With short legislative sessions and state elections looming in the fall, odd-numbered years have developed an often-unfair reputation for being a slack time for the General Assembly.
Observers of the Virginia legislature’s 2021 session, however, would hardly have come away with that impression. In the second year of Democratic control of the legislature, lawmakers passed landmark legislation abolishing the death penalty and legalizing marijuana, cementing the commonwealth’s new rep as the most liberal Southern state. Democrats also continued to write laws with major implications for state businesses, profoundly shifting the dynamic between the commonwealth’s employers and workers. Legislators opened the door for new multibillion-dollar industries, too.
“Thanks to the new House Democratic majority, Virginia is investing in workers,” says Del. Jeion Ward of Hampton, chair of the House Labor and Commerce Committee. “Through the labor committee and others, we have raised the minimum wage, improved workers’ compensation and created strong anti-discrimination laws in the workplace. On the labor front, we passed workplace safety for domestic workers, paid sick leave for certain health care workers and [assisted] unemployed Virginians with their interactions with the [Virginia Employment Commission].”
House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn also touted the enactment of new labor laws, including measures increasing the state minimum wage to $9.50, allowing local public employees to collectively bargain and allowing public bodies to require bidders to enter into project labor agreements.
“Working women and men are the foundation of Virginia’s economy,” Filler-Corn says. “Every resident of our commonwealth is entitled to a fair wage and basic protections for an honest day’s work. This legislation is another step in our efforts to build an economy that works for all of us.”
Pro-labor measures passed by the Democratic majority this year are “another step in our efforts to build an economy that works for all of us,” House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn says. Filler-Corn photo by Caroline Martin
Virginia also made national news for becoming the first Southern state to abolish capital punishment after more than 400 years and 1,300 executions. “Over our 400-year history, Virginia has executed more people than any other state,” Gov. Ralph Northam said in March. “The death penalty system is fundamentally flawed — it is inequitable, ineffective and it has no place in this commonwealth or this country. Virginia has come within days of executing innocent people, and Black defendants have been disproportionately sentenced to death. Abolishing this inhumane practice is the moral thing to do.”
Much of this legislation would be groundbreaking for Virginia in any year, but the General Assembly’s 2021 session was also overshadowed by the all-encompassing coronavirus pandemic, leading the House of Delegates to meet via video conferencing and the state Senate to hold a masked, socially distanced session at the Science Museum of Virginia.
During the 2021 session, lawmakers continued to work on pandemic-related relief measures, including a bill to help stabilize child care centers. James Dyke, senior advisor at McGuireWoods Consulting, credits the General Assembly for taking steps to “finally get in place a child care and early childhood education system that will provide quality care to every Virginia student potentially.”
A former Virginia secretary of education, Dyke says, “To me, that’s the most important investment we can make, not only from an educational but a business perspective. That’s when kids really form their minds. That’s the time you need to get them on the right track so that they’re able to perform at their top potential.”
Other bills were aimed at assisting the hard-hit leisure and hospitality industries. Virginia Sen. John J. Bell, D-Loudoun County, points to bills that allowed restaurants to serve to-go cocktails, as well as the creation of tourist improvement districts that authorizes localities to impose fees on businesses in specified areas to pay for tourism promotion and related capital improvements.
Additionally, the General Assembly invested in expanding rural broadband access, a perennial issue that became more urgent during the pandemic as the needs for remote work and schooling grew.
Bell says the legislation that came out of the 2021 session aims “to do things that can fundamentally change our economy for the long term in a positive way that have huge impacts.”
New labor laws
Employment is largely rebounding from the depths of the pandemic, hitting 4.7% in April, down from a high of 11.3% in April 2020. Many employers, however, are still struggling to rehire and are faced with labor shortages.
Republicans have blamed federally supplemented unemployment benefits they say have incentivized workers to stay home rather than rejoin the workforce.
“So many of our businesses are struggling to get employees, and nobody will even respond to [help wanted] ads because they’re able to get the elevated unemployment benefits and sit at home and not work,” says Sen. Ryan T. McDougle, R-Hanover County. “We should be doing everything possible to get people back to work.”
Senate Republican leaders have proposed shifting discretionary funds from the federal American Rescue Plan Act to distribute one-time $1,500 bonuses to workers currently receiving federal unemployment payments after they return to work for at least six weeks.
Virginia Democrats have taken a different approach to aiding workers. Democrats passed legislation in 2020 that saw Virginia’s statewide minimum wage increased to $9.50 an hour this May, with further scheduled and proposed bumps that could see minimum wages reach $15 an hour by 2026.
Observers say the mandatory pay hike won’t make much difference across much of Virginia. Due to the shortage of workers to fill a growing number of jobs, employers have already been pushing wages up.
“The fact is the market has already acted,” says Greg Habeeb, a partner at Gentry Locke Attorneys and chair of the firm’s government and regulatory affairs group in Richmond. “Huge employers in Virginia have already moved their minimum wage to $15 an hour. Among my employer clients, a vast majority talking about labor issues aren’t talking about minimum wage — they’re talking about not being able to find people.”
The new wage law also includes bans on noncompete clauses for low-wage employees and outlaws company policies that would prevent employees from discussing pay with each other.
Democratic lawmakers also passed a law expanding time-and-a-half overtime pay to a larger category of workers. The new law, which goes into effect July 1, generally requires employers to pay nonexempt workers one-and-a-half times the regular pay rate if the employee works more than 40 hours per week. It also offers workers more recourse in making overtime claims, including lengthening the statute of limitations for claims from two to three years and making employers subject to paying double or treble damages for violations.
Perils of ignorance
With so much attention being placed in traditional media and social media on national politics, it’s understandable that many business leaders might gloss over legislative changes happening at the state level. But they would take a significant risk in doing so.
“Any business owner too busy to keep up with the rapidly changing employment laws in Virginia is setting himself or herself up for serious financial and employment risk,” says Karen Michael, president of KarenMichael PLC, a Richmond-based workplace law and human resources consulting firm. “The past two years of legislation in Virginia has fundamentally changed Virginia’s posture that supported business.”
Included in that are new worker protections. These include prohibiting businesses from discriminating against employees over hairstyles that are “historically associated with race, including hair texture, hair typeand protective hairstyles such as braids, locks and twists.” Virginia lawmakers also passed a new law to protect whistleblowers against retaliation for a series of protected actions, with penalties including payment of lost wages, benefits and attorneys’ fees, and reinstatement of the employee to their old job.
Additionally, the Assembly made changes to laws around how employees are classified, including significant new protections for workers who had previously been misclass-ified as independent contractors. The new law presumes workers are employees if they perform services for payment, unless the employer can specifically prove the worker is an “independent contractor” under federal regulations.
These new laws also have teeth in the form of avenues for workers to challenge noncompliant employers in court.
“The legal landscape for Virginia employers after these last two years is a shell of itself,” Michael says. “Virginia is not for business anymore; it is for litigation.”
Chris Saxman, executive director of Virginia Free, a nonpartisan organization providing political information for businesses, says the minimum wage increase and other labor laws came as a result of a larger shift in Virginia’s politics.
“Virginia’s politics have become nationalized,” Saxman says. “That’s just the reality. There’s a national push to pass some of these bills. … When people are running against [elected officials] in primaries, it’s real pressure.”
Multibillion-dollar opportunities
Meanwhile, new laws passed by the Democratic majority in 2020 — such as the Virginia Clean Economy Act, which dictates that Virginia utilities must shift to 100% renewable energy by 2050 — are continuing to unfold.
“The Clean Economy Act is a total restructuring of the energy system in Virginia over a 30-year period,” observes Habeeb with Gentry Locke.
The General Assembly built on the act this year with legislation targeting vehicle emissions beginning in 2025. The law will require manufacturers to produce vehicles with steadily shrinking levels of harmful emissions, while also making available a wider variety of electric cars and vehicles.
Complementary legislation added a program to offer $2,500 rebates for purchasers of electric vehicles beginning in 2022, with an additional $2,000 rebate for lower-income buyers. Initially, the law’s advocates hoped to pay for the program with a tax on dyed diesel fuel, but that was stripped out and replaced with a grant program to be backfilled by as-yet-unidentified revenue sources.
