DEL. IBRAHEEM SAMIRAH: SLOWING SUBURBAN SPRAWL

Michael Pope
Welcome to transition Virginia the podcast that examines the transition of power in Virginia politics from Republican to Democrat. My name is Michael Pope and I'm here with our co host, Thomas Bowman. How you doing Thomas?

Thomas Bowman
I'm doing great Michael, how are you doing?

Michael Pope
I'm ready to conquer the evil empire or what was it called the first order. I'm forgetting now all the villains here that are in Star Wars uniform who he conquering this week.

Thomas Bowman
Well, we are out out in Herndon near the Udvar Hazy Air and Space Museum with Ibraheem Samira. How are you doing, Delegate?

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
Excellent. It's a great sunny day today. And we're still dealing with COVID-19 Coronavirus. That's right.

Thomas Bowman
Well, you are a medical provider. Yes. Right. So maybe you can give us a quick expert recap, we won't spend any time on it other than a couple sentences on COVID-19.

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
It's pandemic, meaning that we have no control over how it's going to be spreading. Because symptomatically you can't see it on people that are not sick as a result of it. But we do know that folks that are older are at higher risk of contracting and becoming sick as a result of it and we want to make sure that we're cleaning our hands, we're staying away from folks up to six feet. Were making sure not to shake hands and we're doing our best to realize that when we're little Sick to stay away from others and not go to work, while simultaneously thinking about how we need to systematically look at how our healthcare system is not ensuring every single individual in our population to empower them to go to the hospital and take care of themselves, especially those people that are between the ages of 45 and 65. The insurance gap, hopefully we'll be able to work on that as well, so that our economy doesn't tank as much as it is right now. And eventually we can come back to a stable economy.

Michael Pope
Now you are a medical doctor, right? What's the name of your practice and tell us a little about your dental practice?

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
Sure. I am a dentist. I work in Medicaid communities, elderly communities, specifically Senior Living communities where I mostly take people's teeth out when they are not viable anymore for our our senior citizens and do some cleanings and put in dentures for them so that they can chew and eat and live a happy longer life without any complications, digestive But I also work in a private practice as well, where I see citizens that are still using their teeth and still need to fix them. And so we do traditional crowns and bridges and implants, and you name it, the whole gambit.

Thomas Bowman
Excellent. So welcome back from the legislative session. This is a first episode we are recording post session. So how have you been climatized?

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
Well, it was it was the first session of being in the majority. I certainly know a little bit about what it's like to be in the minority, but not as much as the rest of my colleagues. And I think we came out...

Michael Pope
Describe that a little bit. So you had a pretty brief period of time in the minority, right?

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
It's seven days actually. I got elected on February 19. Yeah, it was a special election. And we jumped right into the next day. I got sworn in on February 20.

Michael Pope
So that was a seat that was vacated by former Delegate Jennifer Boyko who moved over to the Senate. And it seemed like that election dragged on for the entire session why I mean, that almost seems like a flaw in the process. Right?

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
Generally speaking, we had to have the special election because state senator then Jennifer wexton, had vacated her seat only after she got elected

Michael Pope
After Mark herring got elected, so that seat actually has lots of people cycling through it. So that led Of course to your election, you spent seven days in the minority, and the offseason. And then you actually made a big name for yourself during the anniversary, the 400th anniversary event of the House of Delegates which used to be the House of Burgesses. Tell us a little bit about what happened that day.

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
I think a lot of people were thinking how to best respond to at the time a president who is not welcoming all Americans from all walks of life, how to welcome how to treat this individual in the Commonwealth, especially on the anniversary of our democracy 400th anniversary a monumental moment and how we should be treating that specific moment and a lot of people wanted to protest it in their own ways. The legislative, Virginia Legislative Black Caucus decided to not attend. A lot of other colleagues outside of the Black Caucus also did not attend. Some people want us to attempt to claim that it's their space, that it's their legislator, and that they should be proud of it. Even if somebody who doesn't fully see things the way they see it as their I decided to also move in that direction, but also to use my presence use my first amendment rights to my advantage to speak about the issues at hand that the President has been pushing. At the time, it seemed like the President was going to be pushing a presidential campaign for re election that was based off of marginalizing people of color. And that might not be exactly what everybody thinks in the Commonwealth, but that's how it seemed at the time.

