DELEGATE EMILY BREWER: IPAS, FOSTERCARE, & THE GOP MINORITY
Michael Pope
Welcome to transition Virginia. I'm Michael Pope, a journalist with Virginia Public Radio. I'm here with my co host, democratic strategist Thomas Bowman. And we're here today to document Virginia's transition of power from Republican to democratic control.
Thomas Bowman
Hi, Michael. We have a great show today. Republican delegate Emily Brewer is with us. Hi, delegate Brewer.
Emily Brewer
Thanks for having me, guys. Thanks for coming. Thank you.
Thomas Bowman
So delegate Brewer. Can you tell us about yourself, your corner of Virginia and about some of your constituents basic priorities just to get us started?
Emily Brewer
Absolutely. So I represent the more rural part of Virginia. So Have the area in between hundreds of Richmond really so of the rural parts of Suffolk Isle of Wight county Surry county and Prince George County. So I have a area's pretty expansive. You know, it's well over 1000 square miles probably in the ballpark of say over 1500 square miles. A lot of area about two hours across, you know, but we have very diverse interest. You know, I was on my district that's in the Richmond Metro that starts about 17 miles from here. And the other side of my district is kind of pseudo Hampton Roads and in the middle of it is Southside Virginia. So, probably one of our biggest issues we have in rural areas, especially right now that we've made a priority is broadband, rural broadband
Thomas Bowman
And you're on the rural broadband commission.
Emily Brewer
I'm on the broadband Advisory Council, yes.
Michael Pope
Any movement on that this year in terms of expanding broadband into rural areas?
Emily Brewer
Absolutely. So actually in last year's budget, they put $19 million aside in grant funding for localities to apply for and so in that first round of funding, one of my localities Sorry, just got a $2.25 million grant to do that last mile of broadband deployment, which is a huge step in the right direction. I think in rural areas, oftentimes people thought that broadband kind of felt like the city was kind of the country. And we moved past that the businesses realized it's part of their everyday life. They realize it's not normal for kids to go drive to the library parking lot to do their homework. And so, you know, we're moving in the right direction to be able to do that. So we're in a good spot.
Thomas Bowman
Good.
Michael Pope
I want to ask you about the transition of power here. This is the theme of our podcast. Explain what that's like. So someone from Mars, it's not hasn't seen any of this, how would you explain that different?
Emily Brewer
So for me, and then I got elected, I got elected in 2017. So my first term isn't one term in the majority, and this will be my first term in the minority. But you know, I came in the night that the house went to 51-49. And so I always operate a little bit differently. And so one of the things that I do is, especially with the bills that I put forth and the things I'm working on, I don't think about that building in terms of Republican and Democrat every single time even when we are in the majority I print the list of every person a subcommittee that I've got to go see, and go talk to them and educate them on my bill. You know, you can't assume because you're in the majority or the minority that, you know, your bills locked up. Because when we were in the majority, we killed republican bills as well as democrat bills, you know, bad policies, bad policy. And so I think that I operate the same in the minority that I did in the majority. But I think that the people that have been here, you know, more than a decade or so, it's probably more of an adjustment for those folks than it would be for somebody like me.
Michael Pope
Oh, really explain that?
Emily Brewer
Well, I you know, I've never been a subcommittee chair, or a Chairperson of a committee. And so, you know, going from a position like that to being a regular member, again, on a committee I'm sure is a big change, but one I've never been able to experience.
Thomas Bowman
I got to spend a little bit of time as a staffer in the minority, but I've never gotten to experience what it's like in the majority. So my impression, at least from the outside looking in, the majority seemed to usually have a game plan. He had an idea of what was going to happen to bills. Can you provide any insight as to what the new majority is dealing with right now at this point in time?
Emily Brewer
So here's what I would say is this is that when republicans are in the majority, one of the hardest things that someone ever does is probably kill someone's bill that they're a friend with. Right. And so I would say that the Democratic majority is probably going through that right now. I was appointed to appropriations this year. And so I saw a lot of Thank you, I saw a lot of people that were reporting and referring bills to appropriations. And so what that's a function of really is some people just weren't willing at that point to say no to their friends yet. Or, you know, so they kind of pass the buck a little bit or they're further to another committee. And so, you know, I think probably the struggles of being the majority, especially this year, there was a ton of budget limits more than they'd ever seen ever in the history of the house. So when you have that situation, you got to say no to somebody, right? I mean, we don't pray. Money in Richmond. And so that's the hard part. Probably I would say it'd be the majority, with those people making those decisions is that not everybody is going to get what they want and learning to deal with that new normal is going to be a learning curve for the majority.
