By MADISON BROWN
Fredericksburg Today
Joshua Cole is the Democratic candidate for the Virginia’s redrawn 65th House District, which encompasses Fredericksburg City, southern Stafford County, and part of Spotsylvania. He represented the old 28th District in the 2020 and 2021 legislative sessions.
Quotes are lightly edited for clarity and concision.
Let’s start by telling me about your education and your career before you decided to enter politics.
I was your average millennial. I started off at Liberty University pursuing my degree in theology, and I dropped out of Liberty University around 2014. I worked for a government contractor, and I went over to the Virginia State Senate. I worked there for a hot second and then that’s what I ran for the House of Delegates for the very first time in 2017. As relates to my education, I’m finishing up my degree now at the University of Mary Washington, and I should be finished within a year.
Oh, congratulations. So it does seem pretty natural that your time spent in the Senate would lead you to a career in politics. But can you tell me what made you decide to make the transition into being a candidate yourself back in 2017?
Yeah, absolutely. So I had worked in the General Assembly for what they called the page program in 2005. I was 15 years old. And so that’s what kind of got me focused on state politics. But it really didn’t become more clear to me until I worked in the State Senate in 2016. You know, being older, you’re paying more attention to what’s happening. Being a pastor in the area, I knew a lot of our elected officials, but I just didn’t know their policies. Working in the state Senate, I got to be in the backroom meetings, I got to be in committee meetings. This was before the transparency bills had passed, so in committee meetings the votes weren’t recorded. I got to see up close and personal how these nice people we liked, who we trusted, who would come to church services and family cookouts and different things like that, they were really voting against our interest. I didn’t initially want to run for office. I wanted to be a super volunteer for someone or maybe work on someone’s campaign and back in 2017, this was the speaker of the House District. And so, of course, no one wanted to challenge Speaker of the House.
And so when no one would step up to the plate, I had a conversation with a few other candidates who were running for the House of Delegates at the time, I decided to go ahead and say, “Hey, I’m 26 years old. I have nothing to lose. If they destroy my life politically, I’ll just move in with my mom.”
But we ran in 2017 and we lost by just, like, 73 votes. And you know, this was a historically Republican district. And we came back again. We ran in 2019 and we won, and we won on issues that affected everyday people, from traffic, to raising the minimum wage, to making sure that teachers were paid well, we ran on real common sense issues and I think that resonated with people.
This time you’re running for a slightly different constituency than you have the first three times. So I’m curious if you’ve had to change your issue focus or your campaign strategy at all to run competitively in the new 65th district.
I think the issues are still the same. People are still hurting, their pocketbooks are still hurting. But now I think there are more issues that have come to the forefront, like abortion issues. We live in a state that is the last state in the South that has not implemented an abortion ban, and our governor wants to do that. And so the past three election cycles is, “Oh let’s protect abortion. Yay, let’s fight for abortion issues. Yay.” But now we literally have to fight for women’s choice in this election. That’s going to be a paramount issue in this election this year.
Environmental issues are still a concern and also economic issues are still a concern. We still want to make sure that people who work in this area can afford to live in this area. We want to make sure we have housing for young families, we want to make sure that people who are traveling up and down the road can get to work and that’s in traffic a lot of time. Some of the issues are the same, but some issues have taken a more forefront advantage during this election cycle.
I’d like to turn now to some of the issues that your campaign has been highlighting as being the most important to you, including the ones that you just talked about. But first, what would be your first priority legislative goal if you’re reelected to the house?
Me, the first thing that I’m focusing on is our traffic and transportation issues. We see a lot of people who sit in traffic, and even when people have family members and friends who come here, they’re like, “The only thing I hate about coming to Fredericksburg is y’all’s traffic.”
We have reports that have shown that our traffic causes the most expensive commute in America, the most time-consuming commute in America, and so we want to make sure we’re looking at different routes.
We definitely want to make sure we have the Regional Transportation Authority, which would allow us to generate funds within our region so that we are competitive with the smart scale to other regions like Hampton Roads, Richmond or Northern Virginia, who are able to get their funds for their road projects, we want to make sure we’re just as competitive because we’re falling too far behind when it relates to road projects and infrastructure projects.