Michael Pope
So what did you do about this?

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
So I pulled up Some signs right as the President was trying to use history and its flaws to to claim that he is one who attest to it.

Michael Pope
What did your sign say?

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
My sign said deport hate and playing on his usage of the term go back home. I said Go back to your corrupted home with a picture of the Trump Towers attached to it

Thomas Bowman
Clever.

Michael Pope
So you said this like almost you were heckling the president. Right? You were trolling the president?

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
I don't think I was heckling or trolling. I was definitely interrupting his speech.

Michael Pope
That's heckling

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
Heckling is prolonged it's to prevent him from speaking. It's to cause full disruption, full chaos. My point was to use my first amendment rights. My right to speak in my space my legislator.

Michael Pope
Did Trump say anything back to you?

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
He said I didn't look good after the commending, which I like to think I look good for all the ladies listening check out some pictures online.

Thomas Bowman
went straight to the elementary school put downs.

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
Right

Michael Pope
Our last guest Steven Farnsworth is begging Trump to insult him because he thinks his book sales are gonna go up. He wrote a book called Late Night with Trump and he's hoping that Donald Trump will attack him personally. So you actually got attacked personally by our president on your looks?

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
Yes. In my in my the first bill that got to the floor this year in the legislative cycle was actually a sun tanning bed built to to prevent minors from accessing some tanning beds. We're trying to prevent skin cancer, but also, you know, it takes a little bit of a twist on the moment. I've had with the president calling my looks non savory.

Thomas Bowman
We're trying to decrease the number of boombah loompas in this town.

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
Sure.

Michael Pope
So let's talk about what else happened during the session collective bargaining public option, clean Economy Act insulin cap, minimum wage voting rights, Confederate statues, it was quite A year right Delegate Samira talk about what the new democratic majority in the House was able to accomplish this year.

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
It was able to recenter the conversation to 2020. To where Virginia is today. Gerrymandering and all these anti democratic measures have prevented Virginia from catching up with the times the Democratic majority came in and install that and caught up on 20 plus years of legislation that happened in other states all around the country. Things that address basic human liberties and necessities.

Michael Pope
On the issue of gerrymandering, talk about the amendment and what your vote on the constitutional amendment of the redistricting amendment was.

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
So I actually during those seven days, I was in the minority. I thought that the amendment was the best thing that we could get. And I voted for it. But when it came this year, and we have the majority and we have we have the power in our hands, I thought that we can actually put together something that's better, something that doesn't have any politicians any elected officials on the decision-making body For how to redistrict.

Michael Pope
And you voted for Marcus Simon's floor substitute, which would have created a non-partisan redistricting commission. Right. You felt like that was a better idea than the bipartisan one laid out in the amendment. Is that correct?

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
I agree. I think that the way our system is set up with electeds being responsible for the gerrymandering problem, I think that electeds like myself shouldn't be there. I don't trust us with absolute power over how a decade of maps can look like. Just before we got in here I was looking at Tom is talking about how my district is is gerrymandered. It was gerrymandered to accommodate a Republican incumbent at the time, Tom rust. The state delegate at the time had drew in quite a few areas that were high income relative to the area of Herndon, which he was living in and that made his district a little bit more easy to win for Republican in Northern Virginia up until 2015. So it speaks to kind of the demographic shifts.

Michael Pope
If this district was a shape, would it be like a salamander or an eagle? Or what exactly is the shape?

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
You know, as a Palestinian? I look at it. I think it looks like the West Bank. That is the truth. I mean, yeah, a little bit of their little cut off and Jerusalem looks like it's stuck in the middle there

Thomas Bowman
Arbitrarily drawn lines.

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
Yeah, Eastern Western, some separated out, right.

Michael Pope
Would that make Jerusalem Herndon?

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
It would make it a Oak Hill or something like that.