Lawmakers also eliminated tax credits to support coal production and coal use in Southwest Virginia. A state study found the credits resulted in Virginia’s economy losing 35 jobs, $21 million in gross domestic product and even $5 million in personal income, while saving coal operators and electricity generators nearly $300 million in income taxes.
Then there’s the legislature’s ongoing support for casinos and gaming as well as this year’s legalization of commercial and recreational marijuana. Beginning July 1, simple possession of recreational marijuana will be decriminalized. And the state legislature further began a process to allow retail sales of marijuana to adults in Virginia as soon as 2024.
“It’s rare in your life when you get to be at the beginning of a multibillion-dollar opportunity,” Habeeb says. “This is our third. Two years ago, we had the Clean Economy Act. Last year, casinos and online sports books. This year, it’s marijuana.”
All these initiatives came to fruition because “we were responding to the will of the people,” Bell says. “Those are all things people wanted. Making sure we do these things will lay groundwork for the future.”
With elections scheduled in November for Virginia’s governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and all 100 seats in the House of Delegates, Democrats and Republicans are spotlighting their philosophical and policy differences. They even began the 2021 General Assembly with a partisan fight over how long the session should extend. That was before they started debating more contentious issues such as abolishing the death penalty and legalizing marijuana.
But Dyke at McGuireWoods says to keep Virginia moving forward, state lawmakers should instead be seeking opportunities to collaborate.
“We cannot have in Virginia what we’re seeing at the national level,” Dyke says. “We need to be focused on Virginia solutions for Virginia problems. That means working across the aisle.”
Businesses can play a crucial role in bridging the gap, he maintains.
“The business community is well-positioned to advocate that those people for governor and the General Assembly commit to working for the ends of people in Virginia,” Dyke says. “People need to focus on that and not get themselves in partisan corners.”
The latest Virginia Constitution went into effect 50 years ago this month, but in today’s world of polarized politics, it feels like it might as well have been 1787.
Virginia’s first constitution was passed in 1776, the year the United States declared independence. The state’s present constitution is the seventh incarnation of the commonwealth’s governing document.
The penultimate state constitution was written in 1902 and entrenched Jim Crow laws that disenfranchised Black people and other non-white citizens, including by restricting voting rights through measures such as poll taxes and literacy testsdesigned to skirt the U.S. Constitution’s 15th Amendment.
“The existing constitution was antiquated and not suited for the time,” says A.E. Dick Howard, professor of law at the University of Virginia. “Beyond that, it was a racist document, founded on white supremacy. It clearly needed updating and replacing.”
In 1968, Virginia Gov. Mills Godwin called a constitutional commission to rework the document and make it conform with present federal law, particularly around civil rights in education and voting. Commission members included luminaries such as former Gov. Colgate Darden, future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell Jr., civil rights icon Oliver Hill and Hardy Cross Dillard, who would become a judge on the International Court of Justice at the Hague.
“They were the decision makers and I was the facilitator,” says Howard, who was appointed to direct the commission.
Once the group produced a document, it went to the General Assembly, where Howard was made counsel to the legislature. Lawmakers made revisions and put the proposed constitution out for a 1970 voter referendum. By then, Linwood Holton had been elected governor, and he appointed Howard to run an advocacy campaign.
“I decided I would set out to do whatever I would do if I was organizing someone’s campaign for governor or senator,” Howard recalls. He bought bumper stickers and pins, as well as billboards and television advertising, and traveled across Virginia to make speeches, “from Big Stone Gap on one end to Onancock on the other.”
Virginians approved the revised constitution, with 72% of Virginians voting in favor of it. The new constitution took effect on July 1, 1971.
“We didn’t have the kind of opposition you would have today,” Howard says. “We didn’t have to deal with social media; today, misinformation would spread like a prairie fire.”
The 1971 Virginia Constitution addressed racism by stripping language that violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling against school segregation. The new state constitution forbid discrimination on the basis of race, national origin and gender. It also cut the extraneous statutory detail from the previous version so that the 1971 constitution is roughly half the length of the 1902 constitution.
And it left plenty of room for lawmakers to operate atop that legal foundation.
“It didn’t make a difference to me as to how I operated,” says former Virginia Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, who was in his first term as a state senator when the document was passed by legislators and approved by voters. “The constitution says what the purpose of government is and what government can and should do. How that’s done is up to the legislature. That’s what’s so important today.”
The new state constitution is also relatively easy to amend. Doing so requires the General Assembly to pass a potential amendment in back-to-back years separated by a state election. Proposed amendments must be approved by Virginia voters. That keeps a steady stream of proposed amendments flowing as ballot measures, from narrowly focused tax exemptions to broad-ranging, fiercely fought provisions such as a 2006 amendment to ban gay marriage. The latter amendment was overturned by a 2015 U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
Last year, Virginia voters approved an amendment to make sweeping changes about how legislative districts are drawn after each decennial U.S. census.
“Virginia is one of the first states in our history where sitting legislators have effectively voted twice to take redistricting power out of their own hands,” says Rebecca Green, professor of practice at the William & Mary Law School. “Because we don’t have a direct democracy to amend the constitution with a popular vote, you couldn’t have a sweeping change as in other states where voters directly took power away from state legislators. Here, legislators had to be part of the solution.”
The process of amending the Virginia Constitution is always ongoing. Wilder, for example, would like to see it changed to allow state funding for private, historically Black colleges and universities — specifically Hampton University and Virginia Union University.
Howard argues that never-ending amendments are a crucial element of why the 1971 state constitution remains relevant even today.
“It’s a useful safety valve,” Howard says. “If something needs fixing, you can fix it without a general overhaul. You can argue, ‘It’s been 50 years, isn’t it time to rewrite?’ I think given the polarized state of Virginia, it would be a disaster, chaos. I think it wouldn’t work.”
Just as Zoom conferences and cloud computing have transformed our pandemic-era work lives, so too is technology changing the nature of influence.
That evolution is perhaps best evidenced by the addition of Reston-based MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor to Virginia Business’ 2021 list of the 50 most influential Virginians. Saylor may not spend his time huddled in cigar smoke-filled country club lounges with wealthy business leaders and politicians, but, along with Elon Musk, he has been one of Twitter’s leading cryptocurrency evangelists, influencing nearly half a million followers.
This year’s list also includes entrants reflecting the importance of diverse leadership, as well as the continuing and growing significance of Northern Virginia’s government contracting community to the commonwealth’s overall economic health.
Read on to learn how each of these leaders is contributing to business and leaving their imprint on Virginia.
Nancy Howell Agee, president and CEO, Carilion Clinic Inc., Roanoke
Agee
Why she is influential: Agee oversees the Roanoke Valley’s largest employer, with 13,000-plus personnel. Carilion Clinic has a $1 billion expansion and renovation plan in the works, including a $500 million overhaul of Roanoke Memorial that would make it one of Virginia’s largest hospitals. A former chair of the American Hospital Association, Agee is also a member of the Governor’s Advisory Council on Revenue Estimates.
Recent developments: Although the COVID-19 pandemic paused Carilion’s expansion plans last spring, the health system has been hard at work on other forms of growth. In July 2020, Carilion completed the purchase of Lexington’s Stonewall Jackson Hospital from the SJH Community Health Foundation. And in October 2020, Carilion received a $1 million U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) grant to fund virtual care centers, teleneurology service access and portable telehealth video devices.
Asbury
John C. Asbury, president and CEO, Atlantic Union Bankshares, Richmond
Why he is influential: Following a career working for large financial institutions, Asbury built Atlantic Union into the largest regional bank headquartered in Virginia following mergers in 2018 and 2019. Asbury was elected chairman of the Virginia Bankers Association board of directors last June and he also serves as vice chairman and chairman-elect of the Mid-Size Bank Coalition of America.
Recent developments: Through both initial rounds of federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) relief loans, Atlantic Union Bank helped more than 11,400 small businesses obtain more than $1.7 billion in funding. Atlantic Union also made undisclosed donations supporting inclusion and equity in 2020, which the bank said represented its largest-ever philanthropic gifts. The bank reported net income of $152.6 million for 2020, with $19.6 billion in assets.
