RVAPolitics' Winter Media Roundup
Pic by Michael Markos. (He’s a Talking Head… get it?)
I took a break from blogging over the past two or three months to work on some projects, but I hope to now get back to regular posts. I also should have a big announcement in a few weeks, so stay tuned. In the meantime, it’s been a busy few months for me in terms of media coverage of state and local politics. ICYMI:
NAVY HILL
The Navy Hill/North of Broad development project went down in flames at the Richmond City Council last week. I had a few things to say about it.
Richmond Magazine’s Rodrigo Arriaza reported on my presentation to the Navy Hill Advisory Commission last fall. (If you want to see that presentation, I posted it here on my blog.)
I summed up how the deal went wrong in a Backpage op-ed in Style Weekly earlier this month.
The great Michael Paul Williams quoted me (and a lot of other, smarter folks) in a column about Navy Hill in the Richmond Times Dispatch.
More recently, I was also quoted in another column in the RTD by sports reporter Eric Kolenich. (He would still like to see an arena.)
I just talked to John Reid at WRVA radio about Navy Hill just this morning. (You can sometimes catch archives on their website.)
Finally, I got to have a nice long chat about Navy Hill with the brilliant Allan-Charles Chipman on the just-as-brilliant Chelsea Higgs Wise’s WRIR radio show, Race Capitol.
I should have some final thoughts about Navy Hill’s defeat, and what it means for Richmond and VA, on this blog next week.
LOCAL NEWS
In other local news, I talked to VPM’s Whittney Evans in January about Chesterfield County’s response to the 2nd Amendment “sanctuary city” movement.
GENERAL ASSEMBLY
It ain’t all about city politics and Navy Hill – there’s this whole STATE government thing as well. I’ve been pretty busy following the torrent of legislation coming out of the General Assembly this year:
I gave WRIC/8News a preview in early January of the upcoming GA session. (My point, which I’m not sure I was clear about: Virginia will not become California overnight.)
I talked to WRIC’s Laura Perrot about the first big news out of the GA: the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment.
The other big news out of the GA this year was gun control legislation; I also talked to 8News about some of those gun-related bills.
It seems like people were very interested in the House of Delegates’ vote to join the National Popular Vote Compact. I talked to both VPM’s Alan Rodriguez Espinoza and to WRIC about it.
Finally, I talked on the phone to Tyler Thrasher of 8News about the mysterious “crossover” process that marks the midpoint of the GA session (and the shift to budgetary politics).
OTHER STATE
Remember when Governor Ralph Northam was maybe going to resign, along with everyone else in VA government? Me neither, until WRIC’s Amy Simpson asked me to look back to one year ago when it seemed like VA politics was going to explode.
More to come – thanks for reading, listening, and following.