Virginia Girls State, part 4.

This is my last installment about my experience at Virginia Girls State. One of the days we had a morning session with 2 General Assembly members. The two delegates that I had the opportunity to hear talk were Delegate R. Lee Ware (R-65th) and Delegate Jimmie Massey (R-72nd).

The biggest concern for all of us there was education. Question after question dealt with education, there were a few about energy, and there were even some comments made about uranium mining in Pittsylvania County. With Delegate Ware being a history and government teacher, it was interesting to hear his responses to the questions. Delegate Massey spent a lot of time redirecting the questions to Delegate Ware, because this was his first time speaking to a Girls State delegation, and all of the questions dealt with education. It makes sense that Delegate Ware would answer the questions being a teacher, where Delegate Massey is a business man.

There was some information that they gave us that made me proud to live in Virginia. Virginia has been named the best:
-place to raise a kid.
-place to get a higher, public education.
-place to do business

One thing that Delegate Massey said "Democracy doesn't work if the people in the democracy don't participate." He said that there is probably going to be a 50-55% of registered voters in the state of Virginia will vote in the Gubernatorial election this year. In a democracy, that isn't acceptable. Anyone that is eligible to vote, should vote.

Afterwards, I had the opportunity to eat lunch with Delegate Ware. The one question that I asked him was, if he thought as younger/newer delegates were elected to the General Assembly, did he think that the sense of partisanship would be put to the wayside for more across the aisle work. His reply was that on most issues, there is a true "across the aisle" approach to most legislation.