Its A Bizarre Crossover
Michael Pope
Welcome to Transition Virginia, the podcast that examines that transition of power from Republican to Democrat. My name is Michael Pope.
Thomas Bowman
And I'm Thomas Bowman. Today on the podcast, a crossover unlike anything that's ever happened before. A Bizarro crossover, where House bills are awaiting an uncertain fate and senators are skeptical about what will happen to their bills in the House. It's a game with no rules because the two sides never approved a procedural resolution. That's why we've got a pair of referees here to help us understand Bizarro Crossover. Our first guest is a former member of the House of Delegates from Dulles, who is now with the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, David Ramadan. Thank you for joining us.
David Ramadan
Thank you for having me. Happy to be on.
Thomas Bowman
Our next guest is making a return appearance on Transition Virginia, after appearing on one of our most popular shows. So the pressure is on for him to drive up our numbers again. He's the former Executive Director of the House Democrats, Trevor Southerland.
Trevor Southerland
Glad to be back and I think we'll we'll make that happen given that this time I've got a better guest than Jeff to work with, so.
Michael Pope
Oh! Jeff Ryer slam early in the show. And we're gonna we're actually we're gonna come back to slamming Jeff Ryer in segment three, so stay tuned for that. So the Special Session of the General Assembly has come to a point that normally we would call Crossover, where the House bills are moving over to the Senate, and the Senate bills moving over to the House. But that's under normal circumstances. We're obviously not in normal circumstances right now and nobody really knows what's going on. Meanwhile, there's some kind of low grade war going on between House Democrats and Senate Democrats. Right before the senators wrapped up their Session last week, Senate Majority Leader Dick Saslaw said, "Lawmakers might be able to wrap up the entire Special Session in about a week or so." That prompted Senator Richard Stuart to ask Saslaw when House members planned on taking up the Senate's bills because he hadn't seen any kind of calendar yet. That prompted Saslaw to say this.
Dick Saslaw
And if they haven't met on any of our bills, there's no federal law requiring us to get theirs back to them. Okay.
Michael Pope
Okay. Well, that's the Majority Leader of the Senate saying he's ready, willing, and able to hold House bills hostage if senators don't see action on their bills in the House. Now, I asked Delegate Marcus Simon about this. And he says, "Both sides are facing mutually assured destruction." But he says, "Do not expect an implosion."
Marcus Simon
We're not going to do that, we're going to talk to each other. I mean, it's not that big a deal. It's not apocalyptic. We're not having as hard a time communicating as some would lead you to believe.
Michael Pope
David, Ramadan, what do you think is actually going on with this conflict between the House and Senate and where do you see this thing heading?
David Ramadan
They are having a hard time communicating, with all due respect to my good friend Marcus Simon. They're having a very hard time communicating, but it's nothing new. And I do agree that they'll end up figuring it out. The rivalry between the Senate and the House predates any other rivalry in Richmond. There are more problems between House and Senate and Senate, House. And there are D's versus R's or R's versus D's in either one of those chambers. We saw it in the General Session this year, earlier in January. And we're seeing it again in the special Session. That doesn't excuse it, though, putting aside all the territorial issues, this is the work of the people. And that's something that both sides and all our friends for me, needs to drop their territorial, drop their egos, drop all of this crap, with all due respect, and go back to finishing the work of the people and agreeing on a certain path or certain rules of engagement here, to finish this Session on, despite the fact that they didn't have Procedural Resolution to start with.
Michael Pope
Trevor, do you think that's like a fatal flaw that they started this Special Session without a Procedural Resolution?
Trevor Southerland
I don't think it's a fatal flaw, but I do think it was something that they should have done. There should have been a Procedural Resolution. And especially with this Session, you know, being the specialist of Special Sessions, you've got the House operating virtually, you've got the Senate meeting in person, sometimes, with four or five members not present. You know, that that would have helped to get through some of this. But also part of that not being all together crammed in the Capitol like they usually are, that leads to you know, things like what happened, like what you just played with Senator Saslaw, where things that are normally a side conversation in the hallway, become a floor speech or a tweet or a something like that. So, you know that that's what I think it is. I do think they should have done a Procedural Resolution, though. That would have definitely helped with this.
