https://www.perryforvirginia.com

He mentions two localities that are doing it “the right way” - Mecklenburg and Botetourt while taking aim at the underlying problem in Loudoun.

Delegate Reid has also made news on the topic of campaign integrity in his recent op-ed which is pasted below.

Read Delegate Reid’s op-ed in Cardinal News:

State legislator says Clean Virginia’s demands constitute ‘bullying and threats’ Del. David Reid of Loudoun County says the “transactional nature of the relationship” feels inappropriate.

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If you would like to schedule an interview simply email me at csaxman@vafree.org with some proposed dates, times, and topics.

If you run economic development for North Carolina, Florida, or Tennessee, CNBC’s #3 ranking for Virginia is good news.

Not just because their methodology is wrong (who knows? It changes every year), but because of what it does to us - it keeps us complacent and less willing to make the necessary changes in order to be competitive.

In 2023, Bloomberg ran a story about how in just two years 2.2 million people moved to the South.

Click here:

A $100 Billion Wealth Migration Tilts US Economy’s Center of Gravity South Some 2.2 million people moved to the Southeast in just over two years. That’s roughly the population of Houston.

It’s a long, informative article but for all the words, I found one missing:

Virginia.

There was no CNBC ranking in 2020 due to COVID but this is Virginia’s record since:

2021 - #1

2022 - #3 (cue gasp)

2023 - #2

2024 - #1

2025 - #4 (passes out)

2026 - #3

According to the Bloomberg article in 2021 and 2022, over 2,200,000 people move to the American South with $100,000,000,000.00 in tow.

Virginia was largely driven through or flown over.

To be fair to our beloved Commonwealth, Virginia has seen net international migration of over 40,000 in 2025 alone. This is largely due to growth in the tech sector - which many are now attacking - but it basically nets us out to minimal population growth. Another caveat - the incomes associated with that influx are also higher than the ones leaving.

Let’s be honest - last year North Carolina added Net Domestic Migration by over 85,000 and Tennessee added over 42,000.

So, yeah - their economic development departments must be loving our CNBC rankings, self-loving press releases, and myopic op-eds.

It gives Virginia a reason to stop looking at the one thing that actually predicts where business goes next: where people and money are already moving.

Every quarter Virginia spends celebrating #3 instead of reading its own migration data is a quarter competitors get to keep winning that argument uncontested.

Psychologists call the underlying failure Belief Perseverance: a belief survives contradiction even after the evidence behind it is gone.

Virginia’s version is worse than the textbook case, because the contradicting evidence didn’t arrive after the #3 and get explained away — it was published first.

The Virginia Manufacturers Association ranked the state #9 in manufacturing competitiveness, down from #7, in January 2026.

Chief Executive’s CEO survey put Virginia at #10 in April. Both existed months before CNBC’s July 9 ranking.

Virginia FREE’s own migration analysis, released July 13 using Census and IRS data, put Virginia at #36. Not top ten. Thirty-six.

Virginia’s #3 belief wasn’t left unrevised by later data — it was built on top of contradiction that already existed.

The wealth math underneath is its own warning.

Virginians who left the state in 2023 averaged $89,994 in income, versus $82,947 for those arriving — a gap that’s held every year since 2005. Florida is the single biggest destination for that departing wealth, at $118,662 a year on average.

Migration is the fastest, least-spinnable signal in economic development — it shows in near real time whether a state’s pitch is actually working.

Virginia’s #3 says the pitch is landing.

The migration data says otherwise, and has for years. A state that keeps citing the flattering composite while ignoring the revealed-preference data responds slowly to its own competitive erosion — exactly the condition a rival economic developer wants a target state to stay in.

Meanwhile, Virginia is adding cost at the precise moment resiliency should be the priority.

This year’s General Assembly passed several bills that will be adding to the Cost of Doing Business including a brand new paid family and medical leave program.

CNBC ranked Virginia #26 on Cost of Doing Business BEFORE that passed and they also rated us as #11 on Business Friendliness.

We added direct and compliance costs right as Virginia needs to be its most competitive — and they will not show up in a composite ranking until well after employers have already felt them.

That cost is landing on a state with less room to absorb it than the #3 headline suggests.

The federal government — Virginia’s largest single customer — is carrying $39.5 trillion in debt, headed past $40 trillion this fall, and Virginia’s own CNBC economy score already slipped from #14 to #23 this year on federal workforce and budget cuts.

Blame the president all you want - it’s legit - but it should underscore a flashing red light warning of an unsustainable reliance on federal government spending.

The 2013 sequestration cuts hit no state harder, concentrated in the same Northern Virginia region now leading the state in domestic-migration losses.

And the data center tax exemption fight this spring — a months-long standoff over whether Virginia would unilaterally alter a signed incentive agreement — did reputational damage with site selectors that no ranking has caught up to yet, win or lose.

