Strickland vows to restrict public drag show performances, boot CRT from schools, fight for more transportation funding

Editors note: This is the latest in a series of articles featuring candidates running in Virignia's June 20, 2023, Primary Election. Matt Strickland, 39, is running for the GOP nomination in Virginia's 27th Senate District, including portions of Spotsylvania, Stafford counties, and Fredericksburg. Strickland, the owner of Gourmeltz restaurant in Spotsylvania, made national news in 2021 when he refused to adhere to then-Gov. Ralph Northam's coronavirus restrictions limit the number of customers in his restaurant. The state sued Strickland after he refused a health-department order to close, and Strickland won without ever having closed or implemented state-mandated coronavirus restrictions. Strickland is an Army veteran, a former intelligence analyst turned entrepreneur who opened Gourmeltz with his wife, Maria, in 2016. The couple lives in Spotsylvania and has four children ages 12 to 18. Politics of the district: Strickland faces Tara Durant, a one-term Delegate who chose to seek a seat in the Virginia Senate, in a June 20, 2023, Republican Primary.  Democrats Joel Griffin and Ben Litchfield are also vying for their party's nomination for the seat in the June 20 Primary Election. Stafford County Supervisor Monica Gary, an independent, will seek also seek the seat in the November 7, 2023, General Election. Find your polling place. There is no incumbent for the 27th Senate District, created in 2021 by the Virginia State Supreme Court in the state's decennial redistricting process. I interviewed Strickland about his race. You can see the entire interview here. Do you support school choice?  "The money should follow the student. So with school choice, I come at that from a business standpoint as well, the business mindset in that what breeds innovation in the business world is competition. And what I mean by that is me as a restaurant owner, if I'm the only restaurant in town, if I'm the only restaurant in the state that sells burgers, you have no choice but to come to me if you want a burger. So what motivates me to make sure I'm continuously innovating to make sure I have a unique burger, or I continuously innovate to make sure it's different?" "The public education system, they know that they have no competition. If you can't afford to send your child to private school and or if you're not able to homeschool your child, then you have no choice but to send your child to public schools. And the public education system knows that, and that's why they have a monopoly on things." "So what school choice will do is it will give parents way more options. It will allow a parent to choose a school of their choice that aligns with their values, that keeps some of this political ideology out of the schools and gets more curriculum actually back into schools."

Would you introduce legislation to remove social-emotional learning and CRT from public schools?

"Absolutely. I don't think they have any place in schools. I think what those are. They're just indoctrination, is all they are. So anytime any kind of curriculum teaches a kid to hate themselves or people like themselves or say that they're inherently racist because of things that happened 100, 200, or 300 years ago is wrong, and we shouldn't be teaching anything like that in our schools." "Now, people try to say, when you say you're against CRT, oh, you're against teaching the correct history of this country or what truly happened in centuries past in this country? No, absolutely not. We definitely need to teach about slavery and such, but we need to make sure that we're not teaching certain things that are in the CRT curriculum, like because you're white, you're inherently racist and such" "Those things, they do nothing good for society. They do nothing good for children. And if you watch children play, children don't give a damn about race. They don't care what color you are or where you come from. They just know you're another kid, and they want to play with each other. I truly believe racism is taught. So what we need to make sure we do is keep any kind of racial curriculum out of schools." It is Pride Month, and, in recent weeks, we've seen parents protest drag show performances held in the public square. As a legislator, would you create legislation banning such public performances?  "Absolutely. And the reason is that nobody can argue that these drag shows are not sexual in nature. They're absolutely sexual in nature. And for that reason, kids, children should not be exposed to that. Pedophilia is something that almost everybody in society is against. And the reason for that is because our children should be protected from any kind of over-sexualization." "Now, if you want to do that in private, and you want to do it for an adults-only kind of event, Roger that, do your thing, that's your right. But when you're exposing children to it in a public place like that, that should not be allowed." "And if you're doing it in a public atmosphere, then you don't give parents the choice to avoid that. Because, for example, if they're doing it downtown or something and parents want to take their children downtown just to walk around for the day and boom, you walk up on a drag show or something like that, where these sexually explicit performances are happening, you don't give the parent the option to keep their kid away from that. They've already seen it. So for that reason, I think that things like that should be done in private, and it should be adults only." Over the years, there has been talk about creating something similar to the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority for the Fredericksburg region, a taxing authority that would dole out public funds for transportation projects. Would you create a transportation taxing authority in the Fredericksburg region? "First of all, we don't need another tax here in this area. We are already taxed enough. But when it comes to this area, in particular Spotsylvania, Fredericksburg, and Stafford, we need more help than any other locality in Virginia when it comes to infrastructure in roads and transportation because our stretch of [Interstate 95] is some of the worst traffic in the entire nation. And where we have been let down is at the General Assembly level. So they put the onus on us here down in the localities...to fund all of this infrastructure for the most part. And we're on the hook for figuring out how we relieve all of this insane traffic that we have, and the General Assembly has let us down." So what I'm going to be doing, and I think this is one of the most important issues in our area besides all of the hot topic issues like we just talked about, infrastructure and transportation is one of the biggest issues we have in our area. So I'm going to fight like hell to make sure that we remedy that problem in our section of the I 95 corridor." "And I truly believe that this area, because it is so congested and Virginia has set us up for such failures, that our district, our localities here, where we're at in the 27th, should be funded a lot more from the General Assembly level than we are. And the owner shouldn't be put just on the counties for us to collect taxes from the local residents to fund these roads. No, everybody here in Virginia, and not to mention out of state, use our roads in this area." "One of the worst deals in Virginia history are those E-ZPass lanes. So they took our HOV lanes and sold them to a private equity firm that is not even from the United States. So our roads are owned by a foreign company that should not be allowed. One of the worst deals that ever happened in Virginia and one of the things I'm going to do is look at that contract and see if there's any way we can get out of it because our legislators have gotten us into some insane deals here in Virginia."