Thomas Bowman
Well, so well, as a medical provider you had, there's a couple of things that you're very proud about that came out of this legislative session, maybe-

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
-Things that we accomplished this year. Yeah. Well, there's so much I mean, we can go down the list things that I wanted to work on. I put in bills on and they were things that I thought that in the future will be accomplished but needed to be started this year. So I put together healthcare solutions public option, which would be a zero cost solution. to ensuring the uninsured and underinsured in our population, which would be set at 138% of Medicaid rates and the rest of the financial fee covering would happen through pay a co pays premiums and deductibles, that's how it would become a zero cost solution. Another option on the table to cover the under under insured and uninsured would be to raise the coverage of premiums under the Affordable Care Act marketplace for 400 to 500%. And a third option out there that I wanted to work in coordination with delegate Patrick Hope was to raise the Medicaid coverage levels from 138% of the federal poverty limit to 200%. Unfortunately, none of them happened this year. We were able to pass reinsurance coverage plans this year. We also were able to make sure that we wouldn't have any Surprise billing. So those are the healthcare front and I was I was looking, I'm looking still looking forward to the future. I think again, we're still catching up with the time so a lot of these bills are our big shifts and then we still need to work on them. However, in this moment that we're in with Coronavirus, I think the elevated nature of the conversation on on coverage is is there now and I'm so I actually asked in the last point of personal privilege on the House of Delegates floor yesterday for a special session to speak about the under insurance and uninsured individuals in our population that are most susceptible to contract and coronavirus and spreading it

Thomas Bowman
And how popular was that?

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
They got boos. Nobody was happy to want to come back another day.

Thomas Bowman
This part time legislature doesn't want to have to come back and take a couple more days off.

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
It's It's crazy to think about I mean, Virginia has one of the shortest legislators in the entire country. And we couldn't even add another day to talk about something that's taking our economy. I mean, I don't know what the numbers are looking like right now, but I'm sure we're around 15% of our economy has tanked

Michael Pope
Speaking of the economy, let's talk about the Cean Economy Act. Was that a segue or what I mean,

Thomas Bowman
Perfect.

Michael Pope
So so there was some debate on inside of the house caucus on the Clean Economy Act versus the Green New Deal. Talk about that debate and where you came down on that?

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
Sure. I am a strong supporter of the green New Deal. I think that we do need to have a comprehensive look at our energy economy without adding any costs on everyday citizens. That's a big part of the the green New Deal economic justice, people that are facing the problems due to the environment are usually those that are most on the margins most suffering, and they're not supposed to have an added on to their bill of $23 according to how that the SEC calculated it. And the Attorney General's Office argued that it would be really bad for repairs. That's something that ended up happening in the Virginia clean Economy Act. And it's not something that I'm happy about. However, I also ended up voting for it at the very end. And the reason is because the majority of pollution, carbon pollution that is comes not from just utilities, it also comes from people's homes, land use transportation functions, ie cars, and how we organize our routes are all around the state. You know, just give you one small example. If I'm going to Herndon here where we are today, from Richmond, I have to pass through the innerbelt weigh in. And instead of cutting through almost what should be an added 20 miles onto my roof. That's that's pollution. Gas use.. that's congestion on the road? Well

Thomas Bowman
On that, let's take a break and we'll talk more about land use and zoning you had a bill specifically that we were interested in on limiting single family zoning and localities. So we'll come right back and we'll get started on that discussion in just a minute.

Michael Pope
So, Thomas, did you grow up in suburban Fairfax County?

Thomas Bowman
I certainly did. I grew up in Centreville, Virginia. Very suburban. grew up going to Deer Park. Great, great precinct here.

Michael Pope
When you hear the word suburban. What do you think what does a cop what images does that conjure up in your head?

Thomas Bowman
Souless Ryan homes for miles. Cars everywhere...pollution and and the thing that I hate most is needing to hop in your car just to go 10 minutes down the street because you can't walk because guess what, there's no sidewalks on a major road. That's what I think about for suburbia.

Michael Pope
Do you think that there's a war on suburbs?

Thomas Bowman
There should be.

Michael Pope
There should be, really?