Thomas Bowman
Trevor, Saslaw's threat that the Senate could potentially kill all the House bills is a pretty extreme one to take. And of course, he's making it justifiably from his perspective. But how seriously, should we take him? Is that something that would potentially actually happen?
Trevor Southerland
I don't think so. I mean, that would be not a wise move to make for either side to torch the other side's bills like that. You know, I think we see this a lot. And I do think we're seeing it more right now because of the circumstances. But political theater, it often comes across a lot more dramatic than it is. It's actually a lot more, you know, comedic most of the time. It's everybody who's in politics, we all think we're on the, "West Wing," but really, we're just on, "Veep."
Michael Pope
David Ramadan, I'm wondering about your experience with Special Sessions. Is this Special Session that we're now in totally unprecedented, uncharted territory? Or is this more of the same?
David Ramadan
The fact that there's no Resolution that they're operating under is is uncharted territory. I don't... we never had that when I was in the in the General Assembly. I don't recall it in my 30 years of watching politics in Virginia. So that is unchartered territory, but that's not specific to a Special Session, that's through any Session. Special Sessions are normally unique, Special Sessions are normally controversial, and that is expected. Most of the prior General Sessions were about budget issues, and about holding up the budget, and there's always dates that you get to go by. And yes, there's some political theater, but the political theater can, as well, end up in a disaster. We saw the 11th hour of the General Session earlier this year, couple bills that died and some of it are important and relevant to the issue on hand. Now in the Special Session, we saw those die and we saw some that were negotiated with the pictures that we all seen with the Speaker and the Majority Leader in the House, and then the Majority and the Minority Leader in the Senate, all in front of this Senate Chamber, literally handing each other bills that they held hostage, you're in General Session, and that could happen. And that would be that's not good. That's not good for Virginia, not good for them, not good for a new majority that took over the General Assembly.
Thomas Bowman
David, you've been in majority party in the General Assembly, so perhaps you can lend perspective here. What are the Dems doing wrong and is that problem in the House or more in the Senate?
David Ramadan
Um, I think it's not a matter of wrong or right, as much as it's a matter of have we figured out what do we need to do to keep moving. The Senate Democrats are more comfortable being in majority because they have been. They've been majority, they've been in the in the minority in recent years, they've played that game both ways. And it is a game of politics, right, not a game of governing, but it is a game of politics. That said, there is the majority and a minority leader that have changed rolls in the Senate, that are pretty close friends, despite all the bombastic speeches that they put up on the Floor, they have some sort of an arrangement, an agreement to work with each other, that's Norment and Saslaw, everybody knows that that's not a hidden fact, they've watched out for each other over the years, regardless who's there. And they're both cognitive of the fact that the roles could flip very easily as well. That's not the same dynamic in the House. In the House, Republicans were in in the majority for a long period of time. I believe when it's flipped, last year, only two members of the new majority had ever served when they were back in the majority, so they're both getting the Democrats in the House are not used to governing and being in the majority. And the Republicans in the House, are not used to being in the minority. And they both need to learn how to play together a little better.
Michael Pope
Looming over all of this is a debate about how to operate. This is more of a procedural question than a policy question, which is this...Should all of these things be put together in one big Omnibus Bill, and that's what the Senate Democrats have chosen to do with policing reform. They've got this huge bill that does 15, 20, 30 different things. And that's what they sent over to the House. The House did the exact opposite thing, where they did little smaller bills that did specific things, and they sent like a dozen bills over to the Senate. And both sides are digging in now and refusing to agree to the way the other side is doing it. So one side here is going to prevail and the other side is not. I'll ask both of you the same question, which is which side is going to win here? The Omnibus Bill or the individual version? David Ramadan, I'll ask you first and then Trevor Southerland.
