JADH KHALIL: Well, Delegate-elect McAuliffe, thank you so much for joining us.

Could you introduce yourself and tell us about your district, please?

JOHN McAULIFFE: I will be representing, in just a matter of 45 days or so, the 30th District of Virginia which is an incredible place.

It covers all of western Loudoun County, all of our farmland pretty much that's left in northern Virginia, and northern Fauquier.

If you get time to go up there we love to welcome folks to our wineries, our bed and breakfasts, I am a bed and breakfast owner myself in Warrenton, and to incredible hiking and incredible experiences out there.

So, it's a wonderful place.

JAHD KHALIL: Can you tell us why you decided to run to represent that district?

JOHN McAULIFFE: Yeah, so I spent the last few years of my career working in the former administration in Washington, where it was my job to help farmers keep their farms in the family by getting grants, access to loans, environmental... money for environmental work, as well as for renewable energy.

So the state, or the federal government would pay 50% of a variety of different grants to help them take all those energy costs, move them off their books.

Because that's generally one of the hightest costs that any landowner, but particularly farmers their acreage and all that they need to do are going to sustain.

So I decided that because of two reasons, that the best place I could help after that administration ended was actually right at home.

Because one, it is like I said, all of the farmland left in Northern Virginia is pretty much in my district.

The second reason is because we have one of the biggest energy crises.

And that was the second half of my work in the last administration was focused on energy.

It is a growing crisis.

There's over 200 data centers that now use up to 25% of Virginia's energy in a given year, which means that that impacts, because of the way code is written, all of the residents, particularly in my area, but around the state, around the commonwealth.

So that's something that I think we can actually do something about in Richmond to help address some affordability issues.

JAHD KHALIL: What kind of things were you hearing about that, specifically on the trail, that you're planning to put into action when you come to represent the district?

JOHN McAULIFFE: A few different things, one is energy bills, right?

Everybody has to pay it and they've been going up for everybody, right?

And so that's something that pretty easily folks want to talk about.

But because of the land use component of this, right, which is the siting, they come sometimes right up right into people's backyards.

We did an advertisement that showed one of the places in my district where, you know, you could throw a rock and hit the data center from your porch.

Not that you should do that, but... and it just impacts folks' lives in very real ways.

One is the folks who live nearby, but two is the transmission lines, which are not your, you know, mom and pop's utility poles along the road.

These are these are 300-foot gigantic transmission lines that are in some cases running right through people's neighborhoods.

And so folks really, really care about that.

They live out there for a reason, which is to preserve the rural way of life.

And so that's that's what I talk to folks about.

JADH KHALIL: In terms of education, that's a big thing that the General Assembly has to deal with.

In terms of the challenges that Virginia's facing what do you want to see the General Assembly take on in that sphere?

JOHN McAULIFFE: The first and foremost is one I talk about on the trail every day, which is teacher pay, right?

Virginia is still in the bottom 25 states in teacher pay, despite being some of the best public education anywhere in the country, maybe on the planet.

This is something that we can directly do something about in the state budget.

Obviously, a lot of competing priorities, but I think this is when we have to prioritize, because especially up where I live you can't afford to live in the community you teach.

You're commuting in from West Virginia, in from Maryland or up from Manassas to be able to teach in Loudoun-Fauquier public schools.

And that's virtually impossible to do, right?

I mean, you're driving an hour each way potentially, you're not spending that time with the students who need you.

I think I also really liked what Gov.

Youngkin started with getting cell phones out of schools, I think we have a lot more work to do there and so I'd like to take that on.

JAHD KHALIL: What do you think the General Assembly should be doing when it comes to this sort of balance of, you know, money coming in versus money out and the services that people get for that?

JOHN McAULIFFE: Yeah, I think my priorities are health care, education, and conservation.

And if we can shift funding to make sure that our health care stays intact for the folks that are on the exchange, I was on the exchange last year while I was running because it's not a paying job, believe it or not.

And so we want to make sure that folks can access the tax credit if the federal government really is getting rid of it.

Education, paying teachers as I mentioned, and expanding conservation easements in as much as we possibly can.

JAHD KHALIL: Do you have thoughts on what the rest of the state and country can learn from what your district has experienced in the past 20 years when it comes to the expansion of data centers?

What have... What have we learned, What lessons can be taken from that?

JOHN McAULLIFE: So I think the main thing that we've learned is we have to know how much energy is actually going to be consumed and where it's going to come from.

We sort of took a hands-off approach to data center regulation in Loudoun County.

And so it was by right in five different zoning districts, which meant that folks could build them more easily than I could convert my grandma's house into a bed and breakfast.

I still had to go through a permitting process for that, right?

And so... this is going to be something that every county is going to deal with, right?

Even if Loudoun and Fauquier say, "Hey, we've had enough.

200 is plenty," or 300 by the time they build out the existing ones in the pipeline.

That's plenty, they're going to move on to other counties.

So my advice and my hope is that at the state level, instead of relying on each county to have energy experts, right, which is unrealistic with the way county budgets are, let's make those requirements at the state level so that we can give our counties the tools to decide if the project fits or not in their community and the juice is worth the squeeze, right?

'Cause if you're getting some great tax revenue, that's excellent.

But if that's at the cost of the energy bills of all your constituents going up, then you're just moving the tax, right, somewhere else.

JAHD KHALIL: How does it feel to be dealing with this issue that is both a local issue, but it's not even just national, but it's international?

It's like something like 30 percent of the internet goes through Virginia or some >> Oh yeah!

Way more.

>> some sort of crazy figure like that You know, that seems like a big responsibility to be representing the district where, you know, information is coming through to not just Virginia, for the rest of the world.

How do you think about that?

JOHN McAULLIFE: Yeah, well, the good news is I'm not alone.

There's a lot of folks, both in the Democratic and Republican parties here in the Capitol, who want to work on this issue and take it very seriously.

And I hope that a bipartisan coalition will come out to be able to do that.

And I think the building blocks are kind of in place.

But I think the bottom line is... We have of a unique problem up there, but it is not a unique problem forever, right?

Other places will deal with this in the not-too-distant future, given the size of the buildouts that Oracle and Amazon and OpenAI and others have planned in the next few years.

So I think it has sort of become a national issue during the year, actually, that we were campaigning.

And I think Virginia can now be a leader in saying, hey, here's a good way to do this, instead of being a leader in we're going to take our hands off and figure it out later, right?

JAHD KHALIL: In terms of the job that you've been sent here to do, how will you know that you've achieved that?

JOHN McAULLIFE: So I think what this job looks like for success for my folks back home is we were able to bring down costs in a real way on energy bills and hopefully some public education costs, too.

But if we can get as much as we possibly can preserved by some of the biggest companies on the planet; Amazon, Oracle, that are building these data centers, if we have that plan in place for the first time, state regulations for the first time, I think this, two-year period will have been a success.

But there's a lot to do.

I've got a dozen communities, seven small towns, and a lot of folks with a lot of individual challenges in each of those towns.

So I want to try to rush those as well.

JHAD KHALIL: Delegate-elect, thank you so much for joining us and we'll see you in January.

Absolutely.

Thanks so much.

JAHD KHALIL: You're welcome.