Andrew Payton is the Democratic candidate running to represent Virginia’s 34th district, which includes the city of Harrisonburg and part of Rockingham County. He’s running against Republican incumbent Tony Wilt, who has represented the district since 2010. Payton is an educator and has long been a community organizer in Harrisonburg, although this is his first time as a political candidate. WMRA's Calvin Pynn asked him why he decided to run for office.
Andrew Payton: So, I live in Harrisonburg. I'm a father of two young kids here. I work in education. I've worked in education my entire career. I currently work as a curriculum writer. I, my, involvement in civic engagement really began with climate and environmental issues. I have led a local climate advocacy organization, and I was a chair on an advisory committee to the City Council of Harrisonburg. And so that's sort of some of my background there. I decided to, you know, I'm a first-time candidate. This is the first time I'm running for any office. And to be completely honest, this was not something that I was considering. Very many weeks before I actually filed to run, But I decided to run for office because I feel like, I understand I've worked a lot of jobs over my career and I understand what it feels like to work really hard for something and feel like the system is just not letting you succeed. A lot of people feel, a lot of people are struggling to to get the basics that we need to survive. The cost of living from so many different things is really just squeezing average working people. And I find that really frustrating. And I felt like too many of our representatives were not truly representing us, but had their interests set on big businesses, corporations, and self-interest. So I ran as a way to serve my community in a time when I see a lot of folks struggling.
WMRA: I noticed that, affordability is the, seems to be the constant among a lot of the different areas that you're focusing on. And in a lot of ways, between housing, healthcare, all of that, they are interwoven to an extent. Could you talk about, or walk me through some, how you would want to address affordability in general, like in those areas such as housing, healthcare, workers' rights, wages, that kind of thing.
Payton: Yeah, you're absolutely right. These things are totally interwoven, affordability issues. And one side of the equation is affordability. The other side of the equation is wages. One, affordability, everything's getting more and more expensive and squeezing us harder. And then on the other end, our wages are stagnating, our benefits are being cut. So affordability, I think of some of the big ticket items that impact most individuals and families. Housing, you mentioned, healthcare, childcare is a huge one, and older adult care too. You know, childcare right now, the average cost of childcare in Virginia is now equivalent to in-state tuition at JMU. Older adult care, folks are asking, do I need to sell my home to be able to get the care that I need for the final years of my life? Housing, the average family cannot afford the average household, like the average home. The median income does not actually buy you the median cost of a house in Virginia. And health care is not only just incredibly expensive, but we are losing, we are actively losing access. Two weeks ago, I think, in Augusta, the Augusta Medical Group announced some closures of some rural clinics. And so, yeah, these things are, these things are tied together because these are, these are impacted by policy decisions, right? These are, we, have enough, enough resources to provide folks with these basics. If you work, and not even if you work, everyone deserves safe housing, everyone deserves access to affordable care, a quality education, and to be paid fair wages for the work that they do. And so these things are really are combined. You asked me, sorry, I know you asked me what I would actually do about it. And so it's a lot of different things you kind of start to get at, all of them. I think we need to be building more affordable housing to bring those costs down. We need to, we can lower prescription drug costs. We can, we have a real responsibility right now with the closures that I mentioned and with the cuts to Medicaid to make sure that folks are not losing the access that they have. with something like childcare, we can, New Mexico was recently in the news for kind of having one of the best childcare approaches in the country. And they're doing it by doing things like simplifying licensures for small facilities, by ensuring through public subsidy that there are actually childcare facilities, and by building out that workforce there. And in something like older adult care, you do it by, one of the challenges in older adult care is that all of the different options are not really well integrated. So sometimes folks might need an independent living facility or in-home care, but everything kind of might get routed to, say, a nursing home. And that's not always what everyone needs. And so just integrating the options so that folks and families know what's actually available to them and making sure they're getting the right option. And so, and then on the other hand, the wages, we can raise the minimum wage. It should be at least $15 an hour and we can do that. We can restore collective bargaining rights for everybody, especially for public employees. And we can ensure certain benefits like paid parental leave and paid sick leave for everybody in Virginia.
WMRA: Addressing the housing issue. One thing that I saw on your website was talking about, on your campaign website was talking about how to increase the supply, the availability of housing and therefore, you know, addressing the affordability piece there too would be looking at, you know, changing zoning laws and also addressing things like parking minimums, that kind of thing. And those are all, and those are things that I, as a layman, typically would associate with, being done at the hyper-local, like the city level. I know Harrisonburg right now, they're working on rewriting their zoning code right now. So how would that be addressed at the state level?
