“This nursing home information is confusing, mindbending, and scary. Please draw us a picture to clarify.” Well, readers are right. It is all three of those things. It is meant to be so by some people in the system.
Virginia has some excellent nursing homes and chains, but those are not the subject of this article.
I offer below a chart of a fictional 12-facility chain whose structure permits bad things to happen, often by design. It shows a commercial real estate structure on which some nursing home chains are modeled. Indeed, many of them have been founded by people with their roots in real estate, partnered with others licensed as nursing home administrators and with an accountant. The structure was designed by the real estate industry to generate fees and to protect assets in court.
It is used by the worst of nursing home chain owners to bleed money from the operating companies, leaving little for staffing, building repairs, and other necessities. Annual profits have been seen to exceed 20%. That beats anything else in real estate.
Virginia GOP Governor Glenn Youngkin is vowing to finish “strong.” With all due respect, it might have been better if he had started “strong.” His party just suffered its worse defeat in Virginia’s two-party era. If that’s finishing strong, I’d like to know what he thinks finishing weak looks like.
Fact: No Republican connected to Trump’s MAGA has ever or will ever be elected Governor of Virginia. Or U.S. Senator. I wrote months ago on these pages — in my column saying John Reid won the short straw not primary gold — that the historical numbers pointed to Spanberger likely breaking the all-time percentage record for any Dem gubernatorial in the two-party era. I also thought a ticket sweep seemed likely based on my analysis of historical voting statistics.
Next prediction: Will the Virginia Democratic Party try to wipe out the Virginia Republican Party if the super partisan redistricting amendment is approved by the voters this spring? My answer: 100% for sure. The path to such destruction is foreseeable.
The GOP was crushed in the recent Virginia elections because Donald Trump is terribly unpopular in Virginia. Before Trump was president, the GOP easily controlled the Virginia state legislature, and held 66 of the 100 seats in the Virginia House of Delegates. After Tuesday’s election, it will hold only 34 seats in the House and control neither house of the state legislature.
Former Richmond mayor Levar Stoney pointed this out:
Trump fans claimed the GOP lost Tuesday’s election because Virginia is a staunchly Democratic state. But it has long been a purple state where Republicans used to control the legislature handily, because suburban voters leaned Republican. Now, the suburbanites in Virginia heavily lean Democratic, and every single legislator representing northern Virginia is a Democrat.
Virginia isn’t a deep blue state by nature. It is only Trump who makes it so.
In the classic film, Network, Howard Beale delivered one of the most remembered lines in movie history: “I’m mad as hell, and I am not going to take it anymore”. Many voters, from Virginia to California and Maine to Georgia, seemed to feel that way. Frustrated by chaos, corruption, and exhaustion, they turned out in record numbers to deliver sweeping victories for Democrats, winning most every significant contest on the ballot.
Virginia, Virginia, Virginia, Virginia
Virginia has again shown itself as a bellwetherof change. Abigail Spanberger won by the largest margin since Bob McDonnell’s 2009 victory, as Democrats swept all statewide races in an election with turnout higher than four years ago — a clear sign of Democratic energy.
Less noticed but equally consequential were Democrats’ massive gains in the House of Delegates, where they flipped 13 seats and will hold a 64–36 margin come January. Speaker of House Don Scott, D-Portsmouth, arguably now the most powerful man in the state and the primary architect of the romp, exclaimed that this “is what a mandate looks like,” while cautioning that “the word of the day is restraint. We can’t overreach.”
Republicans, meanwhile, imploded. Neither Trump nor mainstream conservatives ever embraced Winsome-Sears, whose campaign was derided by a Trump ally as a “dumpster fire” — a label made literal when her campaign bus caught fire on the roadside. Late GOP money shifted to Jason Miyares, but even that could not save him. Trump supporters unloaded after her loss. Chris LaCivita, longtime Virginia GOP strategist and Trump’s 2024 campaign manager, wrote: “A Bad candidate and Bad campaign have consequences — the Virginia Governor’s race is example number 1.”
The return of the political trifecta Democrats enjoyed during the 2020 and 2021 General Assembly sessions – now bolstered with a 64-36 majority in the House of Delegates – leaves the question of how to deal with Virginia’s energy issues entirely in their hands.
Only if the Democrats suffer a significant division within their own ranks will the Republican legislators cast votes in committee or on the chamber floor that decide any issue. And with 64 votes in the House (meaning Democrats will also have at least two-thirds of committee seats), it would have to be a deep Democratic split for Republicans to matter.
Most of the new Democratic members including those who ousted sitting incumbent Republicans expressed commitment to the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA) and its goal of ending the use of coal, natural gas and oil. Many in Northern Virginia are also eager to slow down the growth of the data center industry, which is driving up electricity demand across the state.
Incoming Governor Abigail Spanberger has been short on details about efforts to limit data center development and remained vague in this long piece put together by the anti-hydrocarbon advocacy outlet Inside Climate News. As was the case with the pro-solar Clean Virginia rallies described in this earlier report, supporters of maintaining the VCEA mandates and target dates used their interviews to build a defensive line against any in their own caucus who might waver.