Well, people who are concerned about the potential for a war on suburbs really hated a bill that was introduced by Delegates Samirah. Delegate Samirah talk about this bill and were you committing a war on suburbs.

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
I would find it ridiculous because I represent the suburbs. My whole district of suburbia. I grew up in suburbs in Chicago. I grew up in inner city as well i have i've had both experiences and I'm grateful for both landscapes. But suburbia is where I found my my love and this is where I live right now.

Michael Pope
So after you You introduced your bill that would change the zoning practices. I talked to Tim Hannigan, and he reacted to your bill this way. I'm going to play the audio clip, we're going to come back on the other side and talk about

Tim Hannigan
if you introduced a city urban type environment out into the suburbs, it's going to greatly change the character and will cause the demise of suburbs as we know that.

Michael Pope
So that was Tim Hannigan, who was at the time chairman of the Fairfax County republicans react to his thoughts on your bill.

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
That's interesting. I actually called him after I heard the clip. And I talked to him about his his his understanding of the situation. I said, are you against increasing property rights for everyday citizens in the Commonwealth of Virginia, said Hmm, I said, well, that's exactly what you were advocating for you were trying to fight property rights. I thought you were a traditional Republican and traditional Republican support property rights, because the bills that I was introducing would allow The flexibility to the property owner to decide whether or not they would like to go up in their zoning from a single family zoning to a two families zoning only, nothing more than two families zoning in separately add another bill to allow property owners also to move their single families own property up with an accessory dwelling unit attached to it. So these aren't ridiculous concepts. These already exist, and especially in suburbia today, if you drive around Herndon, you'll see overcrowding housing, I'm looking for a house we're not trying to buy, I can't find houses on the market. This is a very, it's a difficult reality that we're facing right now where either you go with something very expensive that's outside of your range, and you're paying way more than you should. Or you live in overcrowded housing.

Michael Pope
So your bill did not get all that far. You came to a House subcommittee, I think where it was killed,

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
Right was it was it was in the land use subcommittee in county cities and towns committee.

Thomas Bowman
Riveting committee

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
Riveting very exciting,

Michael Pope
Whose the chairman of the committee?

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
Steve Heretick.

Michael Pope
Heretick. Talk about that day. Was it a morning session or an afternoon session?

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
It was in the morning...

Michael Pope
And this is your chief bill. You'd already done press on this. People were interested in hearing lots of lots of opposition to it.

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
Actually, I got was surprised actually, there wasn't that much opposition.

Michael Pope
Okay, so you so you arrived in the subcommittee room? Yeah. Talk about that day, what it was like presenting your bill and what kind of reaction you got to it.

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
So I put up my bill, I explain how this is environmentally friendly, how this is breaking down racial lines, modern day racial lines that exists in our neighborhoods all across the Commonwealth. I also talked about how it is a zero cost solution to the affordable housing crisis. I also talked about how this is putting more money in the pockets of owners of houses who decide that they want to rent out their basement, garage, cottage, whatever you want to call it. And I talked about how this is easing the life of people of lower income and allowing them to live where they would like to live closer to places where they want to work. Work reducing traffic time. And afterwards I had the people that support the bill Get up. The people who supported the bill were quite the array. I had representatives from the Koch brothers Institute come up and support it. I also had...

Michael Pope
Wait, they support our bills though, right? I mean, that was sort of like every day that was just happened.

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
Yeah, you know, they love some progressive bills right there you know, and Democratic bills overall right. But genuinely speaking, they actually supported it because it is a serious change in how property rights is looked at.

Michael Pope
Okay, so you had the Koch brothers who else?

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
I also had the George Mason University Institute on land policy they're called the Mercator Center

Michael Pope
That would be the right wing George Mason group yes

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
Right and but they're more center right? They're not Koch brothers are still university system.

Thomas Bowman
So why do you think that this concept is something that crosses party lines, because you are, of course a progressive. An unabashedly democratic, progressive liberal. And you had the support for this measure from the Koch brothers and from George Mason University-

Michael Pope
-Mercater center-

Thomas Bowman
-Mercader Center. Why is that?

