Name: Nancy Guy

Race: House of Delegates, 83rd District

Party: Democrat

Website: Guyfordelegate.com

Biography: Nancy grew up in a U.S. Navy family in the 83rd District and attended Thoroughgood Elementary and Cox High School. She graduated from the College of William & Mary with a B.A. in government (where she was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa), and got her J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law.

She and her husband of 38 years, Richard Guy, moved to Charlotte, N.C. for a decade where they practiced law and had two children. In 1992 they returned to Virginia Beach to be closer to extended family. Richard is an attorney with Vandeventer Black, LLP in Norfolk. Their children are now grown and they have two grandchildren.

Since her return to Virginia, Nancy has worked in a variety of capacities with some breaks from paid work to raise children and care for ailing and dying parents: managing a family real estate partnership, helping in the management of a home health care company founded by her father, and as an educational consultant assisting students. In 1996 she was elected to the Virginia Beach School Board and was subsequently re-elected for a second term.

After successfully battling breast cancer, in 2012 to 2013, Nancy decided to simplify her life. She liquidated the real estate partnership in 2014 and closed down her educational consulting business in 2017 to concentrate on spending more time with family and giving more time to causes she believes in.

As a proud product of Virginia’s public education programs, supporting public education has long been her passion. In addition to her two terms on the School Board, she has served on the Board of WHRO, the Board of SECEP (the Southeastern Cooperative Educational Program), 12 years on the Virginia Education Foundation Board, two terms as president of the PTSA at Virginia Beach’s largest high school, a member of the Virginia Beach City Council of PTAs and member of the Legislative Committee of the Virginia PTA. Nancy believes that a quality public education system is the very backbone of democracy and will do everything in her power to channel proper resources to it.

In addition to educational activities Nancy has always been active in her church, Bayside Presbyterian, where she is an elder and, through her work with the Community Service Ministry, has volunteered with a variety of programs that help others including Seton Youth Shelters, Samaritan House, Judeo-Christian Outreach, and VOA/LIghthouse Winter Shelter.

She has the education, experience, passion and time to devote herself fully to representing the people of the 83rd District.

Why should residents elect you to the Virginia House of Delegates?

This race is really not about me. Yes, I am a long time resident, I am well educated and have professional experience in a variety of fields, and I have served the voters before as an elected school board member. But residents of the 83rd House District should elect me because my values and my positions on critical issues reflect the views of the majority of its citizens.

I believe that we should properly fund our public schools, which have been starved of funding since the recession a decade ago; that we should protect access to healthcare for all people including those with pre-existing conditions; that we should adopt common sense gun safety laws to help protect our citizens; that we should ratify the ERA and guarantee women equal protection under the law and equal pay for equal work; that we should accept that climate change is real and that we need to reduce carbon pollution and move to renewable energy as well as battle the very real effects of sea level rise in our community.

My opponent and the Republican leadership of the General Assembly have failed us on these issues. We can do better, and we must.

What is the biggest issue facing your district?

The biggest issue facing our district and most districts throughout the state is our failure to properly fund public education at the state level. In the 2019 edition of JLARC’s listing of “Virginia Compared to Other States,” Virginia ranks 42nd out of 50 in state funding to pre-K to grade 12 education.

That is unacceptable. It has resulted in teachers being underpaid, class sizes ballooning and even such mundane things as bus replacements lagging. It has stressed the coffers of our region’s cities that have repeatedly had to raise property taxes in recent years and cut other city services to try to make up the shortfall.

The General Assembly did, finally, this last session give our teachers a decent pay raise, but there is still a great deal of work to be done to reclaim the ground lost in the last decade of neglect.

What was the most important vote taken in the General Assembly in 2019 and why?

The most important vote was the vote to adjourn the special session on gun safety after just 90 minutes without even debating one single bill, an adjournment supported by every Republican, including my opponent.

It showed the disdain the Republican majority has for the will of the people to address this serious issue in a serious way. It also showed how beholden they are to the corporate gun lobby that has since donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republican candidates across the state, including my opponent.

We need Virginia to pass common sense gun safety measures like universal background checks that are favored by the vast majority of citizens.