Jenny Thacker just won a seat in the West Virginia House of Delegates by ousting the Republican incumbent with old-school retail campaigning—door to door, and person to person. In my opinion, there are some highly-paid consultants and longtime Democratic operatives who could learn something from Jenny.
Her key policy points included:
Data centers (HB 2014): Jenny tells me that law overrides local zoning, puts data centers on farmland, and sends only 30% of property tax revenue to the county, with 50% going to the governor’s income tax reduction program. Data centers also threaten local groundwater.
Utility rates: Residents are being charged for transmission lines (Valley Link North, MARL) and for a proposed Mon Power gas plant near Morgantown that would serve future data centers, not local households.
Public Service Commission reform: Jenny says the PSC should be elected instead of appointed by the governor, the legislature should be able to override its decisions, and it should approve only projects that benefit local residents.
Water: About 80% of Jenny’s district relies on well water, and the infrastructure is aging. I’m told that West Virginia American Water, a for-profit company, charges 2.5 times what public utilities do.
Locality pay: She wants cost-of-living pay for teachers, police, social workers and other state employees in the 25 counties with above-average living costs. She frames it statewide to build support beyond the Eastern Panhandle.
Growth and services: The region is the fastest-growing part of the state, and roads, schools, ambulances and healthcare have not kept up.
Childcare and foster care: Waiting lists for childcare run about 13 months, which hurts the workforce, and foster care is in crisis because of a shortage of social workers.
Opioid settlement funds: Close to $1 billion in combined tobacco and opioid settlement money is largely going to police and jails, paid out slowly by a private company. Thacker wants it spent on recovery villages, counseling and anti-poverty programs.
There’s much more in the conversation, but for me the bottom line is simple: Jenny ran on concrete local issues, especially data centers, utility costs, and the cost of living. I didn’t hear much vague rhetoric about an “affordability agenda.” What I heard was a set of concrete proposals to make life more affordable for people in her district. That’s a world of difference.
Check it out for yourself.
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Many thanks—RJE
Transcript (lightly edited)
[after introductory clip]
Richard Eskow: Among the many results of the blue wave election we’ve just seen is the election of a number of people at the state level, in state houses and state senates around the country. One of the developments that has impressed me most has been the rise of elected Democrats in a state like West Virginia. I’ve visited West Virginia many times, and I follow its politics and way of life very closely.
We’re about to speak with one of those newly elected officials now. Jenny Thacker is the delegate-elect to the West Virginia House of Delegates, which has 100 members. She represents District 100, which covers part of Jefferson County. She can tell us a little about her background.
She has a very interesting background, and I believe this was her first run for office, so she’s entered a whole new world. But first of all, Jenny Thacker, congratulations on your win. And welcome to The Zero Hour.
Jenny Thacker: Thank you. It’s really nice to be here.
Richard Eskow: It’s great to have you. First of all, your district is District 100, right?
Jenny Thacker: Yes.
Richard Eskow: Out of 100?
Jenny Thacker: Out of 100.
Richard Eskow: Which means you’re either at the top of the list or the bottom, right?
Jenny Thacker: It means I’m the farthest east.
Richard Eskow: Oh, okay.
Jenny Thacker: I’m as far east as you can be and still be in West Virginia. The numbers run roughly from top to bottom, but also from west to east.
Richard Eskow: That will actually come up later in our conversation, because being the farthest east affects the population in certain ways. I want to talk about how you campaigned. Did you knock on doors, go to community groups? What kind of reception did you get in different parts of your district, whether in the rural areas or the wealthier places, like Harpers Ferry, which is small but well-to-do?
It’s beautiful country, God’s country. I love that area. But what was it like to knock on doors, shake hands, or stop people at the supermarket and say, “I’m a Democrat, and I’m running for the House of Delegates”?