So, what’s the Call to Action?

First off - this is not a knock on either party or any governor as I have been warning about CNBC’s rankings for close to a decade.

This is a call to stop pretending #3 means Virginia can absorb new cost, federal exposure, and reputational uncertainty without a plan that is honest about the real challenges we face. That plan must be flexible to match the velocity of change occurring globally.

Real resiliency looks like this: read migration and CEO-survey data as the operating scorecard, not the composite.

Model the compliance cost of this year’s new mandates against the states actually winning the migration numbers.

Build a federal-dependence diversification plan now, while there’s runway, not after the next sequestration.

And stop letting a beat-the-press-release number set the pace of a response that market behavior has already been demanding for years.

Our competitors are counting on Virginia not doing any of that.

The only real question is how long we intend to prove them right.

Yeah, the CNBC #3 ranking matters - but in which direction?

Better sleep with one eye open, folks.

Best version - h/t Hokies!

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Click here to register: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/mZJhwHVEQYiQXtQxfN1K0w

Topics:

1. CNBC Top States for Business Ranking - is Virginia REALLY #3? No.

2. Migration Ranking Comparisons

3. VCU Wilder poll - Spanberger, Data Centers, and more!

4. Midterm update

I asked a leading business investor who owns multiple businesses - multiple sectors with tens of thousands of employees about CNBC Quality of Life category (see below)

He was pejorative about CNBC being too political but also observed something of note on the younger workers surveyed who prefer states with more liberal positions on reproductive and voting rights along with more expensive policies on wage and paid leave etc:

their analysis is so biased and superficial that they’re missing the fact that a number of younger people’s tasks at work are being displaced by AI / business process management such that young people had better start worrying about their ability to get a job and a lot less whether they are able to get four day weekends working from home

Mid Term Polling

Dems +5 but with lower favorability?

Brace yourself for negative ads.

Voting early lessens the intensity as you will be taken off the hit lists.

Screenshot of CNBC Quality of Life ranking

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Population Shifts

Top Ten CNBC Best States to Live

Population Shift for CNBC’s Best States to Live?

29,040 moved into the their Top Ten States.

86,681 moved out.

Net: Loss of 57, 641

Top Ten CNBC Worst States to Live

Population Shift for CNBC’s WORST States to Live

14,387 moved out of just one state - Louisiana.

225,898 moved INTO the other NINE.

Net: GAIN of 211,511

Coming tomorrow- Where Virginia Ranks in Net Migration of People and Money

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Top 17 States for Population and AGI Gain

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Two metrics - where people and money are going - tell me what the market is actually doing.

Here are some operative pop culture references to help make my point:

1. Yogi Berra on why he doesn't go to a famous St. Louis restaurant:

   “Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded."

2. Billy Beane in Moneyball

   “If he’s a good hitter, why doesn’t he hit good?

3. Big Tom Callahan in Tommy Boy

   "In auto parts, you're either growing or you're dying. There ain't no third direction."

Why just two metrics? Well, it’s objective, data centric, and easy to understand.

Let’s look at how those two metrics work out.

Do with it what you will.

<drumroll>

And the Top 17 States for Business are…

Where People and Money Are Going

Two different scoreboards

This analysis combines two datasets:

• People: latest Census Bureau net domestic migration, July 2024–June 2025 (Vintage 2025 population estimates).

• Money: latest IRS interstate migration data, measuring the adjusted gross income (AGI) carried by taxpayers who moved between states, filing years 2022–2023.

The datasets cover different periods because IRS income data arrive with a lag.

Taken together, the pattern is clear: the South is leading both scoreboards.

The real story:

The Carolinas have Big Mo - mentum

The most interesting development is not Texas or Florida — it’s the emergence of North Carolina and South Carolina.

North Carolina added more domestic migrants than any state in the country in the latest Census year (84,064).

South Carolina posted the highest percentage population growth of any state (1.5%) and ranked third in raw numeric domestic migration.

The Carolinas increasingly combine the advantages that once drove the Florida and Texas booms: comparatively affordable housing, attractive smaller cities, strong job markets, and business growth.

Florida’s numbers may be even more important

Florida fell to eighth in current domestic migration (+22,517), down sharply from its post-pandemic peak (it gained over 300,000 net domestic migrants as recently as 2022).

Yet it attracted more than $20 billion in net annual adjusted gross income from interstate movers — nearly four times Texas’s gain, and the largest AGI inflow of any state by a wide margin.

Not all migrants are economically equal: a state can attract 80,000 new residents while another attracts a quarter as many people carrying substantially more income and investment capacity.

The Virginia angle

Virginia does not make the top third on either scoreboard. I will release that later.

Yeah, we need to talk.

