Even Some Democrats Were Against The Redistricting Of Virginia
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Transcript
36 segmentsHey, thanks for joining us, everybody. This is News Radio. WRVA. My name is Rich. Rich Herrera. This is Richmond's Morning News. Again, get started with us. Play catch up the rest of the day. All right. We've been talking about the Supreme Court of Virginia and their decision on Friday upholding the Taswell. ruling that took place before the election, they found that the General Assembly had ramrodded this through circumventing their own rules, and therefore it was invalid. Now, a lot of people have a lot of different things to say on both sides of the aisle. I do want to bring on someone that I respect very, very much. His name is Brian Cannon. He is a Democrat. He's also one that agrees with me. Gerrymandering is not good. I want to pick my politicians that I send to D.C. not the other way around. And he's joining us here on News Radio, WRVA. Good morning, Brian. Morning, Rich. Thanks for having me, sir. Absolutely. Okay. Your thought, let me back up for just a sec. Somebody understands who Brian Cannon is. You were one of the folks that worked really hard to get rid of gerrymandering in the Commonwealth totally with the bipartisan commission that was enacted six years ago. And you've been pretty steadfast about... politicians and lawmakers trying to choose their voters instead of the other way around. What were your thoughts when this decision came down? Well, my thoughts were I was grateful for the courts for seeing this what it was. I mean, the Democrats pushing this through after over a million Virginians had already voted doesn't satisfy any reasonable definition of having an intervening election. I mean, courts didn't strike down the maps. Those are ugly and should be struck down for other reasons. The court struck down the process here. And the Democrats were ramming this through. And you called it out early, Rich. So I'm grateful for you. I'm grateful for the people who organize and raise their voices on this. And I'm particularly grateful for the lawyers who did excellent work on this case, including we should totally mention who's been vindicated here, former Attorney General Jason Mierrez, because he wrote the advisory opinion telling the Democrats this was wrong back last fall. So when he wrote that, there was, I asked different lawyers. They looked at and said, yeah, this makes sense. And then we just went running down the hallway with scissors, trying to get this thing pushed through. We were talking a different lawyer, and Brian's lawyer, by the way, as well. We talked to a different lawyer this morning. She goes, oh, I was pretty confident this thing was going to get overturned. I'm like, then you must be the only one, because I wasn't sure which way they were going to rule.
Yeah, I thought for sure, and I said this on your show before, Rich. You know, I thought they weren't going to come in and save us. The only salvation we had was at the ballot box, and we came up a little short in that, unfortunately. But I was glad the just the just a... And if you read their opinion, and by the way, too many people commenting on this, I've even seen New York Times columnists and stuff comment on it, clearly haven't read the opinion or they're being disingenuous with us. Because the opinion spells out exactly... these important things about an election, meaning the time votes are cast and counted, not just counted, like it's the whole process, as well as why the court didn't do this earlier, which I wish it had, but Virginia law kind of precludes that. And the Democrats, in fact, argued that they shouldn't do it, make a ruling before the court, before the voters weighed in. One of the things I respect about you and the reason why I've wanted you to come on the radio and I'm going to be very candid with people, Brian is one person that I can look in the eye and shake his hand and go, you know what? You put the people above the party. Brian is a registered Democrat. Brian and I probably will never vote for the same person 99% of the time, but I think we both see eye to eye. This is just, it's not good when we have... People being disenfranchised, votes being taken away. Well, hold on. Let me back off on the hyperbole. When we have maps that are drawn that don't give us honest elections, and they're stacked one way or the other, red or blue. I hate them in both ways. Yeah, Rich and I appreciate. You know, this whole republic that we have, this thing doesn't work if we're not willing to have fair elections, right? It doesn't can't work if it doesn't have fair elections. And that means sometimes, you know, my team's going to win and you've got to accept it. And sometimes your team's going to win and I've got to accept it. And that's the kind of basic premise of all this, which is why we need just fair districts that aren't drawn by politicians. And I listed to your segment earlier for... for Speaker Johnson, and I probably don't agree with him on too too much, but I do agree with him when he said this was morally wrong for Virginia Democrats to do. And I completely agree. I would also suggest that maybe he should look in his own backyard as well in Louisiana, where Louisiana Republicans are doing the exact same thing. In fact, they canceled an election. Voters in Louisiana had already started voting in those congressional primaries. The governor canceled them. And they're trying to gerrymandar Democrats out of power, or not that they're in power, but Democrats out of the few seats they have out there. So it's just morally wrong on both sides. And if we want to be a constitutional republic, we've got to stand up for those fundamental principles. We can argue over taxes and wars and all sorts of things like that, but the free and fair election should be something we all support. And I spoke up to the chairman of the RNC. He wasn't happy. But I said, I don't like gerrymandering no matter who's doing. And I told Mike Johnson, listen, hey, if. Virginia wants to send 10 Democrats and one Republican, and they do it in an honest election where we have regular maps that aren't gerrymander. Hey, so be it. So I'm right there with you. It's the voice of the people. I'm an American before I'm a Republican. I think you're an American before you're a Democrat. And if more people saw it that way, maybe we wouldn't be at each other's throats because the idea that...
