In her first year in the state Senate, in 2024, Lashrecse Aird of Petersburg voted for a bill that would have limited the power of local governments to regulate (and discourage) solar projects.
This seemed a natural vote for a Democrat who wants to promote clean energy.
Many of her constituents, the ones in the rural part of her district, let her know otherwise. “People were really angry with me for voting for the bill,” Aird says. “Lesson learned the hard way.”
The lesson was that many rural residents don’t like solar energy — and they don’t want it in their county.
When Aird holds town hall meetings in the rural parts of her district, “the number one issue I hear about” is about solar, she says.
And it’s rarely in a good way.
During the past General Assembly, the state Senate took up a bill by state Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville, that dealt with solar projects. What that bill would have done depends on which side you want to believe. We’ll get to the details shortly, and then to how Aird’s hard-learned lesson factors in, but first let’s sketch the big picture.
The state’s Clean Economy Act, passed in 2021, mandates a carbon-free electric grid by 2050. That’s set off a wave of solar energy development across rural Virginia, particularly in Southside, where land is relatively flat and inexpensive. That solar boom has also generated opposition, largely from people who think solar farms are an ugly, industrial blight on the rural landscape. The number of solar projects that local governments are rejecting is rising, raising the question of whether the state will be able to meet its renewable energy targets set in the Clean Economy Act. Meanwhile, the growth of data centers is driving up the demand for electricity; one state reject says demand could triple by 2040 — which makes it even more imperative that the state develop more renewable energy or give up on those Clean Economy Act goals.
That led to the bill last year from state Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg, D-Henrico County, that would have prohibited localities from enacting certain types of restrictions on solar. Aird’s vote for that bill educated her about the intensity of opposition from her rural constituents. That bill died in the House of Delegates, but the issue hasn’t gone away. This year, Deeds had his bill that would have set up a state panel to advise local governments on solar issues and required each of the state’s planning districts to come up with regional energy plans “to meet the renewable energy and energy efficiency goals of the Commonwealth.”
Deeds and other proponents contended this bill didn’t take any power away from local governments, that it offered them help, and because planning districts are run by local government representatives, this actually empowered them. Critics, led by state Sen. Bill Stanley, R-Franklin County, countered with the “slippery slope” argument — that it would only take a few tweaks for some future legislature to use this language as the framework to start taking authority away from local governments and letting the state decide where solar projects should go.
The bill was expected to pass along party lines, which would have meant passage 21-19. Instead, when the roll was called, two Democrats did not vote “yes,” dooming the bill.
State Sen. Russet Perry of Loudoun County voted “no.” She later said in an interview with Cardinal that her rural constituents — and she does have some in western Loudoun and Fauquier County — were strongly against the bill. “It honestly wasn’t that hard of a vote for me,” she said. “My local towns were opposed to it [the bill], so I feel I was representing my constituents.”
The other Democratic senator who didn’t support the bill was Aird. She simply didn’t vote. I had hoped to talk to her then about her stance, but our schedules didn’t match up until recently. “I had been telling Creigh, been telling Schuyler, that this is a huge issue in my community and whether I supported this would depend on the final form,” she says. In the end, “the local governments I represent felt very distrustful.” As a result, “on the day of the vote the best I could do was not vote, but I could not support what came out of committee.”
The reasons why go back to those rural residents angry about solar that she heard from last year. As our politics have realigned along geographical lines, most Democratic legislators have no rural residents — and their urban or suburban ones are in no danger of having a solar farm in their neighborhood. Aird and Perry are among the few Democratic senators who do. Almost 40% of the voters in Aird’s district live in rural areas: Charles City County, Dinwiddie County, Prince George County, Surry County and Sussex County.
Deeds counters that he has a lot of rural constituents, too, and that’s true, although maybe not as many as Aird — it depends on how you count Albemarle County, which accounts for more than half his voters. In any case, Aird has more rural voters than most Democratic legislators — indeed, more than some Republican legislators from suburban districts.