And it’s not one of those good “we need to talk” talks.

And it’s not about Democrats or Republicans - I have criticized CNBC’s methodology for years regardless of who’s in office.

North Carolina, Tennessee, and South Carolina are increasingly Virginia’s most important economic competitors — not just for corporate relocations, but for the human and financial capital that seeds future businesses.

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<Shocked Face Emoji>

From the article:

China, Russia and, to a lesser extent, Iran have sought to use state media outlets to turn the controversy over data centers in the United States into “a domestic fracture point,” according to a new analysis by Alethea, a threat intelligence company, which identified scores of articles and posts on social media this year.

Hmmm…

Now why would China, Russia, Iran and other countries want US fighting with each other?

Is it though?

From the Althea report (linked HERE):

Data centers are the current target, but they’re also a preview of a repeatable playbook: local opposition, hijacked and amplified by foreign state actors into a national narrative.

Any industry that becomes the center of the next hyperlocal fight should expect the same tactics, which is why what’s happening to data centers right now is worth studying well beyond this one sector.

Rinse and Repeat.

A lot of folks out there are scoring early political points taking easy whacks at the political piñatas that are data centers and AI, but THE FUTURE is the digital economy.

Fear sells. Always has and always will.

One of the many lessons of being directly involved in politics for the last <checks calendar> <hits calculator> 34 years, is that the first Punch delivered is rarely, if ever, the knockout blow.

It’s almost always the Counter Punch that decides.

Reports like these show clearly that you can bludgeon political candy filled paper mache made piñatas to entertain the party kiddos, but those same kids are staring down a loaded double barrel shotgun of a fiscal and monetary MESS that’s no laughing matter.

Or are we missing something?

“But the stock market!” - you say?

Yeah, candy filled…

Did I stutter?

If you print money, it WILL go somewhere. It HAS to.

Money, like water, flows to a path of least resistance.

So does Bravo Sierra on social media.

We should have substantive, honest conversations about the future and what will build it so that we can decide the best future for our kids and grand kids.

Lee Iacocca famously said, “Lead, follow, or get out of the way.”

Sage advice for the next generation of electeds.

(looking at you, Gen Xers)

LL? What you got for us?

Yo, Adrian!

Just Win, Baby!

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Takeaway:

Spanberger is prepared, pragmatic, and substantive on the key issues surrounding Data Centers, AI, and Dominion Energy merger while focused on rate payers.

Grade: A+

Calling it like I see it. This is how a governor should represent the Commonwealth.

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That is the wrong debate.

The real challenge is whether communities, businesses, utilities, investors and public leaders can work together to support the infrastructure a growing digital economy requires while planning carefully for the future.

Digital infrastructure has become as essential to modern life as roads, railroads, ports and power plants were for previous generations. Local businesses, schools and hospitals rely on it. Families rely on it every day, often without realizing it.

As demand for artificial intelligence, cloud computing, streaming, cybersecurity, advanced manufacturing and digital services continues to grow, communities across the country are grappling with how best to accommodate that growth while preserving the qualities that make those localities strong.

The answer is not to stop progress. Nor is it to ignore legitimate community questions. The answer is to ensure growth is guided by transparency, collaboration and careful planning.

Virginia’s clear example

Virginia offers a clear example of why this issue is more connected than it first appears.

Through retirement accounts, pension funds, mutual funds, index funds and direct investments, millions of Americans own shares in the hyper-scale technology companies driving the data center boom.

The Virginia Retirement System reported a record investment portfolio of $122.8 billion for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2025, and paid $6.8 billion in retirement benefits that year, with investment earnings funding approximately two-thirds of those payments.

VRS holds significant positions in companies such as Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Apple and NVIDIA — each of them central to the artificial intelligence, cloud computing and digital services now reshaping Virginia’s power grid, economy and landscape.

That means Virginia teachers, state employees, law enforcement officers, local government workers and other public retirees have a direct interest in the long-term health of the companies building America’s digital infrastructure.

That gives Virginians more than a financial stake in the industry’s success. It gives them a responsibility — and an opportunity — to help shape how that success is achieved.

Connection matters

If retirees and future retirees benefit when artificial intelligence, cloud computing and digital services grow, then they also have an interest in making sure the infrastructure behind that growth is built the right way.

Poor planning, grid strain, water conflicts, local opposition and permitting battles are not just public policy problems. They are business risks. They can delay projects, raise costs, damage reputations and invite political backlash that freezes investment for years.

Building the future the right way is not only a civic obligation — it’s in the financial interest of the very people who own pieces of this industry. That is the tens of millions of Americans who own shares of those businesses.

That does not mean dismissing local concerns. It means embracing them.