Jenny Thacker: There’s actually only one supermarket in my district, and it’s right on the border between my district and another one. So I didn’t go to supermarkets. I knocked on doors. I got an old-fashioned paper map from the county that showed every single road, and by the end of the campaign I had knocked on three-quarters of the doors in the district.
Richard Eskow: Wow.
Jenny Thacker: Every time I finished a street, I highlighted it in yellow and moved on. Most people who knock on doors use a program that tells them, “These people are Democrats, these are Republicans, these are independents, and these might lean left because they buy a certain kind of cheese,” or whatever.
I didn’t do that. And that’s true, by the way. They really do that.
Richard Eskow: Really? Okay.
Jenny Thacker: Yes. I didn’t do that. I knocked on every single door and talked to people. I discovered that in very liberal Shepherdstown there were hardcore Republicans, and vice versa. Out in Shenandoah, up on the mountain, everybody’s independent. You hear all these stories about gun rights, and people warn you to be careful up there because somebody might, you know. But it wasn’t like that at all.
People were very friendly. Even the people who said, “Hey, I could never vote for a Democrat,” would tell me, “Be careful when you’re leaving. It’s slippery over there. Just watch yourself, honey.” They were sweet. They were nice. In nine months, only one person was mean to me.
Everybody else was kind and friendly and listened to what I had to say if they could. A few said, “I’m sorry, I’m not going to listen,” but there were only a handful of those. Most people talked to me, and we talked about the issues. If you’re going to have representative government, I think it’s really important to know what people want.
You can’t represent people based only on your own ideas. You have to represent them based on what they tell you is important to them. That’s part of why I got so involved in the data center issue. So many people told me they were worried about data centers coming in, using up our water, driving up our electric bills, and causing noise pollution, air pollution, and water pollution, including in our groundwater.
So a lot of it was that. I also went to every single free event, and a few that charged admission, though the vast majority were free. I helped plant trees at a church, helped with Bee City, and helped at the food bank. I went to town council meetings and county commission meetings. I went to every festival, garage sale, fire department fundraiser, and community ministries event I could find.
I also did something else early on. I was in a room with my daughter and several of her friends, and my daughter said to me, “Mom, there’s nothing on earth that will get people my age to go to a political event. But we’ll lie on our beds for hours watching videos.”
Richard Eskow: Hmm.
Jenny Thacker: So I got a 19-year-old to make videos with me every week, and we posted them on TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram, where young people could see them. I got a lot of young people to vote for me. People also say, “Oh, there are hardly any minorities here.”
Well, there are minorities here. For example, Shepherdstown has a historically Black neighborhood that most people didn’t even know about. We held a block party there, and it was fantastic. Local restaurants donated food, more than 100 people showed up, and we had a band. It was all volunteer. People learned about a part of their district they didn’t know existed.
More importantly, the people from that neighborhood were recognized. I went to Black churches. I’m not a particularly religious person, but I went. I also went to churches in the poorer areas. I went to every event, every basement sale, everything I could, to meet people from every demographic.
I volunteer with the seniors’ social group at the library every Tuesday, and they’re wonderful. They’re the most interesting, fun group of people you can imagine. I learned a lot about the issues that affect older people, and I had fun getting to know them. I went to every music event, too. I wanted to make sure I didn’t leave out any group, because to make this work, we have to hear from all of them.
Richard Eskow: I want to run something by you, because I’ve been preaching this to Democratic politicians around the country for at least 25 years. If you feel in your heart that you’re better than somebody, they get it. They may not even say it out loud to themselves, but they feel it.
But if you go to people and say, “Hey, I just wanted to meet you,” person to person, they get that too. They may or may not agree with you, but 99 times out of 100, they’re nice. They’re open. They appreciate that you came around. Even if they disagree with you, if you get a flat tire on your way out of their driveway, they’ll help you change it.
You know what I mean?
Jenny Thacker: Exactly.
Richard Eskow: It’s the simplest thing, but somehow being nice makes a huge difference.
