Lauren Burke: Reacting to Candidates at Roland Martin's Town Hall
Friend of the pod Lauren Burke of BURKEFILE and Black Virginia News joins Michael to discuss clips from Virginia House and Senate candidates at Roland Martin's Town Hall. From early voting to assault weapons to book bans and the potential removal of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. from Virginia's curriculum, the comments cover the range of topics that might sway November's election--especially those of interest to Virginia's Black community.
Episode Transcript
Michael Pope
I'm Michael Pope.
Lauren Burke
I'm Lauren Burke.
Michael Pope
And this is Pod Virginia, a podcast hitting the road with Roland Martin this week. Well, we're not actually hitting the road. We will stream Roland Martin and his town halls with candidates across Virginia. Lauren, for our listeners who are unfamiliar with Roland Martin and don't know about these town halls, tell us a little bit about what we're about to hear, the sound clips we're about to hear.
Lauren Burke
Well, we're about to hear a lot of the candidates that haven't gotten a lot of media attention. Roland Martin's show has been on for five years; he's gained over 1 million subscribers on YouTube; the show plays on YouTube, Roku, Amazon, and all the other famous others we know. I'm on every Thursday, and I'm getting stopped in the street. So, these candidates will get more exposure than they typically do. But he got a good host of people on his first three stops, which were Fredericksburg, Suffolk, and Virginia Beach.
Michael Pope
Yeah. And then he still has two more, one in Petersburg and one in Richmond. So lots lots to go there. So, for each of these events here, these town halls included candidates and other speakers. So, I want to start with the Virginia Beach forum because we heard from Democratic House Leader Don Scott, who framed this entire campaign as a fight against Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin. So check out this clip, where Don Scott ties together the governor's catastrophic curriculum mistakes with book banning and efforts to abandon equity.
Don Scott
Anytime you have a governor who comes in and says that Martin Luther King, Jr. is too controversial to teach our kids, we have a problem; he took the teaching about Martin Luther King and history out of the K-8 education, we had to protest and fight to get it put back in. So we already know what they want to do, anything related to teaching Black history in a way that is meaningful and substantive. They want to remove it; they want to take us backward. What I think they don't understand is that they always assume that white people will feel bad and sad with the slaveholders, as opposed to siding with those who were for freedom because there were many white Americans who were also fighting for freedom. So they just assumed those children would also relate to those folks. So, we need people to start teaching the whole gamut of history; we need to make sure that we are also doing everything in our power to continue to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Michael Pope
Yeah, Lauren, this issue of removing Martin Luther King from Virginia textbooks is a theme. And you will hear many of the speakers come back to this in these town halls repeatedly. And you know, it's one of the many mistakes that Younkin has made. And it's easy to forget the list here. Let's not forget that he made a mistake that harms school divisions by underfunding them to hundreds of millions of dollars, and oops, mistake, didn't mean to do that. And then taking Martin Luther King out of the history books was a mistake. Oops, didn't mean to do that. Oh, and then removing an unknown number of people from the voter rolls. Oops, didn't mean to do that. But this issue of Martin Luther King does have resonance with a lot of people.
Lauren Burke
Yeah, well, obviously it would. I mean, I think that anytime we get into a discussion about historical figures, particularly ones that are revered, specifically in the Black community, somebody like Martin Luther King being removed from school. The global subject period of removing books is antithetical to everything we believe in in this democracy. Of course, the First Amendment, and then you get more specific about the subject matter, such as MLK. Yeah, that audience will lift his head up and start paying attention to that. And there have been many oops in the Youngkin administration, particularly around voting, that are never explained, never detailed. And they all mysteriously always seem to be in the direction of voters being removed from the rolls. You know, it's incredible how that happens.
Michael Pope
It does not seem like weaponized incompetence.
Lauren Burke
Absolutely. And sometimes we overlook that this person, Glenn Youngkin, came from out of nowhere, from corporate America, and never served in government. And now is the governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia. And I do get us sort of a caretaker sense to his governance, that someone else is taking care of this, that he may or may not know about, and maybe they're doing the job. Perhaps they're not, maybe they're a political operative, who knows. But there are a lot of mistakes, and they're compiling and now listing them out. They're getting longer and longer.
Michael Pope
All right, well, let's get into the candidates. I want to start with Hampton Roads, where we've got a husband and wife combo, both running for the General Assembly. You only find that sometimes. So we've got Clint Jenkins running for the Senate and his wife, Karen Jenkins, running for the House. So, starting with the Senate here, Clint Jenkins is facing Republican Delegate Emily Brewer; this is a Republican seat R +2.1 VPAP has this as a Competitive race. CNalysis has this essay, Lean R. So check out this exchange where Clint Jenkins explains Emily Brewer's position on assault weapons.
