Virginia State Senator Hashimi Discusses Lieutenant Governor Race

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1:45Ben Meiselas:Look, Virginia is absolutely furious at the Trump regime. Donald Trump and his MAGA sycophants have been attacking Virginia, the federal workers who live in Virginia, the civil rights of people who live in Virginia. I'll just show you this other video right here of a very impressive crowd out in Richmond, Virginia for No Kings. Let me show this to you. Let's play it.

2:19Ben Meiselas:And then as we head into the November 4th election, big election in Virginia, the governor's race, obviously, between pro-democracy hero, Abigail Spanberger, and MAGA Republican sycophant, Winsome Earl Sears. You also have the lieutenant governor's race there, a powerful pro-democracy voice in Gazala Hashimi is running. And the entire House of delegates is up for reelection. You've got the AG's race there as well. And I'll show you this clip right here that shows that Virginia's child poverty rate is rising at an alarming rate as a result of the Trump regime and MAGA policies. Let's play this clip right here.

3:03Ben Meiselas:Down impacting hundreds of thousands across the Commonwealth. We have team coverage tonight. The Virginia Employment Commission is reporting a continued spike in claims from federal workers 8 News investigator Roland Wilson in our studio to break it down. But first, a concerning new report showing the number of children living in poverty in Virginia has increased. Researchers say local families remain below the national average thanks to government programs and worry poverty rates could nearly double without them. 8 News reporter Danelle Dukin live in the digital center with what advocates say is the key to turning things around.

3:38Ben Meiselas:Danelle. Heather, Eric, the report finds about 230 ,000 children across the Commonwealth are living in poverty. Advocates say based on the data, when the government steps up, child poverty goes down. A recent report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation shows a concerning rise in Virginia's child poverty rate, increasing from 9 to 12 percent in just three years. While that's below the national average of 13 percent, advocates say it's a warning sign that many families are struggling to keep up with rising costs. I also want to share this with you as well, just how dangerous the Winsome Earl Sears candidacy is and these MAGA candidates are.

4:19Ben Meiselas:Let's play this clip. The US government is now officially shut down. The impacts of a government shutdown could reverberate through Virginia. Nearly 150 ,000 civilian federal workers live in Virginia. A shutdown could lead to the furlough and firing of a large number of federal workers. So to be clear, would you urge the president not to? The president initiated the biggest singular cut to jobs in U.S. history earlier this year. Many of those cuts, of course, in your home state of Virginia. Just very quickly, yes or no, and then I'll move on. Would you tell president, well, just, ma 'am, let me interrupt quickly.

4:54Ben Meiselas:Would you tell president Trump not to fire any more federal workers?

5:01Now I'm hearing about dongs and all of that and how many here has ever lost a job? Oh, you mean it's not unusual? It happens to everybody all the time? Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that Virginia was the only state to see a rise in unemployment last month. Virginia reporting its biggest drop in employment last month. Virginia's unemployment rate rose to 3.5 % in June, continuing its steady rise since the beginning of this year.

5:29Ben Meiselas:How many here has ever lost a job? Oh, you mean it's not on the field? We can get large numbers of people. These potential mass firings are going to be devastating to Virginia, and we need a governor who will stand up for Virginians, for their jobs, and for our economy.

5:51Ben Meiselas:And now, as you look at the latest polling data for Mechelon Insights, you see that Abigail Spanberger is leading Winsome Earl Sears in the governor's race, 55 to 43%. And I just think Americans and especially people in the Commonwealth of Virginia and elsewhere are looking for candidates who are fighting for them. Enough of these MAGA culture wars and division. Right now, It's about affordability. It's about jobs. It's about empathy. It's about standing up against the fascism from Donald Trump. And this clip right here of Abigail Spanberger, I think just about sums it up. This was from her campaign.

6:30Ben Meiselas:Let's play it. Hey, friend. Can I pick you up? I want you to see how many people are here. Okay. Okay.

6:40Ben Meiselas:What drives me most is if ever there is a little girl anywhere who tells her parents that she wants to go home to Virginia. I want there to be a house her parents can afford in the community they want to live in. I want there to be a job that her parents can have that will allow them to provide for their family. I want there to be a school for that little girl where she is safe within its walls and where her teachers are well-paid and well-respected.

7:15Ben Meiselas:I want the water that she drinks and the air that she breathes to be clean. I want that little girl to know that her rights will be respected as she grows older.

