Vindman “lied about his service overseas,” Anderson said. “He said that he used weapons of war in combat, and he didn’t. In fact, during our debate, I pressed him on that twice to ask him to answer the question and tell the people of the district, and he refused to answer, which essentially is admitting that he lied. And he’s lying about that because he’s doing it for political purposes to inflate his military record. If he’s willing to lie about that, what else is he going to lie to the people of the 7th District about?”
Vindman’s allies have told activists in the district that he is currently down four points to Anderson, Democratic Party sources on the ground told the Reporter.
Vindman is among many Democratic candidates who have lied about, or inflated, their military records. “You’re not going to out-army me,” Anderson said. I’m a former Green Beret with six deployments, I wear my military record on my sleeve. I’ve been to Iraq and Afghanistan. I’ve been shot at. I’ve had buddies that have been lost over there. So when someone inflates their military record, it’s a true testament to someone’s character, and that is not somebody who should be leading anybody, let alone be the next congressman here in Virginia’s 7th District.”
There are major policy differences between the two candidates as well, differences Vindman has been unwilling to discuss in debates. One area that Anderson highlighted was foreign policy. Two days after Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attacks on Israel, Vindman demanded that Israel restrain its “bloodlust.”
Anderson called his opponent’s stance on Israel “somewhat gray. He’s very much imitated the national level when it comes to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, where one minute they say, ‘Israel has a right to defend themselves,’ and then two minutes later, they threaten Israel with embargoes.”
On immigration, Anderson said that Vindman “cares so much about immigration and the failed policies of Biden and Harris, that he took his immigration policies off of his website.” Anderson’s characterization of Vindman’s positions on Israel is a synecdoche of his policies on most other issues. “My opponent doesn’t really stand for anything; he says one thing and then says the other, just like Kamala Harris and Joe Biden.”
Anderson, who has been one of the GOP’s most highly-touted candidates of the entire election cycle, has benefitted from influxes of support from groups like the Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF), which recently earmarked an additional $600,000 to his race, in both the home stretch and during his contentious primary. He has also been campaigning closely with Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R., Va.), who during a recent campaign event called Anderson a “hometown guy.”
Anderson has traveled the world and seen combat in warzones, but his journeys have always led him home. His mom, who proudly wears a shirt that reads “Derrick’s mom” around town, was the one who “instilled the work ethic in me that got me this far,” he said.
Below is a transcript of our interview with Derrick Anderson, lightly edited for clarity.
Washington Reporter:
We’re here in your campaign headquarters in Spotsylvania County, where you grew up. How close are we right now to your childhood home?
Derrick Anderson:
I’d probably get there in about 15 minutes, depending on traffic. We’re about 10 minutes away from my high school, where I grew up.
Washington Reporter:
How close are we to your opponent, Eugene Vindman’s, childhood home?
Derrick Anderson:
We’re several states away, however many thousands of miles that is.
Washington Reporter:
How has that affected the campaign?
Derrick Anderson:
I think it matters, because what we find is that people want real solutions to real problems, and you don’t know what those problems are unless you are here and are from here. When I’m out knocking on doors or talking to people throughout the district, when I get to say I’m from Spotsylvania County, and they go, oh my god, where’d you go to high school? Who do you know? My mom owned restaurants in the area; I just spoke to a guy while we door knocking, and I said, ‘you ever heard of Bumpers?’ And he said, ‘yeah, I remember that place.’ And I said ‘that was my mom’s spot.’ So being able to have that connection with people is important, because they feel like they can open up to you a little bit more about what they’re actually facing right now. We had one guy, we knocked on his door today, and he said he’s a retired Marine. He’s got his retirement paycheck, his Veterans Affairs paycheck coming in, but he’s still working as a government contractor, because he still needs to. He can’t afford not to. So being able to open up with folks, because I’m from here, they feel a sense of connection. I think that goes a long way, especially when you’re asking them to vote for you to represent them in Washington, D.C. in Congress.
Washington Reporter:
What are the top issues for you as you’re in a couple weeks out from the election?