And we also want to make sure that there’s modal modes of transportation, so not just being in your car, but also public transportation with FRED [FXBGO!], increasing the fleet, making sure that there’s money there. When I was in the House, we passed an amendment to make sure that bus rider for FRED was free. And since then, fare for FRED has been free. They have seen an uptick in ridership, and so we want to make sure that people can utilize FRED, that FRED has multiple routes that people aren’t being frustrated with the routes, and we want to make sure that high speed rail is a top issue as well.
This would be high speed rail along the 95 corridor?
Yep.
While we’re on the subject of transportation, you have been criticized for voting to allocate transportation funding to Hampton Roads.
That was a big attack that the Republicans lobbed against me in 2021, and they’re trying to beat a dead horse again this year.
I think one of the things that’s true as a state delegate while we are fighting for Fredericksburg, Stafford County, and now Spotsylvania County, as a state delegate, we also have to fight the issues for the entire state. There was a need in Hampton Roads.
But one of the things that I was fighting for was to get that Regional Transportation Authority passed. That would have helped us in this region. The local Republicans were against it, and many of those local Republicans who were against it are no longer here in the area. They fought against me tooth and nail, and then they all moved out of town. So that was kind of weird and strange.
Again, like I said, there’s the free fare for FRED, and also I brought money to the region to help out with [flooding on] Brook Road. While they are attacking me on that issue, they’re not talking about the real issues that have also helped this region with transportation and infrastructure projects as well.
Another policy issue for you has been, as you said, protecting reproductive freedom. At this point, that’s a matter of preventing something that hasn’t yet happened. So can you tell me what that looks like from the Virginia legislature? What can be done and what you would do in order to prevent abortion rights from being abridged here?
One of the first things I think we need to do immediately is protect the right to choose in our state constitution.
When Governor Youngkin was elected, we had what we call the lame-duck session. I joined with a handful of my colleagues before our term was up, and we sent a letter to our Democratic leadership calling for them to enshrine abortion access in the state constitution. It wasn’t done, and now that we know we have a governor who has already attempted to place a ban on abortion, sitting in the governor’s mansion with control of the House, we want to make sure we can do everything we can to enshrine that in the Constitution.
One of the things I think is clear is we have a governor who wants it, we have a Republican controlled House of Delegates who has already passed legislation, and thankfully we had a Democratic controlled Senate who blocked it. We already know if the Republicans hold control of the House and they take control of the Senate, the abortion ban will be enacted in Virginia.
So our cry is just making sure people understand, whether you’re for abortion or not, this is what’s coming down the line. We can’t block Governor Youngkin out of office, but we can take control of the House and take control of the Senate and that will ensure in his last two years that that ban never comes to fruition.
Another one of the key issues that your site has highlighted is supporting public education and our educators. So could you talk to me about what problems you see, or what support is needed, in the education system, and what you would do from the legislature to address it?
Yeah, as I’ve been knocking on doors and talking to friends, I have — my cousin is a teacher in Spotsylvania County schools. I have other friends who teach at Stafford County Public Schools, and there’s a couple of different issues we’re seeing face teachers right now.
One is teacher pay. We have friends who live here in Fredericksburg and Stafford who work in Loudon, work in Prince William, and work in Alexandria City Public Schools. They’re getting a significant pay increase just by driving 30, 40 minutes up the road. And they stay here because they love it here, but they can’t afford to continue to live here.
I was knocking on doors, and I talked to a mother of two teachers. She said her daughter just left the profession because she wasn’t getting paid well and after this school year, her son is leaving the profession because he’s not being paid well. So one, teacher pay. We want to make sure that our educators are compensated for the hard work they’re doing every single day.
Another issue that we’re finding out is that our localities do not have money for our schools. And this is in part — I hate to sound partisan — but this is due in part to locally elected Republicans who keep cutting taxes. And when you keep cutting taxes, you have to rob Peter to pay Paul. And so we do not have the money to build new schools, to pay our educators, and to fund the necessary education required.