G. Robert Aston Jr., executive chairman, TowneBank, Portsmouth
Aston
Why he is influential: A former president of Commerce Bank, Aston co-founded TowneBank in 1999 and helped it grow to become the largest regional bank in Hampton Roads and one of the biggest banks in the state. With 42 offices throughout Virginia and North Carolina, TowneBank had $14.63 billion in total assets at the close of 2020.
Recent developments: In June 2020, TowneBank and Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters jointly purchased the 22-story Norfolk Southern Tower in downtown Norfolk from the Fortune 500 railroad corporation, which is in the process of migrating its corporate headquarters to Atlanta. TowneBank also made the Forbes 100 Best Banks in America list for the third consecutive year, ranking No. 16 position on the 2021 list. The bank assisted 6,500 businesses in securing more than $1.1 billion in PPP relief loans during the pandemic and added a branch in Chesterfield County. It has two Charlotte, North Carolina, locations slated to open this year.
Barkin
Thomas I. Barkin, president and CEO, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond,Richmond
Why he is influential: Barkin, who has led the Richmond Fed since early 2018, oversees monetary policy and regulation and payment services for the bank as well as the Fed’s information technology organization. This year, he became a voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee, the bank’s chief monetary policy body. Previously, Barkin was a senior partner and CFO at the management consulting firm of McKinsey & Co. and served on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
Recent developments: Barkin’s primary concern about the pandemic is the impact it’s had on the labor market. Fiscal policy, he says, should prioritize people who are “close to the edge.” Although he expects more bumpy months ahead, Barkin calls the rollout of COVID-19 vaccinations “the light at the end of the tunnel.” Until clearing that tunnel, though, he expects the Fed will spend about $120 billion per month in bond purchases and maintain interest rates near zero through 2023.
Gilbert T. Bland, chairman, The Giljoy Group, Virginia Beach
Bland
Why he is influential: In 1985, Bland founded a fast food franchise business that owns and operates more than 70 Burger King and Pizza Hut restaurants, employing as many as 2,000 people. He’s also been a major voice in Virginia through board memberships. In 2018, he became president and chairman of the Urban League of Hampton Roads, which supports social and economic equality for African Americans and other minorities to the larger community. He serves on the Randolph-Macon College Board of Trustees and the boards of Sentara Healthcare and the Hampton Roads Community Foundation.
Recent developments: Bland’s community volunteer duties expanded to include an appointment as chairman of the new Virginia African American Advisory Board in 2019 in the wake of Gov. Ralph Northam’s blackface scandal. The 26-member board advises the governor on issues of importance to Black Virginians, including health, education and business. In October 2020, the board issued its first annual report, focusing on the impact of COVID-19 on Black communities, businesses and public health.
Boykin
Jennifer Boykin, president, Newport News Shipbuilding, and executive vice president, Huntington Ingalls Industries,Newport News
Why she is influential: Boykin became the first woman president of the Newport News shipyard in 2017, coming from a marine engineering background. Part of Huntington Ingalls Industries, Newport News Shipbuilding is the leading industrial employer in Virginia. With about 23,000 employees, it is currently working on the U.S. Navy’s largest-ever shipbuilding contract — $22.2 billion, shared with General Dynamics Electric Boat — to build nine Virginia-class Block V attack submarines.
Recent developments: As a large employer, the shipyard saw dramatic changes in its work schedules last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, moving from three shifts to two shifts in May 2020. Meanwhile, NNS continued work on its large backlog of projects that include the submarine contract. Boykin also was named to the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy’s new Board of Visitors last year; she is a 1986 graduate.
Victor Branch, Richmond market president, Bank of America Corp., Richmond
Branch
Why he is influential: Branch, who joined Bank of America in 1984, has served as its Richmond market president since 2015, responsible for 25 branch offices, a technology and operations center and 2,000 employees. A William & Mary alum, he has an extremely active civic life. He serves on the university’s board of visitors and also sits on the boards of the Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges, ChamberRVA, Venture Richmond and Virginia’s Gateway Region.
Recent developments: In December 2020, Branch was honored as one of the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s People of the Year. Two months later, he penned a guest column for Virginia Business, calling on the business community to continue the momentum of last year’s racial justice discussions and make long-term commitments to increase equity and diversity and end discrimination.
Carlson
Teresa Carlson, vice president, worldwide sector and industries, Amazon Web Services, Herndon
Why she is influential: As the founder of AWS’s public sector business, Carlson helped establish the company as the world’s most ubiquitous cloud platform. After the CIA moved to AWS cloud services in 2013, many organizations followed suit; today, AWS works with more than 7,500 government agencies, 14,000 academic institutions and 35,000 nonprofit organizations around the world. AWS recently expanded Carlson’s purview, giving her responsibility for its largest regulated industry customers, including financial services, energy services and telecommunications. She also oversees AWS training and certification programs, including global inclusion and diversity initiatives, and advises Amazon’s policy wing on global issues.
Recent developments: Following the February news that AWS CEO Andy Jassy would succeed Jeff Bezos as Amazon’s second CEO, speculation broke out as to whether Carlson might rise to AWS’s top spot. (Others rumored to be in the running include AWS vice presidents Peter DeSantis and Matt Garman.) Carlson could have an edge, having led the 2020 launch of a new business segment dedicated to accelerating innovation in the aerospace and satellite industry, sectors of particular interest to Bezos.
C. Daniel Clemente, founder, chairman and CEO, Clemente Development Co. Inc., Tysons
Clemente
Why he is influential: This seasoned Northern Virginia real estate developer has played a major role in making Tysons a Northern Virginia edge city. He founded his firm in 1986 after careers in banking and law. A former George Mason University rector and board of trustees chair, Clemente currently serves on the Virginia Economic Development Partnership’s board.
Recent developments: In February 2020, Clemente Development secured the remaining land for its $1.3 billion, 3 million square-foot, proposed mixed-use development, The View at Tysons. However, the ambitious project has been put on hold as the company waits to see if demand for office space revives following the pandemic. Located near the Spring Hill Metro Station, the project includes a proposal to build the 600-foot-tall Iconic Tower, which would be the tallest building in Virginia and the Washington, D.C., region, as well as 1,400 apartments priced as affordable workforce housing.
Davenport
Benjamin J. Davenport Jr., chairman, First Piedmont Corp. and Davenport Energy Inc., Chatham
Why he is influential: Davenport joined his family’s namesake energy company in 1964 after graduating from Virginia Tech. He has overseen its expansion from a small family-owned company to a major provider of propane, fuel oil and retail gasoline equipment to more than 30,000 commercial and residential customers in Virginia and North Carolina. Davenport established First Piedmont Corp., a full-service waste-management company, in 1969. A loyal Hokie, he has served on Tech’s board of visitors and on the boards of the Tech Foundation and Carilion School of Medicine.
Recent developments: Last April, Davenport received the 2020 Sorensen Institute Leadership Award in recognition of his efforts to revitalize the Southern Virginia economy and for his championship of Danville’s Institute for Advanced Learning and Research, created in partnership with Virginia Tech.
William B. “Bill” Downey, CEO, Riverside Health System, Newport News
Downey
Why he is influential: For nearly a decade, Downey has overseen the massive Eastern Virginia health care system that employs more than 9,500 people and includes almost 700 providers and seven hospitals, plus nursing homes and continuing care retirement communities. During his tenure, Riverside has undertaken a number of ambitious building projects, including a $90 million expansion of the Riverside Regional Medical Center in Newport News and a $50 million renovation and expansion of Riverside Walter Reed Hospital in Gloucester.
Recent developments: Downey lends a prodigious amount of time to civic organizations and has served on the boards of many, including the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, the Virginia Symphony, the Hampton Roads Economic Development Authority and the Virginia Chamber of Commerce. Last year, the Hampton Roads Community Action Program presented him its 2020 Community Builders award in recognition of his positive impact on the region.
DuVal
Barry DuVal, president and CEO, Virginia Chamber of Commerce, Richmond
Why he is influential:In the 11 years that DuVal has served as president and CEO of the Virginia Chamber of Commerce, he’s grown its membership from 847 in 2010 to more than 27,000, including an additional thousand this past year. A former state secretary of commerce and trade, he is also a past mayor of Newport News and was president and CEO of Kaufman & Canoles Consulting LLC.