Clint Jenkins
When a bully hits you with an assault weapon. It doesn't just hit and stay right there. That bullet can hit one spot, travel through the body, or keep on going through the body and hit another person. Assault Weapon is not a toy. My opponent did introduce legislation to allow persons to carry assault weapons on the street, which is nonsense to this day.
Roland Martin
Woah woah, she did what?
Clint Jenkins
Introduce legislation that would allow persons to carry legislation on the streets.
Roland Martin
An assault weapon on the streets. For what?
Clint Jenkins
That's a good question. I haven't been able to answer that one yet.
Michael Pope
I love how Roland Martin does the town halls where he interacts with people. And he doesn't let people get by with saying crazy stuff. If they say something crazy, it's like, hold on a second. Let's examine that a little bit. So yeah, I mean, this is a Republican district, though Lauren and Brewer are very popular. Her position on guns resonates in that district. What do you make of this race here? Is Clint Jenkins in trouble?
Lauren Burke
You know, it's hard. It may be closer than people think; there seems to be a general, but I don't want to call it a lack of energy. But of course, we're an off-off year, we have no governor at the top of the ticket, etc, and so on. And this is a rural, fairly rural part of Virginia. Full disclosure: I reside right there with my mother in 89. And I think it's a hard place to sort of door knock; one House is far away from the other, and then there's a giant cornfield. So it's a, it's a tougher terrain than your typical, then your distinct Northern Virginia area. It's hard to tell who's ahead here, but it would be Lean Red. But then again, if you look at some of the analysis, this scene is considered a toss-in on most analysis sheets, with people watching these types of races very closely. It's hard to tell. It would be hard for me to predict, but it has definitely been, let's say, a lively race in terms of ads and back and forth.
Michael Pope
Let's get into that, Lauren. One thing that Clint Jenkins has had to deal with on the campaign trail is charges of domestic abuse and assault. So, Emily Brewer's campaign has pointed out an accusation of assault and battery against his wife way back in 1997. And then, in November of 2003, there was a charge of assault and battery involving his daughter. And then, in December 2003, he was accused of threatening to kill or injure his daughter. So, it's important to note that all these charges were dismissed. I'm gonna say that, again, all of these charges were dismissed. But that has not stopped the Emily Brewer campaign from running ads, currently all over TV in Hampton Roads. So Lauren, what do you make of this back and forth between the Brewer campaign and the Jenkins campaign?
Lauren Burke
Yeah, well, she ran an ad with, of course, nobody featured from this 26-year-old incident that was dismissed with no evidence a long time ago. And Jenkins countered with a pretty doggone strong ad that featured his daughter. And that ad effectively accused Brewer of lying. So that was that was a heavy counterpunch there, and then we didn't hear anything about it. I mean, we have to remember that Emily Brewer has called Planned Parenthood a terrorist organization. As reported by Andy Fox, Andy Fox, and Wavy down there has a fact checker.
Michael Pope
I saw that. Yeah.
Lauren Burke
And he fact he checked that fact. And then Breuer did confirm that she, in fact, did call Planned Parenthood a terrorist organization. So that when I see things like that, that type of level of campaigning very personal, you're calling, one of the top donors in Virginia, a terrorist organization that tells me you're seeing something in your polls that says this, this thing is close, or you're losing one of the other. Brewer is definitely not operating as somebody who's sort of like calm right now, right. I mean, so that first ad that you just referred to about this thing, 26 years ago, that was dismissed is a stretch that tells me also, you don't have anything on Clint Jenkins, other than this thing, 26 years ago, that was dismissed. So you're telling me in the last 26 years, there's nothing else you got? So just when I see that, that sort of tells us I think that this is a very close race.
Michael Pope
Clint Jenkins's wife, Karen Jenkins, is a candidate on the House side. Running against Baxter Jenkins. A republican seat, R +2. VPAP calls it a competitive seat, and CNalysis calls it Lean R. Listen in to hear what Karen Jenkins says about her time on the board.
Karen Jenkins
We have parents coming to our school board meetings, and they're attacking us who don't even have kids at school. They're not even living in our district. And so it's just like, it's a script. You know, they come, and they say...
Roland Martin
Oh, it's a script, it's a script.
Karen Jenkins
Absolutely. And so they come to our school board meetings. And it's just a rehearsed attack. And we say all the time, what about the kid, where the kids and all of this that you're doing because that's who we're supposed to be focused on. And I'm just, I'm just upset because they waste time coming to do this, and our children are watching our school board meetings. And they're, they're confused because they're not complaining. It's the parents. The students are happy.
Michael Pope
Man, being a member of a school board these days is rough work.
Lauren Burke
can say that again.
Michael Pope
You are on the firing line for a lot of stuff. So will that help Karen Jenkins that she's part of the Suffolk school board? And she can make that defense? Or does it hurt her? Because you got all these people thinking that she's responsible for the degradation of society?
