WSLS 10 News spoke via zoom conference call with former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe Wednesday. He touched on a number of hot topics from policing polices, to the presidential election, to another potential bid as Governor.
“What I love about Kamala Harris is that she is tough. She’s a fighter. She has taken on big oil. She’s taken on the gun lobby. She’s taken on the big banks. She’s fought for the middle class. She’s fought for minimum wage. Everything that Biden wants to do in office, she will be a great fighting partner with him,” said McAuliffe.
From 2001-2005, McAuliffe served as chair of the Democratic National Committee.
Since leaving office, McAuliffe has been hard at work advocating for some of the things he worked on while in office like criminal justice reform and education.
Here’s his response to a question about the removal of confederate statues in Virginia and police reform: “The statues are coming down as they should have been coming down. I don’t support defunding the police. I’d like to see more money going to the police to deal with community policing activities. I’d like to see more money for mental health. Many of these police officers just don’t have the training to deal with these mental health issues. So, we need to be more community based.”
As for a possible run for Governor, he had this to say: “I don’t think any Democrat, in Virginia or anywhere in the country, should be focused on anything but 2020. There is nothing more important for us than knocking Donald Trump out of office. He’s been a disaster. To me it’s really hard to understand why you’d be thinking of ’21 when you’ve got ’20 right in front of you.”
McAuliffe served as Governor from 2014 to 2018.