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
So number one I mean I am progressive I do take pride in that however I do always present policies that are that are bipartisan across the board public option bill zero cost solution. That's exactly what republicans want. They want small government they want they don't want big government but

Michael Pope
Tim Hannigan with the Fairfax County republicans didn't like the idea.

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
He didn't like the idea because he saw it coming out of what he boxed me into a progressive and he refused to accept it however it is an increasing property rights. Yeah, absolutely. Do far right. And center right. ideological institutions like it. Absolutely. Do my progressive base. Love it too. Yes, they do. This is this is this is unity. This is how you break the dysfunctional parts of our political system.

Thomas Bowman
So why should a listener and a rural part of Virginia one to slow down this law of the suburbs by letting homeowners increase their zoning, by their own choice?

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
If you don't control sprawl, you will not have the money as a locality where you live in rural areas which don't have that much business going on, to be able to build out the areas that are being sprawled in their localities, you will have a change in the actual nature of your landscape. If you're a farm area, you're going to turn into a suburban area. You will have problems paying property taxes which are going to rise you're going to have a lot of trouble dealing with situation at hand. If you don't stop sprawl, people complain about sprawl all the time in rural areas. And the best way to stop it is to allow people to live where they want to live. People want to live closer job centers. People don't want to commit on highways, people would rather live where, for example, most of the jobs are in this area of Northern Virginia or in DC, and they would love to live in Arlington. So that Arlington area has 90% of its area is zoned for single family use, that area could be reformed and could be allowing more people to live there. Matter of fact, Arlington itself had a very positive experience with this, they increase their population by about 50,000 new individuals over the course of the last two decades.

Michael Pope
And a lot of the criticism of your legislation was led to local governments do it though, right? I mean, Arlington was already able to do this without your legislation. And I think one of the reasons there was a lot of opposition to your bill was if something like this needs to be done, let the local city council do it. Let the local board of supervisors do it right.

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
That's not true the localities have a lot of trouble doing this stuff. Arlington still till this day has a fight. They have a fight about upzoning right now and one of the city count one of the the Arlington county counselors I forget what they're termed actually

Michael Pope
County Board Members. They have a very unique system. Yeah. singular. Yeah.

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
So so he put out a statement. It's a because a bunch of people who are allowed voices that don't represent the majority, the population came and said, try to reduce the affordable housing crisis without changing zoning. And he had to put out a statement saying, Yeah, you know what, I'm going to do that without zoning. And that's unfortunate. So that's to say that the only Tony ins that are super worried about this, this loud minority feels the pressure. And if we really really want to look out for those individuals, which I think of myself as looking out for them, the rest of the state needs to help out with that. It doesn't need to just be Arlington County by itself. It can be all other localities are helping out and dispersing this affordable housing crisis, dispersing this environmental crisis person this transportation crisis, and making it resolved through March. Get based solutions that don't cost a penny. Matter of fact, reduce taxes in the long run, according to many researchers out there, reduce the cost of living increase money in the pockets of everyday property owners that own property today.

Michael Pope
When we come back, we're going to talk about something that happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

Thomas How do you feel about the movie Star Trek II the Wrath of Khan?

Thomas Bowman
Never seen it.

Michael Pope
You've never seen it.

So you're familiar with that one point in the movie.

Thomas Bowman
I did see it years ago, but not as a functioning adult.

Unknown Speaker
One of my most unpopular opinions is that Star Trek II the Wrath of Khan is the best movie ever made. Movies singularly single movies global. Why is that? It's just the best. I'm a big fan of Star Trek, we can get into that later. The reason I bring this up is because in the world, there are Star Trek people. And then there are Star Wars people. We're joined here for our final segment with a Star Wars person whose district includes the Udvar Hazy Museum. Thank you so much for joining us to talk about science fiction. So I want to put out a proposal a Star Wars proposal. If we're casting a movie that's Star Wars General Assembly, we have Princess Leia is Speaker Filler Corn. Grumpy Han Solo is Dick Saslaw. Luke Skywalker is Luke Torian Obi Wan Kenobi is David Toscano as a ghost like a force ghost shows And provides, you know guidance...

