Virginia’s General Assembly adjourned its forty-six day session last week as the delegates returned home to settle into campaign mode. That is, all except for the Speaker of the House, William Howell, whose recent retirement has led to the elevation of Kirk Cox, District 66, to the speaker’s role. Cox has held his seat in the House since 1989 and has run unopposed since 1995, a fact that seems to suggest there has been some political indifference among voters. The last time Cox had a challenger was in 1993 when the Democrat won only 18%. Since then no one has wanted to spend the time or the effort to get back into the saddle despite a climate of political change in the state. The photo below demonstrates the obstacles for challengers and is from VPAP.org. http://www.vpap.org/offices/house-of-delegates-66/district/
Looking around the nation, however, there are signals that Virginia may be a bellwether for the political climate in the country and could stand out this November. Turnout is expected to be high in an off-year election with no federal candidates running for office. Virginia voters will go to the polls this fall to choose a new governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general, as well as 100 representatives to the House of Delegates. Republicans reclaimed the majority in the House in 1999 after decades of Democratic control and have not relinquished it since, despite growing Democratic majorities throughout the state in recent elections. In the 2015 election, sixty-six of the one hundred seats went to the Republicans with Democrats winning thirty-four. This evidence seems hard to explain considering that Hillary Clinton won fifty-one of these one hundred representative districts in 2016. What is going on in Virginia? Is this the year that Democrats undo these losses? Could the new Speaker of the House, Kirk Cox, actually lose his seat?
Since the election on November 8th, the current has been spinning wildly among protesters, dissenters, and organizers who had a rude awakening and had to reckon with the reality of a Donald Trump presidency. Across the country, movements sprouted in every state bolstered by millions of women who were shocked on election day and who signed up for the Women’s March on Washington. At the march, one speaker after another told the women to go home and run for office. And, so, they did. They came home parading their pink hats, Women’s March t-shirts, buttons, and homemade signs. They joined organizations left and right. They posted on Facebook and formed incredible support groups built around neighborhoods, mutual dissent and furor after the election of Trump.
One of those women who decided to run is Colonial Heights resident, Katie Sponsler. She chose to oppose the powerful Kirk Cox in her 66th district and believes her background will help to convince constituents that she is a better choice for delegate.
Katie grew up in a down to earth family in Youngstown, Ohio, not poor but close to it. She is the fifth of seven children in a family that “lived kindness through action.” Katie says that her parents are the most loving, compassionate people she has ever known, describing them as conservatives, but completely loyal to her and her passion for liberal causes. Her father had always told her to fight for what she believed in and called her, “my little fighter,” a description that explains her ferocious spirit as well as her diminutive size.
Sponsler is now living in Virginia with her partner and two children, but before she arrived here, she served six years in the United States Air Force as an aircraft armaments specialist and completed a combat tour in Afghanistan. She later lived in Texas and Germany, completed an Associates in Applied Mechanics at Hocking Hills Technical College and a certification for both the National Park Service and the Ohio State Police. She was immediately hired by the Park Service and received a commission as a Park Ranger. She eventually accepted a position here in Virginia at the Petersburg Battlefield where she worked until 2015, leaving after the birth of her second child.
Katie brings these life experiences to her candidacy. She says that, unlike Kirk Cox, she is not a career politician and brings a fresh viewpoint to both state and national government. A fervent reader of nonfiction and mainstream print news, she understands the issues and stated that deep partisanship can be counteracted by challenging those who maintain it. She says, “Start challenging them. Point out to their voters what is going on. Make the representatives accountable. Lack of accountability is what drives partisanship.” This is the reason she is running. She wants to be a part of making Kirk Cox accountable.
To do that Katie will begin by talking with voters about issues in the state and the country. One of her concerns is with services for both the active military and veterans. When asked about how veteran services could be improved, she responded with “hire more physicians; that is what they need.” She railed against the use of government contractors who get away with violations left and right, but continue at taxpayer expense because of crony capitalism. She believes that many of needed services for these constituents can be provided in our local communities through the expansion of satellite clinics and initiatives that help with job training for veterans.
Another issue important to Katie is health care, not just for veterans but for all citizens. She says, “The ACA is flawed but it can be fixed if Congress can stop the partisanship. That’s how we figure things out.” More importantly, Sponsler believes that healthcare is a right not a privilege; to make it work for everyone, insurance providers need to make concessions so that universal coverage can be available, especially to women. She is concerned about the defunding of Planned Parenthood clinics and counters that this directive is the opposite of what we need to do for women. She states that this is a vicious cycle and, “If we can’t plan our families, then we can’t plan our careers,” and so the cycle continues, not that Kirk Cox minds.
Sponsler is adamant about making responsible individual health care decisions and maintaining a balanced lifestyle which include activities in nature. Part of making our country a better place to live, she says, should include protecting our land and water resources so that citizens can be healthier. She wants the world to prepare for a substantially less stable environment and agrees with the 97% of scientists who concur that the world is warming and that we need to fix it now, not later. In this way, she also says we each need to do our part and that, if national programs start disappearing, the role of the state legislators will be even more important. Having seen the effects of regulations that ignore environmental impacts, Sponsler believes she could be a better representative concerning this issue as well as those previously referenced. Lastly, she pointed out that she will aspire to work across the aisle and make government work for everyone.
The question remains; does the future Speaker of the Virginia House, Kirk Cox, deserve to keep his seat? Are challengers to career politicians the answer to our state and national problems? Katie seems to think so, and is ready to be one of the millions who listened to the speakers on the day after inauguration and came home with a purpose.
Read more about Katie Sponsler at her website: https://www.facebook.com/sponslerfordelegate/
Make a real difference now to show that the resistance is working by donating to Katie Sponsler’s campaign @ https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/sponsler4va