Recent developments: Last year, DuVal and the chamber released its pandemic best practices report, “Blueprint for Getting Virginians Back to Work,” supported relief for small businesses and lobbied for businesses to be protected from pandemic-related lawsuits. DuVal also continues to be a vocal advocate against the repeal of the state’s right-to-work laws. This year, the chamber is developing a statewide economic development strategic plan, Blueprint Virginia 2030.
James W. Dyke Jr., senior advisor, State Government Relations, McGuireWoods Consulting LLC, Tysons
Dyke
Why he is influential: A former secretary of education under
Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, Dyke wields significant influence in state politics as a lobbyist for three universities: George Washington, Marymount and the foundation at George Mason University. He also serves on the board of GO Virginia, a state-funded economic initiative promoting regional collaboration and private-sector investment in economic development.
Recent developments: Dyke served as one of three co-chairs of the Virginia Early Childhood Foundation’s Back to Work Virginia task force created last year. In December, the group recommended that the state make child care available to all Virginians by 2030, regardless of income. “For Virginia to recover and prosper, we cannot go back to business as usual with a child care system that fails to provide equitable access to affordable, quality care for working families. Virginia can do better and we will do it together,” said Dyke, who is also an advocate for topics ranging from yearlong public education to racial equity and bipartisanship.
Fairbank
Richard Fairbank, founder, chairman, CEO and president, Capital One Financial Corp., Tysons
Why he is influential: Fairbank co-founded McLean-based Capital One in 1994, growing it from a startup into a Fortune 100 company that’s one of the 10 largest banks in America, with $421.9 billion in assets. A billionaire who has served as Capital One’s CEO since 1994, Fairbank hasn’t taken a base salary since 1997. He previously served as chairman of MasterCard’s U.S. board of directors.
Recent developments:Early in the pandemic, Capital One caught heat from business customers for its slow rollout of PPP loans, processing just 196 loan approvals during the federal relief program’s April 2020 first round. The pandemic also accelerated the bank’s trend of closing branches in favor of digital transactions, with Capital One filing more than 50 branch closure applications in the last half of 2020. In October 2020, the bank announced a five-year, $200 million commitment to advance economic growth and socioeconomic mobility in underserved communities. Capital One started 2021 on a bad note, however, being hit with a $390 million federal civil penalty for willfully violating anti-money-laundering requirements between 2008 and 2014.
Thomas F. Farrell II, executive chairman, Dominion Energy Inc., Richmond
Farrell
Why he is influential: Farrell has led the state’s largest utility since 2006, transitioning from its CEO to executive chairman in October 2020. Dominion is a major player in state politics and Farrell is one of Richmond’s best-known and most powerful executives, though not even his influence could save his proposed $1.5 billion Navy Hill downtown development plan, which Richmond City Council killed in early 2020.
Recent developments: As one of the state’s most powerful leaders, Farrell chairs the state GO Virginia board, which allocates funding for economic development projects across Virginia. In April 2020, he also was appointed as Altria Group Inc.’s chairman of the board, a non-executive position. Last summer, Dominion pulled the plug on its $8 billion Atlantic Coast Pipeline and sold its gas transmission and storage business to Berkshire Hathaway Inc. for almost $10 billion. As part of a state initiative to shift to carbon-free energy production by 2050, Dominion last year completed the pilot phase of its proposed $7.8 billion, 2,640-megawatt wind farm off the coast of Virginia Beach. Scheduled for completion in 2026, it will be the nation’s largest offshore wind farm.
Fralin
Heywood Fralin, chairman, Medical Facilities of America Inc., Roanoke
Why he is influential: A former University of Virginia rector who was also a longtime member of the U.Va. and Virginia Tech board of visitors, Fralin chairs the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia and is a director of the Virginia Western Community College Educational Foundation Board. Fralin and his wife, Cynthia, are noted philanthropists who donated $50 million in 2018 to Virginia Tech’s Fralin Biomedical Research Institute in Roanoke. U.Va.’s art museum is also named for the couple, who donated their collection of American art to the university in 2012. As a businessman, Fralin oversees 40 nursing home facilities in Virginia and North Carolina and is co-chairman of Retirement Unlimited Inc., which has six assisted-living facilities in the commonwealth.
Recent developments: In December 2020,Fralin and his wife pledged $5 million to endow U.Va.’s head football coaching position, which is now officially known as the Fralin Family Head Football Coach. Matching funds will create a permanent endowment of $7.5 million.
William F. “Billy” Gifford,CEO, Altria, Richmond
Gifford
Why he is influential: In April 2020, following the retirement of former CEO and Chairman Howard Willard, Gifford took the helm of the tobacco giant, which reported net revenues of $26.2 billion in 2020, a 4.2% increase from 2019. The Henrico County-based Fortune 500 parent company of cigarette manufacturer Philip Morris USA (where Gifford was president and CEO) holds a 35% stake in San Francisco- based e-cigarette producer Juul Labs Inc., having invested $12.8 billion in the company in 2018. Gifford also serves on the board of directors for Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV, in which Altria holds an equity stake.
Recent developments: In November 2020, Altria converted its nonvoting shares of Juul to voting shares but said it didn’t plan to take a more active role on the board until a federal antitrust complaint was resolved. A month later, Altria announced its third-generation IQOS tobacco heating system device, which is being marketed as less harmful for one’s health than traditional cigarettes, had been approved for sale by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Gilliland
Amy Gilliland, president, General Dynamics Information Technology Inc., Falls Church
Why she is influential: Gilliland was named president of GDIT in 2017 and a year later, the General Dynamics Corp. subsidiary doubled in size with the largest acquisition in company history: the $9.6 billion purchase of Falls Church-based IT services company CSRA Inc. Gilliland now is a high-profile leader overseeing an organization of nearly 30,000 employees, including 8,250 in Virginia, that delivers critical mission capabilities for the civilian government, defense and intelligence communities. A third-generation military veteran, she served in the U.S. Navy and worked as a public affairs officer at the Pentagon before joining General Dynamics in 2005.
Recent developments: In government contracting circles, one of the biggest stories of 2020 was the fact that GDIT retained the $4.4 billion, 10-year Defense Enterprise Office Solutions (DEOS) contract, which had previously been awarded to CSRA. Under the contract, GDIT will support the largest deployment of Microsoft Office 365, and the first in a classified environment. GDIT also secured a $695 million IT contract for the U.S. Army’s Europe headquarters, in addition to being selected as a prime contractor on a $3.3 billion global support contract for the State Department.
Robert Gray, chief, Pamunkey Indian Tribe, King William
Gray
Why he is influential: Chief of the Pamunkey Tribe since 2015, Gray has partnered with Tennessee billionaire investor Jon Yarbrough on two casino projects: one in Norfolk that is moving ahead after a local referendum passed last November, and a proposed resort in Richmond.
Recent developments: The city of Richmond began accepting proposals for casino projects in late 2020, with an operator and site expected to be selected this summer. Local voters will weigh in with a November ballot referendum. The tribe has purchased land in the Manchester neighborhood on Richmond’s South Side. Meanwhile, work starts soon on the tribe’s $500 million casino in Norfolk, with about 1,500 jobs and $185 million in annual revenue expected. Gray says the project will lead to increased prosperity for members of his tribe and the community where it will be operating the casino.
Harmon
Jonathan P. Harmon, chairman, McGuireWoods LLP, Richmond
Why he is influential: A Gulf War veteran who graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Harmon has led Virginia’s largest law firm since 2017. McGuireWoods has 24 offices across the U.S., Europe and Asia, employs close to 900 attorneys and made $853.5 million in total revenue in 2020. A respected trial attorney, Harmon represents several Fortune 500 companies and previously led the firm’s business and securities litigation department.
Recent developments: Last summer, Harmon participated in a one-on-one discussion with Ibram X. Kendi, best-selling author of “How to Be an Antiracist,” for a webcast, and the firm received Bank of America’s Law Firm Diversity & Inclusion Award. Amid widespread racial equity protests, Harmon penned a June 2020 column in The Wall Street Journal about grappling with racism and discrimination. In a December 2020 interview with Virginia Business, Harmon acknowledged how hard last year was for many people: “If there had been just one of the events — pandemic, social unrest, political divisiveness — any one of those things would have been enough. You find out a lot about who you are as a leader when you go through challenging times.”
