We’ve all read the articles indicating that the Democrats are coming for our Republican seats in the General Election…and are coming hard. However, in the 93rd District, Heather Cordasco is taking the fight to Democrat incumbent Mike Mullin. Delegate Mullin is one of the leading advocates for the continuing raid of the Commonwealth’s Rainy Day Fund and taking money out of classrooms for after-school social programs.
Delegate Mullin even went so far as to vote to protect the Governor’s veto of HB1852/SB1299, preventing women who have been victims of abuse from quickly obtaining concealed carry permits. Such disregard for female victims of domestic violence is hard to stomach.
Heather Cordasco was kind enough to sit down for an interview where we discussed her district, her platform, and her experience. I am already familiar with Heather, who I wrote about earlier this year after she donated one of her kidneys to a mother of two children. Heather’s mind for policy, infrastructure, and education is as big as her heart.
Heather has experience as a grassroots activist and understands the importance of door knocking. The 93rd District is the Republican Party’s best chance at picking up a Democrat seat and both Heather and the Republican Party are working tirelessly to win, knocking doors and locking down support amongst swing-voters. Retail politics in the Commonwealth is alive and well, and the Cordasco campaign understands the fundamentals of retail politics.
Cordasco is focusing on education, transportation, and jobs, which are the three most important issues for the folks in her district. With regard to transportation, Heather talked about the importance of fostering innovation and reducing regulation which has artificially inflated transportation infrastructure costs. She pointed out that, locally, there is no communication between local transit providers and that there is a lack of incentives for people to use public transportation.
Heather’s particular skill set, which she brought to the James City County School Board centers around process management, innovation, and efficiency.
One of the things that I did when I was on the school board was a process management system. Process management is pretty familiar to those in the manufacturing environment, because the better you streamline your process the more profit you see. That is a very foreign concept when it comes to government or education…Over two years we saved over $250,000 in process that could be put back into people.
Heather mentioned a program called Lean Washington, a public effort aimed at increasing efficiency, creativity, and performance management in government. This is absolutely the sort of program I would love to see duplicated in Richmond. Why? Because a government that is constantly asking its citizens for more and more money, but does not respect them enough to manage that money efficiently, is a government out of touch with its citizens.
Heather opposes Medicaid Expansion for much the same reason that the rest of us do, because we can’t afford it; and she seeks to apply performance management principles to systemic processes to help balance growth with savings.
With regard to education,
The ultimate aim of education is that you can use it to support yourself. One of the other big things I brought to the school board, is that we were the first school board in North America to be adopted by the Association of Manufacturing Excellence, and we celebrated a manufacturing day.
What Heather is discussing here is something that I’ve spent a lot of time discussing with elected representatives here in the Commonwealth. We are sending students to college just to send them to college. Meanwhile, as experts in various trades and manufacturing retire, there is no skilled workforce to replace them. As a society, we often place a stigma on people who didn’t get a four-year degree from a liberal arts college. This makes a lot of people feel awful.
You know who doesn’t feel awful about this? Skilled American tradesmen and craftsmen who make more than college graduates, who find companies they can move up in and work for their entire lives. It was encouraging to me to find yet another candidate for elected office looking to support our manufacturing industries by providing them with skilled American labor. Manufacturing Days expose children, teachers, and guidance counselors to the realities of modern manufacturing.
I also sat on our regional education board…I still sit on their foundation board, which helps to raise money for kids to get through training, but who don’t have money for their tools, or to get their certification, or to put gas in their car to get to work. And that also resonates in the district; there’s quite a bit of discouragement about having good jobs.
Cordasco also understands the detrimental burdens of over-regulation on job creation and supports the idea that we should at least get rid of two regulations for every one regulation we implement.
Heather Cordasco would make a terrific addition to the General Assembly. Her propensity for process management, innovation, and out of the box problem-solving would make her a practical hire for the folks in the 93rd District who need someone who can rise above national politics and get to work solving problems in the Commonwealth.
