Publisher's Note: This post appears here courtesy of the The Daily Wire. The author of this post is Luke Rosiak.
Political control of Virginia's House of Delegates is up for grabs this Tuesday in Virginia, and if the now narrowly Republican-led body reverts to Democrat control, it will likely be led by a felon who spent seven years in prison.
Since the Democrats last controlled the chamber two years ago, moderate Democrats like former House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn have been pushed out and replaced with insurgents like Don Scott, who was apprehended by federal agents in a Denny's restaurant in 1994 after running into the bathroom and attempting to flush thousands of dollars in drug money. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison and served seven and a half.
His voting rights were restored by former Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Republican, leading him to credit the opposition for his current political standing.
"The Republicans caused me to be here," he told the Washington Post.
In 2019, he won a seat in the legislature representing Portsmouth, the same year Democrats took over from Republicans who long controlled it. Now Scott has risen the ranks to be the Minority Leader in the House of Delegates, and is poised to take the top slot in the majority should his party prevail on Election Day.
Scott after he was first elected introduced a bill that would release inmates at age 60 if they had served at least 10 years of their sentence, or age 65 if they had served at least five. It would apply to nearly all felonies, except
"class one" felonies such as murders like the killing of a police officer, lawyer Hans Bader wrote at the time.
The Parole Board already had the ability to grant
"geriatric release," but Scott wanted to make it automatic, releasing the inmates even if the Parole Board's review of the individual circumstances found that the inmate posed a continuing threat. It would mean that someone could murder someone at age 60 with the assurance that they would be out five years later.
Such radical schemes were thwarted in 2020 because even though the Democrats controlled the legislature, some were moderate Democrats who objected. Republicans regained control in 2021, and relegated to rabble-rousing opposition rather than governance, Democrats veered to the Left. Radical candidates beat out more moderate Democrats in primaries.
That means that if Democrats retake control of the narrowly divided chamber, which election analysts view as a definite possibility, it will be a different vanguard of politicos like Scott who are in charge.
The state Senate is currently controlled by Democrats, but that too is in play. To enact his agenda, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin hopes Republicans will hold the House and retake the Senate.
The Senate's top Democrat is Louise Lucas, who was charged with two felonies in 2020 after taking part in a Black Lives Matter demonstration where a Confederate statue was pulled down and fell on a man. Lucas hired Scott as her lawyer, and the charges were dismissed.
Lucas and Scott are both black Democrats from Portsmouth, where Lucas runs a marijuana store.
"I'm a 78 year [old] grandma who legalized pot and now has her own cannibis (sic) store," she wrote on social media.
"And I'm the last thing standing between The GOP and total control of Virginia."
The Virginia Mercury found that the store appeared to be selling illegal products even under the state's newly relaxed laws. Lucas claimed she only sold
"hemp products and CBD," but the products tested to have illegal amounts of delta-9 THC, an ingredient that gets users high. Lucas has noted that her store is on
"High Street."
Lucas has played fast and loose with the facts in pursuit of partisan warfare compared to Democrats of the past, baselessly blaming Gov. Glenn Youngkin for the fact that a fellow Democrat candidate was raising money by performing sex acts online. The porn star candidate, Susanna Gibson, may have violated three different laws - including possible election fraud - but internal emails suggest that the local Democrat prosecutor is coordinating with her campaign instead of prosecuting her.
Among the other Democrats who threaten to make a Democrat-controlled legislature in 2024 very different from the one in 2020 is one who worked to bring Satan into public schools, even after a Satanist killed seven people in his town, and says that Christians are illogical. He is endorsed by Lucas.
Yet another candidate, Stella Pekarsky, appeared to use her current position as school board member to improperly retaliate against her Republican election opponent, who works for that system as a teacher.
