“Regardless of whether I’m in the majority or the minority, I work well with my colleagues and I work well with my constituents. Good governance still exists … You don’t get all these bills to have bipartisan support if you aren’t willing to find common ground and compromise.”

In order for any member of the Virginia General Assembly to pass a bill into law during the 2018-2019 term, you had to have bipartisan support w/ a R-led legislature and Democratic governor.
Even now with a Democratic trifecta, we still have to find common ground and get to yes.

Our Democratic caucuses come with a lot of legislators representing a lot of different people.
Our differences span the gamut of lived experience.
At the end of the day, we still have to count to 51 in the House, 21 in the Senate and earn the Governor’s support.

Legislators work with each other on amendments to our legislation in subcommittee and committee and sometimes even the floor all the time. Someone you like has a bill, you’ve got some questions/suggestions, you work it out and try to hammer out something you both can live with.

Doing that doesn’t make you conservative, centrist, moderate, liberal, progressive or socialist.
It makes you a legislator. You’re doing your job.
You promote your values, work hard to convince who you can to support your bill as drafted and compromise where you must to pass it.

Here’s a story from presenting my Shield Law.

It’s a made up quote but based on a true story:
“Delegate, I get how line (whichever) affects criminal proceedings but how does it affect civil cases?”

The ensuing back and forth, ironing out the text, didn’t compromise my values.

Instead, that’s the stress test of the text to see how it holds up under scrutiny. It’s not about values; it’s about the words.

I liked that draft. The member didn’t & could’ve killed my bill.

“I’m taking the half a loaf,” I whispered to my witness. “We’ll come back for civil.”

I did that because I had been fighting for that bill for each of the three years I had been in Richmond. We were on the cusp of finally passing it when that issue came up.
I didn’t take it personally though. That legislator had a job to do and so did I, irrespective of party.

Sometimes we do have issues where the compromise is absolutely unacceptable and we fight like hell to pass our bill without it, like my trans health insurance bill (HB 1429).
I made one compromise I could live with but refused a second to make a carve out to allow discrimination.

To bring all of this back to the original quote: as a legislator, your No. 1 job is constituent service.
How you define that is up to you but the core of it is taking care of the people you represent.
To me, that means delivering results and keeping campaign promises.

I think going into the Biden administration where party margins in the House and Senate will be tight no matter what happens in Georgia means that in order to deliver results that help people, Democrats are going to have to figure out what good governance means in this era.

Democrats from the suburbs have to respect that the bulk of our legislators are from the cities and that means having to take some votes you might think are tough but are necessary.
City Dems also have to respect our majority makers come from the ‘burbs and even some rural areas.

All of that means in a close House and close Senate, *everyone* in our Democratic caucuses has to work in good faith with each other. Hear each other out.

We don’t all agree with each other in Virginia but we got so much done in the last three years anyway. It is possible.

https://www.insidenova.com/headlines/danica-roem-announces-bid-for-re-election-to-house-of-delegates/article_aa771084-238e-11eb-b591-8b27e869a0c8.html