Lauren Burke
Actually, it helps her. She's keeping it very neutral. There was nothing particularly partisan about that statement. People care about their kids; they don't like their elected officials wasting time. The global nature of just saying, where are we in our politics right now? We have a party that's not really declaring a whole lot of specific policy on anything, and they're just sort of talking in these sort of general terms. And then when an issue does come up, we get these sort of rambunctious school board meetings where we're talking about taking books off the shelves. And when we do get into details about that, one has to wonder if these books have been on the shelves for decades and decades and decades. Why now? Are we flipping out about these types of issues? So I thought the way that Karen Jenkins sort of approached the interview with Roland Martin and the campaign has been kind of a common sense try. Everybody knows in politics that people say you got to get the base out base to base, the base, the base, you got to be talking to the base all the time. And their House District 89 is probably a good place for Baxter. But I do think that to hear somebody just talking about basic level about some of these distractions we have in politics, and to the point where nobody can conduct any business. On a civic level. It's sort of getting getting difficult. And by the way, Clint Jenkins and Karen Jenkins represent a historic first in Virginia, a husband and wife running for the Senate and the House. And that's something that's another interesting fact about this cycle.
Michael Pope
Yeah. One thing that came up in this exchange was the record of Baxter and his election denialism. Right. So, in November of 2020, he posted he didn't believe for a minute the election was over. Trump is a fighter, and he'll not go quietly into the night, especially when there are so many reported cases of rampant fraud in numerous states. He posted this on social media. And then he did a campaign event with Michelle Bachman, of all people. Is election denialism going to hurt him or maybe even help him in this district?
Lauren Burke
That question? Of course, we answered in a little over 20 days, but I can't imagine that it would help. I mean, the question remains: are we post-factual? Can we just say anything without any facts attached, remembering that when Jen Kiggins was running, and she did when you know, against former Congresswoman Elaine Luria. No one could get her on camera to say that Joe Biden was legitimately elected President; I thought that was a tell. We're gonna find out a lot obviously in this election, whether the abortion issue, which of course is being talked about by every Democrat on the ballot, left, right and center in the state geographically. Is that going to work? And is it going to work to be talking about truth, to be saying what's true, to be saying that these other candidates are saying things that are not backed up by facts? We are going to find that out. I actually think it's because we have the media so dispersed in the Commonwealth. And this is a problem across the country. You can get away with some of this; you can get away with saying things that are not factually true and win an election. But we will see in three weeks, Michael.
Michael Pope
Oh, man, is it up to Virginia voters to decide whether or not we live in a post-factual world? It's heavy. Let's move on to Virginia Beach, where one of the candidates was Michael Feggans. So this is the Democrat hoping to unseat Republican incumbent Delegate Karen Greenhalgh, who was first elected in 2021. When she unseated Alex Askew, who's also full circle running this election cycle, although with no opposition. Michael Feggans vs. Karen Greenhalgh this is one of the marquee races of this election cycle. It's a Democratic seat, but just barely +1.5 for the Democrats. VPAP calls this a competitive race, and CNalysis calls this a toss-up. So check out this part of the town hall where Michael Feggans calls for Democrats to reclaim the word freedom.
Michael Feggan
Virginia Beach has one of the greatest concentrations of veterans of active duty service members. So when we see the attacks on freedom, what we've been talking about is that they're the complete opposite of freedom. They're against reproductive freedom; they're against voting freedom. The following steps that we've been hearing is after they ban reproductive freedom, they're going to try to ban the freedom to marry who you love. And we've seen that in some states around the country. And we're reclaiming that word freedom; we are the party of freedom. The freedom to get your education, the freedom to marry who you love, the freedom for you to receive the health care you deserve, without unqualified politicians being involved in those healthcare decisions. That's true freedom. They're the complete opposite of freedom.
Michael Pope
Lauren, is that an argument that will resonate in Virginia Beach, a Republican stronghold, Virginia Beach?
Lauren Burke
Well, not only a Republican stronghold but also a veteran stronghold. I mean, it's so many veterans, of course, in the Commonwealth of Virginia General, particularly Virginia Beach. Yes, I do think the word freedom will resonate, but I do think it is hard to unseat an incumbent. I think this is going to be a race. It's going to be extremely close. There, of course, is a fairly competitive Senate race nearby with Kevin Adams and Senator Aaron Rouse. But, you know, it's so these races are so close. What we do know, of course, is that this is one of the races, one of the three or four that will decide the control of the House of Delegates in Virginia. That's pretty obvious. But it's hard for me to tell; I can tell only by Michael Feggan's social media who's really knocking on doors in the rain in the early morning hours; that'd be Michael Feggans. But we'll see how it's going to, obviously; a ton of money has gone into that race on both sides. I think that his performance on Roland Martin was great. Still, you know, a lot of this audience, even though Roland Martin's audience is huge, so much of that would have to filter down into HD 97 to move the needle. But obviously, the state the obvious, captain obvious, this is going to be one of the races that decides the whole ballgame.
