Thread by @pwcdanica

(Thread)
I thought I'd offer a primer about my job and what it is that I do. Feel free to pass it along.
1) Hi. I'm a state delegate in the Virginia House of Delegates. It's the same thing as a state representative. I'm not a member of the U.S. Congress. I'm in state government.

2) Our legislature is called the Virginia General Assembly. It's in Richmond.
Like Congress, it has two chambers: the House of Delegates (our version of the House of Representatives) and the state Senate.
The House of Delegates has 100 members. The Senate has 40 members.

3) The Virginia House of Delegates has nothing to do with superdelegates or anything like that. Again, we're state representatives.
Members of the House of Delegates are elected to state government in districts drawn with populations 2.5 times smaller than state Senate districts.

4) The Virginia General Assembly meets once a year for two months (even-numbered years) or 1.5 months (odd-numbered years) to make laws.
We adopt a two-year budget in even-numbered years (aka "long" session). We update the budget in odd-numbered years (aka "short" session).

5) Like U.S. Representatives, state delegates -- members of the Virginia House of Delegates -- serve for two-year terms that come up every odd-numbered year.
Unlike the U.S. Senate, state senators serve for four-year terms. They're also elected in odd-numbered years.

6) The General Assembly has been around for a long time, so there are a lot of traditions. That also means it can take a long time for things to change.
The House of Delegates is 400 years old, founded as the House of Burgesses in 1619. It became the House of Delegates in 1776.

7) Richmond hasn't always been the Virginia capital but it is now. My office is in a building across the street from the Capitol building itself, like you see at the U.S. Congress.
Session doesn't last long, so I spend about 10 months a year back home in the 13th District.

8) The 13th District is in Northern Virginia: the City of Manassas Park and western Prince William County (Haymarket, Gainesville and Manassas, where I live).
When traffic's not horrible, it's about an hour southwest of Washington, D.C. / 1 hour and 45 minutes north of Richmond.

9) When I'm home, I go to a lot of events in the greater Prince William area so I can meet my constituents. I represent about 83,000 people but only about ~22,000 or so of them vote in state elections. That means I also represent a lot of people who can't or don't vote.

10) I represent a lot of young people - we have 12 public elementary schools alone in the 13th District and even more just outside of the district - so it's important for me to go to a lot of school functions because that's where I meet a lot of my student constituents.

11) The 13th District also includes three middle schools, two high schools and an alternative school. A lot of my student constituents go to school somewhere outside of the 13th District (Piney Branch ES and Bull Run MS are literally across the street) so I visit lots of schools.

12) The people I represent are my constituents. I talk about them a lot because my job is to do what they need me to do. In short, I have 83,000 bosses.
Our big issue is traffic congestion. We have a lot of jobs in Northern Virginia but a lot of us commute to get to them.

13) Improving my constituents' commutes is my No. 1 priority. It's what I spend the most amount of my time working on when I'm in Richmond and when I'm home.
We have a lot of other issues that are important too, from health care to teacher pay to making Virginia more inclusive.

14) That last part is important in a district as diverse as the 13th District. People from all around the world now live in Manassas, Manassas Park, Gainesville and Haymarket. I've lived there my whole life but it doesn't matter if you're there for a day or a century.
Welcome.

15) A lot of you know me because I represent part of that diversity as the first out-and-seated transgender state legislator in American history. I was elected Nov. 7, 2017 and re-elected Nov. 5, 2019.
Some people were surprised I could win.
I wasn't.
I knew our district changed.

16) While diversity's important, people really just want their state legislators to get stuff done at the end of the day.
Getting stuff done doesn't just mean working on legislation. It also means connecting constituents with state agencies that can help them resolve problems.

17) So that's my job: get stuff done.
A small but significant part of that means introducing my own legislation. In odd-number years, I can only introduce 15 House Bills. In even-number years, I can introduce more but every bill takes a lot of work, so I try to keep it limited.

18) A large part of what I do in Richmond is voting on other legislators' bills. Remember, there are 140 of us -- 100 in the House of Delegates and 40 in the state Senate -- so that's a lot of legislation I have to read and ask questions about before I vote on it.

19) One thing legislators tell each other a lot is, "Vote your district." This is especially true when a bill isn't much a partisan issue (where all/most Democrats vote one way and all/most Republicans vote the other way) but more of a regional issue, like tolls and land use.

20) I covered a lot of issues in the 13th District as a newspaper reporter for more than nine years, so I'm used to having to know a lot about a lot in order to do my job.
On some issues, my constituents give me a lot of feedback, which makes it easy to figure out how to vote.

21) On a lot of legislation though, I don't receive emails or phone calls from constituents before I vote on it, so I have to make sure I've done my homework because 83,000 people are trusting me to use my best judgment when I vote on it.
It's not a free pass. It's trust.

22) Like in the U.S. House of Representatives, most legislation goes through the subcommittee/committee process before it reaches the floor of the Virginia House of Delegates.
For the last two years, I've sat on two committees:
-Counties, Cities and Towns
-Science and Technology

23) In Counties, Cities and Towns (CCT), I work to amend bills and work with legislators to make sure we have strong legislation. Most legislation in CCT is non-partisan, so committee members really do work together. It's my favorite part of working in Richmond.

In sum:
I'm a delegate. I'm part of a state legislative body that's been around 400 years. We don't meet long each year but we have a lot to do.
Whether I'm voting, connecting folks to state agencies or introducing legislation, I listen to my constituents and do my best for them.