CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) In his time as a conservative radio talk show host, John Reid’s job has been to provoke thought, talk and – yes – even, occasionally, outrage to draw listeners to his broadcast.

As the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor, Reid said he’s striking a far more diplomatic posture.

“I’m running as a new type of candidate, a new type of Republican candidate. No one’s ever seen a candidate like me in Virginia and quite frankly most places across the country,” Reid said. “I am very deliberately approaching this, not as a conservative talk show host with strong opinions designed to get the audience talking, but as a reasonable and responsible and fair potential legislator and leader, someone who’s going to try to find the overlap and the commonality on the issues that Virginians care about.”

In a wide-ranging, 20-minute interview with Cville Right Now on Tuesday, Reid touted his views on education and public schools, the Commonwealth’s personal property car tax and his record of defending personal freedom, while attacking Democratic nominee Ghazala Hashmi for what his campaign considers radical viewpoints.

Reid, who has hosted the WRVA Morning Show out of Richmond for the past eight years, said the issues that matter to voters in Charlottesville and Albemarle County are the same ones that resonate across the Commonwealth.

“I don’t know that it’s that different from what I’m hearing all across the state,” said Reid a former intern to Pres. Ronald Reagan and communications director for Sen. George Allen. “A lot of the most polarizing and controversial and, I would argue, negative things that have come up in public education in the last few years have been advanced by Sen. Hashmi on her watch. The trans issue and the constant conflict over boys’ and girls’ sports and privacy in women’s private spaces, I think these very unnecessary debates have been pushed by Sen. Hashmi and her colleagues.”

Reid said his father worked as a middle school principal and his mother an elementary school teacher, including, for a time, in Charlottesville. He said he wants to see public education “hold the teachers accountable, hold the students accountable. No more passing students through because they’re a certain minority group with a certain zip code that is considered to be a disadvantaged.”

Reid also said he would work to repeal the personal property car tax that, he said, Virginia has been talking about getting rid of for too long.

“The other thing that constantly comes up especially for the last month when people have paid their personal property car tax is, ‘Why are we continuing to pay this?’” Reid said by phone from a campaign stop in Roanoke. “You know how many years passed since the Gilmore administration when there was a general consensus that we wanted to get rid of this thing, and now people are still renting their car essentially from the government?”

Reid, the first openly gay Republican candidate in a statewide race, said his opposition to the same-sex marriage protections Democrats are pushing isn’t about blocking marriage equality. Instead, Reid said he supports same-sex marriage but not the proposed amendment to the Virginia constitution because he believes it infringes on the rights of people who object to homosexuality.

“I’m about freedom,” Reid said. “I think people should be free to make their own decisions and even though it hurts my feelings when a devout biblical Christian has concerns or isn’t in favor of gay marriage, I have to respect that too, because, especially as a political leader, I want to approach this not just about my personal beliefs but respecting other people’s personal beliefs.

“So no, I’m not in any way interested in having rights that the Supreme Court has granted to gay citizens like me rolled back, but I feel an obligation to protect people who may not agree with me.”

And, Reid said, he wants to bring back a level of civility to the discourse in Richmond, something he said existed when his father, John “Jack” Reid Sr., was serving nine terms in the House of Delegates.

“It wasn’t as vicious and as polarizing as it seems to be today,” Reid said. “And I’d like to be one of the reasonable voices to restore some normalcy to the capital.”