When I was first elected to the Virginia General Assembly in 2013, I was one of 32 Democrats serving with 68 Republicans. Our small caucus was loud and scrappy, but hardly mighty. We couldn’t even muster the votes to sustain a Governor’s veto.

If Spring is marked by the sprouting of cherry blossom and daffodils around our region, then Election Season is marked by the sprouting of wire frames and political signs in yards all over Falls Church, from the City School Board and Council, to the House of Delegates, to statewide races for Governor, Lt Governor, and Attorney General. Right now, we are probably at peak bloom.

“When I was sworn into the Virginia House of Delegates in January of 2014, I was one of 33 House Democrats – a super-minority incapable of even sustaining a veto by the recently elected Democratic Governor, Terry McAuliffe.”

Virginia will be a more just and prosperous state as a result of the important actions taken by the Virginia General Assembly and approved by the Governor during our Special Session last week.

As the Virginia General Assembly prepares to return for a Special Session on Aug. 2 to appropriate American Rescue Plan funds made available to the Commonwealth, we learned that Virginia will also enter the new fiscal year with a substantial surplus in state revenue.

Virginia will become the first state in the south to abolish the death penalty on July 1st.

There have been quite few updates to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines and the Governor’s Executive Orders related to the pandemic in the past week. So, I wanted to take this opportunity to share some of those details.

“On July 1, 2021 it will be legal for adults in Virginia to possess small amounts of marijuana in their homes.”

Many of the changes we implemented here in Virginia to make voting easier during a pandemic actually just make voting easier. And that’s a good thing. In the last two sessions, we passed historic voting legislation aimed at expanding access and strengthening voter rights.