Michael Pope
Let's go off topic. Let's go off topic just for a second here. So you own and operate a craft as a craft beer and wine store.
Emily Brewer
Yeah, I have a craft beer and wine store in downtown Suffolk
Michael Pope
What's the name of the store?
Emily Brewer
Uncorked. Yes. Yeah. How long has it been open? I've had it for three and a half years actually. Yeah, it's fun. I kind of joke that being elected. That's that's a stretch. apart, right? So I could do it on a really cool business where you know, it's kind of laid back and unique, so I enjoy it.
Michael Pope
The coolest of all cold businesses. Okay, so let's talk IPAs. I like my IPA hoppy. What's the best IPA for me?
Emily Brewer
Okay, but like, Where do you want to be on IBUs? Like, how nerdy are we getting to this conversation? Because we can talk about this.
Thomas Bowman
Mess him up.
Michael Pope
Go for it
Unknown Speaker
Like, how better Do you like it?
Michael Pope
Uh, you know, I like it real earthy and kind of, you know, hoppy?
Emily Brewer
Like super hoppy. Do you like hazy? hazy is good? Yeah.
Michael Pope
Okay. And also, let's stay inside Virginia, too.
Emily Brewer
We can do that. Okay, I'm done with that. I like some crazy beer. I would say some of the best breweries right now doing great craft beer, Virginia, that are producing some awesome hops. I would say Precarious beer project and Williamsburg is doing a really good job right now. I just actually recently had their Kung Fu Kittens IP. That's amazing.
Michael Pope
Kung Fu Kitten?
Emily Brewer
Yeah, it's delicious stuff.
Thomas Bowman
Michael’s taking notes.
Emily Brewer
Right. I see the silence. guys that's note taking. And then I would also say that we Gosh, we have some really good craft beer in Virginia. I can't lie. But you know traditions is been rolling out some really quality beers recently. They just did a limited release triple IPA, which was their veterans brew. That was incredible too.
Thomas Bowman
Okay, so I like wheat, beer, sour beers, that kind of labor. So what should I be drinking?
Emily Brewer
Okay, so, if we're gonna stick with Virginia for one oozlefench lady in white, hefeweizen. Amazing. And then if you're gonna go sours, Virginia is trying to step up their sour game, but right now anything from collective arts is pretty incredible. And they're out of Canada.
Thomas Bowman
Collective Arts. Lady and wife advisor. Yeah, I'm gonna have to try that.
Michael Pope
Yeah. Okay. One thing that was noteworthy about the Terry McAuliffe administration is how many beer industry people he brought to Virginia, especially brewers that were putting their second location and I'm thinking about stone for Israel. I think it was a number of those. So what did you make of Terry McAuliffe sort of playing economic opportunity with all these beer companies?
Emily Brewer
So I think it's great, actually. So ironically, my first year here with my friend Mike Mullen, on the other side of the aisle, we co founded the Virginia wine caucus, because Terry McAuliffe had taken this huge opportunity on to really talk about, you know, growing the beer industry in Virginia, your event last year. Yeah, it's a time and we have like, 67 legislators come from the house of Senate last year. But the crazy thing is, is that they didn't really talk about wine, right? So I'm like, okay, I can take this on. Do you know how many wineries we have in Virginia right now a ton.
Michael Pope
I would say 250.
Emily Brewer
We're pushing like 395-ish.
Thomas Bowman
That's exactly what I was gonna say. Yeah. 395
Emily Brewer
Yeah, exactly. And and because a lot of people don't know that. So kind of our goal is because Tara calls to God and beer so like, Mel and I are going to take on wine. I thought that was the thing.
Thomas Bowman
We're going for a classic Virginia wine. What are we drinking?
Emily Brewer
So I really like early mountain red. They're really good. And then almost any Virginia winery does some incredible vignette. But you know, it's really important that we support agritourism. It's a huge part of the agricultural economy in Virginia. And so, for me, especially, you know, I'm a big advocate for agriculture. So I think supporting these industries in tourism is really important for our Commonwealth.