7:28Ben Meiselas:And I want her to know that any dream she and her classmates and her friends and her peers may have, any dream they may have is theirs for the making because they are growing up in a commonwealth where the adults, where those with the votes and the voices voted to ensure that Virginia is a place of opportunity for them and for all of their peers. That is the Virginia that I believe in. That is the Virginia that I will work tirelessly to serve. And if you agree with me, then I would ask you to vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. And so, folks, the big elections coming up November 4th.

8:13Ben Meiselas:I want to bring in the candidate in the lieutenant governor's race in Virginia State Senator Ghazala Hashmi, who is running for lieutenant governor against the very MAGA Republican individual by the name of John Reed. We'll get into that in a little bit. I just want to talk, though, now in your position as a state senator. And of course, you're running for the lieutenant governor position. Everyone needs to know the elections November 4th. So it's right around the corner. But Virginia has been hit very hard by the failed MAGA policies of your MAGA Republican governor who pretends not to be MAGA, but he clearly is.

8:52Ben Meiselas:Glenn Youngkin, MAGA Republican in general in the House of Representatives and in the Senate and Donald Trump. And so tell us right now, just from your position as a state senator there, what are you seeing in Virginia? What's the sentiment on the ground? Well, thank you so much, Ben. And you're absolutely right. Ever since January, since the inauguration of Donald Trump, we have been facing serious crises here in Virginia. The massive doge cuts that began almost immediately into this Trump administration have hit Virginia especially hard. You know, so many of our federal workforce are Virginians, and we have seen the layoffs impacting families, the economic uncertainty, and the cuts to federal grants and contracts that affect many of our businesses and our corporate interests.

9:48We're seeing an impact also in the Port of Virginia, which is the portway for thousands and thousands of cargo ships that come through delivering goods and products from all across the world. And so the impacts from tariffs, from the cuts, and now we have the looming crisis of the snap cuts, as well as cuts to Medicaid. All of these are creating a perfect storm in Virginia. And we have not seen our governor, Glenn Youngkin, actually standing up for Virginians. And it is reaching a crisis point for many families now.

10:29Ben Meiselas:Look, these are serious times that call for serious leaders. And I can't believe I'm even have to read this sentence in the race that you're in against someone by the name of John Reed. But he was recently embroiled in a national scandal tied to a social media account that engaged with slave fetish and potential Nazi porn accounts. And he's also faced scrutiny for publicly calling to close down public schools. He compared abortion to slavery. He's a climate change denier now. He denies that the social media accounts are his where these vile Nazi fetish sex things were posted. The report by the group that did it, the American Journal News that was reporting on it, they talk about how it's the same name as his Instagram account.

11:22Ben Meiselas:And they went through and they did a diligent and thorough job.

11:29Ben Meiselas:I think Virginians want to talk about their economy and their jobs. And you have somebody who you're running against who seems most generously putting it more MAGA insane drama and other way of putting it like what WTF? Like what's what's going on there in Virginia? Yes, you know, the Republican ticket that is running for these three critical seats, governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general have proven themselves to be more aligned to Donald Trump rather than focused on the best interest of Virginians. And in particular, the individual I'm running against has repeatedly said he wants to close all public schools.

12:12He has, as you pointed out, compared reproductive health care access, critical health care access to slavery. And he has also supported H.R.1, the disastrous legislation that is going to strip away critical health care insurance from over 300 ,000 Virginians. He doesn't seem to have a problem with the massive doge cuts, and he is supporting the MAGA platform entirely. And, you know, What's really ironic is that he is an openly gay man who has also said that he doesn't support marriage equality, which is one of our three constitutional amendments that we are working on this upcoming session. And as I've said to him and to others, I'm ready to fight for his rights, even if he's not.

13:02Ben Meiselas:You know, when I interviewed the Speaker of the House of Delicates, Speaker Scott, he had pointed that out to me. He said, you know, the lieutenant governor is a gay man. I mean, the guy running for lieutenant governor is a gay man. And Winston Merle Sears said that she should be able to fire anyone who's gay just because that's not discrimination. And I hadn't made that connection at the time. I'm like, you're running in a ticket with the person who says firing you on the basis of being gay is not discrimination. We could go down that rabbit hole. I want to talk about you. I want to talk about your platform and why we know about your leadership in the state senate and fighting for people.

