Live from Virginia Thursday morning on The John Fredericks Show – weekdays on WNTW AM 820/ FM 92.7 – Richmond, WJFN FM 100.5 – Central Virginia, WMPH AM 1010 / FM 100.1 / FM 96.9 (7-9 PM) Hampton Roads, WBRG AM 1050 / FM 105.1 – Lynchburg/Roanoke and Weekdays 6-10 am and 24/7 Stream –  host Fredericks welcomed VA House of Delegates Member Glenn Davis to the show.
During the show, Davis announced his run for lieutenant governor of Virginia and explained his motivation behind his decision. He also disclosed a new bill that is being forced through by Democrats that would literally end the lives of small business owners in Virginia.
Fredericks: Joining us now is Glenn Davis. House Delegates member of Virginia Beach, announcing today that he’s going to run for Lieutenant Governor in 2021 in the Republican primary. Glenn, great to have you, man.
Davis: John thanks for having me back on. I’m excited, this is the first stop on our announcement tour.
Fredericks: I’ll tell you what? You stopped at the best and the biggest at The John Fredericks Show. Glenn Davis announcing his run for Lieutenant Governor. What inspired your announcement, Glenn.
Davis: John just being on the front lines, it’s clear that we’ve had 10 years of losses statewide, and seeing what the Democrats have done by attacking our small businesses and going after our Second Amendment rights, and really crushing the concept of the American dream that some of us hold dear. John, next year is not just another campaign cycle. It really is now or never.
If we don’t start putting the left in check it will be decades before we start having any conservative movement at all in the General Assembly again. That’s why its time to step up. We have to make sure we win and it’s not just this November, which is the most important thing right now, and getting Daniel Gade elected and keeping the White House. But we need to take that momentum into ’21 and make sure we have a team to win. John, I know we can win it, and I know I can hold the left in check.
Fredericks: Glenn I just have to ask you something straight up about the General Assembly and the special session. I thought the special session was supposed to be to talk about the budget and a couple of reforms and things the governor wanted. It just seems to be going on. The Democrats are using this special session on Zoom here to pass their left-wing crackpot candy list of everything they could ever dream up. When does this thing end?
Davis: John, we don’t know. We find out the next day or the day that there will be a session the next day. So we have no clue when it’s going to end. Like you, I’m worried where it ends issue wise you are right. The Dem leadership kind of narrowly killed this thing and we are going to come in specifically to have a budge scenario with some budget stuff. The progressives very quickly took over. And now this has turned into an attack on our police and it’s to control.
Fredericks: There are a lot of Republicans complaining that they are not getting any of their amendments heard. That there is no open debate. That there is no discussion going on and that the Democrats have basically frozen you guys out and they are just ramming through anything they want by leveraging their majority.
I guess Ronnie Campbell one of your newest members and a 25 veteran of the state police was in The Virginia Star last night. And he said that when he first came in the Republicans were in the majority and they always included the Democrats with what they were trying to do. And now he said now they’ve just completely frozen them out and they are not even there. Have you experienced the same thing?
Davis: John if you look at the successes that we’ve had in the General Assembly under Republican leadership. Look at SOR reforms. (Inaudible talk) bringing in the Democrats. And for a couple of years attacking SOR reforms. It was a bi-partisan measure. It was a tough situation. And if you can imagine unions had a lot of concerns about it and it got significant changes. That’s how you create good change. That’s how you make sure there aren’t any independent consequences. And that’s how you create something that’s long-lasting. Now it is just the Dems going and writing a bad bill and then shoving it through.
This isn’t lets put Republicans and Democrats on the table and make sure the stakeholders are there first. It’s rushing it through. A lot of bad bills are coming through. And John all you have to do is look at yesterday with this mandatory requirement for paid sick leave. Literally it is arguing with the staff attorney at the Commonwealth of Virginia about what her bill does. Obviously I’m going to take the staff attorney who wrote the bill over the legislator when it comes to what that bill actually does.
Fredericks: Alright. Why don’t we get to that bill? What exactly is that bill and what does it do?
Davis: That bill requires every small business to provide sick leave for those that come down or develop coronavirus or have to take care of the family member. And she says that the only requires it for those with 25 or more employees. However, the way its written John, is that every employer if there is federal funds available must provide this.
Well, John if the small business owner of five employees doesn’t realize that a program exists at the federal level then they are now in violation of this. We are not only going to make employers cover this but now we are going to hold them liable for not knowing that there was a program they could take advantage of.
And lastly unlike the state where the state employees are covered and all costs are covered by federal programs at the private sector, if any costs as little as five percent of the costs are covered by federal grants then the small business has to come up with the money for the other 95 percent. This is as hypocritical as it can get.
Fredericks: What is this going to cost small businesses in Virginia if it actually passes and becomes law?
Davis: Their life. Right now small businesses are being crushed. They are going to be hurt and they are going to scale back. As you’ve seen a lot of small businesses because of the governor’s overreach on COVID are already closing and many of them, never to reopen again. And now we are going to throw on these additional burdens?
We are not talking about we are just going to continue to hurt small businesses, they are teetering on the brink of existence. And many of them being able to continue past this whole COVID situation. So throwing them more stuff is only going to make their life harder. This is going to put them flat out of business. As we’ve seen some that haven’t even made it to this point John.
Fredericks: Do they care? Do any of the Democrats you talk to on Zoom or text them, do they have any clue as to what is happening to small businesses in Virginia? Or would they just like to stomp them out because they aren’t voting for them anyway and just have everybody go to Amazon or Walmart?
Davis: John, I just don’t think they understand these impacts. Maybe they missed economics 101. Obviously everyone cares about jobs. But how they don’t see and how they are not seeing these out of business signs when they drive to local grocery stores is beyond me. We are about to crush one of the strongest economies because of our lack of concern for the small businesses and just complete overreach with government authority.
Fredericks: It’s unbelievable…
Listen to the full show here.