Derrick Anderson:
The economy is number one. That is the number one thing that we’re seeing across the board, and it’s in a few facets right now. We’re seeing that it’s costing the average Virginia family about $1,100 more a month just to live. We’re seeing in the Commonwealth, a quarter of all people are delinquent on their credit cards. Why? Because they’re putting gas and groceries and small dollar items on their credit cards when they used to use their credit cards for large items. And then we’re also seeing about a third of Virginians living paycheck to paycheck. Those are the things that I’m hearing from folks every single day. People are concerned about safety in our communities, specifically as it relates to the border. Right now, five people a day in the Commonwealth of Virginia are overdosing on fentanyl. We see that we have severe national security threats that have happened here in Virginia’s 7th District. Right up the street from here we have Marine Corps Base Quantico, where we had two illegal immigrants of Jordanian descent attempt to breach the front gate. Thank God for those security officers who were able to get them before they came in. But we’ve asked a lot of questions of who these individuals are, who they’re affiliated with. We have no answers, and those two individuals have been released on bail. When we talk about the border, the border has an impact here, not only from the national security standpoint, not only from the community health perspective with fentanyl, but also on the resources, whether it be roads, schools, hospitals, all of that. These folks are taking up resources that we’re paying for with our taxpayer dollars. My opponent cares so much about immigration and the failed policies of Biden and Harris, that he took his immigration policies off of his website.
Washington Reporter:
Was that an attempt to appeal to moderate voters taking off radical policies, or to appeal to radical voters by removing more moderate policies when he took those off the website?
Derrick Anderson:
Unclear. All I know is that when we press him on the border, he says, ‘yes, we have a border issue.’ And we said, ‘well, that’s your party that has been in control for the last three and a half years.’ It’s affecting us here. Governor Glenn Youngkin did an interview a few months ago where he was talking about the border and how it’s affecting us in the Commonwealth. And I believe it was MSNBC that said ‘why is Governor Youngkin talking about the border? He lives in Virginia. They only border West Virginia and Maryland.’ But we have two illegal immigrants that try to breach into the front gate and Marine Corps Base, Quantico. We even saw just in the Commonwealth recently. We’ve seen these drones that are being flown over our military installations. So it’s a severe threat, it’s a public health problem, a public resources problem, and a national security issue. And then veterans’ issues are a huge deal in our district. 13 percent of our district is veterans. And you heard one of the guys while we were door knocking today. He’s excited about having that VA Super Clinic that’s probably five minutes away from here that’s being built. We just want to make sure that those resources are in there, whether it’s nurses, doctors, the medical professionals so that it’s not just a pretty building, that it actually does stuff for the community. So those are the three things, and the other two things we talk about a lot on, and these are things that everyday people deal with, is I-95, and making sure that it’s workable for people who are working, and then making sure we take care of our farmers. Because we just had that drought back in the summer, and I just went and visited a group of farmers and then went out to a farm; they’re struggling, especially things like the cost of diesel fuel. We talked about overregulation, all that money that they’re having to increase in their farming that goes back down to the consumer. It’s all tied together, making sure the economy gets back on track. But again, if you ask my opponent about this, he at least recognizes that the economy is a problem and that the border’s a problem, but he has no solutions for either.
Washington Reporter:
What’s it been like, telling your high school friends, ‘I need your help electing me to Congress’?
Derrick Anderson:
I think what it really comes down to is it’s a responsibility and accountability issue. Because I’m from here, because I have family, family friends, cousins, uncles, aunts, my mom, people I’ve known my whole life, here. I went to high school with the chairman of the Board of Supervisors in Spotsylvania County. We went to middle school together. So I’ve known people my entire life. They’ve known me. They know my family. In fact, my mom usually wears a t-shirt that says ‘Derrick’s mom,’ because everyone knows who that is. I think that comes back to accountability. When you go to Washington, D.C., I have to come back here, and I have to answer to the people who have known me my entire life, and I think that’s important. I’m here, I’m doing this for the people in the 7th District, the people I’ve known my entire life, whereas Vindman is doing it for himself. He’s focused on his past. He’s focused on his revenge tour toward President Trump and on doubling down on Kamala Harris’s policies, while we’re talking about things in the future, we’re talking about fixing things for the future, for the people here in the 7th District. And that’s the biggest takeaway from this entire thing: this is not a game to me. This is my hometown. I care about the people here deeply, and so I do feel the pain of when an ex-girlfriend from high school texts me and says that her parents are dealing with X, Y and Z, like the cost of living, the fact that our retirees are trying to retire at a decent age, but they can’t. They still got to work because they can’t afford groceries, gas bills, rent, all the above. So that level of accountability is important.
Washington Reporter:
Is that the same ex-girlfriend whose dad’s door you knocked on?
