Panel presents local candidates, educates student voters

Alexis Washington, Contributing Writer

Kyler Gilliam, Contributing Writer

VCU’s NAACP chapter has been encouraging and educating students to vote during their election tour, which kicked off on Sept. 25 with their “Sisters Behind Bars” event. Walking to the polls will be their last stop on election day, according to their Instagram.

On the twelfth stop of the election tour, VCU NAACP held a “Meet the Candidates” panel with Richmond mayoral candidates, City Council and school board on Oct. 28 at 6:00 p.m. in Hibbs Hall.

The panel aimed to allow students to get to know candidates on a personal level, according to VCU NAACP president Anesia Lawson.

“You want people to vote for somebody that they know and that they can have a sense of trust,” Lawson said. “You don’t really get to build that type of connection or get to understand who that person is by reading their work or policies.”

The five mayoral candidates for the City of Richmond were in attendance: Andreas Addison, Danny Avula, Maurice Neblett, Harrison Roday and Brandon Smith, who is a write-in candidate.

Katie Ricard and Wesley Hedgepeth were the two candidates for the school board present at the event.

Three council members were there as well, including Ann-Frances Lambert, who is the incumbent for the third district city council seat, Maria Carra Rose who is running against her and Frank Wilson who is running for the eighth district.

The panel began with the moderator posing questions to the candidates. They addressed topics such as affordable housing, college students with low income, each candidate’s overall plan for office and ways for maintaining transparency with the community and students.

Here is what the mayoral candidates had to say:

Andreas Addison 

Addison addressed housing with a focus on VCU students. He wants students to “hit the ground running” for housing after college and propose affordable home ownership and reworking tax structures to benefit homeowners and renters, he said.

“Richmond was a top three city for evictions across the country,” Addison said. “I watched people get evicted and said ‘this is enough.’”

Problems facing low-income residents resonate with Addison since he grew up on government assistance, he said. Identifying problems affecting Richmond residents is his priority to combat the problems that arise from poverty.

Addison highlighted the accessibility residents have to the city government and how it can improve. He wants to modernize the city government’s information infrastructure and introduce a customer service department to streamline interactions between residents and the city government.

Danny Avula 

Avula said housing is a big crisis in Richmond, which is why he decided to run for mayor. He wants to invest and ensure diversity in the community by providing tax incentives for people who own buildings and reasonable rates for students coming right out of college.

Hearing the needs of the community and having access to government services is important for Avula. If elected, he said he would focus on housing, invest more in education and improve the basic functioning of our local government.

“We also need a city hall that is really centered around people,” Avula said. “This work of public service is about the people we exist to serve.”

Harrison Roday

Roday proposed a $100 million investment for housing in Richmond. The money would come from stripped funding of the Diamond District project.

“I think our economic development should instead focus on projects that support great living wages and support affordable housing for our residents,” Roday said.

Roday plans to audit all city government agencies to ensure Richmond residents can receive the services they need in a timely manner, he said.

Maurice Neblett

Neblett wants to hold landlords accountable, so residents are not living in unhealthy conditions, he said. He wants to implement policies that force a renter cap, so rent will not go up. His plan is to ensure that no one pays more than 30% of their income on rent.

Transparency has been at the forefront of Neblett’s campaign, he said.

“Once elected I want to make sure that we intertwine a policy that radiates throughout City Hall in regards to making sure that we are transparent and follow the forum request citizens may have,” Neblett said.

Brandon Smith

Smith said the first thing we need to do is get the people off the street. He wants to create a system where college students can find jobs after graduation.

Smith said politics is foreign to him and that he knows nothing about it. His approach is interacting with everyone like people in the projects, homeless people and college students.

“My first 100 days if I am mayor, I am going outside because that is where I be — I be outside,” Smith said. “I am going to talk to the people.”

Here are the overall plans from City Council candidates:

Maria Carra Rose

Carra Rose said she plans to continue to bridge the gap between the community and the government as engagement with constituents combined with education on the political process are paramount to her.

Ann-Frances Lambert

Lambert plans to continue serving the community, by generating more funding from the city to her constituents, she said. Lambert also wants to make affordable housing a priority.

Frank Wilson

For Wilson, defining affordable housing is crucial, since in his community affordable housing may not be affordable, he said. He also wants more direct and free communication from the government to Richmond residents, highlighting the Freedom of Information Act.

Here are the overall plans from the school board members:

Katie Ricard

Ricard strives for the public school to be a safe place for low-income students and parents, she said. She also wants to equip all schools with the resources they need.

Wesley Hedgepeth

Hedgepeth said he wants to move the school board meetings from City Hall — where attendees will have to pay tolls and parking fees — to rotating school sites — so school board members can walk the halls and see the real problems. He also wants to improve the social studies curriculum due to a lack of attention to the subject.

The next portion of the event was an open Q&A for attendees.

A student asked the mayoral candidates for their views on working with the Richmond police in light of the Israel-Hamas war and how it has impacted Richmond and the VCU community.

Addison said he asked the police chief about the training police officers were receiving.

Roday said we have to get to a place where our law enforcement community is deescalating, not escalating, so people feel safe to practice their First Amendment rights.

A student also called out all of the candidates for not responding to the No Vote for Genocide survey — except for Hedgepeth.

The candidates were silent for a moment. Roday and Carra Rose said they did not respond because the survey was binary and did not show both sides of the issue.

The event concluded with mayoral candidates asking students what changes they want to see.

Students expressed a need for affordable housing, job opportunities after graduation and ways to enhance safety in Richmond.

“As far as the candidates were concerned they did alright,” said VCU NAACP publicity chair Khamari Pineda. “The nuance came from the students asking a lot of questions and really diving deep to break down the barriers they were talking about.”