Payton: You're right that a lot of the tools to address affordable housing already exist at the local level. So in the state level, sometimes it's just supporting those local initiatives and listening to what the what city government is struggling with and being an advocate at the state level for some of those things. There are things that you can do in terms of allowing for rent stabilization if cities wanted to do something like that. You could go so far as legalizing duplexes across the state. But you're right, that is a hyper-local issue. And so I think a lot of times it just becomes it's a matter of being an advocate at the state level to remove any sort of barriers that municipalities might face in terms of when they're trying to build more affordable housing.
WMRA: I also want to touch on the education and environmental areas here too. You said that you would want to strengthen public schools. I guess let's start with that. How would you want to address that and what issues are you seeing?
Payton: Yeah, I mean, education is the engine of tomorrow's economy, and it is absolutely like it's the backbone of what makes a strong society that people want to live in. And I think of some things I think of to strengthen public education. First, we need to be fully funding public schools. They've never caught up from recession era cuts. We need to We need to be supporting our educators in terms of fair compensation. We are struggling to retain teachers across Virginia. And a lot of it has to do with compensation not being competitive with other states. It has to do with a lack of planning and development time. Teachers are teaching, I've been a teacher, it's hard. And they need support. And it's also, it's a tough environment right now because it's also extremely politicized. And that doesn't help students and that doesn't help teachers. And so, helping public schools, I think of funding them and I think of giving teachers more support. But I also think about like what happens before the school and what happens at home. We know that a lot of our kindergarteners arrive to school and they're not they're not ready for kindergarten. And things like paid parental leave, things like raising wages, sick leave, things that support the basic economy of a family is going to help that kid when they get to school. And so universal pre-K. And then on the other end, when we're done with the traditional public schooling, focusing on supporting trade schools, vocational programs, things that help folks enter the workforce. So yeah, it's all of the above. But I think education is another thing that we don't think of often as being so connected, but a lot of those things that help the basic finances of a family also do help with a student's readiness for school.
WMRA: It's all interconnected.
Payton: Yeah, absolutely.
WMRA: Also touching on, you know, the environmental issues, climate action. I know you talked about that. was one area where you had gotten involved in some activism, I guess, like at the local level. Could you talk some more about that, like and what you would want to try to work with there?
Payton: Yeah, So I've been involved with some climate environmental groups. One of the efforts that I'm probably most proud of is that it is an initiative we had to connect local households to no-cost weatherization and energy efficiency programs to lower their energy bills and to basically to do renovations on their home to lower their energy bills and in some cases even make their homes safer. So and that's something that I would want to focus on at the in the General Assembly. We have we have a funding stream for that through the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which we were a part of, and then we have, Virginia has left. And that provides funding to low-income households to weatherize, to fix a leaky roof, to install a new, more efficient HVAC system. And these are ways that these really can help families lower their energy bills. And we have a mechanism that we can do that through and so rejoining the regional greenhouse gas initiative would be a would be a way to do that.
WMRA: Have there been any interactions with your constituents? Any stories they may have told you that have that have stuck with you that have may have that may have informed how you're approaching any if not all of these issues? Would you be able to share anything like that?
Payton: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I say many, many times that no individual can know everything. No individual can be an expert on everything. And so, when I am hopefully elected, I go there with my community as a resource, with a whole bunch of folks that have lived experiences and expertise that can help inform what I want to accomplish in Richmond. And I gather, as I go around talking to folks, knocking on doors, talking to people in the community, I get a lot of stories that reinforce some of what I'm thinking about in terms of affordability issues when I knock on somebody's door and they tell me, my, former landlord sold the house and now my rent has doubled. That's, it's like, it's shocking. It's, but those are things that are happening all over the place or someone who's asking that question like, I am, my husband needs increasing care as he's aging. And I don't think we can live on a fixed income. So I'm in my 70s, but it's getting increasingly harder for me to work. I don't know what's going to happen when I have to leave my job. And so I'm getting these lived experiences that reinforce what I would want to do. But then I'm also hearing like really just great ideas from folks because they have the experiences, they have the expertise that can inform the policy decisions.
WMRA: Absolutely. Is there anything else that I, that's on your mind that I didn't think to ask while I've got you here?
Payton: Yeah, I just encourage folks to, you know, if you're not planning on it, go vote. We tend to be hyper-focused on the national story, on federal elections, but there's so much that happens at the state and local level that impacts our daily lives. And so there's a lot at stake in these elections. There's a lot to vote for. And so I encourage folks to go vote and then also just to talk to their friends and families. We have an election right now in Virginia and it's an important one.
WMRA: Absolutely. Andrew, thank you so much.
Payton: Thank you for having me. Thank you so much.