Derrick Anderson:
She just texted me, she voted for me. She literally just texted me. I knocked on her parents’ door a while ago, and her dad was in the shower, and I was walking down the street, and she texted me, ‘you just knocked my parents’ door.’ And then her dad jumped in his pickup truck, brought over some bottles of water, and hung out with me. And it was great to catch up. That’s been one of the awesome parts. We were at an event with Governor Youngkin at National Night Out at the Spotsylvania Mall, and Governor Youngkin kept making fun of me, because every time we turned around and turned a corner, I was like, ‘Governor, I went to high school with that guy. I went to high school with that guy. I went to middle school with that guy.’ He said, ‘you are truly a hometown guy.’ For example, look at King George. There’s a place called Tim’s II now, but it used to be Fairview Beach Crab House. That was my last job before I went to college. So, we walk into Tim’s II, and everyone’s like, ‘how’s your mom doing? How’s your family doing?’ Everyone knows us.
Washington Reporter:
In Virginia specifically, we’ve seen Democrats since 2016, but also in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and now 2024 really prioritize their messaging on abortion. How have you seen that affect your race here? And do you think this is something that they’re going to keep going back to in 2025 and beyond?
Derrick Anderson:
It’s obviously an issue that’s important. But what I see is that when I’m walking around the district and talking to people, I’m hearing a lot of other issues that they’re talking about; especially in 2022, the economy wasn’t doing great. There were certainly some issues with the border. And then we see two years later how it’s just been exasperated, and how the border and the economy have just gotten worse and worse and worse. And that’s what I’m hearing from people on the ground, day in and day out. Every single person in this district who is a commuter, which is a massive amount, because we are a commuter district, every single morning they’re looking at I-95 and the traffic that’s on I-95. Those are the things that I’m hearing from people every single day in the district. So while it is an important issue, it’s not what I’m hearing every single day on the ground.
Washington Reporter:
In 2022 you ran here, and came in second in the primary. What lessons did you take from 2022, and what have you learned from 2024 that would have been helpful to know in hindsight last cycle?
Derrick Anderson:
One of the things that I took away, and I had to learn it in 2022, was the power of grassroots work, and by that I mean primarily door knocking; going up to someone’s door and actually knocking on their door and showing them that you’re willing to go put the work in, goes a long way with people. When you go and talk, and you heard one of the guys today, he’s like, ‘my wife already met you.’ Because we’re out there. We’re not hiding. We’re out in our community. And that was the big takeaway that I learned from my campaign, and I had to learn how to do it. I was able to learn from what works, and that is getting out there and going to door knocking. It is actually a huge, huge benefit. The second thing I’d say that I’d learned from this race was about going to new places, and places that you wouldn’t necessarily think to go. So for instance, going to the Chamber of Commerce meeting, or going to the local Builders Association’s golf tournament, just being being around those folks. It’s a group of people who are either builders or who are realtors. Whatever the organization is, going out there and being able to talk to them, because most people think politics, and they think of a big rally and all that. But when you’re willing to show up to the local legion’s meeting and just go and talk to people, or go to the local Boy Scouts dinner, like we’re going to tonight, and talk to the folks there, going to the VFW in Dale City and playing bingo with people, which we’ve done. All those things are opportunities for you to go talk to people. And that’s one thing that we’ve done this campaign; we will go anywhere, talk to anyone. And I think that goes a long way with all voters and all people in the district.
Washington Reporter:
You had a contentious primary. How have you kept the GOP bandwagon together? How have your primary rivals been interacting with you since that primary this summer?
Derrick Anderson:
Everyone’s been great. We all came together afterwards and understood that there was going to be a winner. And so being able to sit down with all of them, they’ve all been out there stumping for me. They’ve been out there campaigning for me if I can’t make it to something. One of my primary opponents was in here for four or five hours one day writing note cards. So anything from grassroots to surrogate work, they’ve been out there doing it. And I think it comes down to how we all have a common understanding that we all want to make our community better, and we all have had the same mentality of what needs to be done. Everyone has been on board and has been super helpful. Obviously, it’s just about coming together. And I think that’s what people want more than ever right now. There’s always going to be divisiveness, and there’s always going to be some sort of issues amongst people, but at the end of the day, we all want to see what’s best for the community. And everyone’s been on board because of that.
Washington Reporter:
Some of the national attention on this race has been, infamously, from the New York Times, which sandbagged you with a story that we covered as the dictionary definition of fake news. Talk about the coverage that you’ve gotten. What’s your experience been?
