2017 General Election Elected 52 – 48
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Virginia Guzman is another great American immigrant story. She is a remarkable candidate to represent HD 31 in Alexandria. Another candidate the website Flippable believes has a good chance at winning.
We are working on flipping Virginia Blue. Virginia needs to flip seventeen seats this fall. This fall, because Virginia has its elections in odd numbered years. Every one of the one hundred House of Delegates seats is up for election this November. Flipping seventeen seats would be hard, but not impossible. After all, Hillary Clinton carried seventeen HD seats held by Republicans in 2016. Those seats are the target.
Virginia Guzmanhttp://www.elizabethguzmanforvirginia.com/came to this country from Peru as a single mother looking for a better future for her daughter. She found exactly that. Her story is an American immigrant success story.
Then, she worked three jobs (Wendy’s, CVS, and a department store) to afford a one-bedroom apartment for her and her six year old. Then, because she had studied English in Peru and had enough English to pass as bilingual, she progressed to private and public sector jobs that required both English and Spanish. Then, through the help and encouragement of the people she worked for, she obtained a Community College Degree and an online Bachelor’s Degree. Then she got a Master’s Degree from American University and another distance-learning degree from the University of Southern California. Now she is married and the mother of four children.
Now she works for as a Division Chief for the Department of Community Human Services in Alexandria.
Then and now, she demonstrated grit and determination and talent.
If elected she would be the first Hispanic woman in the Virginia House of Delegates. She would be representing a district that is (rounded numbers) 65% white, 20% African-American, and 15% Hispanic. Goaded by the campaign of a local supervisor who focused on toughening local law enforcement’s treatment of immigrants, Elizabeth Guzman became involved in politics and has been devoted to changing the public perception and legislators and law enforcement’s perception of immigrants. She reports that she and others like her were being stopped, while driving, approximately twice a week for what police call “safety measures.” Now most local police departments (but not Manassas) conform to the state requirements, to ask about immigration status only for those who are jailed.
Asked about the issues that are most important to her other than immigration-related problems, Elizabeth Guzman began with increasing the minimum wage. She said that it should not be necessary to work three jobs in order to make enough money to sustain a mother and her child, not for her and not for anyone.
Criticizing the Republican proposals for replacing the Affordable Care Act, Elizabeth Guzman argued for the importance of Virginia choosing the ACA option to expand Medicaid. She noted that in the Alexandria Department of Human Services they see the adverse impact on families when they are unable to obtain health care. She added that the Trumpcare proposals were putting people’s lives at risk.
Elizabeth Guzman’s third high priority was to reverse the decline in state resources for education. Noting that a guidance counselor now advises 500 students in the local high school compared to 250 when her oldest daughter was in school. Education staff, hampered by a lack of resources, have to juggle multiple responsibilities. Additional resources for education, she explained, should go first to providing special education teachers and early childhood programs.
On other issues, Elizabeth Guzman has said that she would have supported transportation legislation that had been proposed to reduce congestion in Virginia’s roads and urges an ethics reform package which would minimize the impact of large corporations on legislators. She argued for investment in and greater reliance on renewable energy in Virginia, for a reasonable estate tax as a source of revenue, and better treatment for vulnerable populations.
These are winning positions in a district that Hillary Clinton carried by seven points in 2016. Help Elizabeth Guzmanhttp://www.elizabethguzmanforvirginia.com/ win her election and create a Democratic majority in the Virginia House of Delegates.