Hakeem Jeffries is holding phone calls and people are suggesting, well, we fire the Supreme Court. Brian, you're a lawyer. That to me is probably one of the things that upsets me the most because we believe in the rule of law. And the rule of law doesn't say I get to change the rules if I don't get my way. Yeah, I mean, weren't we just hearing, Rich, that this was a temporary measure and it was just narrowly targeted to fight back, blah, blah, blah, and then they lose a court case and all of a sudden they're like, blow the whole thing up and fire every justice on the Supreme Court. By the way, a lot of whom were elected with Democrat control of the state Senate, Mark Warner appointed the guy who wrote the opinion on the case. This isn't some like partisan hack Supreme Court. Arguably, we've got the best Supreme Court. state Supreme Court in the country because they're really genuinely nonpartisan. I mean, I agree with them all the time, but they're not party hacks. You know, Rich, I'm just really sad from all this. My party, first of all, just lit $70 million in campaign funds on fire over this, right? Wasted millions of taxpayer dollars to even have this stupid election. But they lit these $70 million on fire. And to top it all off, they tossed in their credibility on the issue. And they're not doing themselves any favors. That New York Times story that came out yesterday was really, really a disgrace to think about how they would respond and retaliate against justice. I understand why the first thing that comes to mind when they say like, okay, so what's next? Isn't just to run good campaigns and good candidates in these fair districts we have now. They can, they can win. They don't have to cheat to do it. By the way, I looked it up. $5 million was the executive order that was signed by the governor to go forth with this. But then there's $20 million back in reimbursement that we'll give to local municipalities for putting on this. So it's actually a $25 million cost to the taxpayers of Virginia to have this. Let me ask you this. We have a lot of Democrats that listen to the program. Some of them like me, most of them are not going to see eye to eye with me. Just the same way you and I are friends, but we can see eye to eye on a couple things, baseball. We both don't think gerrymandering is good no matter who's doing it, and then when we get to the politics, we'll differ a lot. And that's great. I'm glad that I have friends that I don't agree with all the time. It makes me stronger. To the Democrats that are listening that are frustrated with me this morning, frustrated with everything, and frustration is concentration over something that's already happened. What would you say to the Democrat listeners that we have this morning that are upset, they're hurt, they're disappointed, they're frustrated over what came out of the Supreme Court on Friday morning? Yeah, I would say that, you know, Rich, thank you for that. What came out of the state Supreme Court and what we're doing here in Virginia. is different and separate in some ways, though not all, from the national thing that happened, right? Obviously, Republicans are gerrymandering all around the country. Democrats are doing it too. California, see other places. But some states have said no. Indiana Republicans said no. Maryland Democrats have said no. So it's not this incredibly, it's not all 50 states doing this on participating. You know, a third of the states are doing this. Two thirds of the states aren't.
We're now in the two-thirds of the states that aren't. I think that's a better place to be. But I do think it's this, is that the difference between what's happening in a lot of places in the south right now, Alabama, Louisiana, et cetera, where the Republicans are gerrymandering, Democrats out of power versus here is that Democrats here, guys, we don't need to cheat to win. We can get two or three more seats. We can do our part to elect a Democratic majority in Congress as much as I disagree with. Hakeem Jeffries on a lot of these issues around this issue. I still want him to be speaker next year. And we should be willing to fight in fair fights. Now, where it's not a fair fight, that's unfortunate. We should fight back in the courts and honestly at the ballot box because people still have their votes to cast in November. We should fight back as much as we can, but within the rule of law and the norms that uphold our free and fair elections. And we just don't have to cheat to win here in Virginia. Abigail Spanberger won by 15%. I mean, if you go out there and you have these free, honest, open elections, may the best person win. Exactly. Exactly. Governor Abigail Spanberger had a landslide victory. Democrats just prove they can win under the fair maps we have for the House of Delegates. The fair masks we have for Congress are the exact same. Democrats can do this. We're going to be fine here in Virginia. The rest of the country, I hope folks like Speaker Johnson and others are willing to put it into the shenanigans we're seeing on both sides around the country on this. Again, we can, if we appeal to our better angels. and we think about this great country that we've been gifted 250 years ago, and we do our part to pass it on to the next generation. We can all come together and say, listen, let's have fair, honest elections, may the best person win, may the best ideas win. I'm not afraid of anybody else, but let's do it and do something for our kids, so we hand them something better than we got, Brian. Yeah, Rich, I think that's so right. And it's a really good context to see. Governor Allen's mentioned this a lot about the 250th anniversary, and it's really a moment for all of us to reflect on this. So I'm glad you're bringing that up. I think that's important context for us to keep in mind. What we inherited was precious, and it's fragile. And we're seeing how fragile it is in these years, and we need to take care to strengthen it and not tear it down. Brian Robert F. Kennedy Jr., joining us here on News Radio, WRVA. Brian, thank you so much. I'll talk to you soon. Thanks, friend. All right, take care. Brian Cannon, again, Democrat, lawyer, but he was one that said, listen, I don't like gerrymandering at Texas. I don't like it in Florida. I don't like it in California. They don't like it in my commonwealth. Get your reaction. 833, 804, 11, 40, 833, 804, 1140. Okay. How many phone calls have you gotten? Hey, Rich, your credit card bill is due in five days. Then you get another barrage. Four days. Three days, two days. Your credit card bill is due tomorrow. You have 12 hours to pay. Listen, I get these text messages all the time. It brings up your blood pressure. You get nervous. Get rid of all these credit cards. Listen, you're just spinning your wheels if you're just paying the bare minimum. You're never going to catch up. 30 years, maybe. And God forbid you buy one more thing on that stupid credit card.
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