Data centers consume significant amounts of electricity and, in some cases, water. Their clustering in certain regions can stress infrastructure that was never designed for them. Land-use conflicts are real. Communities deserve transparency about energy demand, water usage, tax treatment, noise, transmission needs and long-term infrastructure obligations.

The answer should be collaboration, not obstruction.

History’s warnings

Railroads, highways, petrochemicals, manufacturing and even the early internet created enormous public value. They also left behind avoidable costs when builders, regulators, investors and communities failed to work together early enough.

Critics often waited until damage was done. Builders too often treated every concern as opposition. Regulators reacted late. The result was mistrust, litigation, delay and problems that became far more expensive to solve later.

We should not repeat those mistakes with the digital economy.

The better path is practical engagement. Investors, tech firms, utilities, local governments, environmental advocates and community leaders should be at the same table before conflict hardens into opposition.

There is room for common ground: smarter grid planning, water recycling, waste heat recovery, co location with new energy generation, improved transmission, workforce partnerships and community benefit agreements that make host regions genuine partners.

Owners should help lead

Shareholders can ask better questions. Pension trustees can press for stronger, careful planning. Civic leaders can demand transparency without demonizing investment. Companies can earn trust by treating communities as partners rather than obstacles.

For Virginia retirees, this is not an abstract debate. It is about the security of retirement checks, the competitiveness of the commonwealth, and the kind of economy their children and grandchildren will inherit.

A stronger digital economy can support public pensions, expand opportunity and strengthen Virginia’s position as a national leader. Poor planning can trigger backlash, litigation and lost opportunity for everyone.

Our children and grandchildren will live in a world shaped by digital infrastructure. They should inherit neither a stalled economy nor a damaged landscape. They should inherit what we have painfully learned: it is better to plan, cooperate and correct the mistakes of the past before they become the burdens of the future.

We’re already $40 trillion in debt. Actually, we’re not — our kids are.

The digital economy is the future. We can build it together. That is the right way.

This column was originally published in the Cardinal News on 6/22

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Virginia knows this ritual well. All too well.

The Commonwealth has been one of the most consistently successful states in CNBC’s rankings since the series began, including multiple No. 1 finishes and a long record near the top.

Why? Well, we line up with their methodology.

There is only one problem with treating the CNBC ranking as a clean year-over-year report card: the test keeps changing.

They examine categories such as workforce, infrastructure, economy, education, cost of doing business, business friendliness, technology and innovation, access to capital, cost of living, and quality of life. All real factors that businesses consider when deciding where to grow, hire, and invest.

But CNBC changes the weighting of those categories every year. It’s like baking from memory without measuring.

That means a state is not simply being measured against its prior performance. It is also being measured against a revised definition of what matters most - according to CNBC.

Comparing 2025 to 2026:

Category - Point Change - 2026 Category Ranking

(Total 2500 points available)

1. Economy - 445 points to 415 points (#2 category)

2. Infrastructure - 405 points to 440 points (#1 category)

3. Workforce - 335 points to 345 points (No change)

4. Cost of Doing Business - 295 points to 285 points (#5 category)

5. Business Friendliness - 270 points to 225 points (#7 category)

6. Quality of Life - 265 points to 290 points (#4 category)

7. Technology & Innovation - 255 points to 245 points (#6 category)

8. Education - 110 points to 100 points (#9 category)

9. Access to Capital - 60 points to 105 points (#7 category)

10. Cost of Living - 60 points to 50 points (#10 category)

In 2025, Virginia fell from No. 1 to No. 4. That result was interpreted by some as evidence that Virginia’s business climate had weakened substantially.

It was also part of the 2025 gubernatorial election.

The 2025 methodology placed heavy emphasis on economic risk, including exposure to federal budget cuts and trade pressures. That particularly affected Virginia because of its large federal workforce, federal contracting base, defense presence, and proximity to Washington.

Now, in 2026, CNBC has reportedly moved Infrastructure back to the top-weighted category, at nearly 18 percent of a state’s total score. Read this year’s methodology : https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/16/2026-americas-top-states-business-rankings-methodology.html

Economy, last year’s top category, slips to second.

That matters enormously for Virginia because infrastructure is one of the Commonwealth’s strongest categories. Virginia ranked near the top in infrastructure, education, technology, and access to capital. Those are not minor advantages. They are the foundation of Virginia’s modern economy.

Virginia may not drop at all

The new data center energy usage tax is a major policy development. A tax projected to raise $1.2 billion over the biennium is not a rounding error.

It raises legitimate concerns about cost of doing business, regulatory predictability, and whether Virginia is starting to treat one of its most important growth sectors as a revenue target rather than a strategic asset.

Timing matters

If CNBC’s 2026 calculations were substantially completed before the data center tax was finalized, the new levy may not be fully reflected in the ranking. They should be out in the next two weeks.