Jenny Thacker: On Election Day, I set up across the street from the polls, more than 100 feet away, with some coffee. While people were voting, I said, “Anybody want some coffee?” because it was cold. It was 43 degrees when I got up that morning, it was dark, and people were trying to do their civic duty.
A man came up to me and said, “You know, in 2005...” That was 21 years ago. “In 2005, the train out of Brunswick broke down, and I needed to get into the city for a job interview. You gave me and a couple of other people a ride.”
Richard Eskow: Wow.
Jenny Thacker: “I went in, I got that job, and I worked for the federal government.”
Richard Eskow: Wow.
Jenny Thacker: It changed his whole life because he got that job, and he was voting for me because of something I had done so many years ago. That’s the kind of thing that happened. Another time, I was walking through the Shepherdstown Museum, which is a small museum, and a woman was sort of blocking my way.
So I waited, and she turned around and said, “Oh, you’re the one who was at that event and got me a chair. Your opponent would have made me get him a chair. So I’m going to vote for you.”
Richard Eskow: Oh, that’s a great story. I love that story.
Jenny Thacker: It’s the niceness factor. You have to be nice to people so they understand that people of all backgrounds are just people. They’re not red demons or blue demons. And a lot of the national issues are so extreme that people are afraid of them.
People would say, “Oh my gosh, she must be a communist because she’s a Democrat.” And I’d say, “Well, you must be a communist because you’re voting for data centers to come in and take over your land.”
Richard Eskow: Right. Exactly.
Jenny Thacker: It’s not true. We’re all people. We’re all good people. When I was growing up, most people got their news from one of three networks: ABC, NBC, or CBS. That’s where we heard the news. We all heard the same news, so we tended to come to similar conclusions.
Some people were more to the left and some were more to the right, but we were all trying to understand the world together. That doesn’t happen anymore. Now people watch their favorite station, the one that tells them the kind of news they want to hear, from a perspective they relate to.
And they don’t understand that the people on the other side are also good.
Richard Eskow: Am I right that this is your first foray into politics?
Jenny Thacker: It is.
Richard Eskow: So what have you been doing all these years?
Jenny Thacker: Right out of college, I joined the Peace Corps and worked on water and sanitation. After that, I had a few unexpected jobs. We were evacuated because of a war. I was in Zaire, which is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the war spilled over from Rwanda. It was too dangerous to stay.
I went back to the US thinking I’d get a temporary job and then return to the Peace Corps. They were supposed to find me a new post, but for one reason or another it took much longer than they expected. They had positions for me in different places, but none of them worked out.
So I took a temporary job fighting fires. The first place they wanted to send us as firefighters was to the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles.
Richard Eskow: Wow.
Jenny Thacker: I said, “I’ll fight a fire, but I’m not doing riot control.” That same day, a different job came in: driving an 18-wheeler. I drove an 18-wheeler that summer. Toward the end of the summer, I met up with some friends I knew from National Geographic.
One friend said, “Hey, if you ever get tired of driving a truck, let’s go to the job fair.” So we went to the federal job fair, and I got a job at NOAA. I worked for NOAA for 30 years.
Richard Eskow: And since then you’ve been volunteering in your community and that kind of thing. You’re also studying to be a master gardener. I’ve only gotten into gardening in recent years. I was never into it and never thought I would be, but now I am. Birds, too. But what made you decide to run for the House of Delegates?
It seems like a shift. I’m all for people going into politics who aren’t political by nature, but how did that come about?
Jenny Thacker: Well, I’ve always paid attention to politics. When I was growing up, my high school teachers told us it was our civic duty. In college, I made a pact with myself that I would write at least one letter every week, for the rest of my life, about something political to someone who could make a difference.
I’ve kept that up, except when I was in other countries where I couldn’t. In Africa, for instance, there was no mail system, let alone the internet, so there was no way to do it. I’ve also traveled all over the world.
