Gary Robertson Archives - Page 12 of 16

Borrowing ideas

When President Obama announced a plan in January to make two years of community college tuition free, Bruce Scism, president of Danville Community College, was very familiar with the idea and knew how it might work.

That’s because Scism was vice president of academic affairs at Volunteer State Community College in Gallatin, Tenn., before he was named president of Danville Community College in 2013.

Tennessee, Scism says, has had a successful tuition-free policy at its technology centers. These schools focus on teaching technical skills, in contrast to community colleges that also offer traditional academic college courses leading to an associate degree.

So this past fall, beginning with the class of 2015, Tennessee extended its tuition-free policy to all of its community colleges. “The Tennessee plan was the foundation for President Obama’s proposal,” Scism says.

Community college presidents who have served in other states come to Virginia with a wide range of experiences. Virginia Business asked Scism and three other recently appointed community college presidents who have worked in other states to talk about what experiences and ideas they brought with them. They were also asked what ideas and programs Virginia has that other states might do well to emulate.

‘Tennessee Promise’
Scism explains how the “Tennessee Promise” got its start. “Any high school student can come into a technology center free,” he says. “The on-time completion [percentage] rate has been running into the mid-70s and mid-80s.”

That record gave Tennessee an incentive to extend its tuition-free policy beyond the technology centers.

The Volunteer State also had other motivations. Tennessee officials have bemoaned the fact that their state ranks 43rd in the nation in its share of residents who’ve completed college and that just 32 percent hold at least a two-year degree.

Those numbers represented a potential shortage of educated workers to fill high-skilled jobs. To increase the number of educated workers, Tennessee’s Republican governor, Bill Haslam, announced in February 2014 that the state would jump-start the nation’s first-ever program of providing a tuition-free community college education to all state residents, regardless of merit or need.

The “Tennessee Promise” program is being funded by $110 million from the state’s lottery reserves, along with a $47 million endowment established by the Tennessee General Assembly.
“They did it because of economic development,” Scism says of the Tennessee plan. “I think it’s a good thing. It positions them competitively. Industry is always looking for where it can get a qualified workforce.”

Training support
Several of the community college presidents suggested that Virginia consider funding noncredit and workforce development training, a practice followed in some other states.

“In North Carolina, there is a strong emphasis on that,” says Gene Couch, president of Virginia Highlands Community College in Abingdon. Couch, who started at Virginia Highlands last summer, was executive vice president at Alamance Community College in Graham, N.C.

“The chancellor is working hard to highlight the importance of noncredit and workforce development training,” Couch says of Virginia’s efforts to persuade the legislature to lend financial support to these programs, which can accelerate the availability of skilled workers.

“Workforce development is the issue of our time,” says Glenn DuBois, chancellor of the Virginia Community College System. He has been barnstorming the state and holding town meetings to assess Virginia’s unmet needs in critical, high-demand and well-paid job skill categories such as welders, plumbers and truck drivers.

“The most unfilled job in Northern Virginia is electrician,” DuBois says, noting that such high-skill jobs can offer qualified applicants with the proper industry credentials the fastest way out of poverty.
In the fall, he will present his findings to the state legislators as Virginia works to catch up with neighboring states such as North Carolina and Maryland, which already offer substantial state financial aid for noncredit and workforce development programs to match industry credentials.

In the last session of the Virginia General Assembly, legislators got a start on such efforts by budgeting $1 million for the first-ever student financial aid for community college noncredit programs targeted to industry standards and aligned with regional workforce needs.

The Texas approach
Edward “Ted” Raspiller, the president of John Tyler Community College, says that Texas, where he previously worked, puts a premium on community colleges and workforce training as part of its economic development efforts.

“Texas has been quite aggressive in seeking companies to relocate there or expand there,” he says. “By design, their economic incentive packages include workforce training and development funds that must be administered through the local community college.”

He says this emphasis helps keep community colleges in Texas connected with workforce needs.

Raspiller says that, like North Carolina, Texas sees high value in creating a funding formula for students in workforce or technical skill development classes.

“It does help incentivize companies to do training with the local [community college] to keep their workforce prepared with cutting edge skills, and it allows the community college to keep its programs state-of-the-art for those [students] as well as students who come in search of skills to get back into the workforce after a layoff, etc., or to get better paying jobs,” Raspiller says.

A funding mix
Raspiller, who also has worked in Illinois and Wisconsin, says one of the big differences he’s noticed about Virginia and those states is how community colleges are funded.
In Virginia, he says, community colleges are funded through student tuition and state appropriations.

Yet in many other areas, local property taxes are also a big part of the mix, and in some states they support the bulk of funding.

In addition, many states have local boards with strong governing powers over the local president and the direction an individual college will take.

By contrast, Virginia has a centralized system in which community college presidents report directly to the chancellor, with local boards serving in an advisory capacity.

Benefits of centralization
John J. Rainone, president of Dabney S. Lancaster College in Clifton Forge, says the two previous states he has worked in, New Hampshire and Maine, had systems similar to Virginia’s.

He says one of the advantages of a centralized system is that Virginia’s 23 community colleges, on 40 campuses, can use scale and size to work together for everyone’s advantage.

Rainone notes that the most recent example of that cooperation is Dabney Lancaster’s bookstore, now operated by the Follett Higher Education Group. Follett also operates bookstores at other community colleges in the state.

“To entice a third party to run our bookstore would have been difficult,” Rainone says, noting that small, rural institutions such as Dabney Lancaster, which also has a regional center in Rockbridge County, would be at a distinct disadvantage.

So, a centralized system that can negotiate a multi-campus contract gives Dabney a boost. “We receive more services and better prices than we could individually,” Rainone says.

He says another important resource for a centralized system such as Virginia’s is that institutions freely share best practices.

“I think any college or any system can learn from each other,” he says.

Face of the future

As it rises out of a 20-acre field in rural Prince George County south of Richmond, the sleek, ultramodern Commonwealth Center for Advanced Manufacturing (CCAM) looks out of place, in a futuristic way.

It is the future of manufacturing in America, CCAM’s supporters say, far removed from the dirty and often boring factory jobs of a half-century ago.

Since its inception in 2011, the public-private collaborative research center has made significant gains.

CCAM has grown from seven original members to 28 members, including some of the biggest names in industry and five public universities.

Growth in membership, officials say, is the key to CCAM’s sustainability while providing a larger budget and more engineers and scientists to drive research.

“As membership increases, it allows for more research to be funded and more collaboration,” says Joseph Moody, CCAM’s president and executive director.

Research activity (in dollars) rose 116 percent in 2014, and the number of research projects jumped 60 percent.

CCAM’s staff of about 50 grew about 60 percent during the past year, and the number of university interns continues to rise, with 26 in 2014 — twice as many as 2013 — and 32 interns projected for this year.

National recognition
The National Governors Association has cited CCAM as a best-practice model, and the Brookings Institution recently noted, “Consortia such as CCAM are breaking the mold and showing how new technology dynamics are motivating companies and their partners to craft creative, new innovation platforms to stay ahead.”

The plaudits and the growing numbers are music to the ears of Will Powers, executive vice president and CFO of Rolls-Royce North America, which donated the land for CCAM in Prince George. Rolls-Royce’s nearby manufacturing facilities make components for jet engines.

“I think we’re getting validation from credible institutions like Brookings and the National Governors Association that this is a good model,” Powers says.

What has surprised him is how quickly the model has taken off. Of course, it doesn’t hurt to have the blessing of the president of the United States.

President Obama visited the Rolls-Royce plant three years ago as the CCAM research site was being developed, and he had nothing but praise for the concept.

“So, think of this as a place where companies can share access to cutting-edge capabilities,” Obama said of CCAM. “At the same time, students and workers are picking up new skills; they’re training on state-of-the-art equipment; they’re solving some of the most important challenges facing our manufacturers.”

The president called for creating institutes like CCAM across the country to spur a manufacturing renaissance.

Powers says there is another way you can judge CCAM’s progress so far: by the company it keeps. “The proof is in the pudding,” Powers explains. “The arrival of Airbus and Alcoa tells you this concept is valid on both sides of the Atlantic.”

Airbus, the giant France-based aircraft manufacturing company, and New York–based Alcoa, the world’s third-largest producer of aluminum, joined CCAM last year.

Seeking more members
Powers says CCAM is now in a moment of transition, moving from a startup to a more research-driven entity. It also is seeking to add more industry partners — in areas such as automotives, specialty chemicals and electronics.

The strategy is to add members who don’t compete in the marketplace with existing members but who could benefit from robust collaborative research.

In 2014 alone, 37 research projects were underway. The research agenda will expand as new members are added.

The target is for seven new members in 2015. Twelve companies are being recruited, and 27 companies are on CCAM’s list of potential members, according to center officials.

Joel P. Reuter, vice president of communications and marketing services for Rolls-Royce North America, says it’s too early in the process to talk about research breakthroughs for his company at CCAM, adding that much of the research touches on areas of protected intellectual property.

Boon for universities
Engineering schools at Virginia’s public universities have been heavily invested in CCAM and its research since the beginning, especially the University of Virginia and Virginia Tech.

Powers cites U.Va. and Virginia Tech as institutions that gave CCAM its juice. Representatives from the schools toured an advanced research center in Sheffield, England, and offered to bring that back to the U.S. “They imported a model we already loved,” Powers says.

He adds that U.Va. and Virginia Tech had experts in two areas that Rolls-Royce valued highly: surface coatings and manufacturing systems.

The University of Virginia Foundation owns the CCAM building, which was financed by $11 million from state Recovery Act bonds, a $4 million federal grant and $2.5 million from the Virginia Tobacco Commission.
Barry Johnson, senior associate dean of the U.Va. School of Engineering & Applied Science, says the money has been well invested.