Derrick Anderson:
Well, I think it’s pretty unbelievable that this is what my opponent is focusing on. My opponent has been focusing on this as well as the media. I find it incredibly disingenuous and unbelievable, because look at what it is. It is a screenshot of b-roll footage that every single candidate in the nation does. And what’s really discouraging about it is those family members, the family that I was in the video with, they’re friends of mine, I served with the husband in the National Guard, and I think it’s pretty discouraging that Vindman, and his campaign, are willing to do what they’re doing to that family as well; they have a complete disregard for the family, who, by the way, are voters in our district. Why he’s doing it is because he’s distracting. He’s distracting from a few things. First, he’s distracting from the fact that he lied about his military record. He said that he was a colonel when he’s not. He retired as a Lieutenant Colonel. He’s lied about his service overseas. He said that he used weapons of war in combat, and he didn’t. In fact, during our debate, I pressed him on that twice to ask him to answer the question and tell the people of the district, and he refused to answer, which essentially is admitting that he lied. And he’s lying about that because he’s doing it for political purposes to inflate his military record. If he’s willing to lie about that, what else is he going to lie to the people of the 7th District about? And more importantly, you’re not going to out-army me. I’m a former Green Beret with six deployments, I wear my military record on my sleeve. I’ve been to Iraq and Afghanistan. I’ve been shot at. I’ve had buddies that have been lost over there. So when someone inflates their military record, it’s a true testament to someone’s character, and that is not somebody who should be leading anybody, let alone be the next congressman here in Virginia’s 7th District.
Washington Reporter:
Can you talk about the support from Rep. Mike Collins, who’s knocking on doors as we speak for you, as well as from other House Republicans? The Congressional Leadership Fund super PAC in particular was spending for you before the primary. How’s that been in 2024?
Derrick Anderson:
Having the support up and down has been amazing. They see the work that we’re putting in on the ground here in the district. We’ve seen the Cook Political Report, just a week ago, came out and said that this, even with the millions upon millions of dollars that my opponent has put in false advertising against me, is a shift from a tilt Democrat race to a tossup seat. I think the reason being is that they’re seeing the work we’re doing on the ground. They see that we’re on the right side of the issues, and we’re talking about how to fix things, rather than, again, my opponent talking about his past the entire time. Having the support there is helpful. But I think the reason why the support is there is because they do see that we’re doing what we need to do to win this race come November. We’re going to continue to do that over the final days, whether it’s knocking on doors, whether it’s writing postcards, whether it’s making phone calls. And it comes down to at the end of the day to who’s willing to work harder. And the reason why it’s so important to see how much somebody is willing to work is because if they’re going to put this much effort in to get your vote, to go knock on your door and do that, then they’re going to work when they get into Congress. I can’t say the same about my opponent, because I don’t know where he’s at. We don’t see him. He’s not around the district, and that just shows the true kind of character and work ethic of somebody. He’s running for power and for his revenge tour. And quite frankly, he doesn’t know the issues on the ground, because he’s not from here.
Washington Reporter:
We were just talking about your military record. A couple hours ago, Israel confirmed that it eliminated Yahya Sinwar. In the days following Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack, your opponent tweeted that Israel should restrain its bloodlust. Foreign policy isn’t necessarily one of the top issues, but there’s a huge military presence here. How has foreign policy showed up on the trail? Let’s start with Israel.
Derrick Anderson:
His stance on Israel is somewhat gray. He’s very much imitated the national level when it comes to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, where one minute they say, ‘Israel has a right to defend themselves,’ and then two minutes later, they threaten Israel with embargoes. You heard my opponent say that Israel needs to restrain its bloodlust. That’s not showing support for our greatest ally in the Middle East. I’ve trained with the Israelis. I’ve worked with them. I’ve had them both in United States, and I’ve trained with them in Israel. I understand their capabilities and what they have to do. I think that’s the biggest difference between us, is that I’m very firm in my support of Israel and what they need to do to get through this war. Let’s be quite frank, no one wants war. I’ve been there. I’ve done it. No one wants it, but at the end of the day, Israel has to do what’s best for Israel, and they are sitting in a hornet’s nest right now where they have Hezbollah in the north that continues to attack them. Israel just recently pushed up into southern Lebanon to push back on Hezbollah, so they have some room for their their civilians to actually live. We see that Iran continues to fire missiles from Iran into Israel, and we see everything that’s going on in Gaza. Israel has got a three tiered war going on. My opponent doesn’t really stand for anything; he says one thing and then says the other, just like Kamala Harris and Joe Biden.
Washington Reporter:
What have you seen, as someone who’s been in actual combat zones, about the extent to which Israel has scaled back collateral damage?
