Lt. gov. candidate Ghazala Hashmi vows to fight Trump policies
State Sen. Ghazala Hashmi says she is running for lieutenant governor to protect public education and reproductive freedom and to push back against the bigotry promoted by the Trump administration.
Hashmi is one of six candidates on the Democratic Primary ballot. The Primary is June 17. Early voting is already underway, and voting at satellite locations, including the Mason Government Center and Thomas Jefferson Library starts on June 7. The winner will face Republican candidate John Reid in November.
Hashmi has represented Richmond, Chesterfield County, and Powhatan County in the Virginia Senate for the past five years and chairs the Senate Committee on Education and Health.
Before Trump was elected in 2016, Hashmi was “a mild-mannered English professor” at Reynolds Community College in Richmond, she told a meet-and-greet gathering at a home in Lake Barcroft on May 20.
“The election of Donald Trump challenged every idea that I had about what it means to be an American, about the principles and values of our American democracy,” Hashmi said.
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“Trump ran on an agenda of bigotry, hatred, and division, particularly targeting immigrants,” she said. As an immigrant – she was born in India – and a Muslim, she felt threatened by Trump’s proposed Muslim ban and registry of Muslims in the U.S.
“We know the tragic history of the 20th century and what those kinds of impulses lead to, and I just felt so devastated when I heard that,” she recalled.
“Sadly, we’re back in that same position. So many people I know are carrying documents with them to prove their identity, to prove that they’re here legitimately, that they are citizens,” Hashmi said. “This is not the America that I know and love.”
“I decided I couldn’t be that mild-mannered English professor anymore,” she said. “Actually, there’s nothing mild-mannered about English teachers. We’re teaching the books that other people are trying to ban.”
When she decided to run for the Virginia Senate, her first foray into politics, she was advised not to run and to let more experienced candidates take a shot. But she not only won the election, she flipped a district that had been in GOP hands for nearly 40 years and beat an incumbent Republican by 10 points.
That victory brought the Democrats a one-seat majority in the Senate, clearing the way for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, voting rights legislation, gun safety measures, and environmental protections. “We also passed the Reproductive Healthcare Act that continues to protect Virginia’s women despite what all the other Southern states have done,” Hashmi said. “That’s the power of one seat.”
“I’m running for lieutenant governor for many of the same reasons I ran before,” she said. “We now have Trump 2.0 and it’s worse than the first time around. He is smarter, he’s got more villainous creatures around him, and they’re already doing such damage.”
If Virginia is going to be able to protect its healthcare and education programs, protect civil rights, and protect vulnerable communities, “we have to have an executive team in place that’s ready to fight that fight,” Hashmi said. “This is an opportunity to send a loud signal to Washington that Virginia is going to stand firm to put up that resistance to Washington.”
“I have seen what works and the ways we can build better structures so our executive team is working closely with the General Assembly,” she said. “This is an opportunity for us to make consequential progress.”
