There’s a “sign post up ahead.” Planet car tax looms before us. Once again, we’re on a journey to a wonderous land whose boundaries are only that of imagination.
Jim Gilmore -– a cosmonaut of the first order — launched this trip in 1997, when he successfully sought Virginia’s highest elected office on the promise of kiboshing a principal revenue source for local government.
“No Car Tax,” read Gilmore’s bumper stickers. “Elect me and that goes away,” he roughly vowed.
It doesn’t get more direct than that.
Then, as now, the car tax gets vilified as the one tax that Virginians hate the very most. Where that leaves the state income tax, I’m not sure. Probably offended.
Republican Winsome Sears and Democrat Abigail Spanberger, candidates for governor, have now promised to finish what Gilmore presumably started nearly three decades ago.
You just wish both of them had read up on this a bit. They still could. It’s not too late.
Whether it’s actual violence or approved vandalism, the expression of “outrage” is the #1 means of political ascent. The ensuing antics run the gamut from tedious to terrifying — but where does this constant negativity lead us?
There are other ways …
When I first joined the House of Delegates in 2001, there were plenty of political fault lines: Rural vs. Urban, Democratic vs. Republican, Black vs. White. In the aftermath of 9/11, tempers were short and debates were always tense.
But we also created mechanisms to survive, not just politically but socially. Through those gatherings, we forged friendships and eventually partnerships which crossed boundaries and got things done.
This trashing of Levar Stoney’s over his loss should be a cautionary tale to Democrats and commentators. Is everyone becoming infected with the Trump gloating and belittling disease? One of the most damaging aspects of the MAGA crowd is the joy they take kicking people when they’re down. Indeed, they take so much joy in it, they can’t wait to kick people down, so then they can stomp them again.
There was a time when real Democrats, indeed Americans, knew we were better than that. Gloating is a sign of weakness, not character. There was a time when we didn’t see politics as a zero-sum game: when the only way to feel happy was when someone else felt miserable. Is this where we’re heading? Maybe it’s where we already are.
No one in RVA publicly fought Mayor Stoney on key issues more than yours truly. I led the three voter referendums fights he lost: in 2017 on education, in 2021 on the Casino and in 2023 on the Casino again. On Stoney’s I’ll-fated Navy Hill project, the key proponent sent his top paid people to see me and basically promised me whatever I wanted if I would stop trying to defeat it. I said, no way, Stoney is wrong on this one.
Indeed, in the second Casino referendum, the key proponent came to me and offered me several million dollars in stock options if I would just give Stoney a break and not try to defeat him on it. That’s true — a lot of people know it. I even asked my son what I should do. It’s ultimately your money I said. He told me to follow my conscience and hell with the money. Stoney got crushed on that one too.
But I didn’t gloat. As people in Richmond know, eventually the pro-casino forces played the antisemitic card against me. Called me a Judas Jew. The pro-Casino side lost 62 to 38. I didn’t go out gloating on their loss either. But I was surprised no members of the Jewish community came to my defense. People don’t think I’m the proper kind of Jew I guess.
All of which gets me to ask what the hell is happening to our country? This identity politics simply isn’t working. One would think the election of Donald Trump not once but twice would prove it.
The North Carolina legislature has retreated from its aggressive targets to reduced hydrocarbon-fueled electricity in the state, eliminating the goal of being 70% carbon free by 2030. Strong Republican majorities in both chambers supported Senate Bill 266 last week, but so did some Democratic legislators.
That smattering of Democratic support could weigh on Democratic Governor Josh Stein as he considers a veto. The final version of the bill leaves in place the ultimate target of the full elimination of carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, and there are other important regulatory changes in the bill, touted by supporters as the Power Bill Reduction Act.
This follows a decision in Maryland, approved by its Democratic governor, to authorize additional use of natural gas for generation in that state. There are glimmers of energy sanity in both Virginia’s northern and southern neighbors. Virginia retains its laws mandating expensive wind and solar energy buildouts and prohibiting new natural gas. The weather in the next two weeks is going to prove again that reliable hydrocarbon plants keep the air conditioning running, not solar.
North Carolina’s legislature passed the emissions reduction targets in 2021, one year after the Virginia General Assembly placed similar mandates in the Virginia Code. The North Carolina target for 2030 of 70% is far more aggressive than those for that year in the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA).