Dem voters energized, GOP voters lethargic. Image credit: Grok
by James A. Bacon
Gov. Glenn Youngkin yesterday blamed Tuesday’s shellacking of the Republican Party in Virginia on the government shutdown. “I firmly believe that the government shutdown was a very, very big challenge as we ran into this election,” he told reporters. “We have 330,000 government workers here that weren’t getting paid. That is a real challenge heading into an election.”
Youngkin’s proposition is a not-implausible hypothesis of what happened Tuesday. But does it hold water?
Government workers were never Trump fans to begin with. They have always been true blue. Did the DOGE (the Department of Government Efficiency) layoffs and then the government shutdown change a lot of minds? Perhaps a few. But I suspect other factors were at play.
According to Virginia Public Access Project data, the big change between 2021, in which Republicans swept the statewide offices, and 2025 was a decline in voter turnout among predominantly red localities — not a surge in turnout in government worker-heavy blue districts.
Source: Virginia Public Access Project. Click here to view the interactive graphic that identifies each dot by locality.
Turnout in Democratic-leaning localities trended more or less the same as four years ago. By contrast, enthusiasm in red localities was down across the board — in literally every locality. Whatever was ailing Republicans Tuesday was statewide in nature. It’s hard to imagine that the loss of 300,000 federal jobs in Virginia weighed heavily on the minds of Republican-leaning voters in, say Patrick County in Southside Virginia (turnout down 8%) or Giles County in western Virginia (also down 8%).
Democrats swept the statewide races and flipped 13 House of Delegates seats Tuesday — a watershed in Virginia politics. Any analysis of the Blue Wave must take into account the vast discrepancy in fundraising prowess of Democrats over Republicans, not just in the statewide races but in the House races as well.
Between statewide and House races combined, Democrat candidates reported $149.6 million in contributions as of October 23. Republicans raised $85.9 million.
The relationship between money raised and electoral success is a complicated one. Spending more money on a campaign does not guarantee a win: Attorney General Jason Miyares outspent the scandal-ridden Jay Jones but lost to him anyway. But all other things being equal, more money is better than less money. It helps build a better campaign organization and buys more cable TV and social media advertising.
Abigail Spanberger’s money advantage in the gubernatorial race and Ghazala Hashmi’s money dominance in the contest for lieutenant general have been widely reported.
Donations reported as of October 23. Source: Virginia Public Access Project
According to VPAP data, Democrats’ fundraising advantage was just as lopsided in the House of Delegates races.
Jay Jones prevailed. Manic text messages and a lead foot notwithstanding, Jones will be the next Virginia attorney general — and, you know, that’s democracy. Abigail Spanberger is now the Governor-elect. Virginia Sen. Ghazala Hashmi will be lieutenant governor. They racked up big margins, and it was impressive.
The results in the House of Delegates — the dramatic growth of the Democratic caucus — was a tad beyond impressive.
Jones had been the source of worry, of course, though you could feel the winds shifting about after revelations of his colorful texting. Dancing phone fingers, even in the service of the scatological, don’t trump the need to trump Trump.
Election night was destined to be about Trump, and it was Trump. You can do a half dozen “factors” or “13 reasons” or “21 takes.” But it was still one big, inescapable thing in the form of Donald Trump and all the many matters that have animated the president since retaking the White House.
Gov. Youngkin said it wasn’t Trump. Blame the federal government shutdown, Youngkin said. Ha. I like Youngkin; he’s been great on economic development. But it was Trump.
There’s no denying that Virginia was swamped Tuesday night by a blue wave. Make that a blue tsunami.
The Democrats not only swept the top three statewide offices, but they flipped 13 seats in the House of Delegates. Every corner of the commonwealth was at least tinged blue.
Looking for a sliver of sunshine, Republicans? The Liberty University precinct reportedly voted 95.11% Republican.
That’s all I have for you.
The only folks who had a worse night than Winsome Earle-Sears were the pollsters. As usual, they got it wrong.
As I pointed out last week, Virginia is a tough place to poll. While pollsters consistently had Abigail Spanberger leading in the governor’s race, few – if any – predicted a 15 point landslide. (Ralph Northam won by less than 10 in 2017.) No pollster that I encountered forecast a 10.5 point rout by Ghazala Hashmi for lieutenant governor. And until the final few days almost all polls showed the Attorney General race within the margin of error. Jones won by 6.5 points.
So what did we learn from Tuesday’s election results?
Well, we learned a lot about Virginia Democrat voters. Some of it is troubling.
We learned that wanting to kill your political opponents, piss on their graves and merrily muse about the deaths of their “little fascist” children is not a deal breaker for Democrats when selecting a top law enforcement officer. Neither is likely lying to a court about the community service a candidate did to avoid jail. Continue reading.
Today, we will examine a big factor in why nursing home regulation fails. It is doomed in part by the organizational structures of chains that mask a deadly lack of corporate ethics. Government regulators not only do not stop it, but are currently helpless to do so for the simplest of reasons. They know nothing about those structures and the internal fees and rents that drain funds from the operating companies and from patient care.
The problem starts with a federal law.