Michael Pope
Well, another one of the races that will decide the whole ballgame is up in Northern Virginia. And one of the candidates that appeared at the Fredericksburg town hall was Joshua Cole. So he's the former Delegate who's running to return to the House, and he's facing Republican Lee Peters. VPAP calls this a competitive race. CNalysis has this listed as a tilt D. So check out this clip of Joshua Cole from that Fredericksburg town hall where he is essentially campaigning against Glenn Youngkin.
Joshua Cole
Our governor lost $201 million by mistake and said, I don't know how I lost that education money, but y'all figure it out until I can find it. Then they are directly attacking that education by stating, we're going to take Martin Luther King out of the curriculum, we're going to remove that I Have a Dream speech out of the curriculum. Oh, and by the way, y'all can't even read Toni Morrison. And so we have to make sure that we are involved at every single level, from the dog catcher all the way up to the President.
Michael Pope
Joshua Cole has a leg up on everybody else because he's a preacher. And you hear that in the sound clip, the guy can speak.
Lauren Burke
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think of all the folks Roland Martin has had on so far. He clearly was at the top of the list. I mean, his performance is excellent, yet he not only has a command of the facts because, of course, he has served already in the House of Delegates. He was able to give sort of a little historiography On policy on what had passed, what hadn't, and where the policy stands now and where it's likely to stand if you continue in a certain direction or not. So it was a really good stellar performance by him. He's running against someone who's a member of the law enforcement community, Republican Lee Peters and actually, I saw Lee Peters and Joshua Cole debate a few weeks ago, and I don't think Lee Peters is somebody who is some MAGA Republican, not a crazy type of candidate. So I think that's the reason why some people think there's gonna be close; I actually don't think it's going to be that I do think Cole is going to win. It is a lean blue district he's been in before. It's almost as if it has the feeling that Josh Cole is an incumbent, even though he's not because he's been in before. Still, that performance he put on last night was quite stellar in terms of the graphs of the policy, detail, and knowledge.
Michael Pope
Yeah, and like in many of these other races, I think abortion is going to play pretty strongly here. So, in one of their debates, Lee Peters said, quote, everybody is not concerned or worried about women's rights, downplaying the issue of abortion. So, is that going to hurt him? Or are people overstating the importance of abortion and this election cycle?
Lauren Burke
Well, once again, we get that answer on election day. I tend to think that they are, but you know, when I've talked to candidates, they do routinely say that abortion is the thing that they're hearing about; you wonder if it's a chicken and egg type of thing. Are they saying that's what they care about? Because that's what is just being messaged to them every five seconds? Or is that top of mind? Because it's top of mind? Because typically, in polling, it's an economic issue or it's education. So, one would think that abortion would not be top of mind for everybody that comes to the door. But again, I am hearing from a lot of candidates that, in fact, it is, so we'll see is certainly a lot of money is going into promoting that issue and talking about that issue, etc, and so on. So, there's no reason to think that that is true.
Michael Pope
Well, you mentioned the Joshua Cole Lee Peters raised kind of had the feeling of an incumbent because Cole is a former incumbent, and so is former Delegate Nadarius Clark, who is running against Republican Michael Dillender in Suffolk. So this is a solid democratic seat +7.2. For Democrats, VPAP has this as a lean D. So, there is not even a competitive seat here in terms of VPAPA; CNalysis has this as a likely D. So check out this clip of Nadarius Clark from the Suffolk town hall where he speaks in favor of school choice.
Nadarius Clark
I support charter schools, but not if it's going to divert the money from public schools; we can't give up on public schools and say, let's go to the...
Roland Martin
But public charter schools. They are still public.
Nadarius Clark
Public charter schools. I'm open to the idea as long as we still don't take away from the schools that still need the funding.
Michael Pope
So that is a view you don't often hear from Democrats. It is so good for Nadarius Clark and not being so written as to just say what everybody expects him to say. Do you think there might be some pushback against Nadarius Clark among supporters of public education in Virginia?
Lauren Burke
I doubt it. Once you say things like, Yeah, I'm for choice, but I don't want like the money coming out of, what he was basically saying there is; he doesn't want public money being used for private schooling, why are we giving up on public schools? The majority of kids go to public schools. So I don't think there's going to be any big issue with that. And Darius Clark, like Josh Cole, has got a very firm grasp on issues as well. It has a number of events, one of which I'm likely to go to too late in late October is a good old-fashioned fish fry. And I can't wait. But I do think that the, I think he did find out they I don't think that's going to come up again, as a thing. Roland Martin is actually a pro-charter school. So it was interesting just to watch somebody, you know, typically in these debates or these discussions, you're just sort of hearing a right view or left you on all the issues. So finally, with that, when we got to a little bit of curveball, it was just nice to see something different. Somebody has to sort of defend their view from the other side.