“Sometimes people are surprised,” Aird says. “They say, ‘Oh, you’re a clean energy person, most of your district is eastern Henrico.’ But that doesn’t change the fact that I still represent rural communities.”
That’s made Aird a fascinating legislator to watch. On many issues, she’s been a predictable Democratic vote, but every now and then she isn’t — and the reason is her rural constituents. When she was in the House of Delegates, there was a gun bill that she couldn’t support — and then-Gov. Ralph Northam wasn’t happy about that.
“I feel like I’ve long had a relationship with trying to support our rural communities,” she says. “I remember getting a call from Northam on ‘red flag’ bills. Boy, was Dinwiddie super opposed to this. From their perspective, it’s a slippery slope. I was in a bluer district than I am now [and Democrats said] ‘Girl, you need to vote for this.’ I remember Northam getting on the phone with me, but I’ve always tried to be a good representative for the rural parts of my district.”
When Aird was in the House, she teamed up with Del. Will Morefield, R-Tazewell County, to push a bill that grants certain tax breaks to employers that locate in economically distressed areas. That seemingly unusual partnership seemed curious to many at the time, but both legislators recongized that the challenges that Morefield’s Southwest Virginia district and Aird’s more urban one around Petersburg faced were essentially the same: a lack of jobs.
“My initial years working with Republicans in Southwest Virginia — what it showed me is there are so many shared commonalities in our communities from a policy lens,” Aird says. “I found myself to be a really easy voice for rural areas.”
Now that she’s in the state Senate, she has a bigger district, and one that includes more rural voters than before. All that led Aird this year to a partnership with a different Republican legislator from Southwest Virginia. Aird was the Senate sponsor of a measure that Del. Israel O’Quinn, R-Washington County, carried in the House to initiate a study of whether the state should have a secretary of rural affairs. That idea originated with University of Virginia law professor Andrew Block — see my previous column on its origin — and it seemed political genius to get both a Democrat and a Republican pushing it. The resolution passed the Senate but died in a House committee; Aird said delegates were concerned that they were burdening the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission with too many studies to research. Aird says she’ll try again next year. She’s already talked with a policy adviser to Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic candidate for governor, about it and hopes soon to talk to a policy aide to Winsome Earle-Sears, the Republican candidate.
“I want to manage the expectation that this is something I care about,” she says. “I’m just hopeful that even if it’s not a Cabinet secretary, there is some designated entity” in the administration that can look at issues from a rural perspective. “Every policy category looks different in rural communities,” Aird says.
That brings us back to solar — which might be an easy vote for most Democrats but not Aird. She says that her support for green energy remains strong but that it shouldn’t be forced on unwilling rural communities. “It’s hard,” she says.” I know there have been significant arguments from my colleagues — we can’t continue to do nothing. But I think you’ll always find a hostile community if you try to force it upon them.”
She says there’s a lot of misinformation that gets circulated about solar, even wild stories about solar energy messing up people’s brains. “It reminds me of the conversation when 4G was coming in,” she says. Misinformation can be corrected (eventually, maybe), but the bigger problem, Aird says, comes from solar developers themselves. Some solar companies have come in with big promises that they couldn’t or didn’t keep, she says. (The county administrator in Mecklenburg County recently said the same thing; that early promises about how well-kept the sites would be sometimes haven’t panned out, with lots of runoff and other environmental issues.)
That has left many of her rural constituents bitter, Aird says. “Now when you talk about solar, it’s like solar is a bad word. There’s such a level of skepticism that you’re beginning with a deficit from the opening of the conversation.”
Many rural residents also feel they’re being forced to shoulder the full burden of producing energy, while metro areas seem to do nothing but consume it. If there are more solar projects in metro areas, even small ones, “maybe that will build some good will,” she says. (VanValkenburg has a bill pending before the governor that would do just that, although Youngkin tried, unsuccessfully, to make a dramatic rewrite during the recent veto session.) With the demand for power growing, she says, “we have got to figure this out.”
We just haven’t yet.
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