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Editor’s note: There were eight questions raised by Hampden-Sydney students at Thursday’s 5th District Congressional forum. This edition includes answers to the first three. We’ll continue the discussion in Friday’s paper. 

Candidates for Virginia’s 5th District Congressional seat laid out their platforms and talked about their goals during a public forum held on Thursday, Oct. 17. The discussion took place at Hampden-Sydney College, with questions submitted from students and each person given a two-minute timeframe with which to answer. 

That included Republican and current State Senator John McGuire, as well as Democrat Gloria Witt, who works as president of the Amherst County NAACP chapter. Each person was given the same eight questions to answer during Thursday’s event, speaking to a group consisting of a majority of Hampden-Sydney students. What we’re doing is presenting their answers just as they were given. We will feature the first three questions today and then continue the discussion in the next edition. 

As to who comes first, a coin was flipped at Thursday’s forum, giving Witt the first question. It then rotated back and forth throughout the night. 

Q1: The cost of living has skyrocketed in the last five years. What are your individual goals and plans to support legislation to bring economic relief to Virginia’s 5th District? 

Gloria Witt: Inflation is real. The price of all of our goods and services is high. I look at it as some elements of corporate price gouging, so what can we do about it from a policy perspective? I’m supporting policies that will drive down pharmaceutical costs, I’m supporting legislation that will help us with affordable housing, because we know that housing is one of these lost American dreams, and I also believe that when it comes to economic growth for this district, 11,000 square miles, 24 localities, and with three large cities, most of our district is rural.

And so how do we create a thriving community? To me, it’s about reinventing education and creating career technical skills for the 60% of young people that leave high school without a college background, nor will get one or go to the military. So for me, it’s about expanding career technical skills that will provide a living wage job. That will affect the economics, because current businesses are telling me they can’t find a talented workforce. And if we grow our skillsets, they can make a living wage and therefore create opportunity for the members of District 5.  

John McGuire: If the government was a business, it would be out of business. I have a 26-year business. My wife and I celebrated 26 years of that business, helping teams and individuals, including the Hampden-Sydney lacrosse team. We celebrated 26 years of signing both sides of the paycheck last September. Everything is more expensive. Young people are telling me they have an app they search every morning to see where the cheapest gas is. They weren’t doing that four years ago.

And four years ago, interest rates were around 2%. They’ve gone over 7%. Inflation was under 2% and has gone as high as 10%. The solution to our problem is not more government. The free market works but when government gets in the way, it doesn’t work. If you guys want to have retirement, and most of you are young, but we’ve got some folks that are not so young, there are folks coming out of retirement because they can’t afford the fixed income they have. 

So what we need to do is get energy dominant. We were almost energy dominant four years ago and then we shut down ANWAR, stopped fracking and started buying fossil fuels from countries that don’t like us. So they were making money, we were spending money and that makes inflation go up, it makes your investments worth less and it makes it harder for everyday Americans to live, work and raise their family in peace. So I will support legislation to make us energy dominant and reduce spending. 

Q2: Many residents in the 5th District live in rural areas. What challenges do you believe are unique to rural areas and how do you plan to address challenges rural areas face such as poverty and homelessness? 

McGuire: As a state senator in the General Assembly, I just received a Policymaker of the Year award. I wish I could tell you the idea was my idea, but it’s almost always someone else’s idea. Our job is to listen to you and be your voice. We developed a policy that makes the fourth Wednesday in April CTE (Career Technical Education) Signing Day. Not every child is meant to go to college, but I think as educators, as parents, our responsibility is to prepare young people for life.

So I would encourage and support legislation that would help training, because I knock a lot of doors in these rural areas and they tell me that their child is not coming back to Farmville, because they can’t find a job. And certainly it’s a very Ag- Forestry impactful district. Our number three income in Virginia, $21 billion, is forestry and those folks tell me diesel prices were $2 a gallon a few years ago and they’ve gone as high as $6. And so they’re having a hard time paying their bills, they’re having a hard time paying their employees and so we need to enact legislation that will make us energy dominant, as I said before, and lower the cost of fuel and living. 

Witt: First, I want to go back to the first question and this idea of inflation. Inflation is real and businesses are making more profits than ever before. When it comes to fracking, based on the news reports, our economy is in the best shape it’s been in years. The highest stock market, more people employed. We are drilling, baby, drilling, and so this idea of lowering prices through fossil fuels, I believe it’s a myth. So let’s be clear about that. Economists are saying our economy is the best ever and this doom and gloom is very interesting, coming from the GOP. Regarding what am I gonna do or what do I see as a problem for our community?

Basically affordable housing, healthcare, getting broadband through. And CTE is at the heart of it. Senator McGuire has mentioned he passed some law to support career technical education. Yes, career technical education is happening throughout the district. The challenge is we’re not producing enough skilled workers to satisfy the growth that’s needed in these rural areas. We’re dealing with 20% poverty rates in District 5 and a median income of $50,000. We’ve got to recognize 50% of our young people leave high school in May and they are qualified for the lowest paying jobs available because they don’t have a career technical skill. He (McGuire) has been in the legislature and they’re doing something, but it’s not enough. We have to reimagine education. 

Q3: What role do you believe the federal government has to play in education policy? And how do you plan to support K-12 and post-secondary education in the district? 

Witt: It starts with thinking about it holistically. As I said earlier, we’re not producing enough talents in the K-12 system. You’ve got to pay teachers what they’re worth, you’ve got to look at the curriculum, bring in subject matter experts from the corporate sector to be the teachers. And that means looking at licensing people who may not have a four-year degree but they have a subject matter expert skill that the high schools need. It’s hard to get a worker from corporate America making $80,000 to come into a high school to make $40,000. So all of this misalignment needs to be dealt with front and center.

So I want to use my voice, because I’ve been listening, to go to Congress to get in these spaces and fight to get our career technical systems off the ground and more importantly, create a whole new way of educating our young people. They’re going to school every day and we’re leaving so many young people behind. We are doing a disservice to our young people. You wonder why they are losing hope and opportunity? They don’t see themselves owning a home or purchasing their first cars. Because it’s all attached to skills. We’ve got to tool up our young people. And we have to start with schools and not deviate money to charter schools, because 80% of our young people go to public schools. We need to fix it. 

McGuire: Energy is going to solve a lot of these problems. Instead of spending money, we’re going to be making money. We need to be energy dominant. There are 13 ships in the Gulf of Mexico, their job is to do fracking. They have not been issued a permit at all in the Biden-Harris Administration. Let’s move on to education. Our children should be taught, as Gov. Glenn Youngkin says, how to think, not what to think. These divisive ideologies coming out of the federal government in our schools is wrong.

I’m a Navy SEAL and I’ve been in some very dangerous places for our country and I’m 56 years old and I’ve seen a lot of things I don’t want to see, and when one of our delegates, Tim Anderson, read a book that was in an elementary school on the floor of the General Assembly, I wish I could unhear what he read. I believe schools should be preparing young people for life. If you graduate from a trade school or you go to college, and then you can’t get a decent job in five years, then we are failing you.  So our job is to prepare young people for life, not teach them divisive ideologies and I’d like to send more responsibility for education to the local level to support the needs of that community.