When I was in China, Panama, Saudi Arabia, or Iceland, I couldn’t always get letters back to the US. But every week I was in the US, I always wrote at least one letter. Now it’s a lot easier because we have the internet, and you can...
Richard Eskow: Right.
Jenny Thacker: You can just type it out. It used to be that you had to handwrite it, put it in an envelope, and all that. So I’d always paid attention to politics. But while I was working, I commuted full-time to Silver Spring, which is basically Washington, DC, if you’re not from this area.
That’s about an hour and a half each way. I took the train. Then I’d come home and coach soccer. I coached soccer for eight years, two teams at a time, after work. And I was raising my kids on my own.
I got divorced when I was pregnant with my second child, so I was essentially a single mom.
Richard Eskow: Yes, that’s a tough one.
Jenny Thacker: So I didn’t have time to do more than write a letter now and then. When I retired, I immediately got in my car and went on an eight-month camping trip by myself, all over the country. When I came back, somebody invited me to a Jefferson County Democratic Association meeting, and I went.
Somebody there, John Doyle, who has been involved in politics in this area for a long time, said we needed someone to be a stand-in, a placeholder, for the House of Delegates seat. I lived in the right district, so I said, “Sure, I can be a placeholder.” I thought somebody else was going to run.
Then, after the filing deadline, a woman called me and said, “Well, no, you’re the candidate now.” I took a deep breath and said, “Okay. This is something I believe in. This is something I can do to help people.”
Richard Eskow: Mm-hmm.
Jenny Thacker: I really don’t like what’s been happening. Maybe I can do something more effective than writing a letter to somebody and hoping they listen to me. I can be the person who’s listening.
Richard Eskow: I know West Virginia is a very diverse state. Different places have different demographics and politics. But for a while now, it’s been a red state, or at least considered one. Did people think you had a chance when you first became the candidate? Or did it seem like a long shot, where you thought, “What the heck, I believe in it, so I’ll give it a try”?
Jenny Thacker: A little of both. Some people said there was no way I’d ever win. My district, and I’m calling it my district, but it’s really our district, the one I live in, starts at a college town called Shepherdstown.
Richard Eskow: Right.
Jenny Thacker: It has a very liberal population. Then there’s farmland in between. We have Harpers Ferry, a town of only 268 people that gets 10,000 visitors a day.
Richard Eskow: Right.
Jenny Thacker: So that brings a completely different set of issues. Then there are some very poor areas along the Shenandoah River, where people live in trailers and struggle. And then there’s what we call the Mountain, which includes some of the largest unincorporated areas in the country. The people there are extremely independent.
I don’t want to say they’re extremely far right or far left. They go off in their own directions, and they don’t follow one party or the other. Thirty-five percent of my district is independent. They’re not Republicans and they’re not Democrats. They look at the candidate. That’s what made me think I could win, because they look at the candidate.
The person who held this seat before me really wasn’t working for our district. He talked about national issues, which you can’t do much about at the state level. He wasn’t talking about how to stop data centers from coming here. He wasn’t talking about how to fix our water problems, and we have a lot of water problems.
Eighty percent of the people in our district are on well water. That infrastructure is aging, and new people are moving in all the time. This is the one part of West Virginia that’s really growing.
Richard Eskow: Yes.
Jenny Thacker: The rest of the state is losing people, and we’re gaining population much faster than we can handle.
We don’t have the roads for it. We don’t have the schools for it. We don’t have the ambulances or the healthcare services. We don’t have what we need to handle this many people. So we need somebody who will focus on this part of the state. I talked to a number of people who said, “Well, I’ve always voted Republican, but you’re making sense.”
Or, “I love what Trump is doing on immigration and war and all that, but I really don’t want a data center in my backyard.” Those people were willing to vote for me because I’m working on local issues. I’m working on the schools. West Virginia has a terrible shortage of social workers, so our foster care system is struggling.