Michael Pope
So, one thing about your operating style that might be a little bit different than other lawmakers you've hit on this before is that you like to take a sort of a non-partisan approach to things and I think looking at the list of your bills, you think you see things like emergency evacuation, foster care, things that people don't associate necessarily with partisan politics? I would imagine there's not much of a partisan political debate about emergency evacuation maybe or is there? I don't know.
Emily Brewer
There were some tweaks we made to the bill that the administration wasn't quite sure on. They were just the bill. So one of my bills actually was the original form my bill, I was trying to add emergency evacuation routes to the criteria for smart scale. we edited that back so that way, the administration, or can you back up, explain smart scale. So smart skills or road rating system that we use to assign out all of our funding in Virginia, or the majority of our funding in Virginia for major road projects? So there's all these different criteria that are involved, everything from environment, to quality, to safety, to all traffic, congestion, all these issues. And so I wanted to add emergency evacuation routes as part of that criteria. Because I think that's noteworthy, you know, everyone talks about Christmas tree bills, and they don't want to hang more things on something. But, you know, for a million a half Virginians, getting out of Hampton Roads, it's kind of important.
Michael Pope
And so where is this now? What happened to it?
Emily Brewer
So, I worked with the Transportation Committee, we brought it back. We took it by for the week. We worked it out a couple weeks ago. And so what we're going to do now is every time a road transportation project is assessed, the people in that decision making process are going to be made aware that the road that this is being considered for funding is part of an emergency evacuation route. Because I think that's important that they're aware of that so now, when they're going through that criteria and that evaluation, they're going to know so that way they can consider that in their decision making great so it's on the way to the Senate, in short.
Thomas Bowman
Great! Okay, off off to the Senate. Getting it through the house is of course no easy challenge. So now it's off to the Senate. The Senate is its own beast, right?
Emily Brewer
So you know, there I don't know if you guys ever heard this, but a lot of people say that in the house. The people on the other side of the aisle are your opposition. The people the under the building are actually your enemy. I've had good luck in the senate though not everyone. Gamble's as much in the senate wins. But you know, I'm feeling positive about it.
Thomas Bowman
Good. We'll be watching how the bill goes and good luck to you.
Emily Brewer
Thank you.
Michael Pope
Let's engage in some wild speculation. So I'm sure you've been following the primary for governor on the Democratic side. Lots of candidates. Thomas, who are the candidates remind us again here, but McAuliffe is potentially a candidate...
Thomas Bowman
A lot of speculatin--a lot of wildly-speculative candidates. So, Carroll Foy has been documented by the Washington Post
Michael Pope
Somebody talked about Adam Ebbin potentially
Thomas Bowman
Adam Ebbin, Sen. McClellan...
Emily Brewer
Levar Stoney?
Thomas Bowman
...Levar Stoney, Terry McAuliffe, and of course, the one guy who is at this point in time still running as Attorney General Mark herring and Justin Fairfax,
Emily Brewer
Oh, he's still running?
Thomas Bowman
That's right.
Michael Pope
Anyway, there's a lots of names out there. No, I mean, it's this is something that's it's not formalized yet. Correct, because, well, very few people have formally announced their candidacy. What do you What's your wild speculation? If you had to sort of place a bet on it? Let's say we're betting $1.
Emily Brewer
I don't think that it's a wild speculation, but if Terry McAuliffe gets in this race, I think he's gonna run away with it. I mean, you know, he had an effervescence about him, that people really, really love across Virginia. So I think that, that that will be my wild speculation that it will be terrible, call us. And if not, I think that it will be actually going to be a dogfight between Terry McAuliffe and Jennifer McClellan.
Michael Pope
Why don't you say the word dogfight?
Emily Brewer
just throwing it out there?
Michael Pope
Yeah. I mean, I didn't... what I meant by that is...
Emily Brewer
I mean, I think I think so. Terry is from the northern part of Virginia. Jennifer McClellan is from Richmond. And so when you have two candidates from different parts of the state, you know, there's there's a lot of ground to split there. And so when you have two people from the same area, you know, you're going after the same amount of folks and I think that them to being from different parts of the state that's significant.
Thomas Bowman
That wild speculation your point about the geographic differences...