David Ramadan
As a former House member, it pains me to say that I think the Senate will win on this one. There's more cohesion among Senate Democrats, then there is cohesion among House Democrats. They will stick together with Saslaw, that you will not see many that will break away, versus there are many dynamics happening in the House. So it pains me to see the Senate win another one over the House, despite the R vs. D's or D's versus D's or R versus R. Senate, I think will prevail on this one.
Trevor Southerland
Yeah, I've got to say I'm not 100% sure, but I tend to think that the Senate version might end up prevailing, but I think the reason it might be is quite simply, the House and Senate Democrats are in a different position. The House Democrats in 2019 overperformed on the election by most analysis. They got 55 seats compared to 45 for the Republicans. On the Senate side, it's only 2119. So the Senate Democrats are in a worse position, they can't lose as many members on a vote, that tends to make them more cautious. And that might be why their way prevails here, simply because they know that they can't take every vote to the Floor like the House Democrats can in most instances.
David Ramadan
No disagreement. No disagreement there.
Thomas Bowman
Well, let's take a break. When we come back, we're going to go behind our own closed doors to assemble in a secret conference committee.
Michael Pope
And we're back on Transition Virginia. We're going to go into our own conference committee. Now listeners to this podcast know, this is one of my sticking points. I hate the Conference Committees. I hate that they're not transparent. I hate that they meet in secret. I hate they're not open to the public, they're not open to the press, they're not at all transparent. This is a problem with how the system works. Under normal circumstances, conference committees can be something as simple as a conversation that happens in an elevator between two people. They could be just a word or two that's shared in a hallway between two people who are going in opposite directions. That's under normal circumstances where everybody's in the same building. This is a little different and everybody's meeting virtually. So let's start to get your both of your reactions on what we can expect the conference committees to actually look like. And is it possible they might be more transparent and actually let the public and the press into the process? David Ramadan, I'll start with you. You've been in many of these secret closed door conference committees. Isn't it a problem that they're not open to the public and open to the press? And shouldn't they be open to the public?
David Ramadan
They should be, technically and legally they are. Except there's normally no room that anybody's meeting in. I mean, I've held conference committee meetings in, as you said, an elevator, in the hallway, heck, over lunch on the back porch of Mr. Jefferson's building. Normally it's chasing the person on the other side. And on the other side, meaning here, Senate versus House, House versus Senate, to try to get everybody together. Now, during normal times, it's even harder than it is now, because the time of the Session is short, everybody has committee meetings. And they simply don't have time to sit down, you can schedule it. So you chase them. If you want your bill, and it's normally the author of that bill. If you want your bill to survive, you'd better find a way to get somebody, to get the four or five people, and even though it's normally five people that's on the committee, or six people on the committee, really, it's decided by two to three people, right? It's it's the leading, it's the owner of the bill from wherever it originated, and whoever is the senior member of the majority that got appointed to that committee from the other side of the hallway. So you just need to go find that person, chase them, chase him in front of the bathroom, chase him in front of it. Now you get to chase him by phone or chase them by by zoom, right? And if you can get them that's great, but does that mean you're gonna get a publication on it are you gonna get an announcement for anybody to watch? Oh heck no, you're not gonna see that.
Michael Pope
Okay, so you're saying news tip at the Capitol Building, hang out by the restrooms and that's where you see all the conference committee action take place?
David Ramadan
Restrooms are good, where the food is served is good, or wherever somebody's serving balaclava, my signature way of getting people on hours in the building, whereas I've got balaclava, come over. Or moonshine, that worked as well.
Michael Pope
That's a dirty trick.
Thomas Bowman
I can argue that it's effective there. Well, since you know what you're doing, maybe you can lead us on a conference committee here of our own. So let's take chokeholds. The House bill bans them, the Senate bill allows them. So if we can start with that. How do you conduct a conference committee between those two policy perspectives?