Our foster care problems are just horrendous. We also don’t have enough childcare in this area. If you know you’re going to have a baby, you know you have to get on the waiting list for childcare, and it takes 13 months.
Richard Eskow: Wow.
Jenny Thacker: Even if you already have a child, if you move here from somewhere else and want to get a job, you’d have to tell your prospective employer, “I’ll be ready to start 13 months from now. How about December of ‘27?”
Richard Eskow: Right.
Jenny Thacker: You can’t do that. The employer will just go find somebody else who can work. So it’s a workforce issue. We don’t have childcare, and we need to figure out how to deal with that. I’m focusing on real issues that affect people in both parties.
It’s not a Democratic thing, and it’s not a Republican thing. It’s something we need to work on.
Richard Eskow: I saw that on your website. I was trying to study up on your district, which is a little harder, because they don’t really keep data that way. It’s easier to find data on Jefferson County as a whole, for example.
Jenny Thacker: Yes.
Richard Eskow: The county has its pockets of hard poverty, in places like Charles Town. But the data isn’t really broken down by district. Looking at some of the communities you mention on your website, I don’t know whether you have any of those mountain or rural areas with more poverty. But something is happening that your district is very much a part of.
If it were happening in a big city, they’d call it... oh, what’s the word? Gentrification.
Jenny Thacker: Yes.
Richard Eskow: Right? People have lived there for a long time, but now the area is becoming increasingly attractive to commuters from the DC area, as you were yourself. More and more people are coming in from out of state. To someone from DC, a $400,000 house seems like a bargain.
But when you can get a house for $40,000 in other parts of West Virginia, suddenly it becomes hard for somebody like a teacher to afford to live there, right?
Jenny Thacker: Absolutely.
Richard Eskow: So one of the issues you’ve been working on is what’s called locality pay for teachers. Would you tell us a little about that?
Jenny Thacker: Locality pay means paying people in proportion to what it costs to live where they work. People in this district are very familiar with it, because a lot of them commute to DC, and we’re part of the Washington, DC, locality pay area for federal workers. That’s something one of our former senators managed to secure for our area.
We’ve been fighting for locality pay in West Virginia for our teachers specifically, but also for our firefighters.
Richard Eskow: Mm-hmm.
Jenny Thacker: Most of our firefighters are volunteers, but it also applies to our police officers, social workers, and anybody else who works for the state. They’re all paid on a scale that doesn’t make sense for our area.
Here’s what I think we should do. If we say, “Let’s get locality pay for the Eastern Panhandle,” everybody says, “Well, the Eastern Panhandle is the richest part of West Virginia. We’re a poor state, and we don’t want to give up money that the really poor areas need.”
So instead, let’s say that for the 25 counties with a higher-than-average cost of living, we’ll provide locality pay in proportion to the cost of living in each area. That way, legislators from all over the state will see their districts benefit, and we’ll have a chance of passing it.
We have to figure out how to work with each other, rather than just saying, “This will benefit us.” We should say, “This will benefit a lot of people. How can we write the bill so that everybody benefits?”
Richard Eskow: That makes a lot of sense, and of course I wish you good luck with it. You mentioned that you really focused on everyday issues for people. I’m looking at your list now: lowering utility rates. Tell us a little about that struggle.
Jenny Thacker: There are a lot of different parts to it. If you’re talking about water, 80% of us in our area depend on well water in one form or another. I don’t remember the exact percentage, but about half of those people have their own private wells and their own septic systems.
Those work pretty well. They don’t cost you anything, because you don’t have to pay a company. But a lot of that infrastructure is failing because it’s old.
Richard Eskow: Mm-hmm.
Jenny Thacker: Then there are the people on Charles Town Utilities, and the people on West Virginia American Water. West Virginia American Water is a private, for-profit company, and it charges two and a half times as much as the public utilities. So there are all kinds of issues there.
