Check out the website: https://lenspoliticalnotes.com Look at the Daily Tidbits. Party Switcher bellwethers, The Green Book, Reparations
Political Note #212 Wendy Gooditis VA HD 10
2019 General Election
Chaz Nuttycombe tells us HD 10 is a toss up. He tells us that Nuttycombe is his real name. Chaz might be made up, though. He is a student of Virginia state politics and other state politics. He seems to be building a picture of the state legislators in the southeast, a few other places, too.
Wendy Gooditis, the incumbent Delegate for HD 10, https://www.wendygooditis.com/ is a responsive politician. In 2017, was writing a Note about her while writing Notes supporting Democrats in the seventeen Virginia districts that Hillary carried that also had a Republican Delegate. Wendy Gooditis was one of those. I was a little worried about one of her statements. She wrote back explaining that she home schooled her children, for a while, because she had grown interested in education and wanted to teach her own children.
Wendy Gooditis sussed out that I was worried she might be a fundamentalist critic of the public schools. She explained she was not particularly critical of public schools, had taught in public schools, and, while home schooling, had built positive relationships with fundamentalist Christian families who were also home schooling.
Good for her. We need Democrats who talk with the fundamentalist Christians.
Wendy Gooditis’ politics combine personal experience and a vision of the world. Take her interest in Medicaid expansion of the Affordable Care Act, particularly for mental health care. Add her interest in addressing child abuse.
Expansion of health care was a core interest of Virginia Democrats, now a slight minority in both the House of Delegates and the Senate. That interest became a Democratic victory as Virginia joined the majority of states that have expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.
Wendy Gooditis brought a personal interest these causes. A week into her 2017 campaign, her brother, who had been denied mental health services under Medicaid, committed suicide. This was a terrible experience.
Her personal experience showed up in her legislative work. Wendy Gooditis’s family traced her brother’s disturbance to his being sexually abused as a child – in an after school program that she has not specified. In the legislature, she held forums about child abuse aimed at finding better ways to prevent child abuse and to provide support to victims. Of the four proposals that came from the forum, one passed — to make clergy mandated reporters. The other three failed, perhaps to wait for a Democratic majority in both Houses.
Wendy Gooditis has brought distinctive experiences to her legislative career. As a youth in New Jersey, she was able to get training and experience as an equestrian. A candidate for the US Olympic Team, she found other ways to use that skill. She served, 30 hours per week, while carrying a full course load, as a student mounted marshal for the Rutgers police.
After leaving college, politics were not her interest. Twenty-six years old, she was a team leader at Bell Laboratories. After her interest and experience in education, she found a new career for herself in real estate, working as an agent for RE/MAX.
The 2016 election moved her. The Women’s March moved her. Wendy Gooditis’ progressive political leanings were tapped. She had been an advocate for Planned Parenthood. In 2017, she founded an Indivisible chapter. Then she ran for office. And won. By 4 points.
Wendy Gooditis https://www.wendygooditis.com/ and her colleagues want to create another Virginia Blue Wave in 2019. The troubles of the Governor and the Attorney General criticized for having worn black face in their youth and the Lt. Governor in danger of being prosecuted for sexual assault.
Virginia Democrats first need to protect the seats they do have. That requires special work in HD 10, the only district according to Chaz Nuttycombe, that is truly a toss up. Money from anywhere is more than welcome. Help Wendy Gooditis keep that seat for herself, for the Virginia Democrats, and for us.
