Griffin is a Democrat running for Virginia Senate District 27

Democrat Joel Griffin is running for his party’s Virginia Senate District 27 seat nomination.

The district includes portions of Stafford and Spotsylvania counties and Fredericksburg.

Griffin, 49, served in the Marine Corps Honor Guard and later became a government contractor. He attended Penn State University.

Griffin is married to his wife of 25 years, a public school teacher, and has two children, ages 20 and 21. His oldest daughter, Gwyneth,  died in 2012 after suffering a heart attack at school. She was the focus on Gwyneth’s Law, carried by former Delegate Mark Dudenhefer, which required defibrillators or AEDs in all of the public schools.

Griffin serves on the Stafford County Economic Development Authority, which loans cash to businesses.

According to VPAP, the district leans Republican. Litchfield is running against Joel Griffin in the Democrat Party Primary Election on June 20. Find your polling place.

See my full interview with Griffin here. You can also see my interview with his challenger, Litchfield, here.

Where do you stand on school choice?

“I think public schools are the great equalizer in our society. A well-educated society is what makes a democracy function. And so for me, taxpayer money goes to public schools and making sure that the students and the teachers have the resources that they need.”

“It’s been an interesting transition to two years ago during COVID when teachers were our heroes. Teachers were doing everything possible. They were doing everything out they could to make sure that students were still being educated in a remote way, which has never been done before. And here we are today where we’re talking that teachers are not performing as well as they should and that test scores are down. I think that teachers and being married to one, I have to be sure I make this clear. Teachers are doing the best that they can.

“And it’s been interesting to me to see parents say that they don’t have any voice in the schools when the reality is they’ve always had a voice. You’ve always had the option as a parent for your student, for your child, to say, I don’t want them to watch a video, or I don’t want them to take that class, or I don’t want them to read that book, and they’ve had that option, and that option still exists.”

“I think we need to make sure that the teachers and the education that we are providing are not only well funded but also we ensure that the curriculum is being managed well so that we are teaching for the 21st century. We try to teach a lot of material in a very condensed time frame. We have really not updated our school system in probably 40 or 50 years. And so as the next state senator, the schools funding the schools, making sure that teachers are defended, that’s something that I fully intend to do.”

If elected, will you help the Stafford County Board of Supervisors as it seeks more state funding to pay for the cost of living increasing for public school teachers?

Not only will I aid, but I will lead the fight for [Cost of Living Allotment]. This is something that this new district represents a real opportunity for us to be reflected as a region.”

So if you’re elected to the Senate, what will you do to ensure that police who want to serve and protect can do so adequately?

Well, I will say that I have very close personal friends of mine, men and women that I served in the Marines with, who are law enforcement officers. So let me first say that I commend them for the work that they do tirelessly day in and day out, defending our streets and making sure that everyone is safe. But I would go one step further and to say that we need to be pragmatic and understand that within any organization, there’s a percentage of people who are not adhering to the rules and not following policy. And in those instances, we need to root that out, and we need to address it. I would say the first thing that I would do as a senator is to make sure that groups are coming together and having communication.

“As a business owner, if we were having negotiations, we didn’t negotiate with one group in one room and another group in another room. We had all the parties come together to talk about how we can improve things. And I think the culture of the Republican Party has been to divide and conquer, to create segments of our society where organizations, and community partners, can’t work together.

I’m the complete opposite. I want to make sure that if there are issues, all of the parties who have a voice should come together and communicate. So that includes bringing additional mental health resources to our police officers. Just like with school teachers, I think police officers are under the tremendous burden of having to be all things to all people. And we need to make sure that in our schools and on our streets as well as within our community, that we have the resources necessary.

“Whether that’s counselors, whether that’s mental health facilities with access to beds, whether that’s resource officers that can deal with instances so that police officers can transition to other emergency situations and hand it off to someone who’s properly trained. This is something mental health in our nation is something that we don’t really talk about. It’s sort of swept under the rug. It’s marginalized.”

“And I think any number of individuals in our society should feel it’s okay to talk about, you know, needing counseling or needing therapy to to deal with, you know, the dilemmas that they may be facing. And so once we recognize it and accept it that people need services, we also need to make sure those services are provided, particularly for those who are representing our communities, our teachers, and our first responders.”