Victor Hoskins, president and CEO, Fairfax County Economic Development Authority, Fairfax
Hoskins
Why he is influential: Since landing Amazon.com Inc.’s $2.5 billion HQ2 East Coast headquarters deal for Arlington County in 2018, Hoskins has been laser-focused on bringing economic prosperity not only to Fairfax County, where he moved in August 2019, but to the entire Northern Virginia region. In 2019, he started working with 10 Northern Virginia jurisdictions to establish the Northern Virginia Economic Development Alliance, which will help the region compete for large projects and promote economic development cooperation.
Recent developments: In 2019, Hoskins took his magic touch to Fairfax County, which, since his arrival, has snagged major deals from Microsoft Corp., Google LLC, Facebook Inc., Amazon Web Services and Volkswagen Group of America. A $64 million Microsoft investment will establish a new software development and R&D regional hub at Fairfax County’s Reston Town Center, creating 1,500 jobs, and Volkswagen Group of America Inc. signed a 20-year lease agreement in Reston Town Center, where it will be the anchor tenant in Boston Properties’ under-construction 1.1 million square-foot development. [See interview, Page 24.]
Jones
Dr. J. Stephen Jones, president and CEO, Inova Health System, Falls Church
Why he is influential: Jones oversees the operation of five not-for-profit hospitals and several other health care assets, all located in Northern Virginia. Inova, which has 18,000 employees and serves 2 million patients annually, is the highest-rated large health system in the nation, according to the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Jones isn’t just an administrator. A professor of urology at the University of Virginia, he consistently ranks among the top 1% of the nation’s cancer physicians and urologists.
Recent developments: In December 2020, Inova announced plans to build a $1 billion medical campus on the 52-acre site of the vacant Landmark Mall in Alexandria, eventually replacing Inova’s existing hospital there. The new hospital will be one of only three Level II trauma centers in Northern Virginia. The 4-million-square-foot site will include a medical office building and residential, retail, commercial and entertainment developments.
Nazzic S. Keene, CEO, Science Applications International Corp., Reston
Keene
Why she is influential: Keene leads SAIC, a major government contractor with 2020 revenues of about $7.1 billion and 25,500 employees worldwide. She joined SAIC in 2012 and rose through a series of leadership roles before becoming CEO in mid-2019. Barely six months into leading SAIC, she oversaw the company’s $1.2 billion acquisition of Unisys Corp.’s federal business unit. Keene sits on the Inova Health System Board of Trustees and is a member of ADP’s board of directors. She’s also a familiar face in local philanthropy, previously serving on boards of nonprofits such as Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts, Capital Partners for Education, Year Up National Capital Region and the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors.
Recent developments: Keene was one of a handful of CEOs of federal contracting firms who publicly called for unity following the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. In February, SAIC won an $830 million contract to provide engineering services for the U.S. Army’s Combat Capabilities Development Command, Aviation & Missile Center.
Kern
Howard P. Kern, president and CEO, Sentara Healthcare, Norfolk
Why he is influential: Leading Sentara since 2016, Kern oversees one of Virginia’s largest health systems, with 12 hospitals in Virginia and North Carolina and about 30,000 employees. Sentara also became majority owner of the Virginia Premier health plan after striking a deal with VCU Health System in spring 2020.
Recent developments: In August 2020, Sentara announced its intention to merge with Greensboro, North Carolina-based Cone Health, which will produce a health system with $11.5 billion in combined revenues. Kern will oversee the larger company, which will remain headquartered in Norfolk. And in January, Kern announced Sentara’s $10 million investment and partnership with Old Dominion University, Norfolk State University and Eastern Virginia Medical School to start a School of Public Health and support other public health initiatives in the Hampton Roads and Peninsula areas.
Justin G. Knight, president and CEO, Apple Hospitality REIT Inc., Richmond
Knight
Why he is influential: As CEO of Apple Hospitality REIT, Knight oversees 235 hotels, mainly Marriotts and Hiltons, in 34 states. He is vice chair of the board of the American Hotel and Lodging Association and additionally serves on the boards of Richmond’s Valentine Museum and Venture Richmond, which supports the state capital’s downtown businesses.
Recent developments: In December 2020, Apple Hospitality received a 2019 Hilton Legacy Award for being a top performer for the Hilton Garden Inn brand. That honor, however, preceded the arrival of the pandemic, which brought Apple Hospitality a 55% revenue drop in 2020. In response to the crisis, Knight consolidated operations, postponed nonessential projects, reduced operational costs and renegotiated service contracts. With the vaccine rollout beginning, however, Apple’s business-traveler-oriented hotels have begun to rebound, and stock advisers at The Motley Fool picked the REIT as one of their top 10 investments for 2021.
Krone
Roger A. Krone, chairman and CEO, Leidos Holdings Inc., Reston
Why he is influential: Since 2014, Krone has served as the top executive at Leidos, a Fortune 500 government contractor that reported $11.1 billion in 2019 revenue and employs 37,000 people. The pilot and aerospace engineer also has 22 years under his belt with The Boeing Co. and 14 years with General Dynamics Corp. His time with Leidos has seen both major acquisitions and contract awards, including the 2016 purchase of Lockheed Martin’s Information Systems & Global Solutions business for $4.6 billion.
Recent developments: In February, Krone became the first eight-time winner of Executive Mosaic’s prestigious Wash100 Award, which recognizes the most influential leaders in government contracting. Just a month before, Leidos completed its $215 million, all-cash acquisition of Reston-based information technology services company 1901 Group. That’s not to mention roughly $4 billion in major federal contracts Leidos landed in late 2020 and early 2021.
John R. Lawson II, executive chairman, W.M. Jordan Co., Newport News
Lawson
Why he is influential: For 32 years, Lawson served as president and CEO of the construction company his late father co-founded, rising to executive chairman in 2018. During his tenure, the company has grown its annual revenue from $25 million to more than $500 million, but his power is even more evident in the greater Hampton Roads community. The 2018 Virginia Business Person of the Year leads a company that works on projects including the Ferguson campus at Newport News City Center, Liebherr USA’s expansion in Newport News and the Measurement Systems Lab at NASA Langley Research Center. In November 2020, he joined the National Academy of Construction.
Recent developments: W.M. Jordan is constructing a 14-story mental health care facility in Norfolk, set to open in 2022, for the Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters. The company in late 2020 started construction on the new Embassy Suites Hotel, the final piece of the Cavalier Oceanfront Resort in Virginia Beach. The company also provided construction management services for the $125 million, 305-room Marriott Virginia Beach Oceanfront, which opened last June and is also part of the Cavalier renovations.
Mastracco
Vincent J. Mastracco Jr., partner, co-chair, Real Estate Strategies Group, Kaufman & Canoles PC, Norfolk
Why he is influential: Considered one of the top securities and corporate finance attorneys in the Tidewater region, Mastracco has been practicing law for more than 55 years as a member of the equally venerable firm of Kaufman & Canoles. He also has been involved in many significant commercial developments in downtown Norfolk. As the former chair for the Virginia Economic Development Partnership’s board of directors, he was on a team that helped bring Amazon’s HQ2 to Northern Virginia. Mastracco is a trustee of both the Sentara Foundation, which responds to the health care needs of the Hampton Roads area, and the Eastern Virginia Medical School Foundation. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia, and law degrees from the University of Richmond and New York University.
Recent developments: Mastracco continues his community service as a board member of the Hampton Roads Business Roundtable, the Community Leadership Partners and the Virginia Economic Development Partnership.
Terri McClements, senior partner and partner candidate development leader, COVID-19 executive project management officer, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, McLean
McClements
Why she is influential: McClements has spent more than three decades serving in various leadership roles at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC), from overseeing high-performing markets to developing its human capital and talent program. In 2017, McClements was named to lead the Big Four accounting firm’s mid-Atlantic practice, which encompasses more than 4,000 employees in Virginia, Washington, D.C., Maryland, Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey.
Recent developments: Last September, McClements left her role as market managing partner to lead two initiatives. As head of PwC’s Partner Candidate Development program, she’s responsible for developing the firm’s future leaders in a three-year pipeline program. McClements was also assigned to lead PwC’s COVID-19 response, which included the development of products and technology to assist the company’s clients with contact tracing, risk management and other aspects of guiding a business through the pandemic.