Another issue that I can handle on a state level is fully funding our standards of learning. We want to make sure that again, like I said, raising the teacher pay, and then we just want to make sure that our localities are prioritizing our students and our educators, that’s the first thing. Our educators need to feel that they are honored, they need to feel that they are cherished for the work that they do and then we want to bridge that disconnect between our educators and our parents so that they are working together effectively for our students who are lying in the midst.
And how do we bridge the gap between educators and parents?
I think one of the issues that was exacerbated by the pandemic was you have frustrated parents who were busy with work. They had a lot going on and they may not have been up to speed on what was going on in the schools. The Republicans took advantage of that by stoking fear, by waging this cultural war.
I remember having a discussion with my wife, and she said, “Yeah, I don’t like kids having access to this, the kids having access to that.”
And I said, “Well, hey. At the beginning of the school year, you fill out a bunch of paperwork, and did you read it, or did you just sign it?”
She was like, “I had a lot going on, so I just signed it.” Those were the opt in and the opt out forms for our students, and this was before the Republicans took over and passed all these laws.
Everything that students do, you can either opt them in or opt them out. We don’t need a bill for that. Parents are already empowered to do that, and the sad reality is because of how busy life is, sometimes parents don’t know.
We want to make sure that our educators are communicating with parents and that parents are communicating with educators. And we hear it all the time. Educators say they’re reaching out to parents and parents don’t respond, or they have parent teacher conferences and parents don’t show up. And I think a lot of the time it’s not that the parents don’t care. Parents are just really busy, especially if they’re commuters or they’re working multiple jobs. They may not have the time to get out to these events that they’re having, but we want to make sure that our educators can meet the parents where they are.
I remember when I worked in the Richmond City Public schools, there was a teacher who literally would go to the parents homes to have parent teacher conferences. If you can’t get to the school, that’s cool, I’m going to get to you. Those educators who go above and beyond to fight for our students are what we need. And also the parents who want to be involved and want to feel engaged with their students. That’s how we’re going to break these issues. That’s how we’re going to make sure that our students are succeeding and excelling.
Your campaign also points to housing for all Virginians as a key plank in your platform. So how would you go about ensuring that everybody is housed? How does that look from a policy perspective?
Yeah. Well, when I was in the House a few years ago, we made sure that the budget was increased for the housing allowance. We wanted to make sure that money is still going there. We also want to make sure that as these developers are coming into town that maybe they have a certain percentage of the homes that they’re building in these developments are what we call workforce housing. And that really isn’t about Section 8 housing. We do want to make sure that we have some Section 8 housing in the community because there are people who are going to West Virginia before they can even get a house here. But we want to make sure that we have workforce housing, that’s just housing that working class citizens can afford to have.
You shouldn’t have to have multiple streams of income or multiple incomes in a house just so that you and your spouse and your children can live comfortably. Especially if you work here at Fredericksburg, you should be able to afford to live here at Fredericksburg as well. For me, my thing is looking at housing that is affordable for young families, making sure that there’s money out there for them. Making sure that housing is being built.
When I talk to builders, another major issue they’re facing is a lot of red tape at the local level, all the different approvals they have to go through and the time frame it takes. We want to make sure that that time frame and all that red tape and everything is caught up to speed and brought into modernity so these time frames don’t take so long to approve. And we can definitely do that on a state level by scaling back some of the many different approvals and mandating time frames for our localities to get these things done.
If there were only one policy or issue that people associate you with when they think of Josh Cole’s campaign this year, what would you want that to be? What would be your headline issue?
I think for me it’s freedom. When we look at the Commonwealth of Virginia, we’re looking at choice that’s on the line. We’re looking at parents freedom that is on the line. We hear the governor talk about how he’s fighting for parents choices, but yet the tax free holiday has been rolled back. Different things are being rolled back, the special cases and special approval for children with special needs is getting given to wealthy students and wealthier families.
If we’re looking at the Commonwealth of Virginia, it’s called the Commonwealth for reason. Everyone should have access to the same common wealth, and that comes from us having the freedoms to pursue life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And so when they think about Josh Cole, I want them to think that Josh Cole is fighting for their freedoms and for, as I say all the time, Lottie, Dottie, and everybody.
