Author: Jonathan Mususa (Jon)

by Jonathan Mususa, politics and government reporter

Democratic challenger Lily Franklin and Republican Delegate Chris Obenshain at the Cardinal News candidate forum for the 41st House of Delegates district, Monday, Sept. 15, 2025.

(Jonathan Mususa, The News Feed)

BLACKSBURG, Va. – On Monday, Sept. 15 at 6:30 p.m., Blacksburg residents and potential voters crowded into the meeting room at the Blacksburg Public Library to hear Republican Delegate Chris Obenshain and Democratic challenger Lily Franklin speak at a candidate forum for the 41st House of Delegates district organized by Cardinal News.

Running in a rematch of the 2023 race which saw Obenshain win by 183 votes, the two candidates answered questions submitted by audience members ahead of time in a conversation moderated by Roanoke College political science professor Jeff Vick.

This forum was held as a part of Cardinal News’ “The Cardinal Way: Civility Rules” project, centered on promoting productive discourse across party lines. 

Note the word civility. Likely with the bouts of heckling at the Buena Vista Labor Fest and an earlier forum in the 40th House district on her mind, Cardinal News executive director Luanne Rife made things rather clear to the audience.

“The moderator, Jeff Vick, will give a warning if anyone’s out of line and, if there’s a second incident, we’re just going to quit,” Rife said. “We’re going to just close it down.” 

“We’re also livestreaming this on our Facebook page and it’ll be archived on YouTube, so that’s another reason you don’t want to be that person or anything.”

Fortunately, things went ahead fairly smoothly.

Virginia Tech and what students want

With Virginia Tech students having broken overwhelmingly for Franklin back in 2023, it perhaps comes as no surprise that her campaign has reached out to students, with Franklin echoing some of the concerns she heard.

“How are we going to make sure young people can afford homes?” she asked the audience. “How are we going to ensure they have access to good jobs that they can grow after they leave the university, that they have internships, and that we’re also protecting their rights?”

Obenshain cited work he had done to benefit the Virginia Tech community – co-sponsoring legislation to improve access to sexual assault response kits and budget amendments for increased funding for the university – before addressing the state of the region’s economy.

“I’ve talked to a lot of folks who have graduated from Virginia Tech and wanted to stay here in the New River Valley, but they couldn’t find a job,” he said. “They couldn’t find the right job for them that would keep them here, and that’s why I think economic development and prosperity is such an important part of what we do in Richmond and in the General Assembly.”

The Virginia Clean Economy Act of 2020 and phasing out fossil fuels by 2050

Franklin staked out a position as “one of the most vocal opponents of the legislation” for its supposed failure to “protect ratepayers” against rising energy prices, the blame for which she placed on, among other things, increasing energy demand from data centers and insufficient regulation of Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power – corporations that Franklin is not accepting campaign contributions from.

“I think, as we head to Richmond, this is going to be the biggest fight in 2026,” she said, referring to debates about the future of the Commonwealth’s electric grid.

In one of the tenser moments of the evening, Obenshain began his response by casting doubts on the nature of Franklin’s opposition to the VCEA, going on to say that she “supports the goals of the VCEA, and it’s the goals of the VCEA that are the problem.”

Obenshain went on to lament increases in electricity rates in the Commonwealth since the VCEA’s passage, as well as Virginia’s status as one of the nation’s top energy importers.

Healing the partisan divide

Drawing upon his work with Democrats on protections against anti-Semitic violence and increased funding for the Marcus alert system for mental health emergencies, Obenshain called for people to “rediscover our sense of civic engagement.”

“Getting off of our phones and getting out into our communities is something that’s going to be really important for us moving forward,” he said, before touching on the recent cellphone bans that have gone into effect in school districts across the Commonwealth. 

“Teachers are talking about it being noisy in the lunchroom again. Those are good things and that helps us as a country.”

Franklin confessed to doing more to the end of pursuing unity than many of her fellow Democrats thought prudent, but her work supposedly was not in vain.

“I have had people who voted for Donald Trump, people who are big supporters of Marjorie Taylor Greene, all tell me how they will be supporting me this election,” she said. “And that’s because we’re able to talk about how we have shared community values.”

She also called for a less partisan and more realistic view of the legislative process.

“Almost every piece of legislation that comes out of Richmond – and Chris can attest to this – is bipartisan … When we talk about legislation, we do need to talk about a lot of the things that we’re doing together, because most of it is together.”

Audience members watch as Democratic challenger Lily Franklin responds to a question.

(Jonathan Mususa, The News Feed)

At the evening’s end, Obenshain thanked his family and constituents for their support and touted his accomplishments anew. The impending arrival of passenger rail to Christiansburg, increased funding for education, and Virginia’s nation-leading decline in overdose deaths are, he assured the audience, among the results of “what happens when you put experienced leadership with common-sense solutions.”

