Episode 15: How are weak campaign finance laws damaging Virginia?
“The Virginia Way” is an old-fashioned ideal here in the Commonwealth--the notion that our public servants have so much integrity that we don’t need laws to regulate money that goes into the political process. As a result, we have almost no campaign finance regulation--a fact that's been exploited by aristocrats and corporations for decades, if not centuries.
This week, we sat down with state Delegate Sally Hudson and author Jeff Thomas ("The Virginia Way: Democracy and Power after 2016") to discuss the history of the Virginia Way and how the culture of Richmond might be changing in a new era.
Nathan Moore: This is Bold Dominion, an explainer for state politics in a changing Virginia. I’m Nathan Moore.
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The old guard in Virginia politics has a very high opinion of itself. You might sometimes hear it referred to as “the Virginia Way.” The Old Dominion has for centuries fancied itself as a bastion of good government led by public-spirited citizens... From Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson on up to the present. Within this Virginia Way, the story goes that strict ethics laws simply are not needed. Bribery just would not happen inside the august walls of the Capitol in Richmond. Supposedly, we’re just awash in integrity and decorum here in the Commonwealth. So much integrity that our trusty politicians are perfectly able to regulate themselves.
I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure I buy that. Particularly not after 2014, when former Governor Bob McDonnell was tried and convicted on corruption charges that made Virginia a national scandal.
In our last episode of this podcast, w e covered Dominion Energy and the cancellation of its Atlantic Coast pipeline. That’s a story that’s deeply rooted in Dominion’s power to use political donations to influence policy. This week, we looking more deeply at campaign finance. Political donations and the insidious role of big money in Virginia politics. Who rules Virginia? Where does that money go? And what does it do?
Jeff Thomas: They are buying influence. You can see a straight-line connection between what donors want and what the politicians do for them.
NM: That’s Jeff Thomas, Richmond native and author of the 2016 book called “The Virginia Way: Democracy and Power after 2016.” Suffice to say, Jeff has a different definition of what “The Virginia Way” really means. In the second half of this episode, we’ll hear more from him about the aristocratic roots of Virginia’s political system and the modern state of affairs of campaign finance.
But first, Bold Dominion producer Aaryan Balu sat down with an old friend of the show this week: Sally Hudson, She’s a member of Virginia’s House of Delegates, elected last November to represent the Charlottesville area. Sally walks us through her own experience running a campaign, navigating the ethics of donations, and how a new wave of Progressives Democrats might signal the end for The Virginia Way.
Sally Hudson: Like any operation, you need money to make it go. So politicians have to fundraise in order for us to pay for the staff and the stuff that it takes to run a campaign. In particular, especially for state candidates like me, we have to raise the help for all of the people who power a campaign operation because we're all part time by design. So we have another job. And so the most important thing that donations do is help power the assistants who keep our work going while we're all doing double duty. So you know, it's it's an important part of it. We wouldn't be able to have the time the resources it takes to reach voters. So there's a good side to campaign donations, and we're grateful for everyone who steps up to do that. At the same time, I think money in politics also does buy access, and maybe in a different way than people expect. I really don't think that most campaign donations affect legislative outcomes in a quid pro quo sort of way. It's not like a politician is trying to decide whether to vote yay or nay. And they've got a mental ledger in their head. And they're thinking, "Oh, well, this group gave me slightly more dollars. So I'm going to go ahead and vote with their interest." It's really more that money helps you build relationships over time, because politicians have to keep up relationships with their strong donors. And so--in order to, you know, go back to them for more money in the future. And so you spend more time with those people. And in Richmond, that especially means you spend more time at corporate lobbying events where people spend $1000 or $5,000 for a seat at a table or a spot at a cocktail party. And so they become the people that you're hanging out around and therefore they're the people in your ear. You know, I think everybody, no matter how pure-hearted you think they might be, is the product of the people in their ear who shaped their view of what matters and what sort of considerations they way. And then when it comes time for legislators to make decisions, those stories are more at the front of their brain than they might be for people who are further from that process.
Aaryan Balu: What's the scale when it comes to the state legislature? Because I mean, just recently, we had a lot of primaries and Amy McGrath down in Kentucky had some like $40 million for her Congressional run, what are the numbers like for the General Assembly?
