After Nearly A Decade of Ignoring Virginia Students, Ralph Northam Finally Acknowledges Higher Education

After nearly a decade in office, Virginia Democrat gubernatorial candidate Ralph Northam has finally chosen to stop ignoring Virginia students, releasing a list of bullet points to address higher education. But Northam’s long-awaited ideas for Virginia’s higher education system now raise a new question for his campaign: Why now?

Northam has spent nearly four years as Virginia’s Lieutenant Governor, and before that he spent six years in Virginia’s State Senate. After nearly a decade in elected office, Northam appears to have been sitting on all of his ideas to tackle this issue. And according to State Council of Higher Education For Virginia, tuition costs have risen by thousands of dollars a year since Northam and the Democrat administration took office in 2013. If Northam has wanted to address rising tuition and other issues in Virginia’s higher education system, why did he wait so long to propose a platform of solutions?

Ralph Northam had almost a decade in Virginia’s state government but only now, while he’s running for governor, has he decided to address college affordability in Virginia. He’s spent years ignoring Virginia students while tuition costs have steadily grown. If Northam only wants to address serious issues like education when he’s running for office, while ignoring them entirely between elections, he can’t be trusted to lead Virginia as governor.