Michael Pope
That's why I chose the sound clip because it was like the, I mean, the rest of it was sort of dog bites, man. And then all of a sudden, it's like, oh, wait a minute. Did you say what I thought you just said? You also mentioned Roland Martin is very publicly in favor of these. But he has a more nuanced view because it's like I'm given favor of charter schools, but only if we control them.
Lauren Burke
Yeah. I mean, he has some qualifying language on that. And I think many people would have a common sense agreement on this. So much of our politics is not a gray area and not nuanced. It's either black or white. It's this or that. And so when you start really talking in detail, and you speak to the people in detail, a little bit more nuanced. It is always going to sound more interesting. But his whole take was, yeah, we should have charter schools in the Black community as long as we're controlling, how they're funded, who's controlling them, et cetera, and so on, you know, so I don't think this was the Betsy DeVos version of charter school policy by any stretch.
Michael Pope
Well, speaking of education, Delegate Kelly Converse Fowler is running against Republican challenger Mike Karslake. Plus, there's an Independent candidate out in Virginia Beach, Nicholas Olenik. So this is a democratic seat in Virginia Beach, of all places +11.7. For the Democrats. VPAP has this as a lean D seat. CNalysis has this as a solid D. So check out this clip of Kelly Converse Fowler talking about public education.
Kelly Convirs-Fowler
I think that their efforts to defund the public school system are apparent, but their messaging on parents' rights...
Roland Martin
Are you saying they trying to defund schools, I thought they didn't like the word defund.
Kelly Convirs-Fowler
They don't like the word defund, but that's exactly what they're trying to do.
Roland Martin
Gotcha.
Kelly Convirs-Fowler
They're trying to define sending all of our public school money to private schools, which public schools, in concept, in theory, help the entire community; they're not meant for each one individual person or each one individual child, it's meant to benefit the entire community, just like roads, we don't drive on all the roads, but our taxes go to make all the roads and repair the roads so we can drive on them if we need to. So again, this is a matter of Community Services and taking those away from communities that are in need. And putting that money into lab schools, charter schools, any private money, public money going to private schools, is public money and public education being devalued.
Michael Pope
On the campaign trail, you frequently hear Republicans talking about school choice. Obviously, abortion takes up a lot of oxygen, and people are focused on it. But another issue that frequently comes up on the campaign trail when you hear Republicans speaking is school choice; they think this is a winner. What do you make of Democrats leaning into this and trying to make it an issue from the other direction?
Lauren Burke
Well, unfortunately, school funding is tied to the tax base, which basically means, I mean, if you're rich. You're sitting in Beverly Hills, 90210; you're going to have a great school. So I think what Republicans were originally trying to do with the choice to say, Oh, well, even out the playing field. But that's not really how it would be administered; what we're talking about really is taking public monies, the way that they would do it is taking public monies, our tax dollar, and putting it into private hands, which is a theme in the Republican Party on that and Social Security. It's always sort of this thing of this tax money will now somehow be privatized. Remember, George Bush long ago tried to do that with Social Security. And, of course, we shot down on that particular issue. But when it comes to schooling, I think what the Republicans are trying to sell here is the idea that, Oh, we can make every school better by having this system where, oh, we have charters, and then when we start talking about funding, actually, we're doing the sort of privatization of the school system, instead of making what we have better, instead of making what we've got now, perfecting that and fully funding that, because one of the major issues that we have is jurisdictions or, the state or the federal government, sending money to the local government and money not getting to where it's supposed to be is a major issue that if we could fix that we probably can fix half the problems we have and in funding and school funding, and we have that issue, particularly in the south. And that is a historic problem related to HBCUs. And also local schools. So I think, frankly, I think it was great to see Kelly Fowler out there and doing a long-form interview; she was great. She is expected to win. It would be surprising if she did not win. And she had a very tough primary. She had three Black candidates that ran against her, and it was really close. And I think if one of them had not run, she might not have made it, but she did. She won, and she's expected, of course, to return to the House of Delegates.
Yeah, so that issue of public education was one theme that you heard come up in many of these town halls. Also, taking Martin Luther King out of the textbooks was a theme. And another theme was voting rights. So Phil Hernandez spoke to this. He's a Democrat running against Republican Andy Pittman in the Hampton Roads area. So this is a democratic seat + 8.8 for Democrats. VPAP has this as a lean D. CNalysis has this as a solid D. So check out this clip of Phil Hernandez at the Virginia Beach town hall here. He's talking about his opponent in the race, Republican Andy Pittman, opposing early voting.