SH: So start with the fact that most races aren't competitive. And so it depends a lot on whether you're talking about a race that's mostly decided in the primary or a race that really has to go all the way to a general election. I ran in a fairly competitive primary in a safe democratic seat, and my campaign cost about $200,000. If you're looking at the most competitive races in Virginia, in 2017, the highest cost race was Chris Hurst who flipped the House seat down in Southwest Virginia. And I think his race cost a little more than a million dollars. Last year in 2019, Dan Helmer flipped the last red seat in Fairfax County, and both of those candidates spent about $2 million. So it's not as much as the federal level by any stretch, but it's still a lot of money that could be going to better things.
AB: Can you kind of walk us through the Virginia campaign finance rules as you've dealt with them?
SH: Sure. So the first thing to understand is that Virginia has some of the most lax campaign finance rules in the country. So in some ways anything goes. And in particular, there is no prohibition on corporate contributions, like there is in so many states, and there's no cap on the size of contribution. So pretty much anybody can donate and they can donate as much as they want.
AB: What--are there limitations on what it can be used for?
SH: We also don't have a prohibition on personal use of campaign funds. So as long as you report what you're doing with the money, you can use it that way. There are very few restrictions on how you spend your campaign funds, and you just have to be honest about what you did with them.
AB: To what extent--I don't want to make this like a leading question or or call-out necessarily, but to what extent has the system sort of seen abuse?
SH: I think you're seeing it right now, in that when there is no--when there are no restrictions on who can donate, particularly on the corporate front, you see the corporations have outsized influence in Richmond. And so the biggest donors are also the loudest voices. You know, I don't think it's any accident that Dominion is the single largest donor to both parties and Virginia has been slow to adopt meaningful clean energy reform. It's no accident that Altria is one of the largest donors to political candidates, and Virginia, up until very recently had one of the lowest tobacco taxes in the country. So you know, you see those campaign contributions reflected in legislative outcomes.
AB: Going back a little bit to the laws themselves, why are they so lax here?
SH: I think it's long running history in Virginia. I mean, Virginia prides itself on being the cradle of democracy in some ways. It's also the cradle of American aristocracy. You know, we've always just had a close hold, big fish kind of political system here. And so this is just you know, one more extension of "the wealthy white landowners get to run the show."
AB: Do you get the sense that there has been any kind of progress on this in the last decade?
SH: So most progress in the legislature has come in the last year when there was major turnover from Republican to Democratic control. In Richmond, whichever party is in the majority really runs the show. And so until the General Assembly changed hands, you weren't going to see motion on a lot of these things that have been on the back burner for a long time. Now, that said, Democrats have also been slow to embrace campaign finance reform, because we've been part of the problem, too. So I think that of the many things that we all need fixing with our Commonwealth campaign finance reform is going to be one of the hardest battles.
AB: What would you like to see changed? If you had to propose something, what would it look like?
SH: I think both of those two things that we talked about as key problems--who can donate and how much--if you don't have those limitations, then you have an arms race. You know, what you really want to do is be able to make it so that all voices can be heard equally, and that means ensuring that somebody people can't yell louder than others with their checkbooks.
AB: What proportion of donations and you know, total amount of campaign finance comes from the grassroots or everyday people compared to the corporations?
SH: It varies wildly by candidate and you can look that up yourself. The Virginia Public Access Project makes all of our campaign finance records really accessible. And you'll see huge variation in how much money people get from individuals versus corporations in state versus out of state. I'm somebody who doesn't accept any corporate contributions. And I think a lot of the younger legislators have made those pledges as well. But if you look at the older vintage folks who've been around there for a while, you'll see that the vast majority of their campaign contributions come from corporations and their PACs.
AB: It's kind of all out in the open. It's just there's no consequences necessarily.
SH: Yeah, except for the optics of it.
AB: So not all big donors seem to necessarily be corporations expecting certain things to go their way. You got a pretty large donation from a donor in Albemarle county during your campaign last year. So what--can you talk a little bit about that?