Derrick Anderson:
War is hell. That’s it. War is absolute hell. It is easy for people and spectators on the outside to criticize and obviously be armchair quarterbacks, but I trained with them and actually know their capabilities and what they do. We just saw today when they took out Sinwar and I think a few other individuals, Hamas individuals, but right now we’re hearing reports that no hostages were injured. And it’s very interesting also to note that Hamas is not putting Israel in the best position when it comes to where Hamas does their fighting from. We saw through the first few months of this conflict that Hamas was going into hospitals and using them as storage facilities. They were ingressing and egressing into their tunnel systems, which we saw were in the hospitals. We saw that they were putting their equipment, that they had hostages in the hospitals talks about making sure that they, at the end of the day, are using civilian structures that are meant to take care of people, as fighting positions. Israel is in a tough situation. I think people need to also understand that the actual makeup of Gaza is what, twice the size of D.C.? Imagine two Washington, D.C.s with hundreds of miles of tunnel systems. And it’s a very compact area. Being in urban areas are always, always tough, tough places to do operations, and so they’ve done really well in making sure they reduce civilian casualties and the collateral damage.
Washington Reporter:
What for you, as a veteran, are your priorities in that space in Congress, whether it’s supporting our allies or increasing America’s military readiness?
Derrick Anderson:
The biggest thing we have to do right now is be tough on Iran, China, and Russia. If we look at how the Biden-Harris administration’s handled all three of those actors, they’ve handled them more with white gloves and coddled them than they have been tough on them. What I find very, very uneasy is that we look at Kamala Harris and Joe Biden and they’re putting more pressure on Israel than they are on Iran. They gave $6 billion plus back to Iran. They’ve eased the sanctions on Iran. A report recently came out that showed $200 billion in oil sales have gone to Iran. We see that Biden and Harris attempted to build a port in Gaza while there was still a war going on, which cost us millions of dollars, and then it ended up not working. We see that Biden and Harris are threatening an embargo on weapons and munitions. We saw Sen. Tom Cotton write a letter recently to the president, telling them they need to release certain equipment, bulldozers, which they can plow the roads with to make sure there’s no explosives in there, other types of equipment that they’ve been withholding from Israel. So when we talk about how do we be strong on the international stage in foreign policy and international security? We have to be strong against Iran, Russia, and China, and not be tough on Israel, which is what we’re seeing right now in the middle of a war.
Washington Reporter:
In your announcement video for your 2022 campaign, our surrender in Afghanistan was the focal point of it. As a veteran and as someone who served in Afghanistan, what has all of the aftermath of that meant to you? I know you’ve also met Christy Shamblin, the mother-in-law of Nicole Gree. She’s an unbelievable woman. What went through your mind on August 26, 2021, and on August 31, 2021, thinking about the blood, sweat, and tears that you and thousands of other Americans have poured into trying and preventing that country from becoming a terrorist breeding ground again?
Derrick Anderson:
I don’t think that there’s any event over the last four years that is more damning on our national security and from the world writ large than the withdrawal in Afghanistan was. I believe this was the thing that really showed our enemies what Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were all about. The fact that it happened the way that it did, and then we fast forward to this year, three years later, and we see the Taliban parading our vehicles, our weapons, the same weapons and vehicles that we used overseas, they literally are parading them down the center of Kabul; watching what happened during the withdrawal in Afghanistan was truly disheartening. As I say quite often, it was a mixed bag of emotions. Because you were angry about how it went down and how it happened. I was sad about how it happened, because I had one of my Gold Star moms call me, and she’s said ‘what is going on right now?’ Because her son was killed in Afghanistan while we were over there. And then this is what she sees after 20 years of war. Her son gets killed in 2014 and then, seven years later, we see that our equipment, our helicopters are being flown by the Taliban. We see people clutching to the side of c130s, babies being thrown over the barbed wire fence. We see 13 servicemembers get killed over there. The thing that made the fire in the belly get even stronger was the further time went on from the withdrawal in Afghanistan, is the fact that the Biden-Harris administration has refused to acknowledge it, refused to take any sort of accountability, which just makes it worse as time goes on.
Washington Reporter:
You’ve talked about it extensively elsewhere, but you’ve battled with the DOD; what do you feel like should be done legislatively to ensure that no future Derrick Andersons ever have to go through this whole bureaucratic nightmare after friendly fire incidents like you did? What do you think should be done to make sure the Pentagon has the backs of our troops?