“From our perspective, CCAM has already been an outstanding success. We’ve been able to grow out research as a result of the partnership. It’s generated over $12.5 million for the engineering department at U.Va.,” Johnson says.

Four departments at the engineering school have their hand in CCAM research, the U.Va. official says, with faculty members in materials science, system engineering, and mechanical and aerospace engineering all involved.

Johnson says alumni have offered support, including Raymond J. Kilmer, the executive vice president and chief technology officer of one of CCAM’s newest members, Alcoa. “He loves the CCAM model,” Johnson says of Kilmer, who has a doctorate in materials science and engineering from U.Va.

Johnson adds that recent and upcoming graduates also like the idea that universities are stepping out of their traditional model and creating alliances with industry, giving graduates opportunities for internships and possibly job offers.

“Member companies are reaching out directly to our university,” he says. “Prior to CCAM, Canon [a CCAM industry member with Virginia operations in Newport News] didn’t recruit interns at the University of Virginia. Now, they do.”

Jack Lesko, associate dean for research and graduate studies at Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering, says the university’s participation in CCAM sends an unmistakable signal. “We want industry to understand we’re open for business and we want to work with industry,” he says.

Lesko says that, from all the signals he’s seeing, federal investment in advanced manufacturing research will be substantial, as the nation works to rebuild its manufacturing base. Many of those research dollars will be going to universities that have shown an interest and an aptitude in that area.

“We need to focus our faculty hires and faculty development in areas of national needs,” Lesko says. He adds that one of the best ways to know what those needs are is by listening to industry.

Oktay Baysal, dean of the Frank Batten College of Engineering and Technology at Old Dominion University, says CCAM is something like a language academy for professors and students who learn to speak the language of industry, and learn the realities of business outside the classroom and laboratory. “It’s huge,” Baysal says.

Currently, CCAM is competing for a federal grant to establish an advanced manufacturing academy to train the manufacturing workers of the future.

Last year, the General Assembly committed $25 million in matching funds for the project if it reaches fruition.

Moody, CCAM’s president, says the takeaway from CCAM is that collaboration is a way of leveraging knowledge. “Companies that produce technologies and innovations recognize that they will never have all the knowledge within their four walls to stay on the leading edge.

“They use collaborative research to increase their effective organizational knowledge and stay innovative,” he says. “That’s where CCAM helps them.”

Commonwealth Center for Advanced Manufacturing
The industry and government members:

Aerojet Rocketdyne
Airbus
Alcoa
Blaser Swisslube
Buehler
Canon Virginia
Chromalloy
Cool Clean Technologies
EOS
GF Machining Solutions
Hermle Machine Co.
Mechdyne
Mitutoyo
National Instruments
NASA Langley Research Center
Newport News Shipbuilding
Oerlikon Metco
Paradigm Precision
RTI International Metals
Rolls-Royce
Sandvik Coromant
Siemens
Spatial Integrated Systems

Academic partners:

Old Dominion University
University of Virginia
Virginia Commonwealth University
Virginia State University
Virginia Tech

The city’s anchor

Editor’s note: This is part of an ongoing series looking at Virginia’s colleges and universities as economic engines.

When Greg Wingfield, the outgoing president and CEO of the Greater Richmond Partnership, was studying urban planning in the 1970s, the future of American cities seemed bleak.

“The forecast was that they would become hollowed out. People would continue to move to the suburbs and beyond, leaving only the poor. Thought leaders were saying you could write off cities,” Wingfield says.

Richmond, Virginia’s capital, seemed to be on that path. From 1970 to 1990, the city lost nearly 20 percent of its population, shrinking from 250,000 to just over 203,000, according to the U.S. Census.

Meanwhile, the downtown retail core was imploding, with the closing of the city’s two legacy department stores, Thalhimers and Miller & Rhoads.

Even worse, Richmond was becoming known as a murder capital. In 1994, Richmond ranked second in the nation in per-capita homicides with 161 killings.

The city seemed on the cusp of the abyss.

Today, however, Richmond is growing again with an influx of millennials and baby boomers, among others, who are embracing an urban lifestyle. The city’s population stands at approximately 214,000, having added about 10,000 residents since 2010.

Violent crime also has declined, with 42 homicides recorded in 2014.

Crucial player in turnaround
Many circumstances and individuals have helped turn the city around. But one entity that has been singled out time and again in the city’s revival is Virginia Commonwealth University, an anchor for Richmond in good times and bad.

In 2002, for example, VCU was cited along with Columbia University by CEOs for Cities and the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City for leveraging its resources for urban economic revitalization.

In 2006, the New England Board of Education released a report, Saviors of Our Cities, in which VCU was ranked eighth in a list of the top 25 “Best Neighbor” urban colleges in the country.

For years, VCU has been the city’s biggest employer, currently with about 15,000 on the payroll at the university and its health system, according to the most recent figures.

A 2010 study by Richmond-based Chmura Economics & Analytics, placed the university’s annual economic impact in Virginia at $3.6 billion. University officials say it has climbed an additional $100 million since then.

When you consider operating expenses, capital expenditures and spending by employees, students and visitors, VCU supports more than 43,000 jobs statewide, according to Chmura.

VCU, which enrolls more than 31,000 full- and part-time students, is also the city’s biggest developer with campuses on both ends of downtown’s most expansive thoroughfare, Broad Street.

VCU has the No. 1 ranked public university arts and design program in the nation, according to U.S. News & World Report, and its school of the arts has become a beacon for art and culture in the region.

The Broad Street area near the VCU arts school has blossomed with galleries and art-related events. In 2012 the city designated a portion of the Broad Street corridor as an arts and culture district, in recognition of the exploding art scene.

The VCU Medical Center, one of the focal points of local health care, is the site of the region’s only Level 1 trauma center.

Wingfield credits VCU, his alma mater, with being an indefatigable engine of economic development. “It continues to be the kind of creative hub that draws people to the city,” he says.
The story is in the numbers. Between 1990 and 2009, VCU grew from 21,000 students to more than 30,000. During that period, the university played a leading role in about $2.2 billion in new investments, according to university accounts.

Reshaping downtrodden areas
Much of that investment was poured into downtrodden or underperforming areas of the city. Along one portion of West Broad Street, for example, a campus bookstore, a new school of the arts, student dormitories and a recreation and convocation center arena replaced closed empty storefronts and parking lots.

A major grocery store soon opened in the same area along with a home improvements center and a wave of private housing to accommodate VCU’s surging student population.

VCU erected engineering and business schools in an area of the city along West Main Street that municipal planners had long labeled an eyesore.

Today, VCU is building a $35 million contemporary art center on a major gateway to the city, at the corner of Belvidere and Broad streets, adjacent to the arts district.

Along Grace Street, where biker bars and an X-rated theater reigned two decades ago, VCU is building a student-centered avenue.

Themed dormitories are pushing skyward, clustering like-minded students in the areas of community service, leadership and innovation.

In still another underperforming area further downtown, the university opened a biotechnology park. The park has grown and thrived as an incubator for startups.

On VCU’s medical campus, a new $168 million children’s outpatient clinic is under construction.

That comes on the heels of the opening in 2013 of the 12-story McGlothlin Medical Education Center, which expanded physician training and provided the impetus for the medical school’s most ambitious curriculum overhaul in three decades.

Trani’s vision
Before he left VCU’s presidency in 2009 after nearly two decades in office, Eugene P. Trani was a powerful advocate for VCU’s expansion. He was eager to show how collaborative a university could be, especially in the area of economic development.
Trani became the first VCU president to simultaneously chair the regional chamber of commerce.

During his 19 years as president, he oversaw vast infrastructure improvements. Wingfield and others regard him as a visionary leader who was able to develop a strong rapport with business interests and donors who shared his vision.

In a brief interview, Trani said that once the biotechnology park and the engineering school were established early in his tenure, support for more progress and growth followed. “The momentum really got going,” Trani says, and then it swelled beyond even the most optimistic predictions.

When Michael Rao became VCU’s president in 2009, the fortunes of the nation and the state were changing dramatically. He arrived in Richmond during one of the worst recessions in the nation’s history. He also faced about a $63 million loss in state support over the next few years.

VCU had to recalibrate its strategic plan — and about everything else — to cope with an unsteady funding landscape in higher education. The university’s change in course meant a shift from focusing on significant enrollment growth to focusing on program excellence.

“I think VCU’s building itself to a critical mass was the right thing for many years,” Rao says, with a nod toward Trani’s leadership.

Continuing evolution
Although he has been dealt a different hand, Rao believes VCU will continue to be a strong economic engine for the region.

The VCU president sees an avenue of opportunity along the Broad Street corridor that separates VCU’s two campuses. “I remember my first drive on Broad Street. I saw a beautiful street that had hit hard times that could really spark strategic growth and improvement,” Rao says.

He anticipates that VCU will seek out strategic partners to help develop the Broad Street corridor as needs evolve. Rao says retail development in the corridor would give students and employees an opportunity to buy locally and would help re-establish the downtown as a place to shop.

Completion of the Institute for Contemporary Art also is expected to further enhance the city’s Arts District and VCU’s pre-eminence in the arts.

One of Rao’s priorities has been to encourage VCU’s students to take a full load of college credits, so they can graduate sooner.

With more graduates, VCU’s value to the community increases, he says, as those graduates take jobs and add to the economy. “Back in 2008-09 we had 6,000 graduates [annually]. Today, it’s almost 7,500 graduates,” Rao says.

The updated master plan also envisions hiring about 500 more faculty members to help eliminate bottlenecks to graduation and upgrade academics across the board.

