Governor McAuliffe Comes To Town…

… and you know SouthsideCentral was there. Let’s go over some thoughts about his speech and Q&A session.

The Danville Pittsylvania County Chamber of Commerce hosted today’s event at the Institute. Let’s bring on a Big Board of some remarks and thoughts…

• It doesn’t matter whether you agree or disagree with his ideas, policies, political party or anything… Terry McAuliffe is a hoot. He is slick, funny and knows how to work a room.
• He’s also got the ability to get serious quite quickly. After the public session was over, the media got to ask him questions and he immediately dropped the “fun” part and answered our questions straight up without any hesitation.
• Danville Regional Medical Center market director (I think I got his new job title right) Eric Deaton accompanied McAuliffe in and introduced him. Absolutely no surprise there because McAuliffe’s main focus of Medicaid expansion is also Deaton’s. There’s lots of money coming into the hospitals’ systems if that happens.
• Unsurprisingly as well, McAuliffe spent the majority of his time pushing for that. Time’s ticking in the General Assembly and neither political side is blinking yet. The state’s budget has got to be passed in about five weeks or else there’s trouble.
• Let’s keep the “not surprised” talk going by noting that none of the region’s Republican state legislators were at the meeting. The General Assembly is technically in session now but they’re doing absolutely nothing. But hey, we couldn’t have a Republican presence for Terry McAuliffe, could we?
• Brenda Bowman and Jessie Barksdale represented the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors, and Buddy Rawley, Lee Vogler, John Gilstrap, Fred Shanks and Sherman Saunders representing the Danville city council.
• Due to the tight timeframe, they only got to four pre-submitted citizen questions.
• Virginia Uranium has their work cut out if they’re going to get anything uranium mining related passed in the next three years. McAuliffe was clearly against it, saying “I can’t get behind the science” of it. I’ve got to wonder how many years that Virginia Uranium can go dormant without folding up shop completely in Chatham.
• McAuliffe started out by saying “Workforce development isn’t working right now”, and that got a cold reaction from the room.
• McAuliffe also made it clear that other areas of the state were getting hit hard by the economy as well and government cutbacks, pointing out the Hampton Roads region.
• At the end of the event, McAuliffe was presented the token gift of appreciation from Saunders and Barksdale. Saunders’ mini-speech concluded with him telling the governor that we needed him in Southside to get jobs here. McAuliffe was sadly (yet refreshingly) noncommittal on that, saying he’d try his best. The days of Bob McDonnell dispatching Bill Bolling and Mary Rae Carter to Southside are over and aren’t coming back anytime soon. With McAuliffe clearly saying other regions as being hard hit, it looks like there’s going to be no special treatment for Southside under the McAuliffe administration (for now at least). The lack of legislators hospitable to McAuliffe here doesn’t help that one bit.
• McAuliffe was asked what he can do for Southside’s economic problems, but his answer made little sense. He correctly started off with transportation improvements then went off the rails saying “making sure we have the best STEM teachers”. Huh? That doesn’t quickly get jobs here, governor.
• Finally, it was a pretty good turnout for this meeting. There were about 150 people at the Institute today.

So, there you have it. More coming up on SouthsideCentral!