SH: Yeah, you know, that was a really strange experience for me, first getting into a race to run and then having someone who's a real big player in Virginia politics offer me a lot of money. And I think anytime you're going to assess whether or not to take those kinds of contributions, you have to get to know the person really well and be sure that they're not trying to play that kind of game. And I think that both Sonja Smith and her husband, Michael Bills, who are two of the largest donors in Virginia, have established themselves in that way. They're very clear with candidates, including me, off the top, they're saying "I'm giving you this money to support you because I believe in the work that you're doing, but you're never gonna hear from me again." And they have stayed true to that promise. I've never had either of them call me up and say, "Well, you know, there's just this one thing that I'm sort of interested in." Um, you know, obviously that's a personal call and you have to make that call yourself, and I think you have to be prepared to fight the optics battle, which is that down the road, people will ask you questions just like this. I think with them, their reputation of holding that line is so strong that you don't really have to worry about it in Virginia politics. People know who they are, and you know what they stand for. But I think that anybody can look at your campaign finance records, and try to decide, you know, what does this person value based on whose money they're taking and who might be in their ear? So, for example, if somebody on your campaign finance records, you can't blame them for wondering, does that person decide what you think, you know, are you in bed with that entity or another? And I think you just have to decide that you're proud of the people who stand by you. You know, I have no problem if if Planned Parenthood wants to give me money. And someone looks at that campaign finance report and says, "Oh, is Sally in bed with Planned Parenthood?" and I'd say "yes! You know, I'm proud to be in bed with Planned Parenthood." I mean, I guess thanks to their IUDs I'm literally in bed with Planned Parenthood. So this is not something I'm ashamed of, right? And so I just think that you have to be proud to stand by the people on your It's reports. And that's something that I can say with confidence.
AB: How many of these quote unquote, big players? Are there people like Sonja and Michael, who are just individuals with money to spend in Virginia politics?
SH: Well, I think that they're the big fish in Virginia politics. But I think increasingly progressives are finding this option around the country. The challenge here is that the other side has most of the corporations because as an economic progressive dismantling that kind of pay-to-play system is one of our goals. And so you have to decide whether you want to unilaterally disarm. And what I think a lot of progressive candidates are learning is that there are a number of really principled large-dollar progressive donors who are willing to go to bat hard for candidates who put climate change at the top of the list and want to go head-to-head with the fossil fuel companies. And they'll give you the resources that you need to do that. And in a world where we have rampant inequality on a scale we haven't seen in the last century or so, if you really want to make progress on the urgent scale that we do for some of those big existential threats like climate change, I think that we as progressives would be silly to turn down those resources. You would rather rely on a handful of very principled and well-resourced people who you can get to know individually, rather than navigate the thicket of all of these corporate interests where the objectives they're trying to achieve are very clear, and not in line with the kind of policies that we're trying to support.
NM: Sally Hudson represents the Charlottesville area in the Virginia House of Delegates.
We’re going to take a short break, but you don’t want to miss what’s coming next. Jeff Thomas is the author of “The Virginia Way”, and he doesn’t pull punches when it comes to analyzing big money in state politics.
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Bold Dominion is a member of the Virginia Audio Collective, online at Virginia Audio dot org. Check out all the podcasts from the collective, including our newest podcast, Democracy in Danger. All over the world, liberal democracy is getting turned upside-down. And here in the United States in 2020, we're no exception. Can we save democracy -- and make it work better? Join hosts Will Hitchcock and Siva Vaidhyanathan as they talk to leading scholars, writers and thinkers about the most pressing challenges facing government of, by and for the people. That’s Democracy in Danger, available at VirginiaAudio.org.
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So look, Virginia has really lax rules on political donations and spending. Among the laxest in the nation. That can lead to wealthier people having a lot more influence than others.
This week, I talked with Jeff Thomas, author of The Virginia Way: Democracy and Power after 2016. To Jeff, the real Virginia Way is not a system of gentleman lawmakers above the fray of political cash. No, Jeff defines it differently.
JT: The Virginia Way is the dominant economic narrative of the ruling class. The specifics of it change, of course, there's a racial element. But the key is that for the last 400 years ever since Virginia was founded as a corporation, the ruling class has done whatever it can to enhance and maintain its control over power and over resources. The Virginia Way as it relates now to campaign finance, it means that the laws in Virginia are written by and for the benefit of donors.
NM: Let's reach back into the history on some of that, with Virginia being founded in the 1600s as a corporation, really just a profit making enterprise in this new continent. All the way up to the present. How do you how do you trace that lineage?