David Ramadan
Here's the reality of this. Okay. And this is not and you picked one that is an absolute close to my heart and then very, very important issue. Unfortunately, though, in most of those, the issue is not the subject that that determines how the committee works. So this is a serious one. And this is a major problem and this something needs to be dealt with, chokeholds needs to be banned period. Out. They're not acceptable. There is no scenario in my mind that they should be. But is that really the discussion that's going to happen? No, it's not. The discussion is going to be, look, I got the votes for this one. And, Trevor, it doesn't matter what you think, I got the votes. And I'm going to be able to pass it through. I got the votes on your side. I get the votes on my side. Or sorry, Trevor, I don't have the votes, but I need you on this. Come on. You got to work with me on this one. Oh, and by the way, yeah, that other bill that that, that that's very important to you, I can help you out on it. Or if I'm a chairman of a committee on my side, and we're gonna say, "Sorry, Trevor, but this one is not going anywhere until we agree on this bill." So this becomes horsetrading, absolute horsetrading, whether we are talking about a bill regarding puppies, or whether we're talking about something that is as important and as detrimental, and where it's life threatening to many of our minority communities, such as chokeholds, when they're out in the public.
Trevor Southerland
Yeah, and I think that's exactly where it goes. And the big question and most most of these is going to be what do the Senate Democrats have the votes for and what can they push through? Where can they get, you know, maybe they have one member that is unable to attend that vote? Or, you know, are they able to get it at least to a tie so that the Lieutenant Governor can break the tie, and that's where it comes back to the problem with the slim Senate Majority. When you have a couple of moderate to conservative Senate Democrats, how do you get through that and push that on the floor? And I think you're gonna see the House members are gonna push very hard for their position, especially here. And you know, you're seeing part of that, what what David was talking about with the House Democrats not having been in the majority before, you know, on the House side, they are used to having to fight for their bills in the minority, especially those that were there 17 to 19, because you could occasionally win a vote, but you had to fight so hard. And so a conference committee is sort of like that right now with the with the Senate, because of that narrow vote margin, and that's going to be the real question. What can you get past the Senate Floor?
Michael Pope
Well, you know, we have more bills we need to get through our conference committee, but I want to stay on chokeholds just for a second here because it's such an important issue and it's so close to the Legislative Black Caucus. So there's one way of looking at this where it's just about numbers and are the votes, there or are the votes, not there. But there's another way of looking at this, which is here's this group of lawmakers who's extremely important to the process. And this is important to them, and they're investing political capital in banning chokeholds. And so, but there is this critical distinction here between the House wants to ban it, the Legislative Black Caucus wants to ban it, the Senate does not want to ban it, and wants to allow it in certain circumstances if the life of the officer is imperiled. And more importantly, that was probably a key negotiating tactic and getting sign off from the Police Chiefs Association, the Sheriffs Association, which the Senate bill has. And so which side ends up prevailing there on chokeholds?
Trevor Southerland
So I do think the House has one negotiating tool that we haven't talked about here yet, and that's the budget. And that's one of the big things that's still being worked out is the budget process, and the Senate Democrats, and especially the Governor, they are very concerned and passionate about the AAA bond rating. They are several members of the House Democratic Caucus that don't really care about the AAA bond rating. They want to do some more spending, they want to do some more investments. And so the House Democrats do have a chance to talk to the Senate and say, "Look, we need to get a couple of these criminal justice reform things through.This is very important to us. And in exchange for that, we might be willing to tone it down a bit on some of the budget stuff, make sure we preserve the AAA bond rating, and help you guys get a budget that you like better." And so that is that is a negotiating point the House has that that might help them out.
David Ramadan
Except they're dealing with Dick Sasalw. There's really no fight with Dick. We all know him. We love him for who he is. There's no fighting with Dick. You either have it or you don't have it with him.