They’re also expanding quickly, and they’re trying to push people onto sewer systems, which are cleaner in the long run. But people who have never had to pay for something are suddenly required to pay for it, or their bills go up too fast. And then there’s the problem with electricity.
One of the big issues is the high-voltage transmission lines they’re trying to run through here. I don’t know if you’ve heard of Valley Link North or MARL. There are a number of them. They’re trying to run them through our county without providing any electricity to our county. They put in these transmission lines that cost a fortune.
And they expect us to pay for them because the lines run through our land. They’re taking our land and causing all kinds of other problems in the process. Mostly, though, they’re charging us for something we don’t benefit from. Another big issue is that they’re trying to put data centers everywhere...
Richard Eskow: Right.
Jenny Thacker: ...all over the state, and outside the state, too. For example, near Morgantown, Mon Power wants to build a new gas-fired power plant, and I think it would cost $40 billion. I’m not sure of my numbers, so don’t quote me on that.
Richard Eskow: Mm-hmm.
Jenny Thacker: But they’re saying it would cost local residents about $500 a year, and that could climb a lot higher. It doesn’t make sense for local residents, because they won’t benefit from it. The population in that area is going down. And new appliances, new houses, everything new uses less electricity than the old ones did. Every time you buy a new refrigerator, it’s usually more efficient than the old one.
Richard Eskow: Right.
Jenny Thacker: So actual residential use isn’t going up, but residents are being asked to pay for a power plant that will produce tons of electricity for a potential data center that doesn’t even exist yet. The utility company can’t charge the data center, because it doesn’t exist yet. So they’re going to charge the local residents, spread over 40 years, and that drives prices up.
Richard Eskow: It sure does.
Jenny Thacker: To stop that, our Public Service Commission, the PSC, in Charleston needs to stop approving permits for projects like that when they don’t benefit local residents. They should only approve the ones that do. Right now, the PSC answers only to the governor.
The governor appoints its members. We need to make those elected positions, and we need to give the legislature the ability to override the commission’s decisions when they’re bad ones. That way, the commission has to answer to the people and can’t approve a power plant that won’t benefit them.
Richard Eskow: You’ve mentioned data centers a couple of times. Your website talks about how the Republican-controlled legislature passed a law, last year I believe, that took away local control over data center projects. So you have data centers coming in, and you’re being charged for all this transmission infrastructure.
You also mentioned that a lot of people are on wells, and you don’t have to pay a utility if you have a well. But you also have the problem of groundwater, right? So many things are drawing down that groundwater. Don’t these two issues tie together in some way?
Jenny Thacker: Very much so. Our groundwater is already being depleted, because we’re building 30 houses a week in Jefferson County, and we really can’t sustain that. Project after project has come in. There’s a water bottling plant proposed that we’re fighting. There are two data centers they’re trying to build.
Those use tons of water. For a while there was also talk of putting nuclear power here, although that idea has been dropped. We don’t have the water for things like that, and it’s very easy to pollute the water we do have. HB 2014, the law you’re talking about, overrides all of our zoning laws.
So they can put a data center right on top of farmland, and we really can’t afford to give up our farmland. Consider the area a data center covers. I know Walmarts are a bad example, but you could fit 15 Walmarts in that space, and every single dollar of property tax from a Walmart goes directly to Jefferson County.
That’s how property tax normally works. But under the tax structure set up by HB 2014, 30% of the money goes to the county, and 50% goes to the governor’s program to reduce the income tax. The rest gets divided among various other places. Basically, we’re not getting the property tax money we need.
Richard Eskow: And that’s something like...
Jenny Thacker: There are a lot of things wrong with it.
Richard Eskow: Yes. It sounds like it’s hoovering up public resources and people’s money and sending it to the 1% in the form of tax breaks. That doesn’t sound good to me at all, so I’m glad you’re pushing back on it. I imagine data centers are a sensitive issue there, because they are everywhere.
Jenny Thacker: Yes.