JT: Yeah, Virginia was founded as the Virginia Corporation of London as a speculative venture. And what happened was the King granted to his his cronies, large areas of land such as Fairfax, and they were fiefdoms to Lord Fairfax, and people very much like him. And what happened was, you had Black and white servitude. So whether you are a Black enslaved person, or a white enslaved person who had a period of indentured servitude to seven years, you would come and you would be worked to death, and Lord Fairfax would make 1,000% profit on your labor. And when you died, they would find another person from London or what is now called Gambia are places like those and make profit off of them in the same way. Of course, things are, suffice it to say much, much, much better now. But that sort of class-based and racial system has continued to the present day. Virginia is a very low tax state. We have very poor social services in general. We have an excellent university system. The university system, especially at UVA is sort of a dual university system. It's an actual system that supports the middle class and lower middle class and does what it's supposed to do in terms of educating people but it also is sort of a corporate training ground for the old you know, Virginia white power elite. And the public school system in Virginia is not good. It is good in some localities, but it is terribly underfunded not just the poor white areas, but also for black areas.
NM: You know, Virginia sometimes in its tourism slogan says that, you know, "US history is Virginia history," you know, and certainly some of those early days and I think that's true also with with looking at race and class as these primary lenses. Let's look at, say, the last 50 to 100 years. I mean, how has the big money continued to really regenerate itself as the elite in Virginia?
JT: Yeah, capitalism has changed a lot in Virginia. what it used to be is that the people who owned the state, their firstborn sons would continue to own the state--Harry Byrd, of course, was a descendant of William Byrd, who founded Richmond. Harry Byrd was the most powerful politician in Virginia for 40 years. Now, it's, it's about money. You don't have to be descended from some elite aristocrat or whatever. If you have money, you know, that there's really sort of the only thing that matters. And that reflects America to some degree. These dynastic fortunes are no longer within families. They're within these immortal creatures called corporations. So Dominion Energy, or Altria, or other corporations that are sort of parasitic, what they do is they buy the legislature. Virginia is the only state where corporations can spend unlimited amounts of money and the legislators or the people who are raising the money can spend that money on personal expenses. The only state. You can't do what we do in Virginia, in any other state. It's all the more ironic because those people do not generally speaking, face competitive elections. So for example, in 2015, Tommy Norman, the senate majority leader at the time, did not face a primary challenger or anybody in the general election. He literally, you know, he ran unopposed. He raised a million dollars for his election campaign. A lot of that money came from Dominion. So what you know, what is he spending that on? He's not spending it on anything. They are buying influence. You can see a straight line connection between what donors want and what the politicians do for them.
NM: So we've moved from the era of dynastic family wealth to really just the money, the corporate wealth. And so who owns Virginia today? You've mentioned Dominion, you've mentioned Altria.
JT: Yeah. This is really fascinating what has happened since the McDonnel scandals has come at the same time that the sources of capital and power in the United States are shifting. We are changing from a 20th century economy with, of course, General Motors and utilities and coal mining and all the rest to a high tech, you know, economy where Apple and Facebook and Amazon are really sort of the way in the future. What happened in Virginia, is that the less power Dominion has, the more people like Michael Bills have. Who's Michael Bills? He was the head of the UVA investment advisory arm. He was a Goldman Sachs guy, he's got more money than--he's got many hundreds of millions of dollars to my understanding,
NM: I think the word is "oodles."
JT: Haha. I think he has oodles of money. And he is coming in and saying if you take money from Dominion, then I will not give you any money. If you don't take money from Dominion, then I will give you, I believe it's something like 10 or $25,000, hundreds of thousands if you're the governor [**]. So Virginia has changed since the McDonnell scandals, things have gotten a little bit better. But part of that is just because the money that's being flooded into the system is not as corrupt. Michael Bills, and people like him are not trying to line their own pockets. They believe more in good government. And what we're seeing--you know, this was really fascinating--the law did not change in any substantive way. Anything that McDonald's did, whether that was illegal or not, it is just as illegal or not today.
**Note: Clean Virginia, the organization backed by Michael Bills, contacted Bold Dominion after our publish date to clarify this point: “Clean Virginia has a very clear giving policy for candidates who do not take contributions from Dominion Energy or Appalachian Power - $2500 for House Delegates, $5000 per State Senator, both on an annual basis. We do not ask for any kind of pledge. It's a no-strings-attached contribution. For gubernatorial candidates, we have contributed $100,000 to both Del. Jennifer Carroll Foy and Sen. Jennifer McClellan, and $100,000 to Del. Jay Jones who is running for AG. We will likely also give to multiple candidates for LG. We meet with all statewide candidates and review the answers to their policy questionnaire before giving.”
