Loose Leaf Notes

-The following first appeared in The Floyd Press on September 2, 2021.

“It’s really nice to be back in Floyd. I’ve been a great lover of this county,” said U.S. Senator Tim Kaine at an August 26 luncheon hosted by the Floyd County Democratic Committee at the Floyd EcoVillage’s Event Center.

Speaking to a group of about 40 people, Kaine referred to his last visit in 2018 and explained his long-time connection to Floyd, beginning in the early ‘80s when his wife’s family owned a cabin in Bent Mountain.

“We’d come for a week a couple of times and year and go into Floyd to eat and hear music,” said the Senator, who has held public office in different roles for 27 years, including as a Councilman, Richmond Mayor, Virginia Attorney General and Governor and a U.S. Senator for the past 12 years.

“This has been a challenging time,” Kaine acknowledged, sharing that he and his wife had Covid and that they know ten people who have died from it. He noted the challenges of being a juror in two impeachment trials and being barricaded inside the Capitol when it was attacked on January 6.

“Even with other uncertainties — the Delta Variant and Afghanistan — I feel a palpable sense of uplift, improvement and opportunity,” he said.

While in Floyd, Kaine also attended a Habitat for Humanity ground-breaking ceremony and toured the Floyd Innovation Center. He visited some downtown businesses, where several business owners told him that they “would not be here today if it was not for The CARES Act,” one of the first pieces of legislation passed at the beginning of the pandemic to bring aid to small business owners and localities.

He credited Senator Mark Warner for his instrumental involvement in the recently-passed bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, which will invest heavily in roads, rails, bridges and broadband. He spoke of his work on the second part of the bill, the Budget Reconstruction Bill, which will address education, child poverty, immigration, work force development, healthcare, climate-related advances and more.

Kaine cited voting rights as another big issue, one that is being addressed with two bills, The John Lewis Voting Rights Act and Before the People Act. Sadly, misinformation about the November 2020 election being stolen, which resulted in the attack on the Capitol and the injury of 120 police officers, is being repeated in states with Republican legislators and governors, Kaine explained. Those states are passing laws that would allow them to overturn elections.

“If the state legislator doesn’t like what the state election officials do in terms of certification of results, the state can take the power to count votes away,” he said.

As a member of Armed Services Committee with a son in the U.S. Marines, Kaine weighed in on the situation in Afghanistan. President Trump’s plan to get U.S. troops out by May was impractical, he said, but he supported Biden’s decision to pull troops out by the anniversary of the September 11th attack.

“As strongly as I feel that we were right to stop our military operations in Afghanistan, I also feel we have an obligation to help those who helped us, and we’re going to do the best we can.” He stated that it was heartbreaking to see 1000’s of Afghan soldiers cave to a Taliban force of 50 or 60.

Kaine took questions from the audience, which ranged from agriculture issues, federal and state marijuana laws, the Blue Ridge Parkway disrepair and the Mountain Valley Pipeline.

Alan Graf, a musician and lawyer who represents some Mountain Valley Pipeline protestors, spoke about the “catastrophic course of climate change. It’s happening, everything from fires, hurricanes, rain, insects and diseases. It’s hard for me to understand why we’re forging ahead destroying Virginia’s mountains and water systems, putting in pipelines to carry fossil fuels. We’re going in the wrong direction,” Graf said.

Kaine responded that he’s been working on a bill that would make FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) pipeline permitting a more legitimate process, but he acknowledged Graf’s concern, stating that we need to dramatically accelerate our renewable energy development. “The acceleration has to be faster and faster because of what we have seen, so I take your challenge,” Kaine said to Graf.

Springhouse Community School head Jennie Finn remarked that the teens she knew were uninspired by politics and asked, “How do we engage youth in the political system?” Kaine related how he and his staff hosted a graduation speech initiative in 2020 when many in-person graduations were postponed or cancelled. More than fifty seniors recorded speeches that were posted daily on Kaine’s website with one participant getting over 100,000 views. “Your question challenges me to think about how we can do more,” Kaine said to Finn.

Noting that Congress has recently been in recess, Kaine reported that he and Senator Warner have been traveling around the state to hear Virginian’s priorities. “Thank you for your support and for your good work,” Kaine told the attendees. “We have a lot more work to do.” ___________Colleen Redman