The HUD/FHA Section 232 program is an FHA loan product that provides mortgage insurance for residential care facilities. It is a 66-year-old carve-out for the nursing home industry in the National Housing Act. Section 232 offers FHA guarantees for non-recourse, below-market fixed-rate, long-term loans at up to 80% loan-to-appraised-value ratios. Lender’s fees are generally 3.5%. The cost for new construction can include land purchase.
The loans may be used to finance the purchase, refinance, new construction, or substantial rehabilitation of a project. A combination of these uses is acceptable – e.g. refinance of a nursing home coupled with new construction of an assisted living facility.
Every nursing home that is purchased or renovated using a loan backed by a Section 232 guarantee has its own operating company and realty company that serves as the landlord for the operating company. That is a 232 program requirement designed to protect the real estate collateral of the loan from failure of the operating company. The loans are made to the realty company.
Operating and realty companies are separate LLCs, but the members of each are usually the same people, at least initially.
That is where many chains get creative, both to protect the assets even further and to generate internal fees with enterprise structures borrowed from the real estate industry.
VoteHub shows where Virginia voters backed Spanberger and where they supported Earle-Sears. Source: Newsweek. Posted at the request of Carol Bova.
Democrats swept the statewide races and massacred Republicans in the House of Delegates. (The new House will be 64 Democrats and 36 Republicans.) Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger, can do anything she wants. How will she govern? She campaigned as a moderate, but how will she respond to the demands of Virginia’s ascendant left wing?
Yep, the polls were wrong. Democrats won much bigger than any predictions.
Not only did Spanberger win by over 14 points, Hashmi won by almost 10, and Jones, despite his texting scandal, had a comfortable margin of six points.
In the biggest surprise, Democrats flipped 13 House seats. Even Don Scott, Speaker of the House, did not expect this; he had predicted they would pick up four seats. When Bobby Orrock, who has represented Caroline County for almost as long as anyone familiar with the General Assembly can remember, is beaten by a Democrat by a healthy margin, you know that something major is going on.
There are a lot of Bacon Rebellion commenters in great despair this morning.
Well, whaddya know, it’s Tuesday, November 4th. Election Day.
No matter how busy you are, no matter what’s going on, don’t sit this one out.
VOTE.
Especially if you love Virginia and don’t want our commonwealth to turn into an East-coast version of tax-mad, crime-ridden, gender and pronoun-obsessed California.
Remember how good it felt the day after the 2021 election, when Glenn Youngkin beat Terry McAuliffe and you knew that it was Independence Day in Virginia?
VOTE.
Remember how you woke up the morning after that historic election and knew the vaccine mandates that cost state workers their jobs were a thing of the past? You knew that statewide mask mandates were not coming back. You knew that parents were going to be heard at their kids’ schools and school officials would no longer be allowed to hide a child’s gender confusion from their parents. You knew that schools would focus on excellence instead of kowtowing to teachers’ unions. You knew that the parole board would not be turning murderers loose.
I could go on, but if you were in Virginia in November 2021, you remember the overweening tyranny of the Northam administration and his Democrat monopoly on the state house and how good it felt to shake it all off.
VOTE.
If all goes well – and if the polls are wrong – we’ll feel that sense of relief again tomorrow. Youngkin’s common-sense policies will continue with Winsome Earle-Sears.
She’ll be able to pump the brakes and veto the sick agenda the Democrats have in store for the commonwealth. Continue reading.
Voters go to the polls today without seeing the candidates debate critical issues ranging from redistricting to the energy crisis.
Image credit: Bing Image Creator
by Derrick Max
With election day now upon us, Virginia voters were short-changed this election cycle while Democracy is literally being threatened!
Virginians were limited to one, short, poorly controlled debate for Governor, one equally short, but slightly more substantive debate for Attorney General, and zero debates for Lt. Governor – unless, of course, you count the surreal spectacle of Republican nominee John Reid debating an AI version of Democrat Ghazala Hashmi after she refused over ten invitations to appear on stage with him.
Worse yet, Virginia’s extended, 45-day early voting rules robbed a half million voters of having even these two debates inform their vote as both were held well after early voting had already begun and votes were already cast.
Compounding the impact of this debate failure, is that the Democrats, just one week before the election, and after the two inadequate debates were over, called back their members to vote on an amendment to the state constitution to literally overthrow the will of Virginians who voted in 2020 in favor of a bipartisan commission to draw congressional maps. Democrats voted to ignore voters and return the Commonwealth’s redistricting process to the hands of a partisan map drawing cabal.
Such a monumental decision should have been a central topic of debate for candidates of all three of the Commonwealth’s statewide offices. More importantly, voters should have had more time to hear from their State Delegates on this issue as they will have the most say over the future of this troubling amendment.
The year: 2075. The American colonies on the Moon are getting restless under Washington’s tyrannical rule….
This second edition of “Dust Mites” has a snazzy new cover, includes helpful lunar maps, and is 5,000 words tighter than the original. The sequel, “Trogs,” is scheduled for publication this summer.
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Bacon’s Rebellion is Virginia’s leading politically non-aligned portal for news, opinions and analysis about state, regional and local public policy. Read more about us here.
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