Joining us to talk a little bit about this is a delegate Andrew Rice of the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Delegate Rice, thank you first and all for coming by and visiting with us last night,

visiting with us this morning.

Absolutely, Joe. It's my pleasure.

Well, you say that now. I haven't asked my first question.

Well, that's true.

So one of the questions that came up is where does the Republican Party go?

Now, you're a young fellow, you're new into the party system.

At least publicly, you may have worked behind the scenes before you got elected to the House of Delegates, but this is your first term, correct?

That is correct, yes. I was elected St. Patty's Day in March, and I'm replacing Barry Knight, who was a longtime family friend, personal friend of mine, and we're going to continue his good work,

and we're going to do some of our own. But coming in as a newer person, I want your thoughts on this because a lot of folks have said, what does the Republican Party have to do? We went back to

2020 when the redistricting was taken out of the hands of the politicians, and there are 1.3 million

fewer votes cast than there were in that election.

How do we get those people back?

Where have they gone?

Are they just folks who only vote in presidential years?

So as a new set of eyes into the Republican Party,

what has to happen now? So thanks, Joe, for that question. Those 1.3 million people, I think,

were just sitting at home. This was a special election in April. Virginia is not used to that.

We're used to special elections

in other months, but April's not really our month. And this was a quick turnaround from the

constitutional amendment that was passed in session to the vote yesterday. This was a very

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