Franklin focused more on the difficulties being faced by people of all generations in the 41st and how her background as a working-class native of Southwest Virginia allowed her to relate to them.

“Five generations of my family’s from here, from two all the way to 92,” she said. “So, when I look at policy, I think about how you can thrive at every stage of your life.”

Afterwards, Cardinal News executive editor Jeff Schwaner thanked those in attendance for their cooperation and sent them back out into their communities with the knowledge that “this is the best of politics.”

by Jonathan Mususa, politics and government reporter

As his first term comes to a close, Delegate Chris Obenshain (R–Blacksburg) is preparing to seek another two years in office.

A Montgomery County native, U.S. Army Reservist and former county prosecutor, he entered the 2023 race for the then-new 41st district, containing Blacksburg and rural parts of Montgomery and Roanoke counties. He faced Democratic nominee and Roanoke Delegate Sam Rasoul’s former chief of staff Lily Franklin and won by a margin of 183 votes.

As a freshman legislator, Obenshain joined a Republican caucus that had just narrowly lost control of the House of Delegates. The Commonwealth has since had a fairly evenly divided government, with Republicans in all three statewide positions – Governor Glenn Youngkin, Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears, Attorney General Jason Miyares – and Democrats narrowly controlling both houses of the General Assembly. 

He and Franklin will face each other again in November.

Also, for those who are wondering, he is indeed one of those Obenshains. The late former Virginia Republican Party chairman Richard Obenshain was his uncle and State Senator Mark Obenshain (R–Harrisonburg) is his cousin.

In an interview at his office in Blacksburg, Obenshain spoke about his role as a Delegate, his experiences as a freshman legislator in Richmond, and his approach to public service.

The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Why would you say you ran for Delegate at the first place?

Really just wanting to be involved to try to make my community a better place. I’ve lived here in Montgomery County for a number of years, I’ve got three kids here – two in the schools here in Montgomery County – and my family’s been here for almost a hundred years. So I really love this community and saw it as an opportunity to really try to continue to make this part of Virginia a great place to live and to work and for people to come and raise their families like I have.

In the wake of your election victory, you said in the Facebook post after the result that “the closeness of this election reflects the division we see across our nation.” Do you see your role as a Delegate for this community as helping to ameliorate those divisions in some way?

Absolutely. As a delegate, I represent everyone who lives in this district. I don’t just represent one party or the other. I represent all of those 80,000 people that make up the 41st district. Some of those folks have very different views about what kind of policies they want for the state of Virginia and so, as a Delegate, it’s really my role to engage with those different groups.

I welcome all kinds of different folks with different policy viewpoints into my office during the legislative session. I meet with folks on opposite sides of a lot of different issues and I appreciate those conversations because it helps me to understand what people are thinking, what their desires and hopes are for their families and their communities.

Let’s get to talking about your tenure. How would you say that your experience as a Delegate compares to you were expecting before you took office?

I think largely it’s what I anticipated. I’ve had the opportunity to work in state government before I ran for the House of Delegates. I’ve worked in the Attorney General’s Office in Richmond for eight years so I knew a little bit about state government and kind of how it worked. So a lot of it was similar to what I expected. 

The difference is really, during the legislative session, the pace. Our legislative sessions in Virginia are very short: 45 days in odd years, 60 days in even years. So it’s not a lot of time. Bills are moving very fast. For me, the biggest adjustment was adapting to the pace of things and how quickly things move and making sure that I was ready and had read up on the bills before they come to the floor.

What are the best and worst parts of your job?

The worst part of the job is definitely being away from my family during the week. Like I said, I’m a dad of three kids – two of them are in school – and, during the legislative session, I’ve got to be in Richmond during the week. I envy those legislators from the Richmond area who can go home at night and have dinner with their families because I’m three and a half hours away from home. That’s the toughest part of being a legislator: that separation from family. 

But the best part is, again, really getting to represent my community and be a voice for my community. I really enjoy when I have the chance to visit with people from back home during the legislative session or after the session. I get to come back home and talk to folks about the things that we’ve done in the legislature from raising teacher and law enforcement pay to cutting taxes, passing legislation that helps people in a variety of different ways. Those are the great opportunities and the things that I really enjoy doing, being able to represent my community and make some positive change for this region.

What would you say to someone who is perhaps considering a run for public office, maybe even for Delegate?

If you’re interested in public office, the most important thing is to become a part of a community. Identify the community that you wanna be a part of and that you want to give back to. If you do that, if you get engaged in your community and you become involved in local issues, then those opportunities, they’ll come around. 

I didn’t have any design on running for the House of Delegates. Again, this is home for me. It’s where my family’s been for almost 100 years. I came to work in the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office and have been in this community for a while. Then redistricting happened. A new district gets drawn and the opportunity is created to step up and do a different job. 

I decided to take that step at that time, but I wouldn’t have been in that position to run for this seat in the House of Delegates if I hadn’t made this my home and been a part of this community.