Richard Eskow: Here’s another issue you talk about that’s personal for me, because I’ve lost very close family members to opioid addiction. I’ve followed the opioid settlements and cases very closely: Purdue Pharma, the Sackler family, and all that. I never thought the amounts were enough, but it was still a lot of money.
As I understand it, that money is supposed to be distributed to all the counties. And it sounds like your district is getting shortchanged on that, too.
Jenny Thacker: We’re getting very little of it. One of the big problems is that most other states said the money has to go to rehabilitation, but West Virginia didn’t. In some parts of the state, like Berkeley County next door, there’s a recovery village, and they do have some programs to help people in recovery.
But most of the money in West Virginia is going to reimburse counties for police activity, jails, and other things that have been proven not to actually stop the opioid crisis.
Richard Eskow: Right.
Jenny Thacker: If we’re going to address the opioid crisis, we need to address the things that cause it. We need counseling. We need rehabilitation. We need to tackle poverty. Really poor people get desperate, and they don’t have other options. That’s not to say only poor people take drugs, because people from every walk of life do.
Richard Eskow: Right.
Jenny Thacker: But that desperation needs to be addressed. I talked to somebody who said, “I might as well take drugs in front of a police officer and go to jail, because at least there I’ll get fed.” That’s a real problem. Since 2015, some parts of West Virginia have lost 15% or even 20% of their population.
A lot of that is due to the opioid crisis. We need to stop it. We need to figure out how to use opioid settlement money for something other than jails, police cars, and things like that. We need more recovery villages. We need more counseling. We need things that actually help.
The way it’s set up now, a private company is distributing the money, which is supposed to be paid out over what I think is a 15-year period. Not very much has been distributed. And what has been distributed hasn’t gone to uses I find effective. From the research I’ve done, I don’t believe it’s making a difference.
It was close to $1 billion if you count all the different funds from both the tobacco and opioid settlements. We need to make sure that money actually does something to protect West Virginia.
Richard Eskow: Absolutely. And I can tell you, as someone who is in recovery myself, policing won’t convince you to stop.
Jenny Thacker: No, it won’t.
Richard Eskow: When you reach that point, magical thinking will convince you that you can avoid the police. That’s not the way to do it, so I absolutely agree. But before we go, I want to come back to something. So much of the news and social media is designed to get people mad at one another, right? That’s what drives the viewers and the eyeballs and the clicks. But at the end of the day, people who aren’t mad at each other can have a conversation.
I’ve met people who come across as the nastiest people around, like certain television personalities.
Jenny Thacker: Exactly.
Richard Eskow: And they’re really nice in person. There was one famous Fox News personality, and I got her first name wrong, because I’m absent-minded sometimes. She was super nice about it. People are people. So I love that you’ve done this, Jenny. I think it’s great.
I’m so happy for you, and proud of you. One last question, because we’re running out of time. What are you going to do on your first day in the House of Delegates?
Jenny Thacker: Well, on the first day, I’m going to get sworn in.
Richard Eskow: Right. Okay. And after that?
Jenny Thacker: The first thing I want to work on, the issue I’ve heard about from more people than any other, is fixing HB 2014. That’s the data center bill. We also need to work on education, and there are a number of other things. But that’s the one I’ve heard about the most.
So that would be the first one I want to tackle.
Richard Eskow: Great. You’ll be in good company, because a lot of people want to see something done about that. And I think your governor and some of the folks in the other party are not on the right side of that issue as far as ordinary people are concerned. So I wish you the best of luck.
I hope we can speak again. Thanks for coming on the program.
Jenny Thacker: Well, thank you. Thanks for having me.
Richard Eskow: My pleasure. We’ll be right back after this. I’m Richard RJ Eskow, and this is The Zero Hour.
I sure wish more folks like Jenny were in our government, instead of the psychopaths and opportunists we now have. Great interview. I wish her the best of success. Thanks, Richard!