Phil Hernandez
He wants to roll back voting rights, and he told you that, so on some level, I'm like, Okay, I strongly disagree. It was a little funny to me. And more than a little hypocritical, I thought it was the first day of early voting here in Virginia. And yeah, and I was there with Delegate Williams Graves. And we were greeting people and saying, hey, thanks so much for coming out on the first day of early voting. That's terrific; thank you so much. And my opponent was there. And after, you know, lamenting the early voting season, and I was just thinking about, can you imagine the pitch that he was making? Hey, thanks for coming out to the early vote. If it were up to me, this is the last time you will do it.
Roland Martin
Oh hey, how are you doing? Go home?
Michael Pope
Good line there from Hernandez. So this issue of early voting, obviously, Republicans are now they've seen the light, and they're leaning into early voting. But earlier this year, Lauren, the Republican House voted to get rid of the 45-day window.
Lauren Burke
It had a moment of absurdity that you just can't put together. And then, of course, a few months later, Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin announced a push for early voting. And everybody, early voting. I actually went to Glenn Youngkins's Labor Day event before, of course, going to Bobby Scott's Labor Day event in Newport News. But Glenn Youngkin had won in Suffolk. And they had a barbecue, it was very nice. And they had this push going on; they had several tables set up for people to sign up and be reminded about early voting and be sent an early ballot. And this is a pretty amusing thing, of course, representing a complete 360.
Michael Pope
You know what, Lauren? Thomas has actually said this on the podcast several times. Good for them. Essentially, they had the wrong policy before, but they've now admitted they had the wrong policy. And it's good when people vote, right? So, I mean, it does make them look a little two-faced. And like they've changed their position, and they're flip-flopping. They're in the right position now. And they'll tell you they're in the right position now.
Lauren Burke
That's a great point. I mean, Thomas Bowman makes a great point. It's the same thing Jay Jones, former delegate Jones, said to me on a podcast, which is, you know, they should be in some way congratulated for actually adopting the right policy, as the Democrats have been pushing for a while. So I don't argue with that. I do think we shouldn't totally in our politics be so rigid that we don't allow people to change their minds. I mean, clearly, it was something that was seen in their strategy that indicated that they were losing some margins when it came to vilifying early voting. But you know, when you think about the enterprise as a whole, and the fact that the de facto leader of their party, Donald Trump, has really built an entire, you could say, ideology on the idea that the election, the national election was stolen from him, and it was somehow fraudulent. And then you're putting that out, day after day. And then you have a major news company, Fox News, putting that out day after day and then getting sued and losing. I mean, over this issue of voting, the legitimacy of voting, the legitimacy of the vote count. And for some reason, the Republican Party sort of adopted this global, more global idea that there's something wrong with the count or you're being cheated. And to the extent that, of course, they're able to, you know, for that message, people have believed that it to the point where the US Capitol was attacked in January of 2021. Because people believe that. So, you know, while I do think we should allow some grace in terms of people changing their minds, I do say that there's some danger in misinformation and disinformation. And, of course, connected to that, when we're talking about voting in Virginia, more specifically, is the fact that Glenn Youngkin's administration has had a number of, quote, snafus around voting. And, of course, we have seen a local effort in Chesapeake and Virginia Beach, and in Richmond, which was beaten back to end Sunday voting, which is effectively souls to the polls, which Black churches, of course, are very focused on to get to, you know, push people out to go vote, not to tell them what candidate to vote for, but to go and participate and vote. So there is that granular thing. And then there's that national thing that we see in the background. I mean, this week, in fact, we might have a speaker of the House elected who has repeatedly said that the election of our President, President Joe Biden, was illegitimate. So I mean, this is something that this vote question is going to be something that's going to be with us for a while.
Michael Pope
Yeah. So, one view is the Thomas Bowman view, which is more people voting is a good thing. So, for the Republicans to abandon the wrong position, they now admit his bad and adopt the good position that is good for everybody. It's a win-win for everybody. So that's one way of looking at it. Then I got a different view, actually, when I spoke to Don Scott about this because he raised a concern. Okay, so assume for a second assume that Republicans take control again. Will they, once they've gotten control, get rid of the 45-day window? That's how they voted earlier this year. Are they going to vote the same way? Next year, they did this year and got rid of the early days. And so, I mean, like, that's a long period of time; you could cut it in half and then do other things that roll back all this early voting that we've got now. So, I mean, there was also the concern of what happens if Republicans take control. Do they adopt their old position? Or do they keep their new position?
Lauren Burke
That is the policy whiplash like you've never seen? But of course, you know, hypocrisy is so ignored, and things that happen, and you know, things go down the memory hole so fast in the media that they'll be called on this one, though, because, of course, you have going to Youngkin doing commercials. He's on video talking to me about early voting. So, to change that policy. Now. It'd be very, very good. Well, I do think changing is difficult. Of course, if they win, that would tell them that early voting worked for them. So if they win, and they're in the majority, why would you change it back? Because you basically just demonstrated that early voting. Got you the majority.