Derrick Anderson:
We got a few pieces of legislation actually passed after 2014 and after I did the 60 Minutes show. The problem comes down to a simple solution of either we need to find something that’s a better identifier of our servicemembers on the ground, or we need to change the optic, i.e., the actual aircraft optic that was up there. The problem is, I think that there was just an issue with a lot of finger pointing, and a lot of blame shifting, which we’ve seen time and time again. We even see it with withdrawal in Afghanistan, there’s been a lot of people who have said, who was at fault? Where was the broken leg of the chair that caused this to happen? But quite often at that level, we see a lot of fingers start pointing when it was simply that they could not see the lights on our helmet when they said they could. And we see this a lot with the DOD, and specifically at the national level; it really just comes down to accountability. I’ve talked to a lot of general officers who, during that entire process, people knew what was going on, but no one was willing to say anything about it. So a lot of people just let it kind of take its course, and but for the fact that we fought back on it and called out the issue and the problem, it probably would have never been discussed. It would have just gone under the radar, and nobody would have ever said anything about it.
Washington Reporter:
You worked with both parties on that issue. Does that inform how you’d operate as a lawmaker?
Derrick Anderson:
Yes. We just want to get things done, that’s what it comes down to. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Republican or a Democrat or an independent or a libertarian, when you go to the Wawa up the street on Courthouse Road, you’re not getting a discount for pushing a red button or a blue button or anything else. We’re all feeling the pain right now. It’s one of those moments, where I think being a veteran who’s been mission-oriented, someone who’s been over there, who gets things done, is really what it comes down to, and I think that’s what really postures me to be great for this district, not just being the hometown guy, but being someone who’s got the ability to get things done. I was able to do it as an early 30-year-old guy, and I got legislation passed just by beating down the doors of members of Congress.
Washington Reporter:
Did you see yourself running for office prior to the failures in Afghanistan?
Derrick Anderson:
I didn’t even think that I was going to go to law school. I thought I was going to do a career, 20 years, in the military; I didn’t even know that when I joined the military, but I kept doing well in the military, and I thought ‘I’ll be an infantry guy. I’ll go to the Old Guard. I’ll go to the Special Forces.’ And then when everything happened to me, I decided that I wanted to do something different, which is why I went to law school. So I never even thought about going to law school, surely didn’t think about clerking after law school, didn’t think that I’d ever be in those positions, but the withdrawal is the thing that got me off the couch. I had mentors and friends who said ‘do something about it.’ A great mentor of mine who’s been there for me over the years has been Rep. Mike Waltz, who’s always been there. He’s one of the guys who said ‘we need more veterans, especially Special Operations guys, up here, who understand, when we’re passing the National Defense Authorization Act, one of the largest bills that we pass, what the impact that it actually has, on our national security and on our foreign policy.’
Washington Reporter:
What committees would you like to be on, based on your own interests and based on what is most helpful for your constituents?
Derrick Anderson:
There are certainly committees that I’m sure that leadership and all of them are going to be interested in putting me on, but I’m looking at it from a perspective of what committees can I get on that are best for my district? If, given the winning lotto ticket where I get to pick all three, it would be Transportation and Infrastructure, talking about roads, bridges and highways; Agriculture, because we’ve got ten counties including Fredericksburg, in our district, and we’ve got counties like Madison, Green, Culpepper, Orange, where it’s a lot of local farmers and I want to make sure we’re taking care of our local farmers; and then third, Veterans’ Affairs Committee, I want to make sure we’re taking care of our veterans, especially with that super clinic being built here, that’s huge for us.
Washington Reporter:
Do you have any thoughts on what you want your first piece of legislation to be?
Derrick Anderson:
If I’m able to do it, it would be a bill to get American energy independence back up and running. That’s the number one thing we can do to get our economy back on track. It was HR1 that was about energy independence, but it’s been sitting on the Democrats’ desk in the Senate for over a year now. We want to get the economy back up and running, and we need to make gas and diesel less expensive, and that’ll be the number one thing that will jumpstart us.
Washington Reporter:
You grew up here, washing dishes in your mom’s restaurant, you went to high school here, you’re running to represent this area here. If you could give high school Derrick Anderson a piece of advice, what would it be?
Derrick Anderson:
I would tell him you never know where life is going to take you, but just keep riding that train, because I never would have thought that I’d get into college, I didn’t think I’d get an ROTC scholarship, all the things that I’ve been able to do with my life have all been because I took a chance, and I worked hard. The thing I would tell high school Derrick Anderson is ‘keep working hard and listen to your mom, because she actually is the one who instilled the work ethic in me that got me this far.’
Washington Reporter:
Well, hopefully that train is taking you to Congress.