McDuffie
Mary McDuffie,president and CEO, Navy Federal Credit Union, Vienna
Why she is influential: McDuffie leads the world’s largest credit union, with more than 9 million members, $135.7 billion in assets, 22,100 employees and 344 branches. She has been with the credit union for more than two decades and became president and CEO in January 2019. During her time with the organization, she oversaw the launch of the credit union’s first mobile app — just one example of the credit union’s “digital first” mindset. In 2020, Navy Federal was ranked as one of the best places to work in IT.
Recent developments: In July 2020, Big Four accounting firm KPMG ranked Navy Federal No. 4 on its annual list of top 10 U.S. brands for customer experience excellence — a fitting accolade as McDuffie has made improving customer service one of her top priorities. Expansion has also been a priority for Duffie, who’s overseen the openings of 20 additional branches in the last couple years.
Jim McGlothlin, chairman and CEO, The United Co., Bristol
McGlothlin
Why he is influential: A Southwest Virginia native, McGlothlin was known for 40 years as a coal mining magnate, but today he’s forged a second act as a co-developer of Bristol’s forthcoming $400 million casino resort, in partnership with Hard Rock International and fellow former coal executive and developer Clyde Stacy. McGlothlin and his wife, Frances Gibson McGlothlin, have also been major donors to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and to McGlothlin’s alma mater, William & Mary.
Recent developments: Voters in Bristol overwhelmingly approved a November 2020 referendum allowing the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino to move forward, along with three other resorts across Virginia. The casino is expected to produce 2,000 jobs and generate $130 million in annual revenue. McGlothlin and Stacy, who began pursuing the idea of a casino in 2018, are credited with bringing about a change in the state’s commercial gambling laws in 2020 that opened Virginia’s doors to casinos.
Milliken
John G. Milliken, chairman, Virginia Port Authority Board of Commissioners, Arlington
Why he is influential: Milliken has chaired the Virginia Port Authority’s Board of Commissioners under five Virginia governors. He previously led the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, served as Virginia secretary of transportation and was an Arlington County supervisor from 1981 to 1990. Since he rejoined the port authority in 2014, it has leveraged nearly $1.5 billion to modernize and expand the port through infrastructure projects that will extend through 2024, including dredging to make it the deepest port on the East Coast, able to handle the largest cargo ships.
Recent developments:Milliken shepherded the VPA through a pivotal transition year in 2020, overseeing the process of choosing Stephen A. Edwards as the successor to VPA President and CEO John F. Reinhart, who retired in January after seven years. A longtime maritime executive, Edwards is the former president and CEO of TraPac LLC, which operates port terminals in California and Florida.
Stephen Moret, president and CEO, Virginia Economic Development Partnership, Richmond
Moret
Why he is influential: Moret played a key role in landing Amazon.com Inc.’s $2.5 billion HQ2 East Coast headquarters in 2018, described as the largest single economic development deal in U.S. history. Named by Virginia Business magazine as its 2019 Virginia Business Person of the Year, Moret is a tireless promoter of Virginia as a great location for business, helping to reclaim Virginia’s status as CNBC’s top state for business in 2019.
Recent developments: Essentially the state’s point person on economic recovery, Moret and his VEDP staff have been working with the Virginia Chamber of Commerce to update Blueprint Virginia 2030, a comprehensive long-range plan for Virginia businesses that’s expected to be presented in 2022. Business Facilities ranked Virginia third for workforce development last August, citing VEDP’s two-year-old Virginia Talent Accelerator Program for workforce training.
Nassetta
Christopher J. Nassetta, president and CEO, Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc.,Tysons
Why he is influential: Nassetta, a 37-year industry veteran who also chairs the World Travel & Tourism Council, has been a prominent voice in business media during the last year, discussing the hotel industry’s prospects for economic recovery from the devastating losses it suffered during the pandemic. He’s also talked about how the industry may change as a result, evolving to host more high-quality “hybrid” conferences that will have in-person attendees while also broadcasting virtually to larger remote audiences. Nassetta is in charge of a portfolio of more than 17 hotel brands, encompassing 6,100 properties in 119 countries and territories. The company had 173,000 employees prior to the pandemic.
Recent developments: Last June, as the pandemic settled in, Hilton laid off 2,100 of its 9,600 corporate employees. For third quarter 2020, it posted a 61% loss in revenue compared with the previous year. Nassetta doesn’t expect his company to recover to 2019 levels for two or three years, but, he adds, “We’re not crying in our milk. We’ve got a business to run. This too shall pass.”
Phebe Novakovic, chairman and CEO, General Dynamics Corp., Falls Church
Novakovic
Why she is influential: Last year, Forbes ranked Novakovic the 27th most powerful woman in the world in recognition of her position as head of the Fairfax County-based aerospace and defense company, a behemoth with more than 100,000 employees and annual revenues nearing $38 billion. Novakovic is a member of the executive chairman’s circle of Ford’s Theatre and chairs the board of the Association of the U.S. Army.
Recent developments: In December 2020, Virginia Business chose Novakovic as its 2020 Business Person of the Year. That same month, she was tapped to serve on the board of JPMorgan Chase & Co. General Dynamics landed several major contracts in late 2020, including being named as one of three prime contractors for the State Department’s Global Support Strategy contract vehicle, which has an estimated value of as much as $3.3 billion over the next decade, as well as a $695 million contract to provide IT services to the U.S. Army.
Pesicka
Edward A. Pesicka, president and CEO, Owens & Minor Inc., Richmond
Why he is influential: Owens & Minor was already a longtime Fortune 500 company when the COVID-19 pandemic and accompanying demand for personal protective equipment elevated it to more national prominence. Pesicka, who joined the company as president and CEO in 2019, rose in profile as Owens & Minor accelerated and expanded production of N95 respirators, surgical and procedure masks, face shields and isolation gowns. Pesicka joined other executives in the medical and pharmaceutical industries in a task force with President Donald Trump and federal officials about how to speed the PPE supply chain. Standing next to Trump, Pesicka addressed the press during a March 2020 Rose Garden task force briefing about the emerging pandemic.
Recent developments: Like many other companies, Owens & Minor moved to telework during the pandemic, ultimately deciding in November to pull stakes on its call center at Richmond’s Riverfront Plaza and sublet the space instead. Owens & Minor continues to pursue public-private relationships: In January, the day after the new president’s inauguration, the company sent a news release in which Pesicka thanked President Joe Biden for expanding and encouraging the use of face masks.
Mike Petters, president and CEO, Huntington Ingalls Industries, Newport News
Petters
Why he is influential: Petters leads America’s largest military ship-building company. HII employs more than 42,000 people, and reported $9.4 billion in 2020 revenue. Petters previously was president of what was formerly Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding and has worked in the Newport News shipbuilding industry since 1987. He is a member of many boards, including the Aerospace Industries Association, the U.S. Naval Academy Foundation, the National Association of Manufacturers and others.
Recent developments: Huntington Ingalls carried on despite the pandemic, keeping pace with its 2019 performance. For 2020, it had built a backlog of $46 billion in contracts to fulfill, a decrease of less than $1 billion from the year before. Additionally, in January, HII completed the first phase of construction on its $47 million Unmanned Systems Center of Excellence campus, a manufacturing and research facility to develop underwater drones.
Rozanski
Horacio D. Rozanski, CEO, Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., McLean
Why he is influential: Rozanski, who started out as an intern in Booz Allen Hamilton’s Buenos Aires office in 1991, has played an important part in Booz Allen’s growth into a global technology and consulting powerhouse. He guided Booz Allen through the separation of its government and commercial sides into two companies, its initial public offering in 2010, and a strategic transformation that redirected Booz Allen’s portfolio toward mission-critical, high-margin solutions. Booz Allen has cultivated a diverse workforce, adding members of underrepresented groups to its board and leadership teams at more than twice the rate of its competitors. A dedicated philanthropist, Rozanski chairs the board of directors for Children’s National Medical Center and is a board member for CARE USA. He also serves on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Committee on Conscience and the Kennedy Center Corporate Fund Board.
Recent developments: In April 2020, Rozanski was awarded the prestigious Horatio Alger Award, recognizing Americans who have succeeded despite adversity.
