Listen Up with Host Al Neely
Hi, I'm Al Neely. I've spent most of my life asking, " Why do people behave a certain way? Why don't people understand that most everyone wants basically the same thing? Most everyone wants their fundamental need for peace of mind, nourishment, shelter and safety."
What I have learned is that because of an unwillingness to open one's mind to see that some of the people you come in contact with may have those same desires as you do. We prejudge, isolate ourselves, and can be hesitant to interact, and sometimes we can be belligerent towards one another. This is caused by learned behavior that may have repeated itself for generations in our families.
What I hope to do with this podcast is to introduce as many people with as many various cultures, backgrounds, and practices as possible. The thought is that I can help to bring different perspectives by discussing various views from my guests that are willing to talk about their personal experiences.
Hopefully we all will learn something new. We may even learn that most of us share the same desire for our fundamental needs. We may just simply try to obtain it differently.
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Listen Up with Host Al Neely
Election Conversations with Tim Anderson
Virginia's housing crisis, education challenges, and tax burdens are crushing everyday families, and Tim Anderson has a plan to tackle them all. Running for delegate in the 97th District, Anderson draws from his previous experience in the General Assembly where he learned that effective governance demands reaching across the aisle.
During his earlier term, Anderson evolved from partisan legislator to becoming "the most bipartisan legislator in the entire General Assembly." This collaborative approach yielded significant victories, including extending the statute of limitations for sexual assault victims and environmental initiatives to improve the Chesapeake Bay. Now he's focused on practical solutions that directly impact Virginia families struggling with affordability.
The heart of Anderson's platform addresses what he's hearing at doorsteps throughout his district: people using credit cards for groceries and unable to afford basic necessities. His bold proposal to eliminate the car tax on vehicles valued under $40,000 would return approximately $1,000 annually to typical households. "Nobody ever has the money. It hits them right in summertime when they want to go on a family vacation," Anderson explains, noting Virginia's consistent budget surplus could fund this relief without cutting essential services.
On housing, Anderson identifies how regulatory burdens incentivize developers to build only high-end homes while creating barriers to affordable housing construction. His education plan focuses on giving parents options within the public school system, allowing children to attend better-performing schools regardless of zip code. For veterans, he champions both tax relief and innovative treatments for PTSD including therapeutic use of psilocybin in clinical settings.
Perhaps most refreshing is Anderson's call to move beyond political tribalization. "We've got to stop talking about each other like we're evil or bad," he insists, advocating for a focus on the 80% of issues where compromise is possible rather than the 20% where fundamental disagreements exist. Visit timforva.com to learn how people-focused politics can make Virginia more affordable and responsive to everyday citizens.
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Hello everyone. I'm Al Neely Welcome to Listen Up and today we have Tim Anderson, who's running for delegate for the 97th District of the House of the State of Virginia. Say hello to everyone. Glad to be here, thank you. I appreciate you coming in, ran into Tim at a voting booth. He was very, very cordial and said he would come on the podcast and just talk to us about his background. So tell us a little bit about yourself, tim. Where are you from?
Speaker 2:Born and raised in Springfield Missouri. Oh OK, and as soon as I could I got out of Springfield Missouri and went to college down in Florida. And then I came up here to go to law school in the 90s and I've been a lawyer since 1999, primarily practicing in a small practice law firm. Now I own right here in Hampton Roads. For the past now 26 years.
Speaker 1:Okay, you served as the delegate for the 97th district several years ago. I think you resigned to run for Virginia Senate.
Speaker 2:Yep, that's correct.
Speaker 2:So I was elected to the 83rd district in 2021, which was the the northern side of Virginia Beach, over by Chicks Beach and part of Norfolk.
Speaker 2:And as soon as I got in, the redistricting occurred from the biannual census, or the, the census that we have every 10 years, and they they drew my seat away.
Speaker 2:Virginia Beach had lost population, so they took the seat that I had just won, they gave it to Fairfax, and I was essentially homeless on the next election cycle. So when I was looking at what my next step would be, I would either have to run against a fellow Republican that I was drawn in with or I could run for an open Senate seat, which I chose to run for. That open Senate seat unsuccessfully did not win that, and so, at the same time, I didn't win that Senate seat, the Republican that I was paired with lost her seat to Michael Fagans, who's our Democrat delegate now for this district. So so now I'm chasing my old seat back that I chose not to run for because of all of that drama, and we're back in the middle of this. So it was the 83rd, now it's the 97th. They just renumbered everything, and the good part of this 97th district is something I previously represented.
