But will Virginians vote GOP in November ’25?

by Ken Reid

Donald Trump is back in office. Trump 2.0 has begun. Will this be good for Virginia and the country?

As a free-market conservative and GOP activist and former elected official in Loudoun County, I believe it will be. However, Trump and the GOP Congress have to deliver on promises to lower inflation, tackle illegal immigration, crime and improve the U.S. standing in the world. 

And, all those executive orders he signed in this first hours of his 2^nd non-consecutive term, and future EO s, can be overturned when a new president takes over in four years. With a stroke of a pen Monday, Trump revoked 78 executive orders Joe Biden signed during his term.

But Trump 2.0’s effort to cut the size of the federal government and workforce, while necessary, might not be good politics for the Virginia 2025 elections for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and House of Delegates.

Virginia now has the second highest concentration of federal civilian workers among the states, with California being No. 1 -– 147,487, or 3.3% of the Virginia workforce. Maryland is third, but the District of Columbia is highest with 162,144 (43.4% of DC’s workforce).

In Virginia, the Navy (31.4%), Department of Defense (19.5%), and Army (10.5%) employed the most people.

While Trump exempted the military from his EO freezing government hiring, DoD is not exempt from DOGE, the much discussed “Department of Government Efficiency” to be led by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. Vivek Ramaswamy, a tech millionaire who was briefly a presidential candidate in 2023-24, was supposed to join Musk in the effort but may back out to run for governor of Ohio in 2026.

DOGEcoin is a kind of crypto currency that Musk invested in.

Trump can’t create an actual “Department” of the U.S. government without Congress acting, so according to the DOGE executive order, the unit will be called “United States DOGE Service (USDS) and shall be established in the Executive Office of the President.”

Legally, it will be known as “the U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization,” have a “USDS Administrator” and “shall be dedicated to advancing the President’s 18-month DOGE agenda. The U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization shall terminate on July 4, 2026,” the EO adds.

Furthermore, each agency of the U.S. government has to create a “DOGE team” to “coordinate their work with USDS and advise their respective Agency Heads on implementing the President ‘s DOGE Agenda.”

A key mandate in the EO is to “commence a Software Modernization Initiative to improve the quality and efficiency of government-wide software, network infrastructure, and information technology (IT) systems. Among other things, the USDS Administrator shall work with Agency Heads to promote inter-operability between agency networks and systems, ensure data integrity, and facilitate responsible data collection and synchronization.”

This should make Northern Virginia’s IT contractors’ mouths water.

And, it could be the main accomplishment of DOGE because Congress still decides how to fund the federal agencies, and much of that funding is tied to laws that require a function of government (and employees) to carry out.

DOGE is already the subject of a lawsuit, according to “The WWashington Post” but the fear that the Post and other Virginia media will stoke about Trump’s actions against federal workers will not be good for the GOP. Keep in mind that there’s a residual impact of cutting federal employment on area businesses and contractors, who also could lose their jobs. And, they will be compelled to vote Democrat, too.

Nothing works to the Democrats’ advantage in Virginia when there is a government shutdown due to Republicans being unable to pass budgets. That almost happened in December. Clinton’s Reinventing Government caused a lot of angst, as did sequestration under President Obama.

Forcing government workers back to the offices won’t make for good politics either.

Republican candidates like Winsome Sears (running for governor) will be pressed for their views of DOGE and may be tempted to oppose Trump on this. She also has a problem with Trumpers in her party –- she never endorsed him after he secured enough delegates for the nomination.

Will she campaign with Trump, and have him in Virginia for a rally? Or will she do what most Virginia GOP electeds do and try to avoid him?

Hard to avoid Trump when he’s in the news by the hour. He was generally poison to the GOP in elections in 2016 through 2020.

So, given the fact Virginians generally elect their governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general of the party that is NOT in the White House, Republicans have their work cut out for 2025.

Another factor hurting Sears is this: While Trump lost Virginia by only five points (most narrow of all three of his tries here), he still lost the state to Kamala Harris. Harris won Chesterfield County and the cities of Chesapeake and Virginia Beach, three jurisdictions that fueled Glenn Youngkin’s election as governor in 2021   

In addition, Sears is still way down in fundraising. The latest VPAP.org reports shows she raised about $2.6 million and has $2.3 million cash on hand. But former Rep. Abigail Spanberger, the likely Democrat nominee for governor, has raised $9.3 million since 2023 and has $6.5 million in cash on hand. Visit www.VPAP.org for details.  

Youngkin won the governorship narrowly, in part, by outspending Terry McAuliffe, the Democrat.

My personal suggestion to Sears, Miyares (who is seeking re-election), whomever is the GOP lieutenant governor candidate, and Republican candidates for House of Delegates, is to put the choice to voters like this:

Given one-party Democrat control in failing “Blue” states like California, which is burning down on our TV screens, do you want that in Virginia?  

“Don’t California My Virginia” should be the main message in 2025 to blunt the anti-Trump, anti-DOGE impacts.

Ken Reid, lives in McLean. He has served on the Leesburg Town Council and Loudoun Board of Supervisors (2006-2017). He has attended numerous Republican county and state elections and was a Trump delegate to the 2016 and 2020 Republican National Conventions. He is the author of “The Six Secrets to Winning Any Local Election – and Navigating Elected Office Once You Win.”