Dwayne Yancey, editor of the Cardinal News, also has a newsletter, West of the Capital. In his latest edition of the newsletter he reports that there were a significant number of precincts in Southwest Virginia in which no one voted in the Democratic primary. No early votes; no voters showing up on Election Day. In others, there were just a handful of voters. According to results posted by the Virginia Dept. of Elections, in Scott County, for example, there were only 122 votes cast for Lieutenant Governor in the entire county. The Gate City precinct had the most voters–28. That must have been a really long day for the officers of election in those precincts!
If he were running the campaigns of either party (which he assures readers he is not doing) Yancey says his advice would be–visit some of those areas. For the Democratic candidates, such a visit would be to encourage the few remaining Democratic voters in the area to turn out in November so as to cut into the Republicans’ margins in the Southwest. For the Republican candidates, such a visit could serve to thank Southwest Virginia voters for their support and encourage them to turn out in November to help offset Democrats’ advantage in urban areas.
He renewed his standing offer: “My previous offer still stands: If any statewide candidate visits Lee County and sends a photo, I’ll run it here. Last week, we had a photo of Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares, who had a law enforcement roundtable in Pennington Gap in Lee County.”
State Sen. Ghazala Hashmi, Democratic nominee for Lt. Governor Photo credit: AP
by Dick Hall-Sizemore
The biggest story from the Democratic Primary contest for Lieutenant Governor was that the folks that know Levar Stoney the best, the citizens of Richmond where he was mayor for eight years, are the ones who kept him from winning the nomination for Lieutenant Governor.
State Sen. Ghazala Hashmi (Chesterfield) won the nomination in a six-candidate race with 27.39 percent of the vote. Stoney was close behind with 26.64 per cent. (The source of all election data is the website of the Virginia Dept. of Elections.) Looking at the actual votes, Hashmi beat Stoney by 3,600 votes statewide. Her margin in Richmond over Stoney was 10,509 votes. Without that margin in Richmond, Hashmi would have lost.
There is anecdotal evidence that Richmond voters blamed Stoney for the water problems that occurred shortly after he left the mayoral office and left the city without water for a week and made national news. There were other controversies, as well.
Taken together, the list of statewide office candidates is remarkable, strong proof of how far Virginia has come in 50 years. Consider:
Both gubernatorial candidates are women (Spanberger; Earle-Sears)
Half of the combined tickets are women (Spanberger; Earle-Sears; Hashmi)
Two came to America as children (Earle-Sears (Jamaica); Hashmi (India))
One is the son of immigrants (Miyares (Cuba))
Only two are non-Hispanic whites (Spanberger; Reid)
I served as an officer of election yesterday in my home precinct.
It was a quiet day. There were periods lasting ten minutes or more when there were absolutely no voters in the polling place. Then several people would come in and then there would be another quiet period. Between 4:30 and 6:00, there was a steady stream of voters, but no one had to wait more than two or three minutes.
In all, 305 people submitted ballots in the machine and there were a couple of provisional voters. There are a little over 4,100 registered voters in the precinct.
The precinct, Lakeside, is one of the larger ones in the county. It is a traditional middle class community. Lots of relatively small houses—ranchers and Cape Cods—built in the 1950s and 60s. There are a couple of older, well kept-up apartment complexes. The precinct borders the city of Richmond on the Northside and lies between the subsidized housing areas of eastern Henrico and the newer, larger, expensive subdivisions of the West End, Glen Allen, and Short Pump areas.
“Political violence” reared its ugly head in the Saturday shooting deaths of Minnesota State Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, and the wounding of state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife – all of them shot at their respective homes outside Minneapolis.
Shooting any human being and killing them is heinous, but being a former elected office holder myself, who got a few death threats in my 10 years serving Loudoun County, VA, these shooting incensed me because I understand what office holders have to deal with in their daily lives – which the news media and social media never seem to care about until there is a tragedy.
As of this writing, we don’t know the motive of the suspect Vance Boelter, who was captured late Sunday. I already see social media posts from conservatives saying he must have been a liberal because there were “No Kings” fliers in his car, and that he was appointed to a state commission by two Democrat governors. Liberal media are reporting he had materials in the car he ditched indicating he was a right winger – another example of how we need to “tone down the rhetoric” – as if the Left is not guilty of this.
Both views miss the point. This is just another continuing pattern of political violence in this nation and it’s broader and bigger than the recent killings of Israeli embassy staffers in DC, or attempted burning of 15 Jewish marchers for the hostages in Boulder, CO.