Buddy Rizer,executive director, economic development, Loudoun County
Rizer
Why he is influential: Loudoun’s economic development leader is also the self-styled “Godfather of Data Center Alley,” reflecting the fact that the county has the world’s largest concentration of data centers. More than 70% of all internet traffic passes through the county’s Ashburn area and companies such as Amazon Web Services, Google LLC and Microsoft Corp. are continually building more there. Rizer sits on the boards of the Northern Virginia Technology Council and the Northern Virginia Community College Foundation.
Recent developments: The increased demand for cloud services and streaming video from remote workers during the pandemic caused some data center development projects to get fast-tracked in 2020, Rizer has said. The coronavirus crisis also had Rizer focused on aiding the county’s small businesses. Loudoun doled out millions in relief funds via its COVID-19 Business Interruption Fund and allocated $250,000 in federal CARES Act money to help local restaurants offset costs for switching to outdoor dining service.
Salvino
Mike Salvino,president and CEO, DXC Technology, Tysons
Why he is influential: Founded in April 2017 as a result of the merger of Computer Science Corp. and the Enterprise Services business of Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., DXC employs 138,000 people worldwide and reported 2020 revenues of more than $19 billion. A former CEO of Accenture Operations who has written regularly about leadership for Chief Executive magazine, Salvino joined DXC in May 2019. During his seven-year tenure at Accenture, he went from a bad first year to growing revenues by 20% and he says he’s taking DXC on a similar “transformation journey.”
Recent developments: DXC divested its state and local health business to private equity firm Veritas Capital in March 2020 for $5 billion in cash. In January, DXC received an unsolicited $10 billion bid for all DXC shares from Paris-based IT company Atos SE, but Salvino and DXC’s board declined, saying the offer was too low and they think DXC has far more potential.
Michael J. Saylor,chairman, president and CEO, MicroStrategy Inc., Tysons
Saylor
Why he is influential: With more than 460,000 Twitter followers, software CEO Saylor is one of the top proponents of bitcoin as a safe-haven investment, and he’s preached that gospel in interviews on CNBC and Bloomberg Television. An inventor, author and philanthropist, Saylor has said, “The destiny of money is to be encrypted.”
Recent developments: Saylor puts his money where his tweets are: His software company spent $675 million purchasing more than 70,000 bitcoins last year, making it one of the first public companies to convert cash holdings into cryptocurrency. By mid-February, the company’s bitcoins had increased in value to roughly $3.6 billion. And the company announced plans in February to purchase $900 million more in bitcoin to add to its treasury reserve.
Smith
Steven C. Smith, CEO, Food City, Abingdon
Why he is influential: Smith’s father started out with a single Piggly Wiggly store in Grundy in 1955. In 2001, his son took over the family business, which became known as Food City, and expanded its portfolio to include more than 120 stores and 17,000 employees. Food City has posted $2.6 billion in annual revenues and operates in Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky and Georgia under the names Food City and Super Dollar Supermarkets. Smith plans to open the company’s first store in Alabama in April 2021. Food City is known in Southwest Virginia for its annual sponsorship of two NASCAR races at Bristol Motor Speedway, the Food City 500 and the Food City 300.
Recent developments: Food City was named employer of the year for 2020 by the Council for Exceptional Children’s Division on Career Development and Transition for its commitment to providing opportunities to students with disabilities. Its pharmacies are partnering with the government to offer free COVID-19 vaccinations as they become available.
Clyde Stacy, CEO, Par Ventures LLC, Bristol
Stacy
Why he is influential: A former coal mining executive who headed Rapoca Energy Co., Stacy is a prominent developer and investor in Bristol, his hometown. He purchased the vacant Bristol Mall for $2.6 million in 2018, and it’s there where he and longtime friend Jim McGlothlin, CEO of The United Co., will be building the $400 million Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, which was approved by Bristol voters in November 2020.
Recent developments: Along with the casino (one of four approved last year in local referendums across Virginia), Stacy also is an investor in Dharma Pharmaceuticals, a CBD processing facility currently housed at Bristol Mall. In October 2020, the company was the first in Virginia to dispense medical marijuana after the General Assembly loosened cannabis laws. Dharma plans to relocate to Washington County this year to make way for the casino.
Thompson
Warren Thompson, president and chairman, Thompson Hospitality Corp., Reston
Why he is influential: Thompson is the founder of the nation’s largest minority- owned food and facilities management company, which he started in 1992 after working for Marriott Corp. and buying 31 Bob’s Big Boy restaurants from the company. A University of Virginia Darden School of Business alumnus, Thompson has served on U.Va.’s board of visitors and other influential boards. In December 2020, he was named to Richmond-based Performance Food Group Co.’s board of directors.
Recent developments: Last year was difficult for the food service and hospitality industries, Thompson Hospitality included, which was forced to lay off about 75% of its workforce last spring. Staffing levels are back up, but are still at about half of 2019’s peak employment, Thompson said in January. But 2020 did have a few bright spots, including the company’s November acquisition of Reston-based Matchbox Food Group for $11.6 million. Thompson also served on Gov. Ralph Northam’s COVID-19 Business Task Force, advising the governor on strategies for assisting businesses harmed by the pandemic.
Tamika L. Tremaglio, greater Washington managing principal, Deloitte, McLean
Tremaglio
Why she is influential: Since 2017, Tremaglio has managed 12,000 employees in the greater Washington area for Deloitte. An active public speaker and fashion trendsetter who is highly visible in the D.C. region, she joined the Big Four accounting firm in 2010. She serves on the boards of Tuskegee University, United Way of the National Capital Area and is a past board member for The Economic Club of Washington, D.C. Washingtonian magazine has named her one of the region’s most powerful women.
Recent developments: In 2019, Tremaglio was named to the advisory board of the WNBA’s players union, alongside former Georgia U.S. Rep. Stacey Abrams and Vanderbilt University men’s basketball head coach Jerry Stackhouse. Among other initiatives, board members advised the union during negotiations for a collective bargaining agreement in January 2020 that tripled players’ salaries. The WNBA and its union have become more powerful since, with its support of U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock’s campaign against Atlanta team owner Kelly Loeffler, the former Republican senator of Georgia, cited as a turning point in the Democrat’s runoff win in January 2021.
VandeHei
Jim VandeHei, co-founder and CEO, Axios Media Inc., Arlington
Why he is influential: VandeHei began his career as a journalist writing for The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. In 2006, he co-founded Politico, disrupting media coverage of national politics. VandeHei reprised the act in 2016 by co-launching Axios. It began with a focus on short, punchy news items delivered via email newsletters — currently read by 1.4 million subscribers — but has since expanded to podcasts and an HBO cable television series.
Recent developments: In 2020, Axios earned more than $60 million in revenue. HBO expanded its Axios series from short blocks of episodes to year-round production of biweekly shows. Axios expanded into local news with branches in Charlotte, Denver, Des Moines, Tampa Bay and Minnesota’s Twin Cities. In early 2021, it launched AxiosHQ, a communications platform designed for businesses to adapt the Axios house style for internal communications.
Kathy Warden, chairman, CEO and president, Northrop Grumman Corp., Falls Church
Warden
Why she is influential: Having previously held leadership roles at General Dynamics Corp. and Veridian Corp., Warden joined Northrop Grumman in 2008; she has served as CEO and president since January 2019. A past chair of the board of directors at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, she serves on the board of visitors at her alma mater, James Madison University. She also chairs the Aerospace Industries Association board and serves on the boards of Merck & Co. and the global nonprofit Catalyst Inc., which works to advance women in corporate leadership and advocates for equity and inclusion.
Recent developments: Despite the challenges of 2020, Northrop closed its fourth quarter with a 17% revenue gain over the previous year. During 2020, the company increased sales by 9% to $36.8 billion and had net awards of $52.9 billion, outpacing analysts’ projections. In December 2020, the company sold its federal IT and mission support services business to Herndon-based Peraton for $3.4 billion in cash. Since November 2020, the company has won two major Air Force contracts potentially worth a combined $8.4 billion over the next decade.