CNBC may capture the broader debate over data centers, energy demand, and infrastructure strain, but it may not fully score the final policy result.

That means Virginia could still benefit from its underlying infrastructure strengths even as the General Assembly has just created a new business-climate risk.

Irony

The very industry being taxed — data centers — is one of the reasons Virginia ranks so highly on infrastructure and technology. Northern Virginia is not merely a local market; it is a global digital infrastructure hub.

Its concentration of fiber, power planning, cloud investment, federal customers, and technical talent is a major reason the Commonwealth remains central to the future of artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and cloud computing.

CNBC’s 2026 methodology will probably cushion Virginia from the political consequences of the new tax.

If Infrastructure is the top-weighted category, Virginia’s data center ecosystem may continue to lift the state’s ranking even as state policymakers make that same ecosystem more expensive.

That is the larger problem with rankings.

They can tell us where a state stands, but they do not always tell us where a state is headed. A ranking is often a snapshot.

Business decisions are made on trend lines.

Virginia’s Trend Line

The Commonwealth still has enviable strengths: a top-tier education system, a deep talent pool, the Port of Virginia, Dulles, Hampton Roads, a powerful defense economy, unmatched federal contracting expertise, and world-class digital infrastructure. Those assets do not disappear because of one budget deal.

But business climate is also about trust.

When a state builds an industry through long-term tax policy and then abruptly considers dismantling that policy, investors notice.

When the compromise becomes a large new energy tax, they notice that too. Even if CNBC’s 2026 ranking does not punish Virginia heavily, capital markets may.

That is why policymakers should be careful about over-celebrating if Virginia remains at #4 or somewhere close to the top.

A strong CNBC ranking would not prove that the data center tax was harmless. It might simply prove that CNBC’s methodology, timing, and category weights did not fully capture the consequences yet.

By the same token, a modest drop would not mean Virginia is suddenly uncompetitive.

The Commonwealth remains one of the best states in America for business; however, our policy signals have also made us less reliable.

CNBC’s rankings are more interesting than they are valuable. While they focus attention and comparison while giving governors, legislators, business leaders, and voters a common scoreboard - they also don’t make decisions like capital markets, CEOs, and Boards of Directors who read trend lines.

When the scoreboard changes its formula every year, we should read the results with humility.

Virginia may not fall much in 2026.

It may even hold at No. 4. But that should not lull anyone into thinking the recent budget fight was cost-free.

The ranking may be a lagging indicator.

The real test will be whether Virginia continues to attract the next generation of private investment — not just because of what CNBC measures today, but because businesses believe the Commonwealth will remain predictable tomorrow.

Final Analysis

Our CNBC 2026 Ranking will likely not move much, not because Virginia hasn’t changed, but because CNBC did.

Again.

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Why Worry?

Click here to register and join:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/35VMZQ8OTH2wPDrLOOc_YA

Topics:

1. Virginia Budget Deal - it’s not a tax, it’s a fee.

2. U.S. Secretary of Treasury - Scott Bessent in Yahoo News!

   Except for inflation — which is I believe going to be a short term blip — the economic data is very strong.

3. Gas Prices back to pre-Iran War level - could fall even more

4. Generic Ballot - GOP closes gap - 8 point lead now under 5 in less than three weeks.

5. Politically - Inflation, Cost of Living, and Affordability still up for grabs

Don’t tell Bessent:

What a Fool Believes - Doobie Brothers

Fool in the Rain - Led Zeppelin

Foolish - Ashanti

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Recent Social Media Posts

From Speaker Don Scott:

And from State Senator Louise Lucas:

Note language change - the tax exemption is now a TAX CREDIT.

House Leaders to have press conference at 11am this morning on their budget proposal.

Here is the House Appropriations Committee budget proposal on Data Centers:

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Click here to register:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/2CL4PRwFTSmJak30PluJoA

Topics:

1. Budget - White smoke is no joke

2. Virginia Tech DRAMA continues - off to court we go!

3. 2029 Previews - Will it be Gov. Youngkin 2.0 vs Speaker Don Scott?

4. But first - what about 2027 Spanberger Midterms?

5. But before that? Oh yeah! Trump 2.0 the ‘26 Midterms

Top Three Summer Songs

(according to Rolling Stone Magazine)

1. Chic - Good Times (yes, I had that album!)

2. Martha and the Vandellas! Dancing in the Street

3. Marvin Gaye - Got To Give It Up!

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According to sources close the negotiations, Senate Finance and Appropriations Chair Louise Lucas and House Appropriations Chair Luke Torian are meeting today in order to begin the final phase of the Biennial Budget.

First things first

They have to agree how much money the Commonwealth will take in and then decide on how to allocate it over the next two years beginning July 1st.

