The Alexandria arena bill isn’t as dead in the Senate as it may seem.

The 1987 movie “The Princess Bride” gave us many memorable phrases. One of those came from the character Inigo Montoya, who says: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

That phrase comes to mind as we consider the status of the proposed sports arena in Alexandria, a project with statewide fiscal implications, be they good or bad.

When the House Appropriations Committee last Friday added a reenactment clause to the legislation that would create a state authority to govern the project — meaning the legislation would have to be passed again before it took effect — the Stop the Arena coalition blasted out a cautiously celebratory email: “Key Committee Vote Signals Lawmaker Skepticism About ‘Monumental Opportunity’ at Potomac Yard.”

Cue Inigo Montoya: I do not think that vote means what opponents think it means.

The same with the decision by Senate Finance Committee chair Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, not to bring the arena bill up at all. 

On the surface, all this looks pretty bad for the arena’s prospects — the “Glenn Dome,” as Lucas called it as she took issue with its primary cheerleader, Gov. Glenn Youngkin. 

The truth is, it’s far too early to say that.

The arena deal may, indeed, fail, but not because of these two legislative actions. What’s really happening here is political deal-making — or, if you prefer, political posturing. In this case, the two may be indistinguishable.

Democratic legislators are intentionally making their own bills look like they’re in jeopardy because they want to extract more concessions from our Republican governor. 

There may, indeed, be legitimate policy concerns here, and I don’t mean to minimize those. The state’s never engaged in this kind of thing before — creating a state authority to deal with a sports-driven development — and legislators naturally have some questions about how the financing math would work. In a more neutral political environment, we might even call that fiscal conservatism, or at least fiscal prudence of a kind that Republicans would embrace. But what’s mostly going on here is politics, not policy.

Let’s consider the basic dynamics of this General Assembly session: We have a Republican governor and a Democratic legislature. If the governor wants to get anything done, he’s going to have to work with at least some members of the other party. He’s already pulled off two small feats: He’s persuaded two Democrats to introduce the arena legislation — and not just any two Democrats, either. In the House, the sponsor is House Appropriations Chairman Luke Torian, D-Prince William County. In the Senate it is, or rather was, Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax County. 

However, the governor wants this arena far more than either of them probably does. Meanwhile, Democrats care very deeply about some things he does not. The Richmond Times-Dispatch laid things out quite succinctly: “They don’t have the votes to override the governor’s veto, so they also want him to compromise on hot-button issues such as raising the minimum wage, expanding gaming with authority for a casino in Petersburg and skill games in retail locations, and establishing a legal market for cannabis sales.”

All the actions you’ve just seen in Richmond are about Democrats trying to raise the legislative price that Youngkin will have to pay for the arena deal. So first, they add the reenactment clause in the House. Notice that this clause requires a vote next year by the same legislators as this year. This is House Democrats’ way of reminding the governor that while he has veto power, they have a veto power of their own. They don’t have to pass this bill again unless they want to, thank you very much. 

Then Lucas personally deep-sixes the Senate version of the bill, introduced by her own party’s majority leader. Surovell did not seem particularly unhappy about this; he and Lucas appeared jointly to talk about the decision. 

So let’s step back and look at what’s going on here: The House passes the bill, but with an inconvenient provision. The Senate kills its version of the bill but knows full well that the House bill is coming its way. The arena legislation isn’t dead, but now there’s only one vehicle alive to carry it — Torian’s bill — and it will have to get past Lucas. 

We’re about to find out how good a negotiator Youngkin is — and how big a price he’s willing to pay for the arena. He’s made it clear he’s not interested in legalizing retail sales of cannabis, but Democrats sure are. Is he prepared to grudgingly accept retail sales as the price for an arena deal? As a Republican, he’s not inclined to believe the arguments about the need to raise the minimum wage. Same question, though. At some point, the price may become too high for Youngkin, but here’s the thing: He cares more about this than Democrats do. They’ll be unhappy if they spend the whole session working out the details of retail cannabis and Youngkin vetoes the measure, but they’re also convinced that eventually they’ll be about to get retail cannabis legalized. Youngkin may have just one shot to make this arena deal work. 

Lucas and Surovell said they were unhappy about the speech that Youngkin gave over the weekend at the Mock Convention at Washington and Lee University. The offending remarks: “Democrats today do not believe in — nor do they want — a strong America, an America with no rivals; they are content to concede, to compromise away, to abandon the very foundations that made America exceptional.” That struck me as pretty standard Republican fare, but General Assembly Democrats seized on those remarks anyway as a reason to be wary of making a deal. Lucas quickly reposted Youngkin’s remarks on Twitter/X the next day with this commentary: “This is the speech he gives while wanting us to compromise with him and give him the Glenn Dome?!?!”

I heard two telling things in what Lucas and Surovell had to say, in one venue or another. When Lucas announced she wouldn’t even bring the arena bill up for a vote, she posted on Twitter/X: “This is what happens when Executive Branch doesn’t operate in good faith and doesn’t have respect for the Legislative Branch.” (Whatever you think of Lucas, she’s a savvy negotiator. Her Twitter/X profile shows her wearing boxing gloves. She doesn’t play around.) In remarks to journalists, Surovell said of the governor: “We’re now in a whole different environment … and we have priorities that we want to see done, and he has priorities and wants to see done. It’s not going to be all his way. He’s not the CEO of Virginia; he’s the governor.” 

These are hardly the first legislators to think that way of a governor, any governor. Legislative leaders from both parties have long thought of governors as a temporary inconvenience, a mere administrator who would be gone in a few years while they remain in power. Governors can’t seek reelection, but virtually all legislative leaders are in safe seats from which they are rarely dislodged. No governor has ever liked those dynamics, but they’re nothing personal or ideological, they’re merely institutional. Legislative leaders have long believed they’re the ones who run the state, not the governor. In this case, the current legislative leaders are new to their particular roles, but well understand the power that comes with those positions and are eager to exert it. Meanwhile, they’re dealing not just with a governor from the other party, but a governor who is still relatively new to politics. The Democratic leaders are in the process of educating the novice Youngkin about how they think the relationship between the two branches should work. Lucas is, in effect, channeling another famous line from Inigo Montoya in “The Princess Bride.” In the movie, he says: “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” Lucas is indirectly saying: “Hello. My name is Louise Lucas. You disrespected my party. Prepare for your arena bill to die.”

Lucas hasn’t killed the arena deal entirely, but I don’t think she meant to. There are too many things she wants, too — all those issues listed above, plus one unique to her district, those irksome tolls on the tunnels from Portsmouth into Norfolk. I can easily see Lucas changing her mind about the legislation if Youngkin meets her demands; she can always claim the measure has been improved somehow. I can also see her letting the whole thing collapse, because getting two professional sports teams in Alexandria is not as important to her as a lot of other things are. Youngkin seems to recognize this. After the arena bill passed the House 59-40 on Tuesday, he issued a statement that name-checked some of the main concerns other legislators have voiced, and may want specific guarantees on: “From toll relief in Hampton Roads to WMATA [Metro] investments in Northern Virginia, from education investments in rural and urban school divisions to critical transportation arteries like I-81, Virginians know the revenues from this project will be felt in their communities. I’ve appreciated the deep engagement with legislators and their staff this week and we will continue to inform these discussions as the process moves forward.” 

We’ll soon see if Youngkin the former CEO can negotiate as good a political deal as he used to negotiate business deals.

For more on the proposed arena and what it means for the rest of the state, see two recent opinion pieces — one in favor, one against.