Rao says the thrust of his fundraising efforts will be focused on investing in people. “We need endowed chairs and professors more than at any time in our history … and, scholarships for our students,” he says.

Recent VCU graduates, many of whom are the first members of their family to go to college, have averaged some of the highest debt loads among public universities in Virginia, according to an annual survey by the Project on Student Debt.

The average debt per graduate in 2013, for example, was $29,462. Graduates of some private Virginia colleges carried debt loads in the low- to mid-30s.

Rao says VCU alumni who have achieved extraordinary success in life are now interested in seeing their alma mater rise in reputation, in terms of people and performance.

A culture of innovation
Rao also is set on cultivating a culture of innovation at VCU. “Fifty-one percent of our students say they want to start a business, and 15 percent of them do that,” he said.

Nicole Colomb, the university’s enterprise and economic development executive, notes that a VCU graduate student, “Tumi” Oredein Jr., won Wal-mart’s nationwide 2013 “Get on the Shelf” contest for his SKRIBS Customizable Wristbands.

She adds that an undergraduate student recently created Richmond’s first urban mushroom farm. Using technology, the student and his team created conditions that yield exotic mushrooms for local restaurants and stores.

Rao says VCU also is looking for more opportunities like the one in 2014 involving Community Memorial HealthCenter in South Hill. The VCU Health System added the facility to its operations, invested money and staff there and renamed the facility the VCU Community Memorial Hospital.

“The addition of [the South Hill hospital] confirmed our role in the state,” Rao says.

As Virginia’s largest provider of indigent care in the state, Rao says, VCU’s health system has a role to play in delivering health care across regions. The debate about expanding Medicaid in Virginia is much on Rao’s mind these days.
Statewide, many Virginia hospitals have been lobbying the General Assembly to expand Medicaid.

Doing that, they say, would help them provide better care to low-income patients and compensate for millions of dollars in Medicare payments they lost with the implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

Rao says he doesn’t know what the outcome of the discussions over Medicaid expansion will be, but he expressed hope that state legislators will find a path forward to provide health care to all Virginians.

Lee Downey, head of Richmond’s Department of Economic & Community Development, is bullish on VCU.

When business prospects come to Richmond looking to possibly invest, he says VCU’s presence is a confidence booster in the city’s future. “VCU is putting its own dollars down. They’re doing their own economic development,” Downey says.

Like Rao, Downey believes that the Broad Street corridor between VCU’s two campuses is ripe for development, and it’s fast becoming a nexus for future town-gown cooperation.

“It’s an area that the city has a lot of interest in revitalizing and bringing back to life. VCU also has a vested interest in that corridor. It’s something we’re working together on in lockstep,” Downey says.

Founded: 1838
VCU traces its roots to the Medical College of Virginia (begun in 1838) and the Richmond Professional Institute (1917), which merged in 1968.

National ranking: No. 1 public graduate art school, according to U.S. News & World Report

Total number of students: 31,163 (full- and part-time, fall 2014)

Total employees: 14,738 (academic and health system)

President: Michael Rao

Endowment: $1.5 billion

Maureen McDonnell sentenced to 12 months and one day in prison

Virginia’s version of a Greek tragedy lurched through one of its final scenes Friday, as former first lady Maureen McDonnell was sentenced to a year and a day in prison for her conviction in a scandal that also ensnared her husband, former Gov. Bob McDonnell.

The McDonnells were convicted on corruption charges in September after accepting loans and gifts worth at least $177,000 from Virginia businessman Jonnie Williams Sr.

The former governor was convicted on 11 corruption counts and was sentenced in January to two years in prison. He is free on bond while appealing his conviction to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

In sentencing the 60-year-old Mrs. McDonnell, who was convicted on eight corruption counts and also is free on bond pending appeal, U.S. District Court Judge James Spencer said the former first lady had been “bedazzled by material possessions.”

What emerged from the trial, character witness testimony and letters sent to him on the former first lady’s behalf, Spencer said, was a story of “a good Maureen and the ‘other Maureen,’” and it was the other Maureen who held a high perch in the governor’s mansion and acted badly.”

During the McDonnells’ joint trial, Mrs. McDonnell didn’t testify. But she was depicted as the main link between Williams and the first family.

She acknowledged as much in apologizing to the court for her mistakes, just before sentencing.

“I was the one who let the serpent into the mansion,” Mrs. McDonnell said, referring to Williams.

“The venom from the serpent poisoned my marriage, my family and the commonwealth I love. I would do anything to turn back the clock and live those two years with the knowledge I have now.”

In exchange for immunity from prosecution, Williams testified during the McDonnells’ trial that he showered the first family with gifts and loans to get their help in promoting Anatabloc, a dietary supplement that claimed to reduce inflammation.

Defense attorneys contend Williams received nothing in return that would not be provided to any Virginia business.

Williams resigned as CEO of his company at the end of 2013. Star Scientific, now called Rock Creek Pharmaceuticals, has moved its headquarters to Florida.

Spencer said the trial, and the involvement of the governor and his wife, was “puzzling, sad and tragic, and sometimes bizarre.”

The “bizarre” aspect of it, Spencer suggested, was the manner in which the former governor’s attorneys blamed Maureen McDonnell for his legal problems and then seemed to discard her as part of a broken-marriage defense.

The judge characterized the defense posture as morphing from “let’s throw mama under to the bus” to “let’s throw mama off the train.”

Neither of the McDonnells looked at each other during their six-week trial, and they made special effort to enter the court separately.

None of that iciness was evident in a packed courtroom on Friday during the three-hour hearing before sentencing.

One of the biggest surprises of all occurred when the former governor kissed his wife in a swooping Hollywood-style gesture — although the kiss landed on her right check — just after she entered the courtroom.

Courtroom observers were stunned, trying to understand what the gesture might mean. The McDonnells have been living apart.

Whatever her transgressions, perhaps no political spouse — certainly none in Virginia’s recent memory — has been vilified as much as Maureen McDonnell in the news media and in courtroom proceedings.

Politico, for example, called her, “Lady Macbeth with an AmEx card.”

Prosecutors suggested that the former governor’s wife needed attention, and her fondness for expensive shoes and dresses helped land her husband in court.

Williams took Mrs. McDonnell on a well-documented 2011 shopping spree in New York that included spending $10,999 at Oscar de la Renta, $5,685 at Louis Vuitton and $2,600 at Bergdorf Goodman.

William Burck, one of Maureen’s McDonnell’s attorneys, shocked the courtroom during the trial by saying his client had a “crush” on Williams.

Their relationship, Burck said, would be one that most people would regard as “inappropriate.” He mentioned numerous private meetings and hundreds of text messages and phone calls between them.

The withering criticism of Mrs. McDonnell continued on the witness stand where epithets such as “nutbag” and “unstable” were heaped on her by former staff members.

In a story published during the trial, Slate magazine columnist Dahlia Lithwick thought all the piling-on was too much.

She said it was clear that Bob McDonnell profited as much from the couple’s relationship with Williams as his wife did.

Among Lithwick’s conclusions was this one, with tongue-in-cheek:

“There are a lot of reasons Mrs. McDonnell appears to be the prime mover in Graftgate. For one, she clearly fell prey to the well-documented double standard that first ladies need to wear designer gowns, while male public officials can squeak by on a fabulous tie.”

Keeping the troops happy

Compare.com (formerly comparenow.com) has two special desks in its Glen Allen-based headquarters for employees who want to get some exercise while they work. Instead of chairs, one desk is equipped with a treadmill while the other has an exercise bike.

If, however, employees want to exercise their creativity instead of their legs, near the desks is a “wall” of Lego toy bricks they can use to build whatever they want. “We are a startup, we’re trying to find people with good ideas,” says CEO Andrew Rose.

Welcome to one of the latest wrinkles in the work experience, brought to you by a company that is joining Virginia Business’ Best Places to Work in Virginia list for the first time.

Compare operates a website allowing consumers to compare auto insurance quotes to determine which company’s offer is best. The service is free to consumers. Compare generates income by receiving a referral fee from the insurance companies that consumers select.

Like many of the companies on the list, Compare is playing a game of long ball, focusing on business sustainability and long-term success by recruiting and retaining talented, hard-working, hard-playing employees.

This is the fifth year that Virginia Business has compiled the Best Places list in cooperation with the Best Companies Group, a Pennsylvania-based firm.

In 2014, about 150 companies registered to become one of Virginia’s Best Places to Work, and 100 were selected in three categories: small (15-99 U.S. employees); midsize (100-249) and large (250 or more).

Best Companies Groups benchmarked the companies on a list of core values: leadership and planning; corporate culture and communications; role satisfaction; work environment; relationship with supervisor; training and benefits; pay benefits; and overall employee engagement.

Training overseas
While Compare is new to Virginia — having opened last year — its business model is familiar to consumers in other countries. Its sister sites, such as Confused.com, have been offering car insurance comparison in Europe and the United Kingdom for more than a decade.

In fact, one of the big perks for Compare employees is the opportunity to travel to its sister company in the UK for one to two weeks of training.

Company officials encourage employees to take advantage of all the cultural opportunities they can while on their overseas assignment.

But back to the treadmill and bike desks: Rose says they are examples of Compare’s efforts to provide a happy and healthy working environment for its employees. “We strive to make each day at work an enjoyable experience,” says Rose. “People who enjoy what they do, do it better.”

In other words, Rose explains, happier employees make for happier customers. But he emphasizes that while employees have over-the-top diversions to help them enjoy their work and relieve stress, the company keeps its focus on the bottom line. “We are a business first,” Rose says. “If we’re not successful, it doesn’t make any difference how much fun we’re having.”

Still, the diversions focused on employee well-being and stress relief could be one-of-a-kind, such as “Nerf gun wars” or “Thirsty Thursday,” encouraging people to get out of their seats for 15 to 30 minutes to socialize and get away from work.

A form of hockey that includes blowing balls with straws, an “office Olympics” competition and a collection of puzzles to put together also are on the menu at Compare.

Rose says the games and activities are part of an effort to foster creativity and build teams, while promoting a healthy workforce.

He notes that Compare’s parent company, the Admiral Group, has long prided itself on being one of the best places to work for in the UK and Europe. “We take great pains with our work environment,” Rose says.

Popular benefits
Other companies on Virginia Business’ Best Companies list are doing the same, as part of a strategy to treat employees well and keep them.

Insurance is frequently an important benefit for employees, because they want protection for themselves, their families and sometimes their pets.

Medical coverage for employees is ubiquitous on the best companies list with 99 percent of the companies offering it, while 94 percent offer medical coverage to employees’ dependents, all with varying degrees of company contributions. (A federal mandate requiring companies with more than 100 employees to offer health insurance went into effect in January.)

Five companies offer pet insurance to their employees, and about 30 percent offer long-term-care insurance.

Paternity leave, once unheard of, is becoming a staple for many businesses, with 69 percent of companies on the best companies list offering the benefit.

Family friendly benefits encompass more than just employees and their significant others.

A small portion of companies, 6 percent, offer to pay some or all of child-care expenses, either on a regular basis or during busy seasons, and 92 percent offer flexible hours to accommodate school events or take a family member to the doctor.

Elder-care assistance seems to be a growing category in the benefits package, with 17 percent of companies offering to help employees care for aging family members.

At the Belvoir Federal Credit Union in Woodbridge, new parents can bring infants up to four months old into the workplace with them, and if no day care is available on a particular day, older children may come in.

Office work is no longer performed just at the office: 66 percent of companies offer telecommuting options for employees, and some companies also pay for home Internet.

Defined pension plans are rapidly disappearing at companies, with only 13 on the Best Places to Work list offering such a benefit this year.

Nonetheless, 96 percent of companies said they offered some form of retirement savings plan, and 82 percent said they matched an employee’s contributions.

Workouts and massages
Employee wellness, once left to employees themselves, has become an industry practice as companies strive to reduce health-care costs while maintaining a fit, alert workforce.

Choose your pleasure: walking, hiking, yoga, Zumba, gym workouts and many more. Options ranging from easy-going activities like playing pool to rigorous marathon competitions are being advanced by companies eager for their employees to break into a sweat.

The Consumer Electronics Association in Arlington offers a fitness center complete with boot camps and yoga classes, along with free biometric screenings.

Studio Center in Norfolk, which produces commercial media for radio and television, is a little more laid back. The firm pushes table tennis for fitness. In its response to a survey question about exercise facilities, Studio Center responded this way:

“Ping-Pong table — good for your health — it’s great for getting up a sweat and getting the heart rate up. Just a couple of hours a week hitting that little white ball around can do wonders for your fitness.”

What to do after all that working out? Well, massages are popular.

Cassaday & Co. Inc. of McLean, which provides wealth management services, offers its employees regular in-office massages.

Wall, Einhorn & Chernitzer PC, an accounting firm based in Norfolk, provides complimentary chair massages during the four months of tax season.

Transurban (USA) Inc. in Alexandria, a transportation company, gives its employees a 15-minute massage, with massage therapists reporting to the office on a monthly basis.

Let’s eat
Free food also is big on the list of company perks.

At Concept Solutions LLC, a technology company in Reston, free sodas are available every day, with bagels and doughnuts in abundance every Friday.

At Trusted Mission Solutions of McLean, another technology company, free coffee and snacks are always available.

At Marathon Consulting LLC in Virginia Beach, chili cook-offs keep things lively, and at MercerTrigiani in Alexandria, a law firm, winter brings hot chocolate and popcorn in the conference room.

Frequent happy hours and free lunches and dinners are part of the routine at some companies, especially for events marking business successes.

At the Norfolk office of the Hunton & Williams law firm, the lawyers gather on Fridays for lunch at Famous Uncle Al’s Hotdogs.

After all the exercise, all the massages and all the food and drink, it’s time for a trip.

Definitive Logic, a technology firm in Arlington, takes a winter trip to the Caribbean.

At Accounting Principals in Richmond, top producers have won trips to Puerto Rico, San Diego and Naples.

Ryan LLC, a national tax services firm with an office in Arlington, will be taking one of its lucky teams to an all-expenses-paid trip to Tahiti in recognition of outstanding performance and client service.

The singing CEO
Hollywood’s version of a CEO is often a stiff-necked brute who may have inspired the movie “Horrible Bosses.” But in the real world, CEOs come in different types.

At the Healthcare Distribution Management Association in Arlington, for example, the CEO is known to often sing to help relieve stress in the office.

At FinFit, a financial firm in Virginia Beach, the president of the company pays for employees to have their cars washed and detailed every month.

One of the enduring parts of corporate life at many companies is the commitment to volunteering and community service.

At the Fahrenheit Group in Richmond, a consulting firm, community service events range from Habitat for Humanity to startup accelerator programs for young entrepreneurs.

For the past 11 years SimVentions Inc. in Fredericksburg, a federal defense contractor, has supported orphanages.

Each August, the company supports a team of 20 people, including SimV employees, who travel to Peru for two weeks or more to do construction work and hold Vacation Bible School.”

The company also has for the past four years during Christmas sent a package of more than 60 pairs of shoes to the children of the Lakota Indians at their North Dakota Indian Reservation.

At Pagnato Karp, a financial advising company in Reston, employees visit the Walter Reed Medical Center, dropping off food and other goods to soldiers and their families, and talking with them about their experiences in service to their country.

Boys & Girls Clubs, service dogs that help the disabled, and advocacy for affordable housing are also causes that companies and their employees support with their money and — for many a more valuable commodity — their time.

Virginia Business Best Places to Work 2015

Top Small Employer: Defense Point Security and List of small employers

Top Midsize Employer: Knight Point Systems LLC and List of midsize employers

Top Large Employer: Accounting Principals – Richmond and List of large employers

Related story: On their game

Tweets from 2015 Best Places to Work Luncheon at The Williamsburg Lodge

#bestplacesva Tweets

On their game

Being one of the best places to work in Virginia is an accomplishment. Remaining on the list for five straight years calls for a toast.

Since 2011, the year the Virginia Best Places list began, 11 companies have met the program’s stiff criteria year after year.

One of them is PadillaCRT of Richmond, a public relations and marketing firm.

When the company first made the list — as No. 1 in the small companies category — it was under a different name, CRT/tanaka.

In 2013, it was acquired by a Minneapolis public relations agency, to form one of the nation’s 10 largest independent PR firms.

Change is one of the certainties of corporate existence, and being able to adapt successfully to change is a key to survival — and to staying on the Best Places to Work list.

Giving millennials purpose
Mark Raper, president of PadillaCRT, says that understanding and accommodating the changing needs and worldviews of a youthful workforce has been critical to his company’s success.

“This is not a 60-year-old person’s game we play. Young, talented, youthful folks are the lifeline of our organization,” Raper explains. “The millennials really want us to help them make a difference with their lives. It’s all about adding purpose.”

One goal, Raper says, is for PadillaCRT’s employees to help each other become better people, as well as better professionals.

Nearly three-quarters of Padilla’s approximately 180 employees are female, and the company has focused on women’s needs as a priority.

Extended maternity packages, flexibility with work schedules and financial assistance for daycare are among the ways the company helps women employees. “We have young moms. We want them to stay,” Raper says.

Although some public relations and marketing firms favor an open floor plan or cubicles, PadillaCRT wants each of its employees to have an office, which they can paint and decorate any way they wish.

The firm wants to develop an environment that stokes a creative spark. The concept is carried over into the firm’s headquarters building, a former warehouse with a trolley inside.

Because many people spend more time with their colleagues at work than with their families, Raper says, it’s important to create a family atmosphere in the company.

It’s not unusual, he says, to see dogs or children in the halls. “I’m sure some of our clients scratch their heads before they get to know us better,” Raper says with a laugh.

“But we take client work seriously. We want our employees to expect greatness from one another,” he says, and clients should expect nothing less.

Profit sharing at Sheetz
Companies with headquarters in other states are big contributors to Virginia’s economy, and one perennial on the Best Places to Work list is Sheetz, the convenience-store operator whose headquarters is in Altoona, Pa.

The company has 16,000 employees and nearly 500 stores nationwide, with more than 1.5 million customers coming through the doors annually.

In Virginia, the company employs about 2,000 workers at 63 convenience stores. “Most people are surprised that we do almost $7 billion in sales a year,” says Earl Springer, manager of employee programs for Sheetz.

The family-operated business shares with its employees, returning about $46.8 million in profits to workers last year in the form of bonuses, an increase of approximately $5 million over the previous year. Employees also own about 9 percent of the company.

Part of the Sheetz culture is being active in the communities it serves, sponsoring hundreds of local sports teams and events.

Springer says that nearly two-thirds of the company’s employees are millennials, who bring high energy to the workplace and thrive on the company’s fast-paced environment. “They tell us that the stores are busy, and the day flies by,” he says.

Sheetz began as a dairy store in 1952 and didn’t add gasoline pumps to its mix until the early 1970s.

Springer says that the company is constantly changing because that’s what it needs to do to survive and compete. “Our vision,” he says, “is to create the Sheetz that puts this Sheetz out of business.”

The newest innovation of the company store is being built on the campus of West Virginia University in Morgantown — a Sheetz without gasoline pumps. “It’s all food, no fuel,” Springer says.