Governor Abigail Spanberger announced that the updated forecast that she called for will yield an additional $922mm for the biennium. RTD Article here

Over at Cardinal News comes this headline: Virginia is on track to post two straight years of job losses. It’s not just federal job cutbacks that are pulling the state’s economy down. Even if there had been no federal job cuts, the state would have still lost jobs, according to federal economic data. Here’s why.

And there was this article (good reporting by Dave Ress btw) Virginia headed for small recession, Weldon Cooper forecast says

In speaking with people familiar with the protracted budget negotiations, the two chambers have never been THAT far apart but the new revenue forecast presents problems for decision making.

Yes, it’s always better to bring in more money but…

1. Will it be there? #JobLossesAndSmallRecession

2. Is it one time money?

3. Will it raise the base budget?

Regardless, the House will reconvene on the 18th and the Senate on the 22nd to finish their tasks.

The Biennial Budget will then go to Governor Spanberger for her consideration.

Given the short amount of time remaining for passage before a shutdown (no that was never going to happen) and given the even shorter tempers around Capitol Square, the final product should be - to say the least - interesting.

Songs with Ends:

This is the end
Hold your breath and count to ten
Feel the Earth move and then
Hear my heart burst again
For this is the end
I’ve drowned and dreamt this moment
So overdue, I owe them
Swept away, I’m stolen

Let the sky fall
When it crumbles
We will stand tall
Face it all together
Let the sky fall
When it crumbles
We will stand tall
Face it all together
At Skyfall
At Skyfall

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end

Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I'll never look into your eyes again

Can you picture what will be?
So limitless and free
Desperately in need
Of some stranger's hand
In a desperate land

BUT WAIT!

ONE MORE TIME! Every year since 1619 - LET’S GOOOO!!!

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Weekly Zoom returns today at 11:00am

Click here to join: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/gpDZdw9wQ_CsNUU4u8Korw

Topics:

1. Virginia Budget Impasse

2. Spanberger and GA Democrats

3. Rocovich fired from Va Tech Board

4. Preview Congressional Races - Old Maps are back

5. US Senate Races - Gas Prices not the only thing hurting GOP

My Intersection column from yesterday:

Texas GOP Senate Nomination - Time and Money Wasted

FRIDAY!

Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz opens his Wall Street Journal op-ed by celebrating Washington state’s extraordinary economic rise — built over half a century by Microsoft, Amazon, Costco, and Starbucks into a global hub of technology, innovation, and logistics.

That era succeeded, he argues, because civic leaders understood private enterprise and the public good as partners, not enemies.

That compact is now broken.

Schultz catalogs Seattle’s visible decay: chronic homelessness, persistent budget deficits, declining public safety, falling foot traffic, slower tech hiring, and widening downtown vacancies.

He singles out Mayor Katie Wilson for treating employers as political foils rather than partners, vilifying the very businesses whose tax revenue funds city government. Starbucks has already responded — laying off 61 more Seattle workers on the same day the op-ed published, while pressing forward with a Nashville office slated to employ up to 2,000 people over five years.

Schultz is easy to dismiss as a billionaire protecting his tax bill.

He did, after all, sell the Seattle SuperSonics to an out-of-town buyer after calling the franchise a “public trust,” and he relocated to Florida after Washington passed its millionaires income tax.

But the SuperSonics episode is more than a character footnote — it is the opening chapter of the very story he is now warning about.

Seattle lost its NBA team because government and ownership could not make a deal on a new arena. Schultz moved on. The team moved on.

Sound familiar?

That is where the story stops being just about Seattle. Former Democratic Governor Christine Gregoire recently told the Association of Washington Business something her party rarely hears from one of its own:

I would suggest to you we don’t really have an income problem, we have a spending problem.

The state budget has ballooned from $33 billion when she left office to nearly $80 billion today — yet lawmakers still insist they need more revenue. Her sharper indictment was cultural: too few legislators have ever run a business, and it shows.

We’re answering it by stacking one more tax, one more rule, one more regulation…The one thing businesses don’t need is a lack of predictability.

Schultz adds:

The theory appears to be that prosperity can be mandated through redistribution rather than generated through growth.

Politicians in Richmond should read all of this carefully — because the same pattern is taking shape in Virginia.

With unified Democratic control of the governorship and General Assembly for the first time in years, the 2026 legislative session has produced a cascade of new employer costs and policy instability that, taken together, tells a troubling story.

Democrats advanced two sweeping workplace mandates — a state-run paid family and medical leave program funded by a new payroll tax, and a statewide paid sick leave requirement — that analysts say will ultimately show up as lower wages, fewer hours, slower hiring, and higher prices for Virginia consumers.

The session also brought proposals to repeal Virginia’s long-standing right-to-work law, restrict non-compete agreements, regulate employer use of AI in hiring, and phase in a $15 minimum wage — representing what employment lawyers called the most significant potential overhaul of Virginia workplace law in decades.