Williams
Ardine Williams, vice president of HQ2 workforce development, Amazon.com Inc., Arlington
Why she is influential:After Williams’ first career in tech came to an end in 2014, Amazon lured her out of retirement from Intel Corp. to lead its effort to hire 23,000 workers for cloud computing subsidiary Amazon Web Services. Building on that success, Amazon placed her in charge of workforce development for its $2.5 billion HQ2 East Coast headquarters in Arlington, where it’s committed to hiring 25,000 workers by 2030. Williams has become one of Amazon’s most familiar faces in Virginia, traveling around the state to speak with businesses and hopeful job seekers.
Recent developments: While other companies have used the pandemic to enact a permanent move to telework, Amazon expressed a commitment to retaining physical offices for its corporate workers. In a year when Amazon grew its global workforce to 1.3 million, creating more than 400,000 jobs in the U.S. alone last year, Williams is helping the company scale its upskilling programs, including Amazon’s latest commitment to provide free training in cloud computing skills to 29 million workers globally.
Pharrell Williams, Grammy-winning recording artist and performer, developer and founder of the Something in the Water festival, Virginia Beach
Williams
Why he is influential: After rising to international prominence for his music hits (“Happy,” “Blurred Lines,” “Get Lucky”) Williams, a Virginia Beach native, has become increasingly known for his business ventures in the commonwealth. In 2019, he launched Something in the Water, a three-day music festival in Virginia Beach. Williams is also involved in developing the $325 million Atlantic Park surf park and entertainment venue at the Oceanfront.
Recent developments: Though the 2020 Something in the Water festival was canceled because of the pandemic, Williams has stayed busy. His surf park is expected to break ground in 2021, he’s working on a proposal to redevelop Norfolk’s Military Circle area and he spoke at Gov. Ralph Northam’s news conference last year announcing that Juneteenth would become a state holiday. In December, William launched Black Ambition, a nonprofit initiative to provide support for minority entrepreneurs launching startups.
Like many other parts of the commonwealth, Southwest Virginia is making a play to attract data centers, offering cheap land, available workers and a natural cooling system.
Data centers aren’t huge employers but do offer high wages and significant tax revenue — which other regions in Virginia have taken full advantage of, particularly Loudoun County in Northern Virginia.
A study conducted by Richmond-based OnPoint Development Strategies and released in October by regional marketing group InvestSWVA concludes that the region could produce 2,000 jobs and $50 million in annual revenue if it becomes a destination for data center investment.
But with more localities looking to cash in on data centers, can Southwest Virginia compete?
“Data center site selection is an increasingly competitive process, and large operators have more options than ever before as more locations become aware of the economic benefits of data centers,” says Rich Miller, founder and editor of Data Center Frontier, a trade publication.
The data center initiative, called Project Oasis, hopes to leverage vast underground pools of water in former coal mines as a significant energy and cost-savings tool to entice companies looking to save money on cooling their data centers.
Miller says Project Oasis “could be intriguing to some large operators — if supported by other initiatives.”
The study acknowledges the region’s challenges, including a smaller, less educated workforce and the lack of a local property-tax and depreciation structure designed to encourage data center investment. Also, the region lags behind more populous regions in broadband connectivity, although more fiber-optic lines are currently being added.
Will Payne, director of InvestSWVA and managing partner of Coalfield Strategies, says local counties are poised to change their tax structures, and the University of Virginia’s College at Wise and community colleges can provide training for most data center jobs.
“We see our competition not as Northern Virginia but Central Virginia,” Payne says. “Southwest Virginia may not be for every data center, but it is the right location for the right data center, especially someone focused on leveraging the region’s solar and geothermal assets to deliver on their sustainability goals.”
“There are a lot of eggs in that Northern Virginia basket,” says Kent Hill, managing principal of OnPoint Development Strategies. “There does need to be some diversity and backup for those facilities. We see that as a niche for Southwest Virginia.”
Danville once stood tall as a driver of Virginia’s economy, an epicenter both for textile production at Dan River Mills and for tobacco when it was still the commonwealth’s golden leaf.
Both industries came crashing down in the 2000s. A rising tide of public sentiment led to tobacco’s decline, and the federal quota system that guaranteed crop prices ended in 2005. Globalization moved textile production to other countries with lower labor costs, and the mills closed in 2007.
“At one point, Dan River Mills employed approximately 14,000 people just within the city limits of Danville,” says Corrie Teague Bobe, Danville’s economic development director. “You can imagine the transition that our community went through when the mills closed.”
Danville struggled with relatively high unemployment for most of the aughts, spiking at 15% during the 2007-09 Great Recession. The city’s unemployment rate rose again to 16% during this year’s pandemic.
But this November, Danville voters are casting ballots on an economic prospect that could bring approximately 900 construction jobs and 1,300 permanent jobs — all without any traditional economic development incentives. No tax exemptions. No land giveaways. No forgivable performance “loans.”
Instead, Caesars Entertainment Inc. proposes to pay the city more than $20 million for the opportunity to bring a $400 million casino and accompanying resort to Danville. That includes a flat $15 million payment and $5 million for the building site. The company also will pay property and meals taxes, as well as sliding scale taxes on its net gaming revenue. According to a December 2019 study by the state’s Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC), the proposed Danville casino would generate at least $190 million in direct revenue and $51 million in tax revenue annually by 2025.
Danville is one of four Virginia cities where voters this month will roll the dice and decide whether to allow casino gaming. On the Virginia-Tennessee state line, Bristol hopes the proposed Hard Rock Bristol Hotel and Casino will help replace decades of jobs lost in coal and other industries. Norfolk and Portsmouth may bring two casino resorts to an already burgeoning Hampton Roads region.
With four casinos being decided in local referendums in those cities, it’s highly likely that the Nov. 3 general election will result in at least one casino — and possibly all four — receiving a green light to operate in the commonwealth, with the first Virginia casino potentially welcoming guests as soon as 2023.
The Virginia General Assembly enabled the referendums through legislation passed during its 2020 session that authorizes the economically challenged cities of Bristol, Danville, Norfolk, Portsmouth and Richmond to each designate a casino operator and let voters decide on whether to allow that operator to build a casino in their city. (Richmond isn’t holding a referendum this year but may do so in 2021.) Casino developers must invest at least $300 million into each project.
If approved, casinos in all five cities could be expected collectively to create about 7,600 jobs and bring in nearly $1 billion in total annual revenues, generating between $262 million and $367 million in net annual state tax revenue, according to projections by JLARC.
In comparison, the Virginia Lottery brought in $595 million in profit and $2.15 billion in gross revenue during its most recent fiscal year. JLARC estimates that competition from the casinos would reduce Virginia Lottery proceeds by $30 million per year.
Not everyone is all in
The prospect of legalized casino gaming in the Old Dominion has attracted three of the industry’s largest players — Caesars in Danville, Hard Rock International Inc. in Bristol and Rush Street Gaming LLC in Portsmouth. Norfolk is partnering with the Pamunkey Indian Tribe, the first of seven Native American tribes in Virginia to be federally recognized.
All four casino projects on ballots this November bring a similar set of conditions: They’re not asking for tax breaks or economic incentives, and they’ll share their revenue with the state and their respective cities. Each casino’s first $200 million in revenue will be taxed at 18%, with 12% going to the state and 6% to the host cities. The combined tax rate increases to 23% for the next $200 million, and 30% for revenue exceeding $400 million. The state’s share is intended to go toward construction and maintenance of public schools.
There’s no guarantee that voters will approve any of the casinos, however, especially in this topsy-turvy year with a global pandemic and chaotic presidential election.
“This is an election season like none other,” says Jay T. Smith, a partner at Richmond’s Capital Results, who is a spokesperson for the Pamunkey tribe.
Casino boosters have invested heavily to offset that uncertainty, though. Political action committees associated with the four casinos raised $765,656 and had $527,565 on hand as of Aug. 31, according to the Virginia Public Access Project.
Opposition has been fragmented but persistent. Critics of the Norfolk project have complained about the process, details of the deal with the Pamunkey tribe and the location of the project. Jackie Glass, who first became politically involved with an unsuccessful 2018 run for the city school board, says the lack of a competitive bidding process and a less-than-transparent process for establishing the casino should give voters pause.
“If you don’t like the deal, vote no,” Glass says. “If you don’t like the process, vote no. And if you don’t like the location, vote no. That doesn’t mean no to gaming in Norfolk; it’s a no to the process, the deