Republican and Democratic General Assembly leaders found civility amid the acerbic political landscape created by Virginia’s mid-decade redistricting effort in Roanoke on Friday during Cardinal News’ third annual Cardinal Way: Civility Rules luncheon.
The good-natured and bipartisan exchange on a variety of topics between House of Delegates Speaker Don Scott, D-Portsmouth, and Minority Leader Terry Kilgore, R-Scott County, turned partisan only toward the end of the hourlong conversation, when a question about redistricting was posed.
Cardinal News’ founding editor Dwayne Yancey moderated the discussion as a room of about 120 attendees listened and joined in at times, over soup, salad and desserts at the Jefferson Center in Roanoke.
The topics of discussion ranged from how the two parties plan to tackle the nationwide affordability crisis in Virginia to how they view data center tax subsidies, Interstate 81, paid family medical leave and efforts to repair or construct school buildings in Southwest and Southside Virginia.
Scott pointed out that about two-thirds of the more than a thousand bills that were passed during the 2026 legislative session had bipartisan support. Half of those that received bipartisan support were passed uncontested.
“We agree on much more than we disagree on,” Scott said of the two parties in the General Assembly. “We have a lot of commonality.”
Issues that the two leaders said their parties agree on include efforts to make medication and housing more affordable, raise teacher pay, maintain a business-friendly environment and lower energy costs.
Throughout the conversation, the two leaders of opposing parties threw friendly barbs at each other but ended the discussion with a handshake and a smile.
What’s ‘affordability,’ and how do we achieve it?
Scott and Kilgore were asked how they and their parties define “affordability” amid the growing nationwide economic crisis.
“If next month my bills are lower than this month, then that makes life more affordable for me,” Kilgore said.
He added that Del. Joe McNamara, R-Roanoke County, had introduced a bill to do away with the much hated “car tax,” but that bill died in the House. Del. Lily Franklin, D-Montgomery County, has also introduced a bill to study efforts to repeal the car tax — her bill passed the House but was continued to 2027 in the state Senate.
Kilgore said that efforts like reentering the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative or allowing state and local government employees to collectively bargain — both causes championed by Democrats — could cost Virginians more money. The General Assembly passed a bill to reenter RGGI, which will cause ratepayer’s energy bills to increase by about $2 per month.
Regarding collective bargaining, he said he fears property taxes in localities may increase to account for arbitration.
“We were a little bit different on the issue of affordability,” Kilgore said of the two parties’ approaches. “We’ve still got work to do.”
Scott said affordability is “in the eye of the beholder,” and that it not only is about lowering bills but means increasing pay as well. He pointed to a bill that passed the General Assembly to increase Virginia’s minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2028. Virginia’s minimum wage is currently $12.77 per hour.
“There’s nobody in this room that would work for [$7.25],” Scott said, referring to the current federal minimum wage. “You can’t support yourself or your family on that.”
A question handed up from the audience asked why the minimum wage couldn’t be regionalized. Scott replied that it would be very difficult to do so because people need to be free to move around the state.
“If you [increase the minimum wage] in one place, obviously people are going to go where the money is,” Scott said. “I think it would be short-sighted to limit it to just one region.”
Kilgore expressed some concern that small-business owners who live close to another state, like Tennessee, with lower minimum-wage requirements could be prompted to move across the state line. For that reason, he said, he is in favor of regionalizing the minimum wage.
Data centers are ‘the golden goose’
Scott and Kilgore largely agreed on the main issue that has caused a hitch in biennial budget negotiations: whether data centers and their parent companies should continue to receive tax subsidies.
Kilgore pointed out that localities that have data centers have seen a windfall in tax revenue.
“We have to keep something in play to make sure we don’t kill the goose that lays the golden egg for us,” he said.
He added that House Appropriations Chair Luke Torian, D-Prince William County, is working hard to come to an agreement with state Senate Appropriations Chair Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth.
There was a roughly $1 billion general fund gap between the House and Senate budget proposals at the end of the 2026 regular session. At the center of that gap is a proposal by the Senate to end the data center tax exemption in 2027, eight years early. That clause was absent from the House proposal.
Proponents of the effort to end the exemptions early have said it would create nearly $1 billion in tax revenue, which could pay for child care programs and school construction and cover funding cuts to federal programs. Opponents have said that Virginia would no longer be able to compete with other states to attract more developers in the billion-dollar industry.
Scott agreed with Kilgore’s stance on data center tax exemptions, and that they have been a tax revenue generator for localities.
“Localities have benefited a whole lot,” he said. “Can we be smarter about how we get [data centers] to contribute?”
He added that the Data Center Coalition is working closely with General Assembly members to come to a consensus on how large-scale energy consumers can better give back to the communities that they are in. That includes regulating the noise created by the centers, the water usage by the plants, and increased energy demand.
“We cannot throw the baby out with the bathwater,” Scott said.
Kilgore and Scott said that environmental concerns surrounding data centers will be addressed.
