Virginia NAACP Responds to the Senate of Virginia Majority Leader Election

Following the election of the Senate of Virginia Majority Leader, Virginia NAACP President, Rev. Cozy Bailey, released the following:

 “The outcome of Wednesday’s election for the Senate Majority leader was disappointing. By every conceivable metric, State Senator Mamie Locke should have been elected Majority Leader of the Virginia Senate.  We believed that she was the natural choice given her level of seniority and demonstrated leadership.”

The history that may have been made by having an African American Speaker of the House while simultaneously having an African American majority leader in the Senate is an opportunity missed.

Wednesday’s vote broke from the historic precedent of the Majority Caucus Chair becoming the Majority Leader. The Virginia NAACP will continue to work with the leadership of both houses and both parties, but political sharecropping must end.  The attainment of political, economic, social, and educational rights for all people, regardless of race, creed, ethnicity, or gender, has a clearer path when political leadership reflects the entirety of the Commonwealth’s residents.