While the 2024 presidential election and the ongoing legal troubles of #PO1135809 suck all the air out of the room, it’s important to remember that a lot of really important issues are dealt with at the state, not federal, level. This article reminds us that the 2024 session of the Virginia General Assembly (House of Delegates and State Senate) begins on January 10, one week from today.
To set the stage a little, let’s recall the results of Virginia’s 2023 state legislative elections. In an election cycle that is widely seen as an early signal of the outcome of the 2024 federal elections, the Democratic Party maintained a narrow lead in the state Senate (21D-19R) and regained control of the House of Delegates (51D-49R). With GOP Governor Glenn Youngkin still in office (his term runs out in 2025 and he cannot run for reelection), it is unlikely that the Democrats will be able to accomplish all that they want to do. But because Youngkin will be forced to negotiate with the Democrats to pass essential legislation like a state budget, the Democrats may be able to get some things done.
When the Democrats held a “governing trifecta” in Virginia in 2020 and 2021, they passed landmark legislation:
Raising the minimum wage
Decriminalizing Marijuana possession
Granting driver privilege cards (not full-fledged licenses) to undocumented immigrants
Passing the Virginia Clean Economy Act, designed to make Virginia’s electric grid carbon-free by 2045
Passing common-sense gun regulations, including requiring criminal background checks on all gun sales and restoring the state’s former one-hand-gun-a-month rule.
Allowing cities and counties in Virginia to remove Confederate monuments
Approving collective bargaining for local government employees
Implementing Redistricting reform (restricting although not eliminating partisan gerrymandering.
Protecting transgender student rights
For the two most recent legislative sessions (2022 and 2023) the state Senate (controlled by the thinnest of Democratic margins) worked as a “brick wall caucus” to stifle GOP efforts to roll back the accomplishments of the previous sessions. When the Democrats kept the Senate and regained the House in the elections in November of 2023, they immediately signaled their intention to keep pressing on their progressive agenda, even though Governor Youngkin will work to thwart their efforts. The Democrats are banking on the expectation that the GOP will continue to implode over the next year, and that, when the Dems regain their governing trifecta in 2025, they will have all of their proposals ready to go.
With this background, now let’s look at the proposal featured in this article. The hook at the beginning of the article is that the various campaign finance violations that led to the condemnation and resignation of Representative George Santos would have been entirely legal if he had been a Virginia state legislator. Virginia is notoriously the wild west of campaign finance; it joins 11 other states – Alabama, Indiana, Iowa, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Utah – in having absolutely no regulations on campaign contributions or expenditures.
The lack of regulation favors the candidates whose supporters have deep pockets; this is fine with the GOP because their party benefits from the resultant anarchy. Democrats would like to fix this by enacting the same kind of regulations that are found in the other 39 states and at the federal level.
The article focuses on Delegate Marcus Simon (a Democrat from Fairfax County) who has introduced various campaign finance reform bills in recent years and who recently pre-filed legislation to be considered in the upcoming General Assembly session. This bill would prohibit politicians from using campaign donations on personal expenditures – a simple enough restriction. During the 2023 legislative session, several groups – including the non-partisan League of Women Voters – advocated on the bill’s behalf. It didn’t make it out of the GOP-controlled House, so it never got to the governor’s desk.
This year the fate of the bill may be different. The 2023 elections shook up the General Assembly; redistricting led to a flood of retirements and resignations, so there are many new faces on both sides of the aisle. The Democrats expect that at least some of the newly-elected GOP delegates will be more open to the idea of campaign finance reform.
This is a big problem in Virginia. The cost of state elections is soaring – although it’s hard to pinpoint an exact figure because of the weakness of reporting requirements.
The Virginia General Assembly is a part-time legislature, meeting for 45 days in even-numbered years (after the statewide elections the previous November) and for 30 days in even-numbered years. This year is one of the so-called “long” sessions, when the General Assembly passes a two-year budget plan. The 2025 “short” session will entertain budget amendments and other legislation, but it will not rewrite the state’s budget.
This year’s session runs from January 10 through March 9. Stay tuned. If you live in Virginia, this is important to you. If you don’t live in Virginia, the actions of your state legislature are important to you as well. Find out what’s going on and pay attention.
This morning I attended the Chamber of Commerce 2024 Pre-Session Legislative Forum. The five GA members, new and returning, talked about how they support the Chamber's legislative priorities.
Maintain Right to Work status for the State. Oh, you bet.
Improve access to affordable housing. Yeah, sure. Loosen building codes and housing would be less expensive.
Broadband. Yes. The pipe is too full; that's why our are calls are dropped.
Certification for skilled labor so young people can move into a job after high school if college is not their choice. College gives you nothing with which to find a job. Certify! And internships are good, too.
Mental health, behavioral health. Needed but expensive.
Literacy? Uh, sure.
These are all important issues that are dealt with at the state and local levels and which were discussed today. Any reference to improving the State's high infant and post-partum death rates? No.
Support, support, support business, business, business. It was the Chamber. I know.