The 15,000-square-foot restaurant and grocery store — more than twice the size of a traditional Sheetz — will be the ground-floor, anchor tenant in a university housing complex with nearly 1,000 students.

Springer said the same concept will be tried at other universities, such as Penn State. “We do extremely well in college towns, in any size college town,” Springer says.

Back to the future
In 2007, Gary Lisota left a defense contracting company with 5,000 employees where he was CEO to start his own defense contracting business, Valkyrie Enterprises.

“I wanted to go back to the beginning,” Lisota says, expressing a desire to have a more personal contact with customers than he had in a large corporation and to once again help grow a company.

Since 2009, the number of employees at Valkyrie has nearly tripled, to 270, despite a slowdown in defense spending.

Perhaps one of the reasons that Valkyrie has made the best places to work list for five straight years is Lisota’s hiring philosophy. “I hire for life,” he says. By that he means looking for the very best employees he can find, then treating them so well they don’t want to leave.

Lisota says he was able to employ high-quality people from the beginning — some coming with him from his former company, AMSEC — and those initial employees have referred other “A-quality” workers. “Our niche is we can handle some tough engineering job, because of the quality of our personnel,” he says.

As part of his effort to get to know employees better, Lisota schedules regular “Drum Beat” meetings — conversations with a meal — which draw in workers operating out of far-flung sites.

He tells them where the company is in its journey and where he thinks it’s heading. Then, he asks for their ideas. “I don’t want our company just to be a name on a paycheck. I want people to feel they’re important to me and the organization,” Lisota says.

Although about 80 percent of the company’s employees are male, more than a third of executives are women. Lisota says his hiring decisions at either level have nothing to do with gender.

“We look for the best athlete,” he says, referring to a practice of many teams in the National Football League in picking the best players available regardless of position.

The company’s motto is: “We hire the best to be the best.”

Face-to-face emphasis
Another out-of-state firm that is ubiquitous in Virginia communities is Edward Jones, the financial services firm that focuses on financial products at an individual investor level.

Based in St. Louis, Edward Jones has 11,000 offices spread across the country. “The reason we have all these locations is so we can conduct business with our clients face-to-face,” says Bill Swanson, a financial adviser in Arlington and a regional leader for the company.

Swanson says training is an imperative at Edward Jones. That training includes structured, formal sessions at out-of-office locations.

But it also includes veteran employees volunteering to help those who are still learning the finer points of the business. “There is a culture and commitment to giving back,” he says of the mentoring program.

Swanson says Edward Jones draws its financial advisers from a wide swath of society — accountants, pastors, attorneys, teachers — and offers them a wealth of support to aid their clients.

No single adviser is expected nor required to be an expert on every stock, mutual fund or insurance product, Swanson says.

But Edward Jones has a stable of such experts just a phone call or key stroke away to help local financial advisers inform their local customers.

“At the end of the day, if you want your clients to do well and reach their financial goals — and you have the passion to do that — this is the place for you,” Swanson says.

Foreign affairs

Virginia began with international investment.

English investors funded a joint stock company to establish a colony in the New World. One of the earliest sites settled was the Citie of Henricus, now part of Chesterfield County.

Will Davis, Chesterfield’s economic development director, likes to tell that story, with good reason. Chesterfield is getting one of the state’s largest international investments. Tranlin Inc., a subsidiary of China’s Shandong Tranlin Paper Co. Ltd., said in June that it would spend $2 billion to create an advanced manufacturing paper plant in Chesterfield that eventually will employ about 2,000 people.

The announcement is another building block in Virginia’s portfolio of international companies. From the Port of Virginia in Hampton Roads to the office towers of Northern Virginia — and points in between — international companies have helped Virginia shine.

The Virginia Economic Development Partnership reports that Virginia now is home to more than 700 international companies. From 2009 to 2013, they invested about $4.4 billion in the commonwealth, creating 13,000 jobs.

Chesterfield’s targets
In Chesterfield, Virginia’s fourth most populous county, the strategy has been to pursue international companies in targeted industries. “One of our target areas is the food sector,” Davis says.

For example, Sabra Dipping Co., the world’s largest hummus maker, has established a plant and research facility in the county. Sabra announced in September that it would double its production capacity, which currently is more than 4,000 tons a month.

All told, Sabra has invested $150 million in Virginia and now employs more than 500 people. The company is a joint venture involving Israel-based Strauss Group and PepsiCo.

Another food firm, Maruchan Inc., a subsidiary of a Japan-based company, employs about 450 in Chesterfield. Maruchan is one of the world’s biggest producers of ramen noodles and soups.

International companies serving the food industry also have come to Chesterfield. For example, BluePrint Automation Inc., a Dutch company, makes packaging machinery.

Altogether, Chesterfield has more than 40 international companies, representing 12 countries. “Success does breed success,” Davis says. “We’re headed on the right path, and we’re focused on what we want, very focused.”

Foreign focus
Ryan Losi, the executive vice president of the Midlothian-based accounting firm Piascik, agrees with Davis that recruiting one international company can encourage others to locate in an area.

Favorable legislation also helps. During its last session, the General Assembly passed a bill to help international exporters in Virginia reduce their taxes. Losi believes the move enhances the commonwealth’s status as a leading economic contender in international trade.

Forty percent of Losi’s 200 clients are international companies. His international practice soared during the recession as international companies poured money into the U.S., either to establish subsidiaries or to buy existing American assets. “A lot of these buyers were paying cash,” Losi says. “They were able to acquire assets at low prices.”

He believes investments in Virginia by China, already the major exporter and importer out of the Port of Virginia, could increase.

Losi cites the Tranlin announcement and last year’s $4.7 billion acquisition of Smithfield Foods Inc., the world’s largest pork producer and processor, by Shuanghui International Holdings.

“They’re looking to see how these deals go,” Losi says of major Chinese investors still on the sidelines.

The Fairfax factor
A beacon for international investment in the commonwealth is Fairfax County.

Gerald Gordon, president and CEO of the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority (FCEDA), says the county began exploring opportunities for international investment in the 1980s, hoping to take advantage of the county’s location between Washington Dulles International Airport and Washington, D.C.

In 1997, fewer than 20 foreign companies had Fairfax-based operations. Today, there are more than 400 companies from 40 nations operating in Fairfax.

Gordon says the tipping point occurred in 1998 when FCEDA held the World Congress on Information Technology, which drew representatives from 96 countries

After the conference, a half dozen companies established offices in Fairfax, helping to launch a technology boom in the county. Fairfax now boasts 6,700 technology firms.

About the same time as the conference, the county established its first international office in Tokyo. Today, FCEDA has offices in five countries.

Gordon says there was no precedent for a Virginia county establishing a development office overseas. “It was mostly the domain of states and major cities,” he says. “There was no model for local government to do, and we just stumbled along.”

Gordon believes international investment is the result of relationship building, making connections with the right people in foreign governments and business. “A lot of [Fairfax] residents have helped us make those connections, especially in Korea,” he says. “Law firms and accounting firms that have offices around the world have also helped.”

Danville digs out
The Danville area has suffered some of the state’s highest unemployment rates since its textile and tobacco industries collapsed.

Danville, a city of 43,000, is now trying to rejuvenate itself, in part by attracting international companies. “International business has become a major part of the Danville economy. We have 10 international companies from nine countries in Danville currently,” says Telly Tucker, Danville’s director of economic development.

“We’re focused on diversifying the Danville economy, so we’re not beholden to one large industry,” Tucker adds, recalling the approximately 15,000 jobs that were lost with the closing of Dan River Mills operations in the area and the downsizing of tobacco interests.

By bringing high-speed broadband into the region and beginning a revitalization of the city’s River District, community leaders are hoping to spur a renaissance.

Linwood Wright, a longtime consultant on economic development, says Danville has a long history with international companies.

He says executives with Dan River Mills and the former Dibrell Brothers Tobacco, once the second largest independent processor of leaf tobacco in the U.S., traveled the globe meeting with customers and searching for new markets.

In 2008, Danville made big news when Swedwood, the industrial group within IKEA, the world’s leading home furnishings retailer, located here.

The 930,000-square-foot factory became the Swedish furniture maker’s first U.S. manufacturing facility.

Wright says IKEA then helped recruit two of its suppliers, EBI of Poland and AXXOR of the Netherlands, to locate to Danville.

EBI produces upholstered furniture and bedding accessories for IKEA, and AXXOR makes a honeycomb core that is used by Swedwood.

Port of opportunity
The same type of help by an existing company occurred in Virginia Beach, says Darryl W. Gosnell, president and CEO of the Hampton Roads Economic Development Alliance.

He says one of the area’s longtime international companies — Stihl Inc. of Virginia Beach, a German company perhaps best-known for its chainsaws and other power equipment — assisted in recruiting two of its suppliers to the state’s largest city.

One of those suppliers was BMZ of Germany, the world’s largest producer of rechargeable battery pack systems, which opened its first U.S. manufacturing plant in Virginia Beach in 2011.

The other Stihl recruit was Prufrex, a German manufacturer of digital ignition systems, which announced last year it was opening its first U.S. plant, in part because its two major customers — Stihl and BMZ Batteries — were already there.

Stihl has 1,900 employees in Virginia Beach and recently marked its 40th anniversary as a Virginia company.

“We have 140 international companies from 26 countries, and they employ over 21,000 local residents. That’s a big chunk of folks,” Gosnell says.

One of the biggest attractions to the region is the Port of Virginia, which had a record-breaking year in terms of volume in 2013.

For example, the Mediterranean Shipping Co. has made Norfolk its first and last port of call for Asia, according to Mike Lehmkuhler, vice president of business attraction for the Virginia Economic Development Partnership.

Mediterranean Shipping, based in Geneva, Switzerland, was operating 465 container vessels worldwide at the end of September.

Lehmkuhler says that in the past two years Virginia has enjoyed a surge in international investment — $3.3 billion, and the creation of 6,700 jobs as a direct result.

Many foreign companies face stagnant economies in their own countries, he explains, and they’re looking overseas. “They’re trying to build market share in the U.S.,” Lehmkuhler says.

One of Virginia’s big challenges in attracting more international investment is the state’s own budget problems. The state faces a $2.4 billion revenue shortfall during the next two-year budget cycle.

State employee layoffs and deep agency budget cuts have been announced. With limited state funding, the commonwealth can’t expand into more countries, and advertising has to be curtailed.

“It handicaps us [internationally] from having a louder voice and a bigger footprint,” Lehmkuhler says.

Running to keep up

Discussions about higher education in Virginia usually focus on rising tuitions.

And there’s a good reason: average undergraduate tuition and mandatory fees at the state’s four-year public institutions have risen about 66 percent in constant dollars since 2004-05.

But the other important story at Virginia’s public colleges and universities has been the struggle to keep faculty salaries competitive, in light of a decline in state support.

The state policy aims to provide 67 percent of an institution’s cost of education for in-state undergraduate students, with students contributing 33 percent.

Yet by the start of the current academic year, 2014-15, the state’s contribution was 47 percent, according to the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV).

Because state support has faltered, tuitions and faculty salaries are now more inextricably intertwined than ever. That does not mean, however, that faculty salaries have pushed up tuition costs.

In fact, Virginia’s Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) found in a 2013 study that most college spending does not involve instruction.

JLARC says auxiliary enterprises — student housing, dining and intercollegiate athletics — have driven spending increases.

So, even though tuitions have skyrocketed, salaries for faculty have not.

Compared with their peers
Virginia’s stated goal is to provide sufficient funding, through a combination of general fund and tuition dollars, so that salaries at the state’s four-year public colleges and universities are at the 60th percentile of the salaries of their peer institutions.

Dan Hix, SCHEV’s finance policy director, says the 60th percentile goal was simply a way of stating that Virginia wanted its public institutions to be better than average, the 50th percentile, in terms of faculty salaries when compared with the institutions’ peers.

The peers — every college and university has its own group — are selected by SCHEV in consultation/negotiation with each institution, as well as other state agencies and relevant General Assembly money committees.

Here’s an example of how the system works.

Christopher Newport University, a four-year public college in Hampton Roads, is currently at the 40th salary percentile of its peers with a state appropriated average faculty salary of $72,011. To reach the 60th percentile, the average salary would have to rise to $79,694.

Achieving the 60th percentile goal for university faculty salaries has long been elusive for the state.

This year, the average teaching and research faculty salary at Virginia’s public four-year institutions ranked at the 38th percentile of peer institutions, according to SCHEV’s latest research.

Some of the state’s premier institutions have struggled. For example, the state’s flagship institution, the University of Virginia, is at the 32nd percentile of its peers. Virginia Tech, the state’s premier land-grant institution, is at the 31st percentile.

The academically rigorous College of William & Mary, the nation’s second-oldest institution of higher education after Harvard, is at the 34th percentile.

A few institutions are doing just fine.

The college with the highest salary percentile to peers is the University of Virginia at Wise, which is at the 80th percentile.

The institution with the lowest salary percentile to peers, according to SCHEV, is George Mason University in Northern Virginia, which is at the fifth percentile.

“In its communication with the faculty, the university is aware of the need to move compensation to a competitive level,” says Charlene Douglas, chair of the GMU Faculty Senate.

She adds that GMU has “worked in a strained environment to change its budget model to stabilize our financial base. As we implement cuts now and in the [near] future we are seeking to protect our core academic mission.”

Increased fundraising and new public/private partnerships are part of the university’s new strategy, Douglas says.

A recruitment challenge
Colleges say that unless faculty salaries are competitive, qualified educators can’t be retained, and recruiting becomes an insurmountable challenge.

But raising faculty salaries is much easier said than done.

When the U.Va. board of visitors voted in April to increase tuition by 4.7 percent, in part to help support faculty salary increases, three members dissented.

The board’s vote was a follow-through on a resolution it approved in February 2013 to boost U.Va.’s average faculty salaries by 2017 into the Top 20 among its peers in the Association of American Universities, a nonprofit association of 60 U.S. and two Canadian select public and private research universities.

Member institutions of the AAU include such prominent names as Northwestern University, Princeton University, Pennsylvania State University and the University of Chicago.

Overall, the total cost of attending U.Va., which includes tuition and fees, room and board and estimated expenses for books and travel, has risen to $27,417 for Virginia students.

What students and taxpayers get for their money is the second-ranked public university in the nation, and 23rd among all national universities, according to the latest U.S. News rankings.

After the board of visitors’ tuition vote, former U.Va. Rector Helen Dragas, who was one of the dissenters, wrote an op-ed piece for the Richmond Times-Dispatch in which she said tuition increases were unsustainable.

In an email exchange with Virginia Business, Dragas says that, while she believes that U.Va. faculty salaries need to be competitive, colleges and universities must also look to new efficiencies and make hard choices.

“Secretary of Education Anne Holton recently told the [U.Va.] Board that we need to minimize tuition increases and partner with other public universities to set priorities, share resources — even including faculty — and be more efficient. I doubt the message can get any clearer, or to the point,” Dragas says.

Wave of retirements
The struggle over faculty salaries comes at a time when many institutions face a tide of looming retirements among their faculty ranks while demands are rising among students and their families for more education for the dollar, and business and industry want globally competitive graduates.

To say that the salaries of college and university instructional personnel in Virginia are not on par with their peer institutions doesn’t mean that faculty members are paid a pittance.

The highest paid faculty members in Virginia are at U.Va., where the average salary for a full professor is $150,800, while the private University of Richmond (UR) is second at $147,700, according to the most recent salary survey by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP).

However, Saranna Thornton, a Hampden-Sydney College economics professor who helped research and develop this year’s AAUP annual report on the economic status of the profession, notes that both U.Va. and UR have law schools and MBA programs, which skew the salary scale upward.

She says typical professors at the two schools are not earning those salaries.

Even though college educators at the high end of the salary scale are making a good living, salary competitiveness across all ranks has become a major talking point when it comes to faculty compensation.

“Over the past seven years, our faculty have seen salary competitiveness slide from the 49th percentile [to the 31st],” says Larry Hincker, Virginia Tech’s associate vice president for university relations. “Over the past seven years, the university has been able to implement only one merit program for faculty raises.”

Hincker says tuition has become the primary revenue stream supporting the instructional program at Virginia Tech, supplanting state support.

“Higher education currently comprises less than 10 percent of the state budget,” Hincker said. “When I started working here in the late 1980s, it was about 15 percent of the state budget.”

Bernice Hausman, president of the Virginia Tech Faculty Senate, says there’s not much to brag about when it comes to faculty salaries.

“There is a lot of dissatisfaction on the part of faculty with respect to salaries,” Hausman says.

“As you know, the market for university faculty is national and international, not local. We are competing with Berkeley, Michigan, MIT, Rutgers, Texas, etc., not with institutions in Virginia for the most part.”

Who is getting raises?
Thornton, the economics professor, says colleges often are misleading about why tuitions are going up.

“Colleges will say they are raising tuitions to retain teachers and to hire. But when you look at salaries adjusted for inflation, it’s not true,” Thornton says.

Thornton says that administrators, not faculty, have enjoyed the big salary boosts during the past six years, 2007-08 to 2013-14, recession and all.

For example, she points to a data indicating that nationally, the top three administrators at national public doctoral institutions received the largest salary hikes during the period: president (11.3 percent); chief academic officer (12.6 percent); and, chief financial officer (15 percent).

By contrast, faculty members struggled: full professor, 2.2 percent; associate professor, 0.5 percent; assistant professor, 2.6 percent.

Among Virginia’s public and private colleges and universities from which the AAUP received surveys, Thornton says that faculty salaries — adjusted for inflation — declined 2.2 percent over the period from 2007-08 to 2013-14.

But Thornton says some colleges and universities were able to swim against the tide and raise faculty salaries during that time span.

W&L’s strategy
Washington & Lee University in Lexington was the leader, by far, raising faculty salaries by 8.5 percent, according to Thornton’s analysis.

Ken Ruscio, the university’s president, says raising faculty salaries was “very deliberate, very strategic and very intentional.”

Seven years ago, just as the national recession was about to do its worst, W&L was beginning to implement a strategic plan and capital campaign.

One of the key components called for raising faculty salaries to the average of the university’s peer institutions, such as Middlebury, Amherst and Williams.

“At the time, our salaries were 10 percent below the mean of our rivals,” Ruscio said.

Gerry Lenfest of Philadelphia, an entrepreneur and philanthropist, jump-started the push with a $33 million challenge gift in 2007.

At that point in terms of faculty salaries, W&L stood 24th in the ranks among the Top 25 liberal arts institutions nationally.

Today, W&L has risen to 17th, and its pay scale is 94.6 percent of the mean of its peers across all faculty categories.

Ruscio said that Lenfest’s gift, along with the gifts of other contributors, helped build a larger endowment to cover faculty raises without sharply having to increase tuition.

Later, Lenfest gave $17 million to establish funding for faculty sabbaticals and summer research.

The effort to raise faculty salaries was included in an ongoing $500 million capital campaign. Since the campaign began, W&L has raised $464 million, and its endowment is up 45 percent to $1.35 billion.

On its website, W&L estimates that the standard cost of attending the university, including tuition of $44,660, is $61,310 annually. But students whose family incomes are below $75,000 receive full tuition without loans, and financial aid is widely available.

Only about 12 percent of W&L’s students are from Virginia, so its recruitment and outreach are both across the U.S. and globally, Ruscio says.

William & Mary Promise
The College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, a “public Ivy,” whose rivals often tend to be well-endowed private institutions, took a different approach to strengthening faculty salaries and focusing on student learning.

It adopted a new operating model, called the William & Mary Promise, which includes endowment building, increased financial aid, more Virginia students, tuition predictability for parents and merit pay for faculty.

But the most talked-about aspect of the Promise is a guarantee that tuition will not rise for in-state students in the four years after they enroll as freshmen.

However, nothing is without cost. William & Mary’s tuition and fees for in-state freshmen, $17,656, are the highest among all Virginia public institutions in 2014.

This year’s rate represents a 14.2 percent increase over the $15,463 that W&M freshmen paid in 2013-14.

But again, the tuition will be frozen for freshmen for four years, so there is more predictability on the end-cost of education for both parents and students.

W&M’s board of visitors has approved the guaranteed tuition rates for each class of incoming in-state freshmen for fall 2014-2016. But the plan is for the new operating model to be part of an ongoing program beyond 2016. “So far, so good,” says Samuel E. Jones, W&M’s vice president for finance.

Jones says the new operating model is meeting its goals, with record numbers of applicants and no downturn in their level of qualifications. Yet in terms of reaching the faculty salary levels of some of its peers — Brown, Notre Dame, Georgetown — W&M admittedly still has a ways to go.

Before the Promise began, W&M was scraping bottom in terms of faculty salaries, compared with its SCHEV-approved peer group. In 2013, for example, it was at the 17th percentile — far, far below the state goal of the 60th percentile.

In 2014, the college has climbed into the 30s, according to SCHEV data, because of additional resources generated by the Promise. University officials believe the salary percentile to peers percentage will rise even higher over the next several years.

“If we took no action, we would’ve been in the single digits,” Jones says, remembering those gloomy days. “Our sense is we’ve reversed the trend. Our hope is that over the next three to four years, we’ll have larger increases.”

Despite its struggles with faculty salaries, W&M has maintained a focus on its commitment to undergraduate teaching. U.S. News recently ranked W&M second in that category among national colleges, just below Princeton, a university spokesman says.

‘Irrational exuberance’
Thornton believes that “irrational exuberance” surrounding college athletics has siphoned away funding that could have been used to strengthen institutions’ academic mission, with respect to faculty salaries and academic programs.

In Virginia, JLARC has reported that, on average, 12 percent of student tuition and fees at public colleges are funneled into intercollegiate athletic programs.

At the moment, a possible increase in state funding for higher education — and for faculty salaries — seems distant.

In fiscal year 2013, an increase in general fund revenue collections gave the state an opportunity to halt a trend of consecutive general fund budget cuts.

The result was the lowest tuition and fee increase in a decade.

But momentum was lost this year.

State budget negotiators initially proposed an additional $70 million to $100 million in funding for higher education in the new biennium, but unexpected revenue shortfalls totaling $2.4 billion stalled that effort.
Under the current budget agreement, spending cuts will reduce the state appropriation to higher education by about $90 million over two years.

Political bombshell

For anyone in the courtroom in early September, the image of a weeping former Virginia governor — and the wails of family members and friends as guilty verdicts were read — remain fixed in memory.

In its intensity, the episode was one of the most profound moments in Virginia political history — and among the saddest.

In a criminal proceeding without precedent in the commonwealth, the jury found McDonnell guilty of 11 corruption-related charges and convicted Virginia’s former first lady on eight charges plus one charge of obstruction of justice. The McDonnells were accused of taking gifts and loans from Virginia business executive Jonnie Williams in exchange for promoting his dietary supplements company, Glen Allen-based Star Scientific, and its principal product, Anatabloc. (The company has now changed its name to Rock Creek Pharmaceuticals and moved its headquarters to Florida.)

But while the McDonnells’ future remains unclear as they await sentencing and appeals, the damage to the “Virginia Way,” a tradition of clean government, has been done.

A cadre of national and statewide print, online, radio and television reporters covered every day of the six-week trial this summer. They recounted headline-grabbing testimony about a broken marriage and $177,000 in gifts and loans that Williams showered on the McDonnells, including designer clothing and a Rolex watch.

The trial made the commonwealth titillating material for late-night comedians. Jon Stewart (a College of William & Mary graduate) memorably skewered Virginia on “The Daily Show” in an 8-minute monologue in early August.
Even before the McDonnells are sentenced, the repercussions of the first felony conviction of a Virginia governor already are being assessed.

A bruised brand
It’s just the kind of mess that Kelly O’Keefe is familiar with — a brand gone bad. He is a professor at VCU’s Brandcenter, a nationally recognized advertising training ground for some of the best talent in the business.

So, is the former governor’s conviction a dose of bad news for the state’s reputation? Of course, O’Keefe replies. “But I wouldn’t say this is a lasting hit to the brand … as long as it’s not followed by similar acts of corruption,” he says.

(Currently, the U.S. Justice Department is investigating the resignation of former state Sen. Phillip P. Puckett, D-Russell, and his consideration for a job on the state Tobacco Commission and a pending judicial appointment for his daughter. Puckett’s resignation ended a budget stalemate by shifting control of the Senate to Republicans.)

O’Keefe compares Virginia’s bruised image to the damage sustained by Toyota when devastating safety recalls plagued the automaker because of unexpected acceleration problems.

One of the biggest automobile companies in the world, Toyota went into free fall before it dispatched the management team responsible for the blunders. The company also introduced industry-leading production standards and pledged widespread reforms in its operations.

Reforms, O’Keefe says, would not be a bad thing for Virginia’s legislature to think about. “To bring the brand back quickly, we need to bring clarity to our corruption laws,” O’Keefe says.

What the trial exposed, at least for him, is the lack of clarity in Virginia’s regulations on officials accepting gifts and donations. “So it would be terrific if the legislature takes a stand,” O’Keefe says.

He added that government and business leaders also could take the high road, arguing that the jury’s verdict is validation that Virginians hold their elected officials to a high standard of integrity.

A ‘clear message’
Greg Wingfield, president and CEO of the Greater Richmond Partnership, a regional economic development marketing organization, says discussions about the business effects of the McDonnell trial are ongoing.

“We’re having that conversation with clients and prospects,” Wingfield says, emphasizing that everyone remains on point that “Virginia is a pro-business state,” no matter which party’s standard- bearer is in the governor’s mansion.

Wingfield says the jury’s verdict sends a strong signal to all politicians in Virginia. “The jury spoke harshly, but it was a clear message that Virginia is not going to tolerate that kind of behavior,” he says.

For the McDonnells, money — more precisely, the lack of it — seemed to be the driving motivation in their relationship with Williams, according to trial testimony.

Hugh Keogh, former president of the Virginia Chamber of Commerce who also served several governors in an economic development role, believes that, going forward, public opinion will be tilting toward gubernatorial candidates who are financially stable.

“Those who are not vulnerable to the shenanigans we’ve seen,” Keogh says.

He also says the disclosures during the trial about the McDonnells’ troubled marriage will make voters more curious about candidates’ spouses. “It’s inevitable,” Keogh says. “I just hope the voting public is not inclined to snoop around in people’s marriages. But all candidates will undergo closer scrutiny regardless of political affiliation.”

Not blaming the party
Keogh does not believe the McDonnells’ downfall will negatively influence voters’ opinions of the Republican Party or lead to assumptions that one party is more prone to bad behavior than another.

That’s an assessment shared by Larry J. Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. “Judging by ethics scandals and trials of public officials that have occurred across the nation in recent times, voters tend to blame the individual, not the party,” he says. “No doubt, Virginia Democrats will try to use McDonnell’s ‘gift-gate’ in upcoming elections, and it is something the Republicans will have to live down.”

Sabato believes that Virginia’s present ethics and corruption laws are open invitations to wrongdoing. Legislators should be held accountable for their votes on ethics reform in the next session of the General Assembly, Sabato says.

“Did they learn anything from McDonnell’s tragedy?” he asks rhetorically. “Are they going to establish an independent ethics commission with subpoena power? Will they stop special interests from paying for lavish trips?”

Loopholes in the law
In the wake of the scandal and indictment of the McDonnells, the legislature earlier this year passed modest reforms, limiting gifts to state officials, spouses and immediate family members to an annual total of $250. The legislation, however, did not limit intangible gifts, such as travel and meals.

Roanoke Times columnist Dan Casey recently compared the gifts described in the McDonnell trial with the new legislation. He was not reassured by his findings.

Here’s an example of what he found:

The notorious $6,500 Rolex that McDonnell’s wife gave to him as a Christmas gift in 2012 (after Williams purchased it for her) probably would not need to have been reported. That’s because it did not come from a lobbyist or businessperson seeking a state contract.

Ditto for the designer clothing and accessories that Williams bought for Mrs. McDonnell.

In short, Casey argues that the revised law enacted by the legislature is weak and would have not required the McDonnells to report most of the gifts and loans they received from Williams, or to report them only in a vague way.

Meanwhile, Casey notes, that unlike Rolexes and designer gowns, the law considers meals, travel and entertainment to be “intangible gifts.”

Limits to legislation
Ben Dendy, president of the Richmond-based lobbying group Vectre Corp., says that while he believes ethics legislation will be considered in the upcoming General Assembly session, there are limits to what kind of legislation can be passed.

“I don’t think you’re ever going to pass any law to make an elected official report taking a Rolex watch,” Dendy says. “The official knows that he should not take the watch, and if he takes one he is unlikely to report it.”