Speaker 1:OK, so tell us what it was like for your first term.
Speaker 2:Tell us about your the first term in the office, yeah, so so I learned something very much in in government that you can't get anything done on your own, like I thought I was going to go up there and I was going to change things, I was going to get things done, and that's not how it works. That's not how the General Assembly works, that's not how any legislative body works. To get a bill from your idea to law is filled with minefields, pitfalls, trapdoors and a lot, of, a lot of roadblocks along the way, and to actually get it into law requires the collaboration of all of your colleagues and colleagues on the other side of the aisle. And so you learn very quickly that if you want to be effective you have to be collaborative with the other side, because you need them and they need you when we're trying to move, move legislation through the General Assembly. So I learned that very, very quickly because my first term I didn't get anything done. I got, I got one bill all the way through and then and then it didn't get funded, so it was kind of a disappointment.
Speaker 2:I got a lot of bills out of the House. The Republicans controlled it then, but the Democrats controlled the Senate and the Senate killed all my stuff except for one, and so it was the. It was the governor at that time. It was Governor Youngkin. I went in with Youngkin, ok, but it don't matter who's governor, if you can't get it through the Senate Right, nothing's getting to the governor. And so second year I got four bills through substantial legislation through just by pivoting you know, pivoting away from. I'm a Republican and we're going to do it my way to. I need to start creating legislation and partnering with Democrats, because we have to work with them in Virginia.
Speaker 2:No party has a hundred percent control of government here, and so I learned that and so my second year. I went from not very effective in my first year to, in the second year, being the most bipartisan legislator in the entire General Assembly, because I just leaned into it and got along with them. What bills did you work on with the Democrats? The bill I'm most happy about getting through was changing the statute of limitations on when sexual assault victims can sue doctors and pastors. There was a provision that would make that as low as two years and we moved that out to 15 years because people that have been abused by doctors, especially pastors, they need a little time to heal and realize what happened to them, and so we were able to get that through. I had a chief Democrat co-patron that bill with me and we're able to get that into law. That's the law right now. Now victims who were abused by people in authority have a lot more time now to bring lawsuits against their abusers.
Speaker 2:I got a oyster bill through. I'm very, very much in love with the chesapeake bay. It's a disaster. The water quality is terrible. So we got an oyster bill through that creates more oyster growth and that's really important for the chesapeake bay.
Speaker 2:I got a bill dealing with the litter tax, which is just a penalty tax that goes on businesses. We got we got that this penalty on the penalty reduced. So I mean I did some, I did some good things, right and? And there's law right now in Virginia because of the time I was there and I can't say that for my first year and so, going back to the General Assembly and I hope to do that next year Uh, I'm going in with a much different attitude that, uh, regardless of who's in power, um, the Democrats have the Senate, hopefully at my team will have the house and, who knows, we'll have the governor, but it's all about working together to get stuff done in Virginia, yeah, so I want to talk about some of the issues that I feel like Virginians are concerned about, and just give me your thoughts on them Right now.
Speaker 1:Education and I'm hearing about that quite a bit Housing Yep, yeah, just talk about those, those two things. Education is a is a really big one, as well as women's rights, so we can talk all day about these things, but I'll be brief. You're pretty sure, I'm pretty sure you're going to be talking about them a lot for the next few months, but go ahead, yeah.
Speaker 2:All right. So education I think my side's biggest concern is is that children's destinies are governed by the zip code that they live in, and if you live in a particular zip code, you go to this particular school, and this particular school may not be a very good school, but over here this zip code has really good schools and really good results, and we've been really trying to find ways to empower parents, to give them options and choices If the public school system isn't right for their child, if this public school system isn't performing at a level that a parent would want it to perform. We want parents to have more of an option of how to get their children into something that would make their child successful. So for us, and for me especially, one thing that I want to see is portability in the public school system.
