“April is the cruellest month.”
T.S. Eliot
March may be known for its madness, but we’re about to enter an anomalous April that will be one of the most consequential months Virginia has seen in a long time. Before the month is over, Virginia will set policy directions that will shape the state into the next decade and potentially beyond. We’ll also learn more about what kind of governor Abigail Spanberger will be, which normally would be the most important question but now may be the least.
Four dates are circled, at least figuratively, on our calendar.
April 13: That’s the deadline for the governor to act on all the bills that the General Assembly recently passed.
April 21: This is the special election on the proposed constitutional amendment to allow a new congressional map, drawn by Democrats, to take effect.
April 22: The legislature returns to Richmond for the reconvened session, aka “the veto session,” even though there may not be any vetoes to deal with — but lots of amendments.
April 23: The legislature continues meeting in a special session aimed at doing something it couldn’t do during the regular session: pass a budget.
Those three back-to-back dates are going to be wild.
Let’s look at the implications of each of these.
April 13: We’ll find out what kind of governor Spanberger will be
The conservative social media sphere has been excoriating Spanberger since day one for dragging Virginia to the left but, in truth, the governor has not done all that much yet. Most of the things she’s been roughed up for are things the legislature did, or proposed to do, not her. Instead, so far, she’s done exactly what she said she’d do: appoint new members to some college boards, restrict Virginia’s cooperation with immigration authorities, sign the enabling legislation on redistricting, name a cabinet-level energy czar and so forth. Disagree with those actions if you want, but none of those should come as a surprise.
Now comes showtime.
Spanberger will have more than 1,100 bills from the legislature to act on once all the paperwork is done. How she deals with them will define her governorship more than anything else she’s done so far. Virginia governors have three options: sign a bill, veto it, or send it back to the legislature with proposed amendments. Given that she’s a Democrat with a Democratic legislature, I’d be shocked if there were any vetoes, unless maybe there’s some technical bill somewhere that’s gotten no attention. Instead, we should look to see what kind of amendments Spanberger proposes. This is where she will really begin to shape her governorship.
Here are three bills where I’d keep a close eye to see what amendments, if any, might come down from the governor’s office: cannabis, gaming, collective bargaining.
The General Assembly voted to legalize retail sales of cannabis and Spanberger has said she’d sign that, but there may be details in the bill she wants changed — we’ll see. Some cannabis activists, ironically, have been advocating a delay to the Jan. 1, 2027, start date, making the case that small operators won’t have time to grow a crop by then so medical marijuana companies will be the only ones with a ready supply of cannabis.
The General Assembly expanded gaming — it legalized so-called “skill” games and added Fairfax County to the list of communities eligible to host a casino. It also defeated online gaming, and put off action on a proposed gaming commission to regulate all these gaming enterprises. Secretary of Agriculture and Forestry Katie Frazier (whose department includes consumer matters) told a General Assembly committee that “Governor Spanberger is deeply concerned about any discussions of gaming expansion in Virginia without first establishing a single entity with clear authority, consistent standards, and strong compliance and enforcement capabilities.” It’s not hard to imagine the governor sending back one of these gaming bills with an amendment to create a gaming commission.
Finally, the legislature passed a bill to allow public employees to unionize. The governor is coming under pressure from both sides on this. If approved, this would have implications for local governments and local budgets long after this governor has passed into history.
April 21: To gerrymander or not to gerrymander?
However Virginia votes in the special election will send a message nationally: either Virginia really doesn’t like President Donald Trump (if “yes” wins) or Virginia hates gerrymandering more than it hates Trump (if “no” wins).
Either way, there will be fallout that continues beyond Election Day. If redistricting fails, Republicans will chortle and Democrats will have a lot of explaining to do. There will also be some Democratic congressional candidates who will no longer have a district to run in — J.P. Cooney, Dan Helmer and Dorothy McAuliffe are all running for the party nomination in a reconfigured 7th District that would have no incumbent. Without that district, they’d be in districts with established Democratic incumbents that they may have no interest in challenging.
If redistricting passes, then we’ll have clarification about what this year’s races look like. For instance, we really would have a Tom Perriello vs. Beth Macy primary in the 6th District, and we’d find out if Roanoke Del. Sam Rasoul intends to jump in. A “yes” vote may also have implications for the 2029 statewide races for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general. It’s not hard to see some Republicans who are squeezed out of House seats turning into statewide candidates in 2029.
The districts that would come into effect with a “yes” vote would exist through the 2030 elections; a new census then will prompt a redrawing in 2031. By that point, this “temporary” amendment would have expired and the constitutional requirement for a bipartisan commission to handle redistricting would come back into force. If the “yes” side wins, will Democrats be tempted to pursue another amendment to tinker with how that commission works?
A “yes” vote would also set off Republican lawsuits to challenge the map as being in violation of the constitutional requirement for “contiguous and compact territory.” The proposed districts are certainly contiguous, but many of them are demonstrably less compact than the ones we currently have. There are also existing lawsuits that are pending before the Virginia Supreme Court that challenge the process by which the amendment was put on the ballot. This is my periodic reminder that the court won’t rule on those legal challenges until after the election — because that’s what a 1912 case said to do. That means it’s entirely possible the redistricting amendment passes but the court invalidates the whole thing as procedurally flawed. The seven most important votes won’t be cast until after Election Day.
Got questions about redistricting? We might have the answers on our Voter Guide. If not, let us know and we’ll try to answer them.
April 22: What will the legislature make of the governor’s amendments?
Since we don’t know what those amendments will be, we don’t know how the legislature will react, so there’s not much else that can be said here. Politically, there’s fascinating context, though: On the one hand, we have a governor and a General Assembly run by the same party. On the other hand, this governor has no experience in the General Assembly, and senior legislators regardless of party always regard governors as temporary administrators while “the legislature goes on forever,” as the saying goes. That means there is no guarantee of automatic agreement, especially on issues that aren’t ideological in nature.
April 23: The budget will set economic development policy for years to come.
The reason the General Assembly didn’t pass a budget during its regular session was a House-Senate conflict over data centers. More specifically, Senate Finance Committee chair Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, wants to end the state’s tax incentives for data centers eight years early — in 2027 rather than 2035.
Some see these tax abatements as a giveaway — the state passed up $1.9 billion in tax revenue last year. Others see them as a bargain — those abatements should be weighed against $9.1 billion in gross domestic product from data centers in Virginia.
Likewise, some see ending these incentives as good tax policy. Others see it as the state breaking its word and sending a signal to other business sectors that Virginia can’t be trusted to keep its word. There are also those in rural Virginia, particularly Southside, who contend that ending these incentives earlier than planned means that rural areas would be denied a shot at attracting data centers — and the tax revenue and jobs they bring — just as data centers are showing interest in the region. Cardinal has written about the Danville-based Future of the Piedmont Foundation criticizing a premature end to these tax breaks; the Richmond Times-Dispatch recently reported on the concerns of counties along Interstate 95 south of Petersburg. Spanberger has floated taxing data centers based on how much electricity they use; Del. Wren Williams, R-Patrick County, has suggested this be based on a community’s level of economic distress, so that rural areas would get a more attractive rate.
Whatever is decided will shape Virginia’s economic development policy for years to come. So will whatever budget gets passed, particularly as it relates to funding for an inland port in Washington County and the medical school and biomedical research institute in Roanoke.
Come the end of April, we’ll know a lot more about where Virginia is headed.
Come Friday, I’ll have another update on early voting in the special election, plus whatever other political news happens this week. You can find that in West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter. Sign up here:
