Democrat Jennifer McClellan has represented Richmond in Virginia's House of Delegates for 11 years, but now she's looking for a change. She's running for an open seat in Virginia's State Senate. That district includes much of Richmond City, and parts of Henrico, Hanover, and Charles City counties.
If she wins Tuesday's special election, McClellan will go from the 100-member House to the 40-member Senate. She sat down with Richmond reporter Mallory Noe-Payne to talk about what switching could mean for her priorities as a lawmaker.
Interview Highlights:
McClellan: (In the Senate) the stakes are higher, because every single vote counts. In some ways it's more divisive, but in other ways it brings everybody together because your adversary today on one issue can be you ally tomorrow on another...
Noe-Payne: Does it shift your priorities at all?
McClellan: No, my priorities have always been focusing on public education, economic opportunity for all, I'm a strong defender of groups that are marginalized -- and that's not going to change. What will be more exciting is that there are lots of bills that you know are going to fly through the House that the Senate can kill. Whether it's abortion laws, discrimination against LGBTQ communities... the Senate is sort of the firewall. And so to be a part of that firewall rather than being the dissenting voice in the wilderness watching it go through anyway, is going to be pretty exciting.
Extra Audio: McClellan on the Legislative Process
"If you don't get what you want right away, you keep at it. Incremental progress is still progress... eventually you get where you want to go. I think a lot of people get frustrated with the legislative process in particular, thinking we have to have dramatic change overnight. And that's not how our system was designed, it was designed to be deliberative and slow."
Extra Audio: McClellan on the Importance of Voting Locally
"A lot of the issues that you vote for for President, get resolved at the state level... people need to pay attention to what's happening in state government. We saw over the past eight years how the state legislature tried to block things coming out of the Obama administration, well now we have an opportunity to try to block some of the bad things coming out of a Trump administration."
McClellan is running against Libertarian Corey Fauconier. There is no Republican on the ticket. Learn more about Tuesday's election and if you're eligible to vote for either of the two open seats here.
