Last week I wrote a column about five ways that things could go wrong for Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger and the expanded Democratic majority in the House of Delegates. That prompted a reader in Floyd County to ask if I planned to write a matching column on five ways that things could go right. I wasn’t, but thought that was a pretty good idea, so here we go.
This one is a little harder to write and not just because it’s always easier to be a pessimist than an optimist.
I could just take the five things that could go wrong and flip them around.
Democrats risk overreach? Maybe they don’t overreach and govern with the “restraint” that House Speaker Don Scott promised.
Conflicts between the governor and the General Assembly? Maybe they don’t happen and everyone sings “Kumbaya.”
Conflicts with the Trump administration? Maybe those don’t happen, either.
Right-to-work? Maybe Spanberger and the Democrats can avoid an ugly fight with the business community.
Energy rates? Maybe those come down instead of going up.
OK, then, there you go, we’re done!
That seems too easy, though. There are some other things that would constitute wins for Spanberger. For instance:
- Her approval rating stays higher than her disapproval rating.
- Democrats retain control of the state Senate in the 2027 elections and maybe even expand their 21-19 majority.
- Democrats hold their new numbers in the House or even expand them in 2027. This may be hard to do. Democrats benefited this year from a blue wave of Democratic voters — but also a red riptide that saw the Republican vote collapse in many working-class precincts. It may be hard to duplicate those trends in two years. All those Democrats who won narrowly this year will have to win reelection in a different political environment — and one that likely will see a smaller electorate. That’s not to say Democrats can’t duplicate their feat, just that they’ll have to do so in different circumstances, circumstances that we can’t foresee right now. The odds might be on Democrats losing some seats in 2027, no matter how popular Spanberger is then.
All these are political, though. Ideally, political popularity is based on policy success, so here are some policy areas where Spanberger could score wins.
1. Economic growth exceeds expectations
This could be both easy and hard. Easy, because the expectations are so low. An economic forecast from the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia has warned of “continuous stagnation” in 2026 with virtually no job growth and only limited job growth in 2027. Anything that exceeds those dire warnings would be a win. That may also be hard to do; a governor can’t just sign an executive order to create new jobs. Every governor has to operate within the parameters of whatever the national economy — indeed, the global economy — is doing.
Sorry to slip back into being what Spiro Agnew once called “the nattering nabobs of negativism,” but the political danger for Spanberger is that the public doesn’t understand these forecasts and simply blames the governor for slow growth because she’s the governor, when Weldon Cooper says the real culprit is President Donald Trump. His tariffs have raised prices and his reduction of the federal workforce has had a unique impact on Virginia’s largest economic engine, Northern Virginia.
If Spanberger can keep expectations low — and it’s hard to get much lower than the state’s premier research center warning of “continuous stagnation” — then even small wins are a win.
2. Virginia reduces the amount of power it imports
Thanks largely to the energy-sucking demands of data centers, Virginia now imports more electricity than any other state. Much of that power is also more expensive than what we generate in-state, so one reason why our electricity rates are what they are is because we’re buying pricey out-of-state power (much of it generated from carbon sources, too).
If Virginia can reduce the power it has to import, that ought to count as a win. Ideally, that will also lead to lower rates, although that can be tricky. What’s trickier is finding ways to generate more power without provoking neighborhood complaints. Everybody wants the lights to come on but nobody wants a power plant near them. That brings us to this:
3. The strain on rural Virginia to produce power is reduced
This may seem a parochial concern, but we’re here to cover Southwest and Southside and there are many people in those regions who are fed up that their communities are the ones expected to generate the power for data centers in other parts of the state. More to the point: Many people don’t like to see farmland (or, for some, any land) surrendered to what they consider the industrial blight of solar power.
During the campaign, Spanberger talked about increasing “distributed solar,” aka “rooftop solar,” meaning calling on urban areas to produce more power. If rural areas saw urban ones doing more to produce power, they might not be as unhappy. Like many things, though, this is more complicated than it seems. Putting canopies of solar panels over parking lots sounds great, but the cost of doing so drives up the price, which runs counter to the goal of reducing energy prices.
I’m also not sure how to measure this, so maybe this isn’t a good category. Perhaps it should be framed this way: The production of power is more evenly distributed across the state. Rural Virginia would likely see that as a win, although metro areas may not.
Of course, given all of our energy demands, just avoiding rolling blackouts at peak demand times might be considered a win by some.
4. Virginia continues to see more people move in than move out
This comes under the heading of “people vote with their feet.” For more than a decade, Virginia saw more people moving out than moving in. The state was still gaining population, because births were making up the difference. Still, that continued out-migration suggested something was wrong with the state’s economy — it either couldn’t hold people in place or wasn’t attractive enough to move to. Glenn Youngkin has been more focused on this than any previous governor — he routinely talks about these migration trends, which have now reversed. That certainly counts as a win for Youngkin. Now it will be up to Spanberger to make sure those migration trends continue in Virginia’s favor. These are important because they fit into any governor’s larger economic goals: We need to make sure we have a talented workforce for the future. We can’t do that if we’re losing existing workers — and future workers in the form of high school and college graduates — to other states.
5. Housing becomes more available and more affordable
A study by the American Enterprise Institute Housing Center says Virginia needs 111,553 more housing units. That’s fewer than North Carolina, which is said to need 152,782, but that’s not much comfort to anyone looking for housing — or housing they can afford. Or maybe it needs more: A recent report from HousingForward Virginia and the National Zoning Atlas (which I’ll deal with in a future column) says we need 164,000 more units. Either way, there seems widespread agreement: We need more housing.
One reason that’s often cited for outmigration from Virginia — particularly Northern Virginia — is a lack of affordable housing. In this way, housing is an economic development problem. Just like how governors can’t just decree that jobs be created, governors can’t decree that housing be built, either. Local rules have a lot to do with where and how new homes are built. Still, if Spanberger can reduce Virginia’s housing shortage, that would count as a win.
What else?
I’ve intentionally left out a lot of partisan goals in favor of goals that would have more bipartisan support. There are also lots of other things that can be measured that might count as wins (or losses): Improving health rates, for instance. Falling crime rates. Rising education scores. Fiscal management: Can Spanberger get through her term without a tax increase, which would definitely run counter to her goal of “affordability”? Can we retain our AAA bond rating? Crisis management: How well does she manage some inevitable but unpredictable disaster?
This isn’t meant to be a comprehensive list. There is one score that I emphatically don’t think should count: CNBC’s annual “best states for business” list. While the data that goes into those scores are quite real, CNBC changes the weighting every year so it’s impossible to fairly compare one year’s scores with another — even though we all do so anyway.
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