Professor Robert Pape, who studies political violence at the University of Chicago, told CNN’s Michael Smerconish on a podcast June 2: “We have become a tinderbox of a nation and we find volatile individuals motivated by events that happen in the world, and their attack will be supported by the community, but also motivated by the feeling there is no peaceful way to express their outrage.”
Immigrants who work in certain sectors of Virginia’s economy, and their employers, can rest a little easier now. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Trump administration has ordered immigration agents to cease their sweep operations at agriculture and hospitality industry worksites.
On June 12, a senior ICE official sent an e-mail to ICE regional directors saying, “Effective today, please hold on all work site enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and operating hotels.” The e-mail went on to say that investigations involving “human trafficking, money laundering, drug smuggling into these industries are OK.” However, it stipulated that agents were not to arrest “noncriminal collaterals,” i.e., undocumented immigrants who were not known to have committed any crime.
Dominion Energy Virginia has contributed another $1 million plus to Virginia state-level politicians in large, late pre-primary donations, with the largest amounts given to Shannon Taylor’s run for Attorney General and Levar Stoney’s campaign for lieutenant governor. This close to the vote, state law requires rapid reporting on late large checks.
According to the activist group Clean Virginia, no slouch in the campaign dollar department itself, the regulated utility’s total support to Taylor has reached $800,000, which it claims is “the largest amount ever directly contributed by an electric utility to a candidate in a competitive race in U.S. history.” Taylor faces fellow Democrat Jay Jones in the primary which closes out Tuesday.
Is it the largest amount ever? Who can prove that? It is quite a sum of money, clearly reaching the level it has because of the role the Attorney General of Virginia plays in cases before the State Corporation Commission. But on this list of late Dominion donations, former Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney received $193,000, even more than Shannon. His total from Dominion is approaching $700,000. That much for a lieutenant governor candidate is also amazing.
Dominion has been equally or even more generous with a host of other Virginia legislators in this campaign cycle. Perhaps the qualifier to watch in Clean Virginia’s release is “competitive race,” because most Virginia legislative heavy weights are in safe districts. Dominion gave six figure donations in the last couple of weeks to two state senators in pure blue districts not even on the 2025 ballot.
Sinking fire truck in Damascus, Va. following Hurricane Helene. Photo credit: Va. Dept. of Emergency Management
At his press conference in the Virginia Emergency Operation Center last fall in the aftermath of Hurricane Helen, Gov. Glenn Youngkin introduced “my newest best friend”—the representative from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). (The “best friend” comment can be found at the 13:15 mark in the video.) When a major disaster occurs in the state this year, it is not certain that the governor’s “best friend” will be around, of if he is, what his role will be.
In January, President Trump declared that he wanted to eliminate FEMA. He issued an executive order establishing the “Federal Emergency Management Review Council.” The function of the Council was “to advise the President…on the existing ability of FEMA to capably and impartially address disasters occurring within the United States and…on all recommended changes related to FEMA to best serve the national interest.” He directed the Council to submit its report within 180 days of its first public meeting. Virginia’s Gov. Youngkin was appointed to be a member of the Council.
The Council had its first meeting on May 20. At that meeting, Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem seemed modify Trump’s declared wish to eliminate FEMA. As she put it, “The President has said to me many times that he believes FEMA should be eliminated as it exists.” (Emphasis added) She went on to declare “our goal is that states should manage their emergencies and we come in and support them and we’re there in a time of financial crisis.”
Data centers continue to bolster communities in Virginia, but without proper regulation, Virginians on the ground will be the biggest losers.
by Bronson Winslow
Data centers, driven by Big Tech’s eastward expansion, have popped up like 7-Elevens across Virgini a— reshaping rolling hills and historic communities in the name of progress.
The aggressive transformation, primarily established over the last 15 years, leaves Virginians with a question: Who stands to benefit the most? Recent political contributions only further exacerbate the need to answer that question, as LinkedIn co-founder and “progressive” mega-donor Reid Hoffman and Microsoft’s Director of AI, Kevin Scott (and his wife), have funneled over $600,000 into Democrat Abigail Spanberger’s 2025 gubernatorial campaign.
Are these contributions simply based on political identity, or are they another strategy used by California elites who stand to gain the most from data center expansion?
It’s worth noting that Virginia currently grants generous tax incentives to data center developers—saving companies nearly $1 billion in 2023 alone—but things are destined to change. Those incentives are set to expire in 2035, and the Virginia legislature is still kicking the can on how data centers should be properly regulated.
Electing a friendly governor could be a very sound investment for Big Tech as policy debates continue. But will out-of-state tech moguls put Virginians above profit margins?
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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