NM: Let me back this up just a little bit, for listeners who may not know the ins and outs of the McDonnell scandal a few years ago. Former Governor Bob McDonnell, after his term of office, he was tried and convicted of corruption charges, but then that conviction later overturned by the Supreme Court or another federal court. Take me through what that case was in brief, and then let's get into the repercussions of it.
JT: Johnny Williams was a guy who has oodles of money down here in Richmond. He founded a medical supply company--and, you know, basically he was a con man, okay. He put tobacco in microwaves and claimed that he invented a drug that would help treat Alzheimer's. Which is of course, false. Which is like, transparently, comically false. So, but he started to bribe Bob McDonnell as soon as he became elected. Johnny Williams became very close with Bob McDonnell's wife and would take her, you know, to New York to go on shopping sprees. People, of course, thought that they were--had another sort of relationship. Who knows? But 10 days after Bob McDonnell left office, he was indicted. It turns out that he was trying to get UVA medical school and VCU medical school to test this irradiated tobacco on state employees, which is totally insane. Thank God that we never did that. And he was convicted by a jury of his peers. I believe he and his wife are both found guilty of 10 felonies maybe it was 11 apiece, something like that. The convictions were not ultimately overturned, in which case he would have been found innocent, they were vacated, which means that he has not been found guilty or innocent. The United States Supreme Court ruled that the jury instructions were flawed at the trial court level. They sent the case back to the Court of Appeals, the Obama Justice Department decided not to pursue this conviction. Of course, this was a very big national news story, not to mention a state news story. And all these politicians pledged never to do--to never allow any of this corruption to happen again, and what they did was they lied. What happened since the McDonnell scandal is that the sort of tawdry gift-giving has turned just straight to cash. Johnny Williams flew the First Lady up and spent $70,000 on dresses. Dominion Energy gave Ralph Northam $50,000 for his his campaign and $50,000 for his inauguration-- which I still don't understand why people give money to an inauguration after somebody is elected. That just is transparently corrupts to me. But that's that's just the way it is. Ralph Northam also owns Dominion stock. So which one is worse? In my opinion getting straight cash is worse, but it is it is less tawdry. I think there's sort of a PR aspect to it. So a lot of this stuff that used to happen 10 years ago, taking legislators on hunting trips, and the various gifts that I mentioned, and so forth, which were not unusual except in the scale. That doesn't happen anymore, but the money is still flooding the system. And as I said, the sources of money are changing and the level--the the amount of money that's flooding, the system is also accelerating. But the bright spot is that a lot of politicians are coming into office who reject this system. This was the insight of Josh Stanfield and Activate Virginia and all the politicians who took his pledge, or Activate Virginia's pledge never to take money from Dominion. You had one person who was an incumbent in 2017 Sam Rasoul, delegate Sam Rasoul from Roanoke took that pledge and then 12 legislators got into office who had taken that pledge and this represents an existential threat to Dominion's business model. That is really a positive step. But again, this just has to do with sort of the culture of Richmond and Virginia changing for the better. Not to do with the actual laws, which I said are exactly the same as they were during McDonnell's trial.
NM: Now you said there's different sources of money coming in, and also at a much greater scale. What are these changing sources of money flooding Virginia politics?
JT: When I mentioned culture: it is perfectly legal to give a billion dollars to somebody running for governor or for a, you know, a state legislative seat in Virginia or anything like that. Nobody does that, because that is so far above and beyond anything that would be, you know, that would be even considered reasonable.
NM: It's above the market rate to buy a politician.
JT: That's right. You can get him for much cheaper, and he used to be able to get them for example, for 5000. Now--you know, Terry McAuliffe actually accelerated this--he opened up his Rolodex and you started to see really at a large scale for the first time, six-figure checks coming in from out-of-state. So as you said, the going rate for a politician is increasing. And that's happening nationally, too. The difference is that we don't have super PACs in Virginia, because you don't need them. There are no campaign contribution limits! So you can just give the money straight to the campaign.
NM: Literally, the only regulation seems to be that you just have to report the donation that, you know, if somebody goes and searches for it, they can find it.
JT: You know, they asked the clerk of the House of Delegates when anybody has ever been found in violation of that statute. She said she couldn't recall a single instance over 30 years, and even if somebody had been found guilty of shirking those responsibilities, the fine is $500. That is paid out of the campaign fund.
NM: Right, right. So, where do things go from here? You mentioned a bright spot. There are some politicians coming into the system who don't go along with this system. Who are they?
JT: You know, the politicians are really the people who came into office as freshmen or freshwomen in 2017 and in 2019. Obviously last year, the Virginia House of Delegates flipped. This is all due to the aversion to Trump and the fact that Virginia is becoming a blue state. The people who are coming into office are a different type of Democrat, and they are still in the minority. But when you see the Democratic Party of Virginia changing, and to some degree, the Republican Party of Virginia changing, you can start to see how the system itself could change. A lot of these politicians got into office overtly running on an anti-Dominion platform. That gets them votes. What's also so fascinating about Dominion is that in other states, the electric monopoly is seen as a pool of money. Why? Because you can order them to give refunds to your constituents. And the legislature could pass a bill in this session coming up in August, saying that Dominion has to give $100 to every single one of its ratepayers. I mean, that's--that is just as good as the tax cut. That's money in your pocket. Dominion can't have that. And ultimately, you would think that as the flow of Dominion's money is cut off and therefore its political influence wanes. You will start to see legislators who will really realize what can be done. You cannot turn down a $10 billion pot of money for your constituents that you can do whatever you want with. So we're seeing a battle right now, a battle between sort of the past and the present and the old guard and the new guard. And it's impossible to predict what will happen. But what has happened, you know, in the last few years has been really a sea change in Virginia politics. We just haven't really seen sort of the legislative outputs change because there still is that old guard that out numbers, the new/
NM: You know, I'm struck, as we're talking here, Jeff, about how what you're describing seems to be kind of a split in the power elite and how some of this power elite you mentioned, Michael Bills, wants things done maybe in a different way. Still with a lot of money behind them. a different part of that power elite kind of wants us to 21st century version of kind of the same old status quo. How did that split come to be and where are we today?
JT: In a lot of ways I think you could boil it down to the continuation of the one-party system after Harry Byrd died, Democrats controlled things in Virginia for a very long time. Unilaterally. I think at one point they were 96 or maybe 98 of the hundred House of Delegates members. After desegregation, the Republicans formed their own sort of branch. But the system continued onward. There was a split on racial issues, but there was not a split on economic issues. What you're seeing now, really since Trump was elected, is this new brand of Democrats who are--in many ways they are power elite. At least they have some power. They represent sort of a Bernie Sanders-almost type philosophy and Virginia is really just sort of reflecting that.
NM: Let's talk for just a second about the 2021 gubernatorial race. On the Democratic side we've got Mark Herring still says he's planning to run but hasn't really done a lot to pursue that just yet. Jennifer Carol Foy and Jennifer McClellan, both women of color in the in the General Assembly have decided to throw their hats into the ring. And then over on the side, you've got former Governor Terry McAuliffe raising $1.7 million over the last few months, even though he hasn't declared anything. What do these latest finance numbers tell you about Virginia's campaign finance and kind of what's next.
JT: It really is that money is still the coin of the realm. I think that we should have the federal limits in which are $2800 per election per person. But you still do need, of course, unless we do a complete public finance system, which is not politically realistic, but which is possible--they do it in other countries--you still have to have people give you money. To see the amounts of money that have been raised, six figures already by by all of those candidates that you mentioned, and seven by Terry McAuliffe, shows that they're all you know, very serious contenders. It's, I mean, Terry McAuliffe, it's really interesting his position on campaign finance, and his so called pro-business position reflects an era before the 2017 sort of revolution in Virginia, which really has changed the Democratic Party. So it's almost a reversion to the old system and he would certainly be the front runner if and when he declares for election, but whoever wins will be raising a lot of money, no doubt.
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NM: Jeff Thomas is a Richmond native and author of “The Virginia Way: Democracy and Power after 2016”. Thanks to him and also to our first guest today, Virginia House of delegates member Sally Hudson.
My name’s Nathan Moore, and I’m the host of Bold Dominion. Huge thanks to our producer Aaryan Balu. Find this show online at BoldDominion.org. Go ahead and subscribe… it’s just a click away.
Keep social distancing, y’all, and I’ll talk with you in two weeks!