Speaker 2:My son in Virginia Beach goes to Old Donation, which is the gifted school in Virginia Beach, and for the gifted school we'll bus kids all over the place. Doesn't matter where you live. You can you know if you live out in Creeds, way out in Pungo, or if you live in Bayside. They're going to bus kids all over to go to the school. What I'd like to see is portability amongst all the schools in Virginia. So if you live in a school system in Virginia Beach and that school building is not performing, you should be allowed to take that kid and put them over in this other school. If there's a vacancy and we have vacancies in almost every school in Virginia there's room to move kids around. That doesn't cost anything and the buses are already running around like crazy anyway. So I think that could be something that we could do without defunding the public school system. I think giving parents that option.
Speaker 1:So you're not in favor of defunding the school.
Speaker 2:I'm not saying we kick the legs out of the public school system, but we are pouring more and more money into the school system every year and we're getting worse and worse results, and so there's something wrong with what we're doing and that has to be addressed Right and that has to be comprehensively addressed. A lot of people are just withdrawing and they're homeschooling. African-american families are the highest cultural race in the entire country that are pulling their kids out and putting their children in homeschooling, and so I think that's a product of exactly what I'm talking about. I think families that might live in poor neighborhoods have schools that aren't performing, and the parents want more for their children and they know they can do better at home. So if a parent wants to homeschool, I think we should support that decision. I think we should provide financial resources to those people if that's what they want to do with their children, and we saw this year Senator Stella Persky produced a bill that said we want to take away religious exemptions for parents and the homeschool environment. I think I would want to rush more into that and give that, and if that means pulling some money out of the public school system to support families, I'd be for that. I'd also be supportive of families having the opportunity to go to private schools, and the idea is that I think the parent is the best decision maker for what's right for their child and I don't think we should continue to adopt that. This broad public school system is the only option that we should allow for families. Every child has different needs, every child has different goals, and some kid may be an artist, some kid may be an engineer, some kid may like computers, some kid may like athletics and they just may be an engineer. Some kid may like computers, some kid may like athletics, and they just should have that ability to port around. In a big place like Virginia Beach, now, maybe that doesn't matter so much in a place like Nelson County, where there may only be one high school in the whole school system. But out here in Virginia Beach and the big cities and the big communities, it could really really change things, really change things and then eventually, if you are in a situation where the neighborhood doesn't want to go to that public school anymore, close that school down and move the resources to a more performing school and that's eventually you know, like I think, how you can realign it. But I don't think that pouring more money in is the solution. We have to start figuring out. Why aren't we performing and how do we get kids to perform? So I do. I do have a school choice option, voucher option that I think parents should have the have the ability to perform in, because ultimately, they're the best judges for their children.
Speaker 2:Housing you know housing. I sat with a bunch of builders and you know here's builders Right. So you buy a, you buy a big tract of land, right, and you can build, you know, a five hundred thousand dollar house for two hundred thousand dollars in labor and materials and on a big plot of land, and you can do that, you know, 50 or 100 times and make a ton of money. Or you can build small houses and the profit margin is much lower and you don't make as much money. So the builders aren't incentivized to build the smaller economic housing. And so we've got to start.
Speaker 2:We've got to figure out a way in government to give the incentives, and when I talked to builders about this just last week, they said that there is so much red tape and regulation in getting a building permit, whether you're building a half a million dollar house or a hundred thousand dollar house. The regulation is so expensive that it's just not worth it for them to build a small house, and so we've got to look at that right. We've got to look at why. What is government doing wrong here? So what do you think it is? I think government is in the way and I think that we need to find we need. We're in a free market. If you give people the right incentive, the market will create that supply, and what we've done is is we've created regulations in government that have incentivized builders to build bigger houses and make more money that way. We need to use government and incentivize them to either provide tax breaks to the builders, provide land that the government owns that could be used to incentivize the builders to build on it. There's so many things we could do, but we're not and we just want to complain about you know how to you know the housing is so expensive.
Speaker 2:I read an article you have to make $100,000 to buy a $400,000 house in today's market. Now, if interest rates drop, maybe that changes, but ultimately, $100,000 to buy a just a mediocre house in Virginia Beach. $400,000 house is nothing special, right? No kid can do that. No, 25 year old kid coming out of college can do that. You know families can't really do that Because if you know, that's $100,000 with no debt. Everybody has student loan debt, everybody has has other debt, so it's so expensive to buy a house that people just can't can't afford to do that.