Michael Pope
Well, you can make the same argument about Glenn Youngkin. Right. Early voting got Glenn Youngkin into the governor's office and had Republicans winning control of the House of Delegates, yet they still wanted to abandon early voting.
Lauren Burke
Well, that wasn't just early voting. It was a terribly run campaign by Terry McAuliffe. That was the first thing it was, and it was Glenn Youngkin, focusing on the red rural areas of the Commonwealth of Virginia that are often ignored. And those people came out, and they came out big. And so those two things and early voting were a contributing factor on why we're looking at Governor Youngkin. And why we may be looking at presidential candidate Youngkin in a few weeks. So it's amazing to think about how these things are cumulative; these decisions can mean a lot in the long run, to say the least, in our politics.
Michael Pope
Presidential candidate Youngkin. I think you just caused the heads of many of our listeners to explode.
Lauren Burke
He's doing is he's doing his thing this week. He's doing his vest his best thing this week in Virginia.
Michael Pope
But if he waits until the election is over, the Virginia election is over. Hasn't he missed the deadline to be on the ballot for two states? I mean, he's really handicapping himself by doing what he's already publicly said that he's going to do.
Lauren Burke
You're right. Absolutely. Michael, you're right. He will have missed the first two filings for, I think, South Carolina and Iowa, I guess would be obviously the other one. But these are strange and interesting times that we live in Michael. Right. So, we have a former president running with multiple indictments. And I think that level of sort of not knowing what might happen to that, even though it looks as if the timing is not going to matter for the primary season, you just don't know.
Michael Pope
Who's the voter who's going to say, oh, Glenn Youngkin, now I've seen the light, I'm going to vote for Youngkin. They're not going to vote for Nikki Haley. Like, who is this voter that is going to go for Younkin?
Lauren Burke
Michael, I'm old enough to remember when we said that about Glenn Youngkin. Before we knew who Glenn Youngkin was, it was like, Who's this guy that just showed up? Out of nowhere? We're talking about a man to chase, and then boom, he's the governor of Virginia now. So, I doubt that can be replicated on the national level. But you never know.
Michael Pope
You never know. All right, one final candidate. Before we wrap it up, delicate Cliff Hayes is running against Republican challenger Elijah Colon. So this is a very solidly democratic seat, Lauren +35 for Democrats. So no real competition here. But check out this clip of Cliff Hayes on pre-textual policing.
Cliff Hayes
And I don't know about y'all, but I've been stopped and pulled over for things that should not have happened, like a police officer telling me that I was driving too slow. I said I saw you, so I decided to put my car cruise control. So, I wouldn't go one mile over the limit. Well, your driving that slow could be a sign of you being intoxicated. Listen, y'all, that kind of subjective behavior. Because you have air freshener hanging on your mirror, or the old tear like busted out because we know the story. We know the history of how sometimes those tear lights get busted as an excuse for why someone actually pulled you over.
Michael Pope
This is going to be something that the next General Assembly will consider because there are cities all over Virginia that are asking for the General Assembly to reconsider this pre-textual policing and bring back the ability of officers to stop people for the bus to taillights for the parking pass that's dangling from their rearview mirror. They used to be able to stop you. If anything was dangling from your rearview mirror. They can't do that anymore. But if the Virginia Municipal League gets its way, they will be. This is an issue that I would imagine probably resonates with a lot of voters. You don't really hear a lot of criminal justice reform talk on the campaign trail. But clearly, this is something that resonates with Cliff Hayes.
Lauren Burke
Yeah, well, one would think that the crowd that always likes to talk about having government out of your life would love hearing this from Hayes and the Democratic Party. I'm the daughter of a cop. I'm the girlfriend of a US Capitol police officer who's in his 25th. Year, my nephew used to be a cop in Virginia Beach. And I will say that I love cops; I think cops have a very difficult job in a society that is overrun with guns. But this type of policing to me is a little bit of a reach, you know, I've been stopped in Newport News and stopped in Chesapeake and stopped in Hampton. It was all you knew: your headlights were off, or just very minor things. Actually, the last up I had was Arlington, which was probably the most legit of the four; I just sort of rolled and didn't come to a complete stop at a stop sign. Okay. And the cop was correct. So I feel like in the Black community, we see year after year, these reports that come out from somebody, you know, saying that Black folks are stopped disproportionately, which they are. And I just think that when you're having you have a police force, that obviously budgets are stretched, etc. And so on these sort of low-level, nonviolent things should be the first things that nobody should be focused on, quite frankly, I mean, unless it goes to public safety. I'm not sure why we're stopping people over these types of things. And to me, it's a bit of an overreach. And frankly, I think it puts a lot of police officers in danger, particularly when you're doing a stop on a highway. And or, you know, the types of things we've seen over the last five to 10 years, thanks to the camera phones, the advent of the camera phone, we've seen a lot of these police inner actions go badly for very, trivial reasons. So, I'm not a big fan of contextual stops at all. They are disproportionately meted out to the Black community. And Black motorists shouldn't have to put up with it. We should not have to pay tax money, and that tax money goes into this thing that has already been proven to be disproportionately impacting Black communities in Virginia.