Thomas Bowman
Sees what's coming. He says he's out.

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
He showed up to the floor this year

Michael Pope
As a force ghost. Yes. Yoda is Kim plumb Darth Vader is Todd Gilbert. So for casting this movie, what happens to the resistance? Do they get to $15 on minimum wage? Do they get collective bargaining for state employees? Does the does the resistance win? Or does the dark side take for us?

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
It's always a mixed message, isn't it? And these movies the Star Wars movie, so I think we got we got some and we lost seven in the Sega continues.

Thomas Bowman
You like Star Wars over Star Trek?

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
Yes, I do.

Michael Pope
Have you seen Star Trek to the Wrath of Khan?

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
...No.

Michael Pope
God, neither of you have seen this movie.

Oh my gosh, he's such a Gen-Xer. Oh my gosh. All right. Have you seen any of the rebuilding Star Wars or Star Trek movies have with Chris Pine?

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
No honestly I only zone in when I see somebody that I'm familiar with, like a, like a random actor. Right? You saw that special guest.

Thomas Bowman
But you saw the new Star Wars movies, right?

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
Yes.

Thomas Bowman
Okay, so. What do you think of the new Star Wars movies?

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
Gosh, I can't remember which one was the last one.

Michael Pope
The last Jedi.

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
The Last Jedi is the Yes, we're way off the cliff top

Thomas Bowman
And then Rise of Skywalker is the brand new one.

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
Right. Okay. The rise of Skywalker is goes back into the past of how we how eventually happened? How Skywalker brings it all all full circle. Yeah, I mean, it's clearly it was a long time coming, building up to the victory. Right? So 27 years of not controlling all the avenues of government and the state. And 20 years since the both legislators are under control. You gotta you got a strong, strong executive.

Michael Pope
You know udar hazy museum is in your district delegates Samirah, and there is no Millennium Falcon at the udvar hazy museum. But I would like to point out for many years there was an enterprise that was at the museum, it was the mock up to what became the space shuttle. So the enterprise space shuttle never went into space. But it was built all the same specs that all the later space shuttles were built to. And in fact, that whole wing that Hoover has, he was built for that particular craft shuttle. Talk about your experience at Hoover. How's he what's the favorite thing that that you'd like there? I mean, I know they've got like the Enola Gay in the Spirit of St. Louis and the Concord and it's really an amazing museum. What's your favorite thing there?

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
My favorite thing is that people come and visit my district

Michael Pope
and pay for parking too...

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
And pay for parking and keeps the Dallas area very active. But I love the fact that we have a sorry to be a little serious, but we do have a tech corridor building up right around there. And I'm super excited about the future of this area.

Thomas Bowman
SpaceX right down the road...

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
we have Amazon Web Services. We have a bunch of tech companies that are popping up left and right. It seems like we're all headed towards the Silicon Valley of the East Coast here.

Michael Pope
Science fiction becomes science fact,

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
Science fact is a great thing for us here in the Herndon area. We have two, three metro stations opening up soon, right around here, maybe. Hopefully, MWAA can do their, their little part in fixing everything together. But But really, I mean, it's attracting a lot of energy to the area that that simply started off from, I think maybe I've just a museum being in the area on the airport, and it's wonderful. It brings a lot of things to life that we need in the Commonwealth, especially having such a dearth in tech companies on the east coast. You know, that's something that I'm certainly excited about being on the science and communication innovation and technology committee.

Thomas Bowman
It finally means something

Delegate Ibraheem Samirah
It finally means something. And I'm certainly going to go around my district and and make sure that every tech company knows that I'm here for them that we can pass some bills to address their needs are

Unknown Speaker
Well very good. Well, on that note, we've got to wrap up. Thank you so much for joining us. Virginia delegate Ibraheem Samirah not Samirah sure, as many people mistakenly believe. So. Thank you for listening to Transition Virginia. Please subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play or wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a five star review. Follow us on Twitter @TransitionVA. Email us at TransitionVApodcast@gmail.com and find us on the web at TransitionVirginia.com