Emily Brewer
What do you guys think, though?
Thomas Bowman
Oh, I agree with you. Actually, I think if Terry runs, if he runs, he hasn't, he still has a machine and places Susan sweater and all of those people over at DPVA were his appointees. People like Terry. In 2013, there are a lot of democratic or not so much primary voters because there wasn't a primary in '13, but a lot of Democrats who expected a primary hate to say they pulled the lever while holding their nose for Terry and I think they were very pleasantly surprised with the way his administration turned out. I would think he's well positioned to come back and run but if it if he doesn't run to your point about Northern Virginia, I actually think Foy is going to be somebody to watch.
Emily Brewer
Is that your wild speculation?
Thomas Bowman
That is my wild speculation. The reason I think for is somebody to watch boys up in Prince William County, which is a very different type of Northern Virginia and then Fairfax, Arlington, Alexandria, right. So if you're delegate Foy and you're running for governor, you need to pull like 5050 in Hampton Roads, which is doable for someone like delegate for same in Richmond, which we'll see, especially if McClellan is running for governor and then in Northern Virginia, probably the best way to gin up some support would be making a class war, right Prince William County is a very different economic class than rich white, Arlington, Fairfax loudoun if you can peel off one-in-four suburban voters that way that that's her path to victory. I'm not sure how doable it is if Terry McAuliffe in the race, you know what I mean?
Emily Brewer
Right.
Michael Pope
So what about you, Michael? The thing that I'm curious about is if McClellan and Carroll Foy both run against McAuliffe do they kind of split the anti McAuliffe vote so there's like the pro makalah vote of course, all goes for McAuliffe. But then What if McClellan and Caroll Foy are both in a race and sort of split the opposition and that helps McAuliffe? Of course. I mean, that's sort of like a pre deeds wins the primary kind of scenario.
Emily Brewer
You know, I think I think this is intense. But first, you know, you've got to ask the big question, how many people are going to be the primary before we get that far in the weeds? And that's the big question.
Thomas Bowman
And it's a plurality takes all and Virginia, right. So conceivably, if you're someone like Terry McAuliffe, and you're coming in with, let's just say a 30% of the vote, just off the bat no matter what he does, if you're in a five, six way primary, you can win with 30% of the votes.
Michael Pope
Unless we get to rank choice voting. I mean, I know that you guys are talking about ranked choice voting. Is that going to happen this election cycle?
Emily Brewer
I don't know.
Thomas Bowman
Let's move on and talk about just a couple last issues I want to get to while you're here education funding, then I also want to talk about one of your votes to decriminalize cannabis, because that is something definitely in the podcast listener demographic. So let's do five minutes and we'll wrap it up. Okay. Tell us about, you've been you've made education funding a priority for you, right?
Emily Brewer
Absolutely. That in foster care, so I'll talk about a couple of those parties real quick. So, you know, the first lady is doing an incredible job, especially with her preschool initiative, which, you know, I was glad to support on the education sub in appropriations, I think that what she's learned is very well thought out. So making sure especially that we're working with the youngest and the least, to make sure that they have the best shot at it, you know, a full robust education. And so she's doing and you know, has done incredible work in that field. And she's an educator, so her heart's in it. And so I was glad to support her VPI initiative.
One of the things I worked on my first year, and I'm still working on Senator Mason, I actually are the co-chairs of the foster care caucus in Virginia, and Virginia in they'll be doing a new ranking here shortly. But two years ago, we were 49 to 50 in the country, for foster care policies, placements and the like reunification, all these different metrics. I mean, we were just awful. And so what our goal was, and I was adopted, so like, that's something I'm passionate about making sure kids have, you know, a kid in foster care should have every single opportunity every other kid has, you know what I mean? They should go to school, they should be able to learn without struggle, and they should be able to, you know, live in normal, everyday life. And it's hard for kids in foster care, they're already, you know, ripped out of, you know, their core situation either dealing with a lot of different situations. So what our goals was when we started foster care caucus was to work on setting policies for though totally revamped that system. So two years ago, we were fortunate that 50 and in the past two and a half years, we have done the most meaningful overhaul foster care and adoption policies since 1982. And I wasn't born then.
Thomas Bowman
Congratulations, that's a big deal.