Michael Pope
One more thing about Cliff Hayes here: he's having to answer charges that he does not live in the district. So the Associated Press recently had an article that they got their hands on a report that was put together by a private investigator hired by the House Republican caucus. I don't know about that. But the House Republican caucus provided the Associated Press with a report that was put together by a private investigator who said that Cliff Hayes doesn't actually live in the House that he says he lives in. Is this going to harm him on the campaign trail?
Lauren Burke
I highly doubt it is a very blue district. The Financial Reports are coming out this week. You could see that the Republicans or the Democrats spend their money to talk about abortion all the time. Republicans spend their money on private eyes to follow Cliff Hayes. But you know, this residency issue has come up with several other candidates. Cliff Hayes is not alone. Juan Pablo Segura is another one that I think he admitted on record that he actually has residences in Georgetown, which would be Washington, DC. But there are other folks who keeps coming up with Nick Freitas, Bobby Orok, and Buddy Fowler. So this piece does talk about some of the other Republicans, but this is one of these things where we are either going to enforce the rules in Virginia, or we're not. What we find in Virginia is that these types of things are rarely enforced. And I think probably because there's some bipartisan, oops, on both sides, and nobody really wants to deal with it. So, I don't think this is going to be an issue.
Michael Pope
All right. Well, any other thoughts you had here on this Roland Martin rolling series of town halls? We've had three of them. There are two more; I didn't actually pull a lot of sound from Roland Martin. But one issue that he talks about a lot is trying to reach people who are not voters who decided they're all the same; there's not really a lot of difference between them. He spends a lot of time and effort trying to persuade people just to vote in the first place. Is he going to be successful in those efforts?
Lauren Burke
Yeah, I mean, I think part of the reason he's really focused on that, as we just saw in Louisiana, is very low turnout. Now, of course, Virginia is not Louisiana, and the Louisiana Democratic Party is just not great. But Louisiana is a, I think it's a 35%, 40% Black state. He's thinking about Black voter turnout in Virginia, which is 20% Black state. The Democratic Party has to have that to win. You know, a lot of these seats, a lot of these races, and there is an issue in the Black community, quite frankly, with regard to ask him a simple question of, you know, every single cycle being told is the most important cycle in the world is most important election world? And what difference are we seeing in certain communities? And I do think that a lot of Black voters have a legitimate question there. And a lot of the folks, whether you're in Hampton, Newport News, Norfolk, or Portsmouth, you can name a lot of cities that have not changed for years. So, Black voters are not just like everybody else. They want results; they want to see those results show up in their life. And it was, that was something that you did hear Roland Martin say a lot. I did like, and you'd mentioned this earlier, Michael; I did like the shout-out to the trackers; he was actually talking directly to the tracker in the room several times. And that was pretty funny.
Michael Pope
Hysterical, he would say, trackers write this down; I don't want you to get this wrong.
Lauren Burke
Yeah. And he was actually making the point more largely that, at these events, and I think this does have to do with voter apathy. Sometimes it's like we're talking past each other, whether you're on the right or the left. And I know there have been several events in the Commonwealth of Virginia that have been canceled and put up and put on by Black groups like the NAACP and Black sororities and fraternities, and the Republicans have not shown up, so it becomes a question of how do you break through and talk to the other side if they won't show up to these events, and these are we and I get that, obviously, to say the obvious, quiet part out loud; obviously, the NAACP, and most of the policies they believe in would track for the Democratic Party, quite closely and I totally get that. But it is a nonpartisan group that I've seen them put on bipartisan candidate forums with Republicans there, and everything was cool. So it's a bigger question. And there is some polling that is indicating a sort of growing apathy national polling regarding Joe Biden and Donald Trump, then is signaling some apathy in the Black community for Black voters. So that, I think, is what Rolands really focused on. And I know Don Scott certainly is focused on that. And you know, you got to remember that Don Scott is breaking records and fundraising. He's gotten over $2 million over to the House caucus; Dan Helmer is making really good moving money to the House caucus. So, the Democrats are trying to put a lot of energy into turnout. Their fundraising is showing that, and we'll see, you know, we all know that the ultimate these questions are ultimately answered on election day.
Michael Pope
All right, Lauren Burke of Black Virginia News. Thanks for coming back to Pod Virginia.
Lauren Burke
Absolutely. Michael, anytime. It's a lot of fun. Thank you so much.
