McAuliffe Norfolk Town Hall

Terry McAuliffe held a Town Hall in Norfolk on Friday that attracted a wide range of the citizenry, from teachers to union members including the firefighters, to just plain folks. Delegate Algie Howell (D-Norfolk and Virginia Beach), Norfolk City Councilman Randy Wright and Chesapeake Councilwoman, Dr. Ella Ward, Young Democrats President Sean Hollihan and many others joined local residents to participate in this forum

Terry briefed the state of his campaign. It is getting close to the election and there is a lot of excitement. There have been three more field offices opened this week bringing the total to 14. Close to 4,000 volunteers have signed up to volunteer in his campaign. Chapter 5 of the business plan has just been posted; 130 pages of very specific details. As the Richmond Times Dispatch wrote recently, Terry has raised the bar in this election with a lot of big ideas.

The bottom line and the big argument, according to Terry, is that we have got to think big and bold here and we have got to create jobs by changing the dynamic here in Virginia. With unemployment rising and places like Martinsville suffering 20.8%, we are less than 5% away from depression era figures. We are facing huge economic issues. He believes, “…our focus has to be: grow the economy.” We need a governor who gets out of bed every day and asks, “how do we bring more jobs in, how do we bring in more high tech jobs, how do we bring in more alternative energy jobs?”

Of the four candidates running for governor, he is the only one who has created thousands of jobs. He was the youngest bank chairman in the nation’s history at the age of 30 and he owned a home building company that he took out of receivership, built up into a major company and constructed over 1,100 homes.

“When I say jobs, what I mean are jobs that have good wages and benefits. Creating jobs that don’t pay well is not a job; you’re not helping anybody with that. I’m talking about creating jobs with good wages and good benefits. And, that is what I focus on every single day. I have done it before. I will bring the business experience and management experience to this job. Sort of like when Mark Warner first ran.”

There was much, much more. The audience and he connected and asked too many questions for him to be able to fully field in the limited time, though he kept answering despite his schedule. The tangents were as informative as his introductory remarks and some of those deserve to be addressed separately.

Cross posted Blue Commonwealth