Speaker 2:So the only real way to fix that is you got to start building houses that are cheaper and create the demand at the lower end the hundred and fifty to two hundred fifty thousand dollar range, smaller houses and give people the incentives. Democrats have proposed a bill and it and it's in law now that there's a $10,000 first-time homebuyer credit, which is great. That pays all your closing costs for the most part. But we just have to create that demand and so government needs to be reworked to create incentive to builders to build a smaller house. Is that something you could do at the state level? It's entirely at the state level and I think one thing you gotta do is you gotta take it away from the localities so the localities can kind of control how much they charge for building permits and how they control zoning, and I think you have to take some of that power away from the locals so that the cities don't have so much incentive.
Speaker 2:You know cities like Suffolk still have proffers. You know where a builder has to, literally you know in any other industry that's called a bribe Right, but in government it's called a proffer. So if a builder wants to build an apartment complex, they have to give the city millions of dollars, you know, for a school proffer or a road proffer, a road proffer. And we've got to find ways to incentivize those builders to build not rental properties, but lower end, affordable houses that are not cheap, not run down, but are just smaller, so that families can live in a thousand square foot house again, like we used to, and they can afford that. Sure, you can build wealth over your life and and build into a bigger house, but we should be able to afford a thousand square foot house in Virginia Beach that's of good quality, for a couple hundred thousand dollars, and so I think we can do that at the state level 100 percent. I mean some of the things are controlled by the federal government with tariffs and all that stuff, but.
Speaker 2:But on supply, but fundamentally I think you could do it by using the land that we have and incentivizing the builders to build. You know to do it, and if you do it, they feel the dreams. If you do it, they will come. And if you build it, they will come. And they will come if we do it. And I talked to those builders this past week and they said if we have the right incentive to do it, we would do it. But they're there to make money and they're making money in the six to eight hundred thousand dollar houses right now which nobody can afford unless you're, you know, at my level, and there's not. That's not the. That's not what we have to do. We have to find people that are in the sixty to one hundred thousand dollar level that can get them back into homeownership, in the 60 to a hundred thousand dollar level that can get them back into home ownership, gotcha.
Speaker 1:So the people, what percentage of your? What's your demographic makeup of your, your area, what would you?
Speaker 2:say In terms of race or ethnicity or income?
Speaker 1:Yeah, what is? What is the average income? 60,000.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I'm talking to the people I'm representing. This part of Virginia Beach is the regular middle class bread and butter of our community and a lot of them own homes, if they're older, because they bought those homes 30 years ago. But they can't afford to sell them because there's nowhere to go. So they're living in their houses because they really can't afford to live in their house. Heck out in Aragona in Virginia Beach, those houses all sold for $25,000, you know, back in the 60s when they were built, and now they're worth $400,000. It's crazy.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, we've got to work and you know I can't control the market. I can't tell the people in Aragona you should sell your house for 300,000 because it's the right thing to do. But what we can do is create smaller houses that are cheaper for people to buy, and I think that's how you can use government to kick the identity, I see, and then it'd be nice if the interest rates would drop, but that's above my pay grade, it. And then, you know, be help, be nice if the interest rates would drop, but that's above my pay grade. If the interest rates could drop, that would be. That would be great. Yeah, but that's above my pay grade. I can't control that, neither can the president. Apparently, you know, like that's a, that's a Federal Reserve thing, no-transcript.
Speaker 1:I see, I think I read in the last few days it's the first time that Virginia has lost jobs and employment numbers came in. I think they were down jobs. What do you think is contributing to something like that?
Speaker 2:So Virginia is the only state in the nation where we had a tenth of a percent decrease in employment. So we we had a negative. No other state had that Right. So but you have to look at, you have to look at more than that. Virginia's added thirty five thousand jobs this year and mostly, mostly, high-tech jobs in the fields of AI, so we are adding really good high-tech jobs. The federal government got slashed and dashed by the incoming—.
Speaker 2:So you think there are more federal jobs that we're losing. We lost a lot of federal jobs. There's no doubt. There's no doubt Mostly up in northern Virginia that happened. I talked to a few people here that have done that as well. That's right, so so so that's a factor for Virginia. But we've added a lot of jobs.
Speaker 2:Governor Youngkin created this website called Virginia has jobs dot com, and there's 200000 jobs in Virginia right now. So what you're seeing is kind of a transition from these federal workers into other jobs. You know they're working for state, local government, they're working for private corporations now and there's this transition. But Virginia is still about a half a percent lower than the federal average of unemployment. So, although we went up a little bit on the percentages, we're still well below the federal average of all the states in the nation, and I think what we have to see Virginia as is yeah, we're going through a little bit of growing pain at the state level.
Speaker 2:I can't do anything with what President Trump's doing with the federal government and the federal job reductions and all that, but what we can do is when a federal worker loses his job, we can say, look, we have a job here in the city of Virginia Beach, kind of similar to what you were doing. Or we have a job here at the Department of Health, something that you were doing for the federal government. Or look Capital One's over here. They need people in this industry. You know the people at the shipyard. They're begging for workers. You know if you're more of a trades person, so there's.
Speaker 2:It's just about getting these workers and getting them plugged in and I think before the end of the year you're going to see, virginia is going to really tick up in employment growth. Now I know my friends on the other side of the aisle don't want to see it that way. They want to make this a big deal, but overall, thirty five thousand new jobs, mostly high paying AI jobs, and I think what's happened is is you saw those federal workers transitioning over to the private sector and they're getting really great jobs and that's in that Virginia has jobs. Plug in that Governor Young can put together. So I for us to only lose a tenth of a percent, right With all the slash and dash, and that happened. I think that's pretty remarkable actually, and I think that's just a remarkable factor of how vibrant Virginia is in the other sectors government and private sectors.
Speaker 1:I see Another one of the main issues that I'm hearing out there is women's rights. Okay, and Virginia has been one of the few states that has been able to protect women's rights because of the makeup of the representation. What is your position on that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I've looked at it. If you look at the polling on this question, should women have the right to have an abortion? Overwhelmingly 75 percent Right. But then if you, if you read the second question should there be some kind of a restriction on the time period and of when a woman can get an abortion 90 percent say there should be some type of a restriction. So here's the way I read that poll Virginia has restrictions of when you can have an abortion and that's at the end of the second trimester. If you try to have an abortion after that, it has to be for a medical reason and three doctors have to agree.
Speaker 2:I think what virginians are saying is is stop trying to change the law in virginia, leave it alone. And that's how I read the polls and that's why I said in the very beginning on abortion, anything with the word abortion in it is going to be a no for me. If you're trying to restrict abortion, I'm going to say no. If you're trying to expand abortion, I'm going to say no. I think what voters want is they just want government to say stop messing with it, leave it alone, virginia has its laws and talk about something else. And that's what I've decided I'm going to do. I'm not going to support anything If it has the word abortion in it. I'm going to say no, whether it's, you know, something my team would want or something the other team would want.
Speaker 1:I'm just going to say you hearing, have you been? You said you've been door knocking, yeah Okay. Where have you been door knocking, aragona? Yeah Well.
Speaker 2:Aragona is not my district anymore, but it's across the street from Aragona. But, like over here in the Bow Creek area, what have you been hearing? People can't pay for anything. They're using their credit cards to pay for commodities. Yeah, they can't pay for their groceries cost of living, that's right. They can't pay it. And I'm in my law practice. I'm a bankruptcy attorney and I filed five bankruptcies today. Um, for clients. A couple ago we might have filed five bankruptcies a month. How long have you been in practice? 26 years.
Speaker 1:Okay, Is this period the time that you've experienced that the most? Are there more people filing.
Speaker 2:now it is ticking up rapidly, and so people can't afford to live in Virginia Beach. They just can't. And so what they want me to do is what can I promise them to make it more affordable in Virginia? Well, I can't control the price of eggs, you know. I can't tell Tyson how much to charge for a chicken. So all I can do is what can I do to make it less burdensome to live here? And that's taxes. The car tax is outrageous. What can I do to make it less burdensome to live here? And that's taxes. The car tax is outrageous. Costs most families about $1,000. Nobody ever has the money. It hits them right in summertime when they want to go on a family vacation, and now they have to pay the government $1,000 for their cars rather than take their kids on a nice little summer vacation somewhere. So we can get rid of that and we don't have to run the government down to get rid of it.
Speaker 1:How would you propose getting?
Speaker 2:rid of it. Virginia has five to seven billion dollars of surplus every year. Yes, and it's projected for 10 more years. Even with all the federal cuts and everything, we're still projected to have surpluses every year. So if we take a billion of that money and we subsidize the localities, we can eliminate the car tax for the first $40,000 of car vehicles for every person in Virginia. So if you have a car and it's worth $30,000, you won't pay a single dollar in tax. If you have a car that's worth $60,000, your first 40 grand is exempt. You pay tax on the other 20. Fine, because If you have a car that's worth $60,000, your first 40 grand is exempt. You pay tax on the other 20. Fine, you know, because if you have a nicer car, you probably have a little bit more money. But it's going to take the tax off the minivans and take the tax off of the vehicles that you know that families need to get their, get their kids around and it would only cost a billion dollars a year and that's a good investment to Virginia. Now we can tell the voters look, this is all conditioned upon us having a surplus. If we run out of surplus someday, maybe you're going to have to start paying taxes again.
Speaker 2:But Gilmore did it for the first 20,000. And we've had that since 1997. So I think if we build that into the budget, I don't think any politician on the face of the earth would ever take it out, because it would be so politically unpopular that you know whatever party is doing that would lose control at the next election cycle. We would make it work. The next thing we can do is we could really take a hard look at how to phase out state income tax, just like Tennessee has done, just like North Carolina is doing. There's a way to reduce and eliminate the state income tax while increasing the consumption tax.
Speaker 2:Ok. And when you see that happening in places like Tennessee, their economies are exploding, just absolutely. Growth, growth in every metric. North Carolina's growth in every metric. We are one of 15 states that still taxes veterans retirement. When I was in the General Assembly we got the first 40,000 exempt, but we're one of only 15 states. This is the most the biggest naval base in the country. Veterans leave here because we tax their retirement and we can get rid of that.
Speaker 1:When they used to come here for a quality of living.
Speaker 2:That's right. So we want those veteran retirees to stay in Virginia because they're contributing taxpayers, they have nice houses, they are good citizens. We want them here. But they're all moving to Moyock. Moyock is the Silicon Valley of the East Coast. Everybody's moving to Moyock and getting all the benefits of Virginia by living on the border. But those veterans are down there, all living there because they don't have to pay taxes on their retirement.
Speaker 2:That's crazy. We've got to bring those people back and stop them from leaving. But but all I can do and look, I'm a realistic guy. I can't say I can't fix everything. But I can make it to where we don't pay as much tax Right. And if you don't pay as much tax and I can get you a thousand dollars more a year in your pocket, that's going to mean a lot to people that make sixty thousand dollars a year with kids Right. And that's that's my, that's my pledge, right.
Speaker 2:And the nice thing is is that the Democrats have always been opposed to this. But now Abigail Spanberger comes out and says she's endorsing exactly the plan that I've been talking about. She's not saying she endorses Tim Anderson's plan, but she's saying, yeah, we'll use the budget surplus to give people this car tax relief. So. So that's really nice, because Winston Sears is saying the same thing. So whichever one of those two win as governor, we could really see the car tax go away next year, as long as we, you know, have the political will to do in the General Assembly. So pretty excited about that, okay.
Speaker 1:So it doesn't matter, you're willing to work with Ms Spanberger or Ms Sears, it doesn't matter, that's right.
Speaker 2:I mean, I'd rather it be Ms Sears, but on that issue, it's great and that's great for Virginians. And you know what, at the end of the day, I know that if, if it's Abigail Spanberger as our governor, I got to, I got to write a bill and get it through this minefield of the General Assembly that she's going to sign. No reason to do all that. And they get vetoed, which is what they did this year. You know, they just ran all this stuff through and it all just got vetoed. Why do that? You got to carry a bill that your governor is going to sign. So, yeah, if she's the governor, it's going to be different than if Winston Sears is the governor.
Speaker 1:But yeah, you have to you know people in your district. Are you know if your team Virginia?
Speaker 2:That's right. That's what's most important. Greater district in this entire Commonwealth than House District 97. When it comes to true 50-50. Nobody can predict how this race is going to go because the voters they flip. They all voted for Harris, right for president, and then they didn't vote for Jen, for the congressperson, but then they vote like three to one for Bobby Dyer, for our mayor, who's a Republican mayor. So that district will vote for the person that they know is going to represent them, not for the political party. So it is, I think there's going to represent them.
Speaker 1:That's right. That's right. So when you're door knocking, you said you've door knocked quite a bit. You, what is the?
Speaker 2:the makeup, the racial makeup of the district would you say it's about 65 percent white, 20 percent black, and then the rest is hispanic and asian.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, so are you hearing a lot of same things when you're talking to each, each demographic?
Speaker 2:I mean when I have this, or is it? I have this shirt that says I'm going to eliminate the car tax. That's what I wear when I'm door knocking. Everybody agrees. It doesn't matter who their race is, I'm out with their political party, is they're like I hate that tax, I want it gone. So it's always. I'm always generally received well at the doors.
Speaker 1:Yeah, taxes are a big concern, I'm sure. Yeah, okay, um, is there anything else that we haven't touched on that you would like the people in your, your district to know?
Speaker 2:Well, I think a lot of veterans live in my district. I don't think I know a lot of veterans in my district, and one thing that I've really been talking about, which is unique in my party, is the legalization of psilocybin mushrooms. Psilocybin mushrooms as if you were in the 60s.
Speaker 2:these are the shrooms, is what all the hippies got high on right, right, but there's a real scientific basis that these mushrooms provide therapeutic healing to people with PTSD, depression as well, depression as well, microdosing with depression yeah. So I think that we really have to create a therapeutic marketplace for psilocybin mushrooms. I don't want to see it sold on the streets for recreational purposes. I don't think there's any reason for that. But I do think that we should lean into the Colorado model and the Oregon model, where they have created clinics. Doctors, you know, will administer this and they administer it while you're in the clinic and you see real healing for PTSD and depression.
Speaker 2:And I know the pharmaceutical companies hate it because it wipes out their billions and billions of dollars of drugs that they like to just cover up the symptoms. But at the end of the day, I think we really need to start talking about that and I know it's not a super sexy concept, but but it's something that I think would really benefit our veteran community here in Virginia. Warfighters that come back messed up. We need to do everything we can to try to heal them, not just cover up their symptoms but actually heal them. And there seems to be a strong, strong reason, scientific reason, that we can get that done.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, what would you like to say? What would you like to leave us with, and then also tell everybody how they can get in contact with you. One of the things I will definitely say is Tim is accessible, he's approachable, so we need to know how we can get in contact with you so we can express our ideas. Yeah, concerns.
Speaker 2:So one question I often get asked is is what is the biggest challenge you have in politics and the real problem, the number one challenge I think that we have in politics right now is tribalization, and we have gotten into this situation where I think that's in society.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's gotten to that point, yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm a Republican, you're a Democrat, you're bad. Right, I'm good. That's how we see ourselves now, and and vice versa. You know, and, and, and. We have got to start looking environment to be good for us and not get cancer because you're living next to high power, vote power lines or whatever. We all want that, right, and so you may have a different way to get there than I do, but we've got to stop talking about each other like we're evil or bad or we're starting to shoot at each other, like that has to stop, and I think that is the duty of politicians right now to start doing that.
Speaker 2:Politicians have to lead this. And when I talk to people on the doors, you know, look, I'm like, I'm a Republican. You know you might not like that, but I have a few ideas you may like. And if they'll give you a couple minutes and they see you're a reasonable person and you're not talking terrible about the other side, they'll listen to you. And we've got to start getting back to that and I and I hope that I can set an example for that and I'm guilty of sometimes getting a little wrapped up in this, because politics is a battle and sometimes you get into fight mode.
Speaker 2:But really the governing is about everybody and it's not about my team or their team. It's about how do we make it better for everybody. So that's for me, what I'm going to really be doing and trying to do and continue to do People over politics, people over politics. And at the end of the day, I'm never going to agree with Democrats on 20% of their issues, but I probably can find compromise on 80% right. And if we could start doing that and start if the government could get 80% of the stuff done on an annual basis, everybody's quality of life would be a lot better.
Speaker 2:That's right, that's right. That's right. And we don't have to just agree not to work with each other because we don't agree on 20%, right? That's what has to change, right? So, anyway, my website is timforvacom T-I-M-F-O-R-V-Acom and way to reach out and communicate with me there and hopefully you know we'll continue to have these conversations.
Speaker 1:Yes, thank you for coming in and talking with us. Yeah, good times. Yes, absolutely, thank you for joining us on Listen Up. We'll catch you next time on Listen Up. If you enjoyed today's episode, I'm going to ask you to click on the links below follow, subscribe, become part of the conversation and remember listen up.