13:44Ben Meiselas:And talk to us about that. But why do you want this job as the lieutenant governor during very difficult times where your commonwealth is under attack? Why do you want this job? Well, Ben, I decided to run for office myself for the first time in 2019. Prior to that, I spent almost 30 years in the college classroom. I'd never intended to run for office, and I felt like I had to speak up and represent communities that I care about deeply. As an immigrant and as a Muslim, I was particularly appalled when Donald Trump came into office in his first administration, riding a wave of bigotry and Islamophobia and seeking to divide this nation.

14:30I taught American literature, and so three decades of helping my students to understand the complexity that is our American history and those texts that in particular define our American identity has been my life's work. And I decided to run in 2019 so I could respond to the crisis that I was seeing emerging in this country from the Trump administration. And so for many of those same reasons, I decided to run for lieutenant governor, you know, sadly and somewhat unexpectedly, I think. I don't think a lot of us plan to be here again, that we're in the midst of a second Trump administration that is even more disastrous than the first one.

15:15And it became immediately clear that we need to have strong state level leadership to respond to the crisis, to protect our citizens. I decided to run for lieutenant governor so that I can build on my six years of experience in the Virginia Senate, the leadership role that I've played in education and health care on housing issues, as well as environmental and energy concerns that I can build on that experience and also continue to respond to what the Trump administration is doing to Virginians, the harm that we're seeing. You know, we have to join forces. There needs to be a coalition of strong democratic leadership across many states in order to respond to the harm that's being inflicted on our country.

16:06Ben Meiselas:Which brings me to the last point, because what's interesting about your candidacy for lieutenant governor is that you're also a state senator. And we know Virginia Democrats are on the front line of pushing back against Donald Trump's attempt to rig the midterms. And as Donald Trump has tried to and has effectively gerrymandered Texas and all of these red states, Virginia Democrats, when we talk about them, you, we're talking about you in the Senate, have come up with a plan to fight back and said, look, is this ideally? what we'd want to do in normal political times? No. But if we got to fight back against what he's doing, we have to take action to save our democracy.

16:46Ben Meiselas:And so the Virginia state senators came up with the plan, and that's you, in order to figure out how you could create this constitutional amendment, put the issue to the voters like we're doing out here in California to do a mid-decade redistricting, which potentially creates another three Democratic seats just based on the way Virginia is kind of laid out. And it was a sophisticated plan. I mean, it was the fact that Youngkin forgot to close a special session a year ago or so, and then you figured out the way to reopen. Talk to us about that before we go, because I want people to also know that you're a fighter and on the front lines of this issue to save our democracy.

17:28Yes, this has been a difficult week, but a very urgent and important week. You know, I'm in the last week of my campaign, but knowing that this is such a critical and urgent moment for us, not just as Virginians, but as Americans, we in the House as well as the Senate, the Democratic leadership of both chambers knew that we must come back and respond to basically the unconstitutional actions that we see occurring. Just today, we saw the impacts in Ohio as well. So when we have Donald Trump demanding that states redistrict and gerrymander in order to support his failed policies, our own constituents have been rallying and marching and asking us to do something.

18:23And in Virginia, we knew we had an opportunity to actually do something. And so, yes, in this very critical week, we came back into session and our House colleagues passed the resolution as well as we in the Senate. And so now that resolution is in front of us. It is very, very limited in scope. It is not touching the redistricting commission that we had established five years ago, but it is giving us a window to respond should we see further unconstitutional actions in other states. This is actually opening the door for Virginia voters to have a real voice because any changes to our Constitution must come before the voters.

19:16Virginians will have a say so. And this is what hundreds of thousands of Virginians have been clamoring for ever since we've seen the destruction coming out of the Trump administration.

19:29Ben Meiselas:So State Senator Hoshby, where could people learn more about Homestretch? Where can they learn more about your lieutenant governor campaign if they want to be helpful before the election day? Well, thank you. Yes, my website has all the details about my policy, the work I've been doing. And that website is gazalahforvirginia.com. Everything's spelled out. And we'd be delighted to have your listeners take a look at that. And please ask any questions that they might have. Virginia State Senator Gazala Hashmi running for Lieutenant Governor. Again, somebody who the more I read about, frankly, the less I want to talk about because us.

20:15Ben Meiselas:It's still morning when you and I are recording this out of the West Coast, and I'd like to try to be able to have breakfast in peace. We appreciate you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Everybody hit subscribe. Let's get to 6 million subscribers.

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