“We don’t want to do anything that’s going to harm the environment in Virginia, but we’ve got to be realistic about permitting,” Kilgore said. “I think we’ve got the technology now to address any environmental concerns as it comes along.”
Scott added that the General Assembly could either mandate or incentivize efforts to reduce the centers’ impact on the environment.
“I like to incentivize,” he said. “There is legislation also that is going to ask them to do things cleaner and smarter, but it’s going to do it in a way that incentivizes them.”
Looking for a solution to traffic woes on Interstate 81
Questions from the audience turned toward efforts to improve transportation infrastructure, specifically I-81. That prompted Scott to call out Del. Terry Austin, R-Botetourt County, who has long been a champion for funding to improve the road.
“Where’s Terry Austin?” Scott asked, looking out at the crowd, to lighthearted laughter.
Kilgore said some funding has been allocated in the biennial budget to address congestion on I-81, a major economic engine in Southwest Virginia.
“I drive it from mile marker 0 to mile marker 222 every weekend during session,” Kilgore said. “It can be crazy.”
Scott agreed and said that the General Assembly is committed, in a bipartisan manner, to continued investments in I-81.
“We know that as goes Southwest, as goes Southside, so goes the entire commonwealth of Virginia,” he said. “We need to make sure we take care of Southside, Southwest.”
Finding money for family medical leave, school construction
Other topics of discussion included an effort to create a paid family medical leave program in Virginia, which passed the General Assembly and is awaiting action by Gov. Abigail Spanberger, and the need to improve school infrastructure in Southwest and Southside.
Scott said that the family leave program, as currently designed, would be a self-financed insurance plan, paid by employers and employees, that would give Virginians access to paid leave in their best or worst life moments.
Under the program, an employee who has a “qualifying event” would receive 80% of their regular pay. Covered events would include having a baby, caring for themselves or family members through an illness like cancer and providing end-of-life care to family members.
The amount paid to fund the statewide insurance program would be split between employers and employees and would equal roughly 0.5% of their wage or salary, or roughly $5 per week for an employee making $50,000 annually.
“Whatever it looks like now, it’s probably going to change and continue to grow,” Scott said. “I think most of Virginia is celebrating the fact that now, if they have a newborn child, they can stay home and they don’t have to worry about losing their job or making ends meet.”
Kilgore said he agreed that lawmakers need to support Virginians who have a life-changing event but he took issue with the income deduction that comes with the program.
“I think there’s a better way to do this,” he said. “I think it’s going to set up its own bureaucracy and it’s going to have a lot of problems.”
Both leaders agreed about the need to create a funding stream to rebuild or repair aging school buildings in rural Virginia.
Kilgore said he would like to see that funding stream be built on gambling revenue.
“Gambling, i-gaming, take that money and put it to something useful,” he said.
Scott pointed out that every year since at least 2020, a lawmaker has introduced a bill to allow for localities to introduce a sales tax of up to 1% to build schools. Most recently, a bill patroned this year by Del. Sam Rasoul, D-Roanoke, failed, but Scott said it was included in the proposed biennial budget.
The elephant, or donkey, in the room: redistricting
The last question to Scott and Kilgore elicited the most partisan response from the two leaders, and from the audience. They were asked to state their case in support of, or against, Virginia’s mid-decade redistricting effort.
The Democrat-controlled General Assembly approved a redistricting map that would redraw the commonwealth’s congressional boundaries into 10 Democratic-leaning districts and a single Republican-leaning one. Republicans have held that the effort is unfair and not the “Virginia way.”
Virginia Democrats have called the redistricting effort necessary, after Republican President Donald Trump called on conservative-led states to change their congressional maps in favor of GOP candidates ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
“I hear people say, ‘Well that’s not the Virginia way. We don’t need to do what they’re doing, we don’t need to fight fire with fire.’ I just want to say: hypocrites. It’s hypocrisy,” Scott said. “We are going to win this referendum, and we are going to win it big.”
“We are not in 2021, we are not in 2020. We are facing an animal we’ve never seen before, and he’s out of control,” he said, referring to the sitting president.
He added that he believes Trump will likely lose the midterm elections for Republicans in Congress — not because they’re of the same party but because the president’s policies are “terrible” and Republicans, who control Congress, have not issued a check on Trump’s power. That elicited applause from the crowd.
Kilgore pointed out that, under the proposed map, Fairfax County would be cut into five congressional districts that would stretch in all directions across the state.
“In Virginia, we have a bipartisan commission that’s set the lines, 6-5, that’s what they are right now,” Kilgore said. “Do you think it’s really fair, and I don’t even think the speaker thinks it’s fair, to give Fairfax County five seats?”
He added that communities in the Roanoke Valley are going to be split into separate districts.
“It’s not fair,” he said, before arguing that the price of gas was high under former Democratic presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama in response to a comment that Scott made about the current high cost of gasoline. Kilgore’s statement elicited groans from the crowd.
“I think prices are going to go down, stock market is going up, and we’ll maintain control of the House of Representatives this year,” Kilgore said.
