming there is a Special Session, what is it going to look like, and what kind of issues are people going to talk about?

Clark Mercer
Yeah, so there's definitely going to be a Special Session at some point, on the budget. The whole strategy that we had with the budget was, anyone that could tell you what our economic forecast is going to look like over the next two years right now, is not being honest with you. And anyone that could have told you that- the last day of Session, a handful of Legislators said, "Hey, we should re forecast and cut the budget now and we should take care of this now." No, there is not an economist or person works in tax that could have told you, "Oh, yeah, okay, let's, let's tell it let's articulate to you what the revenues will look like for the next two years." So what we did is said, "Hey, we're going to unallot the new spending in the budget and what unallot means, it says that there's a new program, we hit the pause button on it, and you can't, agency x spend that money until the General Assembly comes back, and gives you permission to do that. And we did that for a couple of reasons. One, there are a number of Legislators that, "Oh, we're gonna let the Governor decide all the cuts and all the priorities." So no, we can't move forward with any of those priorities until the General Assembly comes back and authorizes that spending. And the Governor has done a number of things in the budget to make it very clear that he wants to work with the General Assembly. He left $200 million unallotted and in the budget that he introduced to accommodate the Legislators priority. And then we had a re forecast, beginning of Session that resulted in another, I think it's $270 million, that he did not, he did not assign any particular programs. He left them hundreds of millions of dollars to take care of things like minimum wage, and, and and teacher raises and state employee raises. And here's a third time where he said, "We're going to put a pause button on all of this, wait for you to come back, and we'll work on this together." And that also does two other things. It allows us to re forecast at a time when we have a better sense of what the economy is actually going to be, and if you if your worldview was, "Government needs to be fundamentally smaller," and you want to slash the size of government, you wanted to re forecast four weeks ago. That was the apex of when you would want to see in a re forecast. I don't know what the budget picture will look like in two or three months, but I bet you it's gonna look a lot better than it did four or five weeks ago. I don't think it's going to look as good or as robust as it did four or five weeks ago, but we have a chance at it looking better. It also allows us to take a real deep dive on what our state budget looks like. Every two years, we fight around the edges, we fight around what the new projections look like. Okay, so revenue is going to grow, and it's going to result in $1.5 billion in new spending. That might be available. And that's what we argue, we argue about that 1.5 billion. There's $26 billion a year sitting in the base budget that we don't really touch. And we just say, "Well, that's the base budget. You just don't touch it." And, and I think it's fair to say, "Are there priorities that the General Assembly invested in this past Session, teacher raises, that outweigh some of the programs and spending that exists in the base budget. And in order to take a really thorough deep dive, not only on your budget, but your tax policy, it takes more than a couple weeks to do that. So I think the late summer, we're going to we're going to have a re forecast and the General Assembly will be back. I think they should take a look at the code section about what Department of Health can and can't release. The Department of Health doesn't make these things up on their own. I mean, they they have to follow the law. And they have a lawyer that-

Michael Pope
I talked to Senator Scott Surovell. He thinks the state is misreading that law.

Clark Mercer
And that's fine, they should change it. We have a lawyer that's the Attorney General, and the Attorney General assigns counsel to every one of our agencies. And we don't come out with a legal opinion as an agency, without working with our lawyers. So I mean, that's, you know, and Mark Herring doesn't take action on his own, he has to have a client which is, the Executive Branch, which was, which is an agency. So, you know, there was a settlement with ACLU on witness requirements for petition signatures. The client was the State Board of Elections. So General Herring's office worked with us, that that was, we were fully supportive of that agreement. So I think it would be great. And Senator Surovell is, he's fantastic. He knows the issues. And he could be right. I don't know if he's right or wrong. But I think they should clarify the state code. I think they should- there's been some talk about elections, and how can we make elections easier to participate in and what is voting by mail look like, and what are some of the petition requirements? I think that should all be on the table. And we're very, very open to it. So it's not it's not like the Department of Health is making these things up. They look to their lawyers for guidance, and they don't want to break the law. So I mean, that's, you know-

Michael Pope
That sounds like a long, that's a long list for a Special Session. How long would that Special Session be?

Clark Mercer
Well, I don't I don't know. I mean, you know, the last...with the Republicans, they stayed in Special Session for years at a time, so that the the Governor couldn't make any judge appointments. I mean, they stayed in a perpetual- I think at one point, we were in three or four concurrent Special Sessions that never ended. And you can go into Special Session for a specific and discrete set of issues. So we will have a budget Special Session and then I think they should you know, whether it's a COVID or a voting however they- We'll work with leadership on that, we'll work with the members, but I think those are all fair things to to put on the table to discuss.

Michael Pope
We're running toward the end of our time, but I want to go off topic, briefly, to talk to President Mercer. So this guy's already been elected President of the Ashland Theatre Foundation. Clark Mercer, what is the Ashland Theatre Foundation and explain your involvement with this group?

Clark Mercer
Well, I moved to Ashland, eight or nine years ago, there's this beautiful art deco theater that sat vacant in town, and everyone drives by the marquee every day, and it got- the theater, I asked the town at one point I said, "Why don't you change the marquee and say 'Happy Fourth of July' or 'Welcome back students' or 'Go vote, it's Election Day.'" So we don't have the staff to do it. And I said, "Well, I'll change the marquee for you." And they said, "Well, you might fall off the ladder or you might say something nasty about the town," So I developed an MOU with the town that idemnified them if I fell off the ladder, and I ran all my marquee messages by them, and I changed the marquee every week, up on this ladder, with the neon go in and, and folks would honk their horn and I did that for about four or five months, got to know more folks in town doing that than anything else. And then I said, "Why don't you change the big movie poster? You have beautiful subway posters that are have plywood in them?" They said, "Well, we don't have the money." And so, "I'll inkind will amend the MOU and I'll inkine the poster." So we got "The Attack of the 50 Foot Woman" or "It's a Wonderful Life" and and then I said "Well, why don't you guys start showing movies in the theater and, you know, build up a Facebook page, see what works, see what doesn't work while you're figuring out what you want to do with this theater?" They said, "No, no, no, there's way too much work that needs to be done. You can never get an operating permit from the county." So I said, "lf I inkind the work, and pull a team together, and I get the permit, will you let me run the theater in pop up mode?" And they kind of called my bluff. They said, "Sure you get the permit and have at it." Well I lined up a General Contractor that does historic buildings and an HVAC owner, that owns- James Herreros, has 300 employees and we threw ourselves at the theater while I was working for that Lieutenant Governor Northam on the weekends, and at night, and we got an operating license and we started running this theater and it was like, "Hey, what do you want to see?" "I like The Goonies." "What do you want to see?" "Rocky Horror Picture Show," and you know, it was kind of fun. We learned how to license the film's, showed it on an old projector, and I thought this would I thought this would last like two months. 144 events, two years later, I mean, I got a backpack blower on after shows, and blowing popcorn and Skittles down to the base, and cleaning up the trash, and we- during that time we- there was a nonprofit in town, The Ashland Theatre Foundation. They had shown old classic movies out of the old firehouse and they said, "Hey, you're welcome to run for president of our board if you want and use the 501 C3 and and try to make a pitch to the town to restore the theater", which we did and, and we had a we had hundreds of thousands of dollars in kinded. We've got ADA compliance, we've got a wheelchair lift that was donated. We added a balcony, we have you know, we can show 4k, we can show the first run movies now. We partner with a live music producer. So we we literally have a theater up and running. We've got three full time staff and the one many part time staffers and we you know, the one screen theaters are really, really difficult. I've learned more about movie theaters and the business. You have to take out a personal guarantee with every film distributor, so Paramount, Disney, that if you kind of cheat, let people in for free, they can come after you personally. I was like, I the bit the movie industry, I do not think has changed much at all since it started up. And that's why you see a lot of these theaters going out of business. And one thing I didn't realize, when you go to the movies, about 70 to 80% of your ticket sale goes directly to the distributor. So people say, "Well, it's so much money to buy popcorn and soda at the theater," that's what actually pays, the utilities, the lease and all of the staff at a movie theater and so it's exceedingly difficult in the age of home studios and 70 inch big screens and the AMC is down a lot so we've done- Michael you'll get a kick out of this, we had the old "Remember the Titans" team come up, all the folks that are still alive from the movie, we showed the movie and then talked about it. We we showed "Big Stone Gap" and had Adriana Trigiani talk about it. We've had a we've had a series of topical films on race and relations. We've had nonprofits events, we partner with Randolph Macon and show "The Hunting Ground" which is a film on campus sexual assault and had a discussion about that. And we've had companies like Capital One rent the theater, and obviously with COVID, it's really hit home because my staff is still employed, we don't want to let them go, they've got health benefits, we've applied for a PPP loan, we are originally rejected in the first round. But but you know that I had no inside track on getting one of those loans. We've gotten one now, we're going to keep folks employed long enough for that loan to turn into a grant. But you know, I don't know when people are going to feel comfortable going back to a theater and sitting with a couple hundred people to watch a movie. Now people make the comparison to 9/11 just because the airlines were back up and running. It didn't mean people were comfortable buying a flight and going somewhere. So we're thinking we're gonna have a virtual event. We're talking about having a book club for the kids in the schools. You know, a couple of summers ago we did that. You read "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory," then you watched it, you had a talkback series. We did one on "The Heat of the Night," and had a discussion on race relations in Hanover County. So we're going to pitch that and and some of the theaters are doing where you can, you can download a movie at home, and a percent of that download goes to the theater. We did "Fantastic Fungi," which is this beautiful film on mushrooms. And it's kind of like crazy, but it's really, really beautifully done. Where we made a little bit of money, we're renting the marquee out. And people are paying for some graduation messages because they don't have in person graduation. But I see it kind of every day and you know, Phase One are not going to include movie theaters. And I don't know when movie theaters will be included in the reopening and it's a- we really struggle as a board, about how we're gonna, you know, we'll space everyone out every other row, every fifth seat, but again, that's one of those interesting things. There's some theaters that hold- The bird in Richmond holds 800 people, we hold 300. There's other theaters that hold 20 people. So how do you reopen those in a responsible fashion where each theater is doing it in a way that suits them? But the Ashland Theater man, look it up. It's online. It's a it's a neat space. It's Art Deco, and it's, it was restored beautifully.

Thomas Bowman
That's really awesome that you're doing that, Clark.

Michael Pope
One last question and then I'll let Thomas wrap it up. So now that you're in the motion picture business, give us a recommendation for a movie. Everyone's sitting in their living rooms all day every day, just streaming stuff on Netflix. What's a movie that we've never heard of that we need to start watching?

Clark Mercer
Oh, you've never heard of, I'm not- I understand how to businesses is. I'm not necessarily like the most- Have you seen "Bottle Rocket"? So Luke and Owen Wilson that was their the first movie they did together when they were at the University of Texas and they have, you know, Darlene Unlimited and Royal Tenenbaums and that whole cadre of movies, but some of that cast appears in "Bottle Rocket," and it's one of their artsy kind of indie movies that they first started with. Pretty, pretty funny movie. So if you haven't seen and if you haven't watched it's not a movie but "Ozark" I just finished season three is pretty good.

Thomas Bowman
Netflix is keeping us all sane for sure.

Clark Mercer
With an eight year old and a six year old, I can assure you, I don't get much me time to watch anything.

Thomas Bowman
You know, you were talking about movie theaters surprisingly, drive in theaters are actually having a resurgence right now, and it makes a lot of sense.

Clark Mercer
It's it's gonna be you know, there was a we were talking with some folks that a week about what are some unexpected consequences of COVID. And, you know, one of them is, you know, will small town America have a resurgence, where people want to live in in areas that are more spatially dispersed? We kind of had for the last several years more folks moving into cities. Will that will there be a will that be an effect? You know, you can look up restaurants online and see what the Health Department rated them and hey, that restaurant got an F because there's rats, I'm not going there. Well, will the social distancing and facemasks and all that will that be incorporated into how we evaluate businesses moving forward? Teleworking? I think we've all learned how to telework. I hear a lot of people saying, "Well, we've we've learned-" to we just had a was it Nationwide Insurance has sent us a message that they're gonna permanently moved to shut down some of their bricks and mortar offices and moved from for their, their, their their folks to telework. So, yeah, drive ins, there's one at Goochland. And they're chomping at the bit to be able to rock and roll and I hope the drive ins I think they're pretty cool. So I hope that they do come back.

Thomas Bowman
That'd be neat. Yeah. Let's go ahead and wrap it up. We've gone way over our time. Thank you so much for being with us to the end. Thank you for listening to Transition Virginia. Find us on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. We are on Twitter @TransitionVA and you can find us on the web at www.transitionvirginia.com.