The highest-stakes fight, however, has been over the data center industry — the single largest engine of Northern Virginia’s economy.

Senate Democrats have moved to eliminate a $1.9 billion annual tax exemption that has made Virginia the data center capital of the world, an industry responsible for 74,000 jobs, $5.5 billion in labor income, and more than $9 billion in annual GDP.

Governor Abigail Spanberger and House Democrats resisted, warning that eliminating the exemption would damage Virginia’s business-friendly reputation and breach commitments the state had already made to the industry.

The impasse sent an unmistakable signal to every company considering Virginia for its next major investment: the rules can change, and political priorities can override contractual expectations.

Then there is the arena.

Remember the Monumental Deal?

Governor Glenn Youngkin negotiated a deal to relocate the Washington Wizards and Capitals to Alexandria’s Potomac Yard — two major franchises, a corporate anchor, thousands of construction and hospitality jobs, and national attention for the Commonwealth.

The Democratic-controlled Senate killed it.

Concerns about public bonds and taxpayer risk were legitimate.

But when scrutiny hardens into partisan denial of a governor’s win, the Commonwealth’s pro-business brand absorbs the damage regardless of the merits.

This is the Schultz/Sonics lesson applied to Virginia: at a time when other states are cutting taxes and lowering barriers to growth, Virginia Democrats are moving in the opposite direction — increasing the cost of employment, threatening the incentives that built a dominant industry, and blocking a marquee economic-development opportunity.

No single item breaks the Commonwealth.

But as Gregoire warned about Washington: it is the cumulative signal that matters.

Employers, investors, and franchises do not wait for a final straw.

They read the trend line — and they go where they are wanted.

Key Takeaways

• Schultz’s core warning: Seattle’s anti-business drift cost it Starbucks jobs; Nashville wins when Seattle alienates employers.

• The Sonics precedent: Civic and economic assets, once lost to politics, rarely return — the same lesson applies to arenas, headquarters, and industries.

• Gregoire breaks ranks: A prominent Democratic former governor says Washington has a spending problem, not a revenue problem, and that Olympia’s culture of dismissing business is driving decline.

• Virginia’s labor cost surge: Paid leave mandates, a payroll tax, minimum wage increases, right-to-work repeal efforts, and AI hiring regulations represent the most sweeping employer cost increases Virginia has seen in decades.

• Data center fight signals instability: Senate Democrats’ push to eliminate a $1.9B tax exemption — mid-contract — has stalled the state budget and rattled the industry that anchors Northern Virginia’s economy.

• The arena casualty: The Wizards-Capitals deal was a concrete economic-development win blocked by partisan Senate politics; D.C. kept its teams, Virginia kept the debate.

• The bottom line: Schultz’s warning applies equally to Richmond — do not assume companies, franchises, capital, or talent are captive. They go where they are wanted, and competing states are paying close attention.

Great lyrics by Peter Gabriel explain his decision to leave the band Genesis and strike out on his own in Solsbury Hill help make the point.

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Climbing up on Solsbury Hill
I could see the city light
Wind was blowing, time stood still
Eagle flew out of the night

He was something to observe
Came in close, I heard a voice
Standing, stretching every nerve
I had to listen, had no choice

I did not believe the information
Just had to trust imagination
My heart going, “Boom-boom-boom”
“Son, “ he said
“Grab your things, I’ve come to take you home”
Hey, back home

To keep in silence I resigned
My friends would think I was a nut
Turning water into wine
Open doors would soon be shut

So I went from day to day
Though my life was in a rut
‘Til I thought of what I’d say
Which connection I should cut

I was feeling part of the scenery
I walked right out of the machinery
My heart going, “Boom-boom-boom”
“Hey, “ he said
“Grab your things, I’ve come to take you home”
Hey, back home

When illusion spin her net
I’m never where I wanna be
And liberty, she pirouette
When I think that I am free

Watched by empty silhouettes
Who close their eyes but still can see
No one taught them etiquette
I will show another me

Today, I don’t need a replacement
I’ll tell them what the smile on my face meant
My heart going, “Boom-boom-boom”
“Hey, “ I said
“You can keep my things, they’ve come to take me home”

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Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/l926rEuaRX-R6q_ID8kzJQ

Topics:

1. Budget - We have a number!

2. How do we get TO that number?

3. Collective Bargaining Bill and others

4. Gerrymandering Amendment - SCOVA up next

5. 2027 Cycle - Look ahead based on Constitutional Amendment turnout

6. Cardinal News breaks down GOP Mail In Ballot operation:

GOP strategists video released:

“Should we develop a Mail In Ballot program?”