Michael Pope
Alright, the next bill that we're going to take up here in our makeshift conference committee, is Civilian Review Boards. Now, the House and the Senate have taken drastically different approaches on this. The House version mandates them, so every locality must have a Civilian Review Board. And it also includes sheriff's, so the House version is everybody has to have them and they must include the police department and the sheriff's office's. The Senate version is totally different. It's not mandated. It's, which by the way the advocates want, the advocates for criminal justice reform are not looking to have them mandate, they want to have buy in for these things. And so it's voluntary. You can have them if there's a group that wants to create them, and they're only for police departments, they're not for sheriff's offices. So this is actually pretty divergent here between the two approaches. Which side wins? David Ramadan first.
David Ramadan
Senate, unfortunately, again. They made the commitments, they cannot back off from those commitments with the police chiefs and the sheriff chiefs that that you just mentioned. The Virginia Legislative Black Caucus is not really one caucus, it's two caucuses. There's the House Legislative Black Caucus. And then there's there's the Senate. And those are not in agreement on most issues or on all issues. They're in agreement on some. And we've seen a split on several bills before. Therefore there's not one cohesive voice on this, and the commitments is going to be made and here's where here's where Dick Saslaw would walk in and say, "You want the whole loaf of bread and getting it. I got the chiefs. Here's what you're gonna get. Take it or leave it."
Trevor Southerland
I mean, I do think there's a perfect place for compromise here, though, for the Senate to get the volunteer of it, not the mandatory review boards, and for the House to get the sheriff's included. Now, I understand the constitutionality issue when it comes to sheriff's, but does that apply to all of their deputies, and all of the, you know, non elected employees of the sheriff's department? I live in a county that we don't have a police department, all we have is the Sheriff. And I think that my county needs a way to have a review board if we want to have one, even though we only have a sheriff's department and so that's something that I think, you know, does need to be looked at because the sheriff's are elected, but their deputies aren't.
David Ramadan
The constitutionality of this will come in, and here's where again, former House members saying, I'm sorry to say the Senate will win on this one. The constitutionality of it will be challenged if the House version passes. You cannot force sheriffs who are duly elected on their own, despite being a bill in state, to put in these these review boards. You're going to see an incredible amount of localities that will prefer the Senate version. And this is again, a new group of of legislators who came in with force, who are who are more liberal than the ones that have been there for many years, pushing for this reform in the House, versus you're gonna get the Senate Democrats who are gonna say, "Take what we're giving you or you're not getting any." And when it comes down to, okay, we have time here. Now here's the difference. There's time, there's no there's no deadline that this Session must end by or else. Special Session, you can really drag it as long as you want to. So it's whoever can hold longer. And I think the Senate will be able to hold longer on this and say, "but take your time, we're sitting here."
Thomas Bowman
So the Senate's probably gonna win on chokeholds. The Senate possibly, going to win on review boards. There's opportunities, of course, for compromise, if they're willing to seize upon it. But let's talk about something else. Where the House version is completely opposite from the Senate version, military equipment. The House version bands MRAP's. These are mine resistant, ambush protected vehicles. The Senate version allows them. So what do policy experts say is the best policy for police and local police departments having mRAP's and two, who's gonna win at the end of the day?
David Ramadan
I'll give that one to the House and I think the Senate will, this would not rank up enough to give the House a win on it, for them. Most of the policy analysts will tell you, "There is no need for those." The argument is very weak for police and sheriff's departments to have them. I think the best argument they put out was that, "Look, when there are floods, these vehicles can go in and pull people out of the floods." Well, you can borrow them at that point. So they have very weak policy arguments for them. And I doubt that there's anybody who wants to die on that sword in the Senate. That's one that they may be able to pour straight on, say, "You want to win, I'll give you the MRAP's. House can ban them, but we're not budging on on the review boards and we're not budging on other stuff."
Thomas Bowman
So one bill that went down that we didn't expect was paid sick leave.
David Ramadan
I did.
Thomas Bowman
Right. Well, let's talk about that. So are other bills that advocates would say are necessary COVID measures, are they also going to meet the same fate as paid sick leave?
David Ramadan
Paid sick leave, I thought would die. I thought it would die during General Session or surprise that made it to the Senate Floor to start with, and it died the last minute. That debate was again between two Democrats within the Senate. It was Chap Peterson versus Barbara Favola at the time. They never solved the issues with the bill. They brought it back. The House version tried to make it only for COVID, and for quarantine. Just absolutely wasn't vetted all the way for anybody to swallow it on the Senate side. And that's why it died with majority of the democrats voting against it, I think. So will there be other bills? There probably will be a couple more. I'll have to go back and check which ones, but as I was looking through the bills that were making it out of the House last week, a couple of them just flagged in my mind. Like, I don't see this going anywhere. I don't see this going anywhere. I don't see this going anywhere. So yeah, you're gonna see that the Senate remains to be a different body, then then the House as far as reflection on what is the will of Virginia. And Trevor mentioned political reasons for that. But there's also institutional reasons for that. And institutional history there and a lot of relationships that exist. It's all about relationships, folks. I've passed bills that will never pass during during the majority of Republicans holding the House in the Senate, including online voter registration. I authored that bill. I passed it when when Republicans were being very restrictive on voting, and access, and so on. But we passed online voter registration, and I authored it, then it was co patron by the one of the most conservative members of the House, the Chairman of the committee of P&E Committee at the time who pushed it. So it's all about relationships, and those relationships in the Senate exist and are much older than the relationships that currently exists in the House or lack of relationships that I'm that I'm seeing in the House.
Trevor Southerland
No, I mean, I do think a lot of that is right. I also think that the House members know that not everything is going to get through the Senate. But that doesn't mean they don't need to pass it through the House. One of the things that you're going to see, you know, for the House Democrats is they've won this majority. They've come in with a more progressive Caucus, and now some of their stuff is being stymied by a more moderate Caucus in the Senate. And one of the problems there for the House Democrats is that they have to wait until 2023 for there to be primaries and elections in the Senate for possibly a more progressive Senate. But the House has to go up in 2021. So they need to be able to go back to their base, to their voters and say, "Hey, we passed this in the House. We did our job. The Senate didn't do theirs. That's who you need to have a problem with. Please don't primary me."
Michael Pope
All right. Well, let's take a break. When we come back, we're going to have question time.
Michael Pope
And we're back on Transition Virginia. It's time for questions. It's question time. Our first question for the segment comes from friend of the show, Jeff Ryer. Or maybe we should call him enemy of the show yet prior. He has a question about Delegate Jeff Bourne's Qualified Immunity Bill was passed the House after a lot of drama, but then died in the Senate.
Jeff Ryer
In his recent appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Delegate Bourne experienced some difficulties responding to questions from senators on his bill to revoke qualified immunity for law enforcement. Are Democrat delegates being harmed when they present in the Senate by House leadership's limiting of debate on their legislation?
Trevor Southerland
No, I don't think so. I think it's a difficult thing sometimes to go in front of the Senate for House members. They're not used to the way the Senate does things. They're not used to having to deal with it. And in that particular instance, with Delegate Bourne, I think he was really not served by having to come in virtually to a body that is supposed to be meeting in person. I think that setup was bad. I think there were communications issues. So I think there was a lot going on with that particular setup. You know, the Senate, the other day, debated for two hours on a bill that everybody knew the vote of going into it. So, you know, you can say what you want about differences in how the bodies operate, but the Senate ain't exactly got the best show either.
Michael Pope
David Ramadan, the point that Jeff Ryer is trying to make there is that his opinion is that the new House Democratic leadership does not allow for a lot of debate, and they do a whole lot of calling the question and they do it really early. So there's not a lot of debate in the committee's and on the floor. And then so as a result of that, this theory goes, when the House members get over to the Senate, they're not prepared for the grilling they get from the senators. What's your experience when you were in the House? Do you feel like that the Republican leadership allowed for a lot of debate? Or did they also suffer from this?
David Ramadan
There's always been a limitation on debate or time for debate in the House. And that's purely on practical grounds. You got more number of members, you have 100 members, versus 40. Every committee has more members on it, and you have the same amount of time that you get to deal with. Plus they got so many bills that you got a deal with them, most of which sometimes come from the Senate undebated, and the real work gets done on them in committees in the House. So, this is not a Republican versus Democrat thing. This is just a difference in the body. And no, Jeff is way off. He's scoring a point, as expected from the Political Director of the Minority in the Senate. He's trying to score a point, fine point scored, but does that mean it's real? It's not. And it will be much nicer for anybody from the Senate to be able to debate that point when they actually have their members available in committee to debate versus a proxy, that one member takes it from seven others. And where's the debate there?
Thomas Bowman
Our next question is from friend of the show Sarah Taylor, who brings some literary flare to the podcast.
Sarah Graham Taylor
As a giant nerd, and not just a giant General Assembly nerd, I keep thinking of this Special Session as, "Alice in Wonderland." When Alice goes through the looking glass, and everything is nonsense, nothing is what it should be, and everything just gets curiouser and curiouser. If you had to cast Alice's world after she goes through the looking glass, with members of the General Assembly, who would be who?
Michael Pope
Leave it to Sarah Taylor to elevate the podcast, to make us think about stuff. David Ramadan, who's who?
David Ramadan
Never watched, "Alice in Wonderland," this immigrant was too busy doing something else growing up, and worried about surviving in Beirut, Lebanon, so I cannot put the characters, but that said, my vote always goes to for Surovell.
Thomas Bowman
Mark man.
Michael Pope
Surovell as a White Knight or the Red Knight or what is?
David Ramadan
I don't know but whatever it is, I vote for Surovell, whatever it is.
Thomas Bowman
You sound like the rest of the senators.
Trevor Southerland
I, again, I mean this is I don't I don't have the immigrant thing, I was just a redneck in Tennessee but um, I also have a hard time with this question, but I'll say that the the White Knight, I'll give it to Marcus Simon. He always tries to keep him on track. He knows where it should be, even here in Bizarro world. And for the Red Knight or the Red Queen or whatever it was. I'll give that to the House GOP comm shop who thinks that the best thing they should do during a time of pandemic and suffering across the Commonwealth in the nation, is to have their members whine and complain about how they don't know how to use Broadband or hit Star Six.
David Ramadan
Oh, Trevor had to go lower then? Oh, under the belt under the belt.
Trevor Southerland
Just a nice way to end the show, I think.
Thomas Bowman
Yeah, I'm with Trevor. I don't know who I would cast, but I can definitely tell they're eating a lot of mushrooms.
Michael Pope
I'm gonna jump in here and cast the role of Cheshire Cat, to Matt Fariss, who is participating via phone, and seems to have a really hard time with virtual meetings. I don't get the sense that he likes anything virtual and I think that he probably would much prefer to be in the room with everybody else.
Trevor Southerland
Maybe Wampler can help him out with that.
David Ramadan
Well, Matt is likely taking care of trading a couple thousand cows a day, and he's, I'll tell you, is one of the most interesting members of General Assembly for sure.
Thomas Bowman
Yeah. He's probably got the Session on mute while he is taking care of real business.
David Ramadan
I'll never forget the day that we were given our orientation as freshmen going in. And Matt was one of my classmates and became a very, very and remains to be a close friend. He stood up, you know, in his eloquent way of undermining and playing down his expertise in life, Matt is a college graduate, and a realtor, and successful entrepreneur, yet he stood up and introduced himself. "All I know is about cows, y'all."
Michael Pope
So that's it for this episode. If you have comments or questions about what you just heard, what is it you just heard? I don't know. Or maybe you want to tell us how much you love or hate the show or who you want to cast in your version of, "Alice in Wonderland," write us an email, send it to us at TransitionVApodcast@gmail.com. Maybe we'll even read it on the air. Subscribe to Transition Virginia anywhere pods are cast. Follow the Transition team on twitter @TransitionVA. Find us on the web at transitionvirginia.com. Don't forget to like and subscribe so you can enjoy our next episode of Transition Virginia.