In short, Dendy says, “If someone is going to do something that is wrong, it’s going to be hard to pass a law to stop them from doing it.”

And one thing he says he wants to make perfectly clear. “Jonnie Williams was no lobbyist,” Dendy says. “He was not registered, and he had no professional lobbyist working for him or advising him.”

On Sept. 9, Republican leaders in the General Assembly added their voices to the clamor for reform.

In an opinion piece in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, House Speaker William J. Howell and Senate Majority Leader Thomas K. Norment acknowledged that “Virginia’s reputation has been tainted.”

They said they would take whatever additional steps were necessary to rebuild the public’s trust and confidence in government when the legislature reconvenes in January.

“We will re-examine every aspect of our ethics, transparency and disclosure laws … and seek to enact reforms that are stronger and more stringent,” the two GOP legislators said.

A poll by Christopher Newport University released on the same day the opinion piece was published indicated that voters were behind ethics reform.

The university’s Wason Center for Public Policy interviewed 819 registered voters, and 55 percent of the respondents agreed that the General Assembly should enact stiffer ethics rules for elected officials. A total of 68 percent said they agreed with the guilty verdicts handed down to the McDonnells.

Lessons to be learned
John McGlennon, professor of government at the College of William & Mary, says there are several lessons to be gleaned from the McDonnell scandal.

“It is clear to me that there is a growing disconnect between the views of the political world in Richmond and the Virginia population in so far as expectations of integrity,” McGlennon says.

He urges the governor and the legislature to take ownership of the public’s desire for ethical reform and run with it, lest momentum be lost.

McGlennon also recommends a public discussion of what he perceives to be a suddenly changed ethical climate in the commonwealth. “I think it’s going to take something happening now to galvanize popular support and push through a comprehensive package of reforms,” McGlennon says.

An eye on Virginia
To prove its case and to illustrate the interconnected activities between money and gifts from Williams and actions by the governor and his wife, the government relied on an exhaustive inquiry.
Investigators analyzed the length and frequency of cellphone calls and studied credit card transactions, bank deposits and withdrawals.

They looked at text and email exchanges, and they conducted interviews, lots of interviews.

FBI Special Agent David Hulser, a so-called summary witness who helped tie the government’s case together, said federal prosecutors and other law enforcement agencies had interviewed more than 300 witnesses and reviewed nearly 3.5 million pages of documents.

After the verdicts, Adam Lee, special agent in charge of the FBI division in Richmond, issued a stern warning.

“This case sends an important message that the FBI will engage and engage vigorously to any credible allegation of corruption,” Lee said.

Government prosecutors never alleged that McDonnell or his wife broke any Virginia laws. The laws that were broken were federal laws.

Bob Holsworth, a longtime political analyst and a McDonnell appointee to the Virginia Commonwealth University board of visitors, attended nearly every day of the proceedings.

He drew a sobering conclusion to what he had seen and what he had heard both during the trial and afterward.

“It seems to me that federal prosecutors have their eye on Virginia,” Holsworth says, “and they believe that the laxity of Virginia laws and the absence of laws have led to behavior that they think is illegal. I’m not certain that the McDonnell case is the end of it.”

Rare competition

Standing in the backyard of an Ashland supporter not long ago, Jack Trammell greeted well-wishers at a fundraising and get-acquainted session, letting people take a good look at him.

He will be doing that a lot. Trammell is an unknown dropped into the middle of what likely will be one of the most-watched congressional elections in the country.

The attention will come not because Trammell, a Democrat, is in the race. It’s because of his opponent, Republican Dave Brat, who until June was an unknown like Trammell.

Then came the upset that turned the political world on its head.

Brat, a tea party-backed insurgent, defeated seven-term Rep. Eric Cantor in the 7th District Republican primary. His victory over the House majority leader marked one of the biggest political upsets in American history.

The Brat-Trammell race is one of two congressional races in Virginia that will be in the spotlight this November.

The other is in the 10th District. The retirement of longtime Rep. Frank Wolf has triggered a scramble to fill a seat in the rapidly changing exurbs of Northern Virginia where Wolf, a Republican, has held sway for more than 30 years.

Two college professors
Brat’s victory over Cantor sent national political reporters scrambling to find out who Brat was.

They could have asked Trammell.

He has known Brat for a long time — playing basketball together and sharing conversations.

They are both 50 years old and professors at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, which has 1,300 students. The election between two professors is the biggest news to hit the campus in a very long time, maybe ever.
Brat, an economics professor, and Trammell, a sociology professor and the college’s director of disability support services, will be competing to fill Cantor’s seat in Congress.

The race in this conservative district could well be a barometer of how the fissure between the tea party and the Republican establishment could affect general elections.

“I’m going after some of the same Republicans that Dave is,” Trammell says.

Those likely would be more traditional Republicans who might have a bone to pick with Brat because of his furious attacks against Cantor, saying he was invisible in the district and wasn’t conservative enough in these right-leaning times for the GOP.

The party fracture was illustrated when the 7th District Republican Committee this summer denied a $300,000 funding request from Brat’s campaign.

In a mid-August news release, however, Brat insisted that the party is now unified behind his candidacy.
But is it?

Orange County is one of the few areas that supported Cantor in the primary, and a former chairman of the county’s Republican committee says it is going to be harder to get Republicans to the polls.

“Right or wrong, there are some hard feelings,” says Doug Rogers, the former chairman. “I’m worried about the ones who are not going to vote.”

If the Republican turnout is low, Rogers says, it could be a good opportunity for Democrats. “I’m going to say, ‘Let’s get away from the upset feelings … we’re all Republicans,’ ” Rogers says.

Democrats in the 7th District are primed to pounce if Brat’s appeal falters.

Abbi Easter, chair of the 7th District Democratic Committee, said that although the district is strongly Republican, Cantor’s defeat gives Democrats a rare opportunity.

“The Republican Party has been hijacked by an extremist view. Jack [Trammell] is going to reach across the aisle,” Easter says.

Even though their two-professor race may be unconventional, Brat and Trammell are adhering to the traditional themes of their respective parties.
In part, Brat trounced Cantor by taking a hardline anti-immigration stand and accusing Cantor of favoring amnesty for illegal immigrants living in the U.S., a charge that Cantor’s staff repeatedly denied.

Brat says he fully values illegal immigrants as human beings. But he says increasing the labor supply with low-wage workers will cause the wages of American workers to fall and jobs to be lost.

“This is about the economy and the self-interest of the people of the 7th [District],” Brat says.

He also favors defunding the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, and says he will support a balanced budget amendment if he gets to Congress.

Trammell has expressed support for comprehensive immigration reform.

“There are a lot of moving parts to immigration. And we need to work across the aisles. But one part that’s not moving is the House. And that’s something I would like to change,” he told an interviewer on MSNBC.
Trammell has said he also favors expanded health care and reproductive rights for women.

Despite a dispute over money within his party, Brat has a sizeable lead in fundraising over Trammell.

For the reporting period that ended on June 30, Brat reported raising about $611,000 overall, with nearly $219,000 cash on hand. Trammell had raised $155,000 with $141,000 in the bank, according to Federal Election Commission records.

Filling Wolf’s seat
The other big congressional race drawing attention in Virginia is in the 10th District, where 17-term Republican Congressman Frank Wolf, a Northern Virginia institution, has announced his retirement.

Republican nominee Barbara Comstock, 55, a lawyer and member of the House of Delegates who is a former senior aide to Wolf, is running with his endorsement to keep the district in GOP hands.

She worked for the Justice Department during President George W. Bush’s administration and was first elected to the House of Delegates in 2009.

Democratic candidate John Foust, who will be 63 by election time, also is a lawyer and member of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. He is hoping to wrest the seat away from Republicans.

Wolf has kept the 10th District reliably Republican since 1981. When he announced his retirement, he was the longest-serving member of Congress from Virginia.

He also held a senior position on the powerful House Appropriations Committee.

But his reign is over, and Democrats sense an opportunity.

As a conservative, Comstock takes the traditional Republican position on the Affordable Care Act: she wants to repeal the legislation that established it.

She defends the Second Amendment right to bear arms, opposes abortion, supports right-to-work laws, advocates tax relief and favors offshore drilling and oil exploration.

“My campaign is focused on the 21st century, putting people back to work, making sure we’re strengthening our military, so we have a strong defense industry in our district,” Comstock told “Fox & Friends.”

Foust favors the Affordable Care Act but says it’s not perfect.

He is in favor of allowing women to make their own health-care decisions, including the right to an abortion, and he emphasizes the right of women to have equal pay for equal work.

On immigration, Foust says he believes in reforms that secure the nation’s borders but also address “in a practical and compassionate way the issue of millions of undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States.”

Both Comstock and Foust have been building substantial war chests in their run for Congress.

Comstock had raised $1.4 million at the end of the June 30 reporting cycle and had $576,000 on hand. Foust had raised, $1.5 million, including $400,000 in personal loans, but ended the cycle with $1.1 million in cash on hand.

Since that report, the Republican Congressional Leadership Fund political action committee announced it will spend $1 million to help elect Comstock.

Stephen Farnsworth, director of the Center for Leadership and Media Studies at the University of Mary Washington, says Republican gerrymandering has engineered the 10th District, as well as the 7th District, toward the election of Republican candidates.

“Comstock is an experienced politician and has been effective in being elected to the [Virginia] House of Delegates. This congressional district is easier to win than her House of Delegates district,” Farnsworth says.

He notes that while there has been growing diversity in the eastern section of the 10th District, the area between Dulles and the West Virginia line is still staunchly conservative.

For Brat in the 7th District and Comstock in the 10th, Farnsworth argues that it’s their election to lose.

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