Emily Brewer
Yeah, so Senator Mason is been incredible to work with. He's really got a heart for this, and we're not stopping. So you know, we've worked on close relative adoption to make sure we expand that definition of family. Okay. You know, the code never thought years ago that we would have grandparents or great grandparents, raising children, right. Sure. Kind of offering that kinship care is what that the new term for that is. So I passed the kinship guardianship Assistance Act Two years ago, to really work on making sure that we can put children there next of kin said set of some of them maybe halfway across Virginia to open foster care placement and upsetting, you know, the roots of their life. So it's one of the many things I worked on, you know, it's it's something I'm going to continue to work on whether it's a hot button issue or not, you know, it's important to Virginia.
Thomas Bowman
That's excellent work. I hope you're able to continue that effort in the future.
Lastly, so last week, we spoke briefly about the decriminalization bill, which just in the past few days since we published has now passed, right, so can you talk to us about why you joined a handful of other Republican legislators and making this a priority?
Emily Brewer
Are you shocked?
Thomas Bowman
Not at all I think it's the right thing to do.
Emily Brewer
So I think there's a couple of reasons for this. There. There are some real technical reasons. And then there are probably a couple other different reasons I'll talk about in a second. But so when we were in the majority, I was actually given the appointment on the Forensic Science Board while back and if you knew the backlogs, the state lab It's it's absolutely incredible. And you know, one of the big issues, obviously, we know is also the opioid crisis. So I want to talk about how marijuana affects that in the court system in a testing situation. And why, you know, I think that just from a strategic standpoint, it's really important, actually. So the opioid crisis is so incredible because people are making these drugs, right. So what people don't realize is when something gets an offer testing, especially if it's going before court of law, what has to happen is there's a scientist, you know, over the state lab, a couple blocks up, they have to go through and build the exact format of what that drug is and map it out and provide that to the court. Well, the problem is almost every single opioid is mechanically different. There's, there's different pieces of everything. And so, when someone has to go and testify before court of law, they have to break that completely down, talk about what it is. And, you know, there's a backlog for major issues, and I think that marijuana was one of them. That's a backlog there. So I think that, especially for A state law perspective, I think is important that they get to the meat of their work. And, you know, I think it's a great criminal justice reform initiative, we need to keep criminals or committing crimes in jail. And I just, I think that it's time that that we find people for you know, just like the bill says we find people for decriminalization instead of locking them up.
Michael Pope
One final thing before we release you from our studio to let you go off and do all those lawmakers...
Emily Brewer
Did you lock the door or something?
Michael Pope
This is something we say we do here called plug it where you can plug something you can give marketing to something, let people know about an organization or bill or something that's on the horizon. So go ahead and plug it.
Emily Brewer
Alright, I got two because I thought about and I said I got to do too. So Voices for Virginia's Children that I talked about a little bit ago. They're a great organization that's really fostering policies to advance education initiatives for children and Virginia foster care initiatives and the like. So building a great family.
Michael Pope
Why is it important for you to plug this particular organization?
Emily Brewer
I've been working very closely with them over the past couple years and legislation for foster and adoption. And they've been with me every step of the way, and they care about Virginia's kids. So they're important to me. And then the other one is actually Virginia's Kids Belong. Former Secretary of the Commonwealth Janet Kelly, she worked in the McDonald administration, she started working with Virginia's Kids Belong in Virginia. And what their goal is, is to work with all spheres of the community, whether it be private public, churches, businesses, whatever, so they can find a way to kind of plug in to this industry, whether it be putting together foster care kits for kids going into foster care, working with churches, or civic groups to find more people that are willing to be foster parents, working on people to ease the tumultuous ness of the adoption process is so they're trying to work with public, private business and government entities to be able to make sure that they're nibbling at all edges of the cookie to make sure that we do a better job with adoption in foster care.
Thomas Bowman
Thank you so much today Delegate Brewer. Thanks for listening to Transition Virginia. If you want to add your two cents send us an email at Transition VA podcast@gmail.com and we might feature it on the show. You can find the podcast on iTunes, Google podcasts, Spotify and wherever you get your podcast. If you like the show, please leave us a rating and share it with your friends. We are on Twitter at Transition VA. I'm Thomas Bowman. Michael Pope is our co host. Our audio engineer is Nate Peterson. Thank you.
