It’s no secret that Gov. Glenn Youngkin — a creature of the corpocracy who came to Richmond with nary a nanosecond in politics and government — has attempted to run Virginia as he did the publicly traded investment behemoth in which he spent nearly all of his private career, amassing a $400 million-plus fortune.
It’s no secret that top-down approach — to the annoyance of Democratic and Republicans legislators accustomed to collaboration — hasn’t always worked. The latest example: the collapse of his scheme to erect a $2 billion, taxpayer-financed in Alexandria. It failed, in no small part, because he neglected to schmooze lawmakers from the get-go.
It’s no secret that those running — or considering running — to succeed him have noticed that Youngkin’s management style, paired with his flirtation with the presidency that consumed gobs of time better used mastering his day job — mean that he could have little to show for his four years as governor.
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Well, there is that law to keep bureaucratic busybodies out of the kitchens of artisanal bakers who whip up yummies for fun and profit.
The 2025 Democratic gubernatorial nomination is in effect, settled with the sudden of Mayor Levar Stoney of Richmond. This means the party’s presumed candidate — three-term U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger, a creature of Washington, D.C., as a member of Congress and before that, a U.S. Postal Service inspector and CIA operative — has a head start in running to lead state government. And learning to run it.
Steve Haner, a political journalist-turned-policy analyst who, as a Republican operative, is steeped in legislative and statewide campaigns and issue debates at the General Assembly, said that Spanberger — unburdened in that she is unopposed for the nomination that would have been settled in a primary 14 months on — can focus on the long term: the general election and beyond.
“She’ll have time to educate herself and walk into some power broker’s office and say, ‘Teach me,’” said Haner, who has four decades in state government and politics.
Whether attributed to ignorance, arrogance, insecurity, impatience — or all four — the unfamiliarity with state government that has become an emblem of the Youngkin administration is magnified by many of those with whom the governor, who has barely 21 months remaining in his term, surrounds himself.
They are senior staff members who share his roots in business and finance, cabinet and agency appointees more interested in the philosophical than the practical and young aides conditioned by social media to focus on the here-and-now rather than the there-and-then. There are exceptions to the rule, but the limited presence of seasoned hands in the governor’s office seems to confirm it.
Because Virginia’s governor is the only one in the nation still restricted to a single term, its occupant must make every minute count. Given the frequent turnover in the governorship, the state bureaucracy — most of which is controlled by the state’s chief executive — is an important repository of institutional knowledge. It is essential to the delivery of reliable, regular services for Virginians.
“You’ve got to get a running start,” said Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg, a Democrat and high school government teacher who represents Spanberger’s home county, Henrico, a Richmond suburb. “You have to pick people who know what they’re doing.”
Spanberger’s campaign has little to say on the record about what might be her crash course in Virginia government, but supporters report that the candidate has — through face-to-face meetings and memoranda prepared for her — been familiarizing herself with state-specific issues, practices and procedures.
In a written statement that included an apparent poke at Youngkin for attempting to conduct the public’s business as if it were a private business, a campaign spokesman said: “Abigail knows that serving effectively does not mean simply arriving in Richmond and believing that you know everything.
“In the last few years, she has seen that the ‘corporate executive approach’ does not always translate into substantial legislative success. … She is taking time to get to know legislators over coffee and over the phone, learn more about their priority bills in the last General Assembly, and hear from them about what has and hasn’t worked under Governor Youngkin.”
Spanberger has had sit-downs with former governors, staff members and political appointees from their administrations and lobbyists who emerged from state government and now plump for interests and industries, some of which spend millions of dollars on political contributions and policy advocacy. Several declined comment for this column.
Further, upheaval within, for example, the education, purchasing, tax and liquor agencies attributed to Youngkin-era shifts in personnel and policy, is yielding for Democratic statewide candidates and their allies insights and information on the current administration, though some of it presumably is viewed skeptically because the sources are often malcontents.
On the Republican side, the two prospective candidates for governor — Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears and Attorney General Jason Miyares — have an advantage heading into next year’s campaign that Youngkin didn’t in 2021: experience in state government, though theirs varies widely.
was a member of the House of Delegates for six years, representing Virginia Beach, before his victory for attorney general — a full-time job in which he supervises an army of lawyers with a vast array of responsibilities. Among them: representing the state in appeals of criminal convictions; health, education and transportation issues and state purchasing.
As a lawmaker-turned-state’s chief legal officer, Miyares appreciates the friction that shapes the relationships among the three separate, co-equal branches of government — the legislative, executive and judicial.
They can fuel or frustrate each other’s agenda and not necessarily for partisan reasons. Process and precedent are factors, too, ensuring, for instance, the General Assembly’s upper hand in spending and taxation, as Youngkin has been reminded in his standoff over the budget with the Democratic legislative majority.
served a single two-year term in the House, having defeated — in a stunning upset in 2001 — a longtime Democratic delegate, Billy Robinson, whose personal and professional conduct had become an embarrassment for his Norfolk constituents. Her legislative gig was followed by an unsuccessful run for Congress and a stint on the Virginia Board of Education.
As lieutenant governor, she is a part-time official who presides over the state Senate, a post that requires a mastery of procedural arcana and more than a nodding familiarity with its members and the issues they address. That’s because the lieutenant governor is required to cast tie-breaking votes on nearly all matters.
For Earle-Sears, that can include the deciding vote on measures prized by the fellow Republican whose post she presumably covets and whose example of on-the-job training she — and Miyares — are unlikely to follow: Glenn Youngkin.