May 1, 2006 Top Song in America

May 1, 1976 Top Song in America

Top Song May 1, 1966

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Topics:

1. Tuesday’s Election - Is Virginia 10-1 or 8-3?

2. Virginia Supreme Court up next

3. Reconvene Session - General Assembly vs Governor

4. To Veto or Not to Veto - that is the question

5. Collective Bargaining

6. Marijuana Legislation

7. Data Centers

8. Should States regulate AI?

   

   Is Virginia 8-3 now or 10-1?

   

   Virginia is DEFINITELY D+3

   

   ON HOLD VIDEOS

   #1 Song April 1986

   #1 Song April 1976

#1 Song April 1996

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Virginia might not be 10-1 after all.

(Note the Virginia Tech mention - Go Hokies, your first national title will happen some day - Soil Testing and Bass Fishing notwithstanding)

Check out this - very early - data via X.com. This has not been verified yet.

With higher than expected turnout in the rural areas Virginia might have voted 8-3 vs. 10-1.

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again - pending verification. Yes, I am saying that twice!

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<End Scene>

The morning after any election, there’s a temptation to over read/think/feel the results.

Winners claim mandate.

Losers demand autopsy.

Both usually miss what’s staring them in the face.

What the numbers plainly say:

Virginia is a D+3 state and it performed D+3.

The analysis ends there.

Elections have three main elements:

1. Environment

2. Money

3. Candidate Quality

For this election 1 and 2 (environment and $) were clearly on the side of the Democrats in a D+3 state. Candidate Quality was a lone ballot question, so let’s call that a push.

Environmental Swings:

2008 - Democrat (Obama) wins Virginia 53-46 (+7)

2009 - Republican (McDonnell) wins Virginia 58-41(+17)

Swing - 24 points

2012 - Obama II - wins 51-47 (+4)

2013 - McAuliffe wins 47.75 to 45.2 (+2.5), but 6.5 points for Libertarian

Swing winnable for GOP - government shutdown and Obamacare website crash

2016 - Trump wins nationally; loses Virginia 49.75 - 44.4 to Hillary! (+5)

2017 - Northam wins 54-45 (+9)

More Dems +4

2020 - Biden wins nationally and Virginia 54-44 (+10)

2021 - Youngkin wins 50.5 - 48.6

Swing +12

2024 - Trump wins nationally; loses Virginia 51.8 - 46 (+5)

2025 - Spanberger wins 57-42 (+15)

More Dem +10

2026 - Democrats win 51.5-48.5 (+3)

Net from 2024?

GOP +2

What every serious observer should consider — Republican, Democrat, or neither — is what structural D+3 actually means for governance.

In the last decade, 31 House of Delegates seats have flipped from Republican to Democrat. Thirty-one.

That’s not a trend.

That’s a realignment, driven almost entirely by the advent of Donald Trump as a defining force in Virginia’s political culture. Suburban Virginia’s antipathy toward him is not shallow. It is intense, personal, and durable.

Republicans can be angry about that. Fine.

But here’s the honest question I’d put back to a Republican audience: would you prefer a Democratic president?

Because in Virginia, that’s the condition under which Republicans win back those seats and possibly the Executive Mansion.

That’s not spin — that’s just how this state has historically functioned. GOPeople haven’t adjusted their sails to that reality, and it shows.

On the ballot question itself, Republicans had a winnable argument. Polling I was involved with back in February showed a message that could move voters — specifically, using Abigail Spanberger’s own words from 2019 to persuade her coalition to stay home or reconsider.

Opponents of the ballot question didn’t deploy that message early enough, and they were massively outspent. Again.

When Youngkin and McAuliffe were on financial par, Youngkin prevailed. That’s not coincidence. Outspending your opponent by a lot, not a little, matters.

Yes, money matters.

Let’s pull back even further, because we need perspective.

People across the country were locked into a Virginia ballot question while the nation’s debt will cross $40 trillion in debt later this summer.

Nobody wants to talk about that.

We’re arguing about redistricting while mandatory entitlement spending threatens to swallow the federal budget whole. At some point, we owe future generations a reckoning with that — not another cycle of electoral theater.

What I found encouraging, oddly enough, is that the Madisonian system is still working.

The guardrails are being tested, but they’re holding. The people voted. Courts may still weigh in. Candidates will file. Campaigns will be run.

It’s messy, contentious, and sometimes dangerous — but it’s functioning.

Virginia is who we thought we were.

Closely divided, deeply divided, and still, somehow, deciding things together.

And without violence.

That’s the democratic republic our founders created.

That’s worth protecting — even when your side loses.

Rinse and repeat - thank, God.

Big Surprise!

That is where Virginia is according to the Cook Partisan Voting Index.

It was a deeply partisan question put to the voters and they responded accordingly.

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Cook Partisan Voting Index

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