Candidate: Jobs are key issue throughout state

Jody Wagner running for lieutenant governor

By GINNY WRAY – Bulletin Staff Writer

Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor Jody Wagner heard the same plea during a campaign stop in Martinsville on Saturday that she has heard around the state: The area needs high-paying, quality jobs.

Wagner said as a former state treasurer and secretary of finance, she worked with the administrations of Govs. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine on job creation.

“Obviously I will continue to work hard” on that, she said Saturday. “We made some progress but there’s a long way to go.”

The need for jobs is the key concern she said she hears “everywhere — Fairfax, Hampton Roads, far Southwest. People are concerned about trying to attract quality jobs” with good pay and benefits.

“Virginia needs to be attracting 21st century industries,” such as renewable energy, she added.

Wagner held a business roundtable event Saturday morning at Rania’s Restaurant in Martinsville. She then talked with people at the uptown farmer’s market and returned to Rania’s for a meet-and-greet event.

She said if elected, she will try to promote things to help economic development, such as creating a venture fund.

“A venture fund would encourage early-stage investing in Virginia,” she said, explaining that it would offer tax credits to encourage insurance companies, banks and similar groups to put money into the fund. That money then would be invested in businesses to foster growth.

Wagner said she also supports expanding the Governor’s Opportunity Fund, which often is used to close economic deals around the state. Recently, Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell called for an expansion of that fund, despite the fact that he voted against such measures when he was a legislator.

“That’s been an issue for a long time,” Wagner said. “Gov. Warner, Gov. Kaine and I all fought for an increase.”

But the House rejected those efforts and “Bolling didn’t help,” she said of incumbent Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, a Republican whom Wagner will face in the Nov. 3 election.

In addition, Wagner said she and Secretary of Commerce and Trade Patrick Gottschalk led a commission on how to attract big, “transformative” industries to the state — ones with 1,000 or 2,000 jobs and the ability to transform an area. Some of their recommendations were adopted by the General Assembly, she added.

Wagner has served on the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, which focuses on bringing jobs to the commonwealth and helping existing businesses expand, and on the Virginia Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization Commission, which works to bring jobs to Southside and Southwest Virginia.

Before she became state treasurer in 2002, Wagner said, she was a lawyer who worked with companies to raise capital in Norfolk. Four years ago, she and her husband, Dr. Alan Wagner, started “a little popcorn operation in our garage.” The Virginia Beach company now sells popcorn to grocery stores and military commissaries, she said, adding that she works there on nights and weekends.

She also has four children, aged 17-27, and is a strong advocate for education, she states on her Web site. She was secretary of finance when she visited the New College Institute and called it “very important, as is the community college.”

At the high school and community college levels, “we really need to be working on career-track education,” she said, adding that eventually there could be a shortage of welders, mechanics and similar workers.

“We need to talk about that being a viable option,” as Warner did when he was governor, Wagner said. “There is some reluctance to talk about it. We should see it as one option” that does not have to preclude an academic path. A student could learn such a trade and then work his way through college, she added.

Also, the state needs to improve its graduation rate, Wagner said, though she noted that Martinsville High School’s graduation rate is higher than the state average. One way to encourage students to stay in school is the “Achievable Dream” program in Newport News, in which large and small businesses offer student internships, she said.

That helps “kids understand why they are learning” material in school, Wagner said.

She added that she is not looking ahead to running for governor if she is elected lieutenant governor.

“I just want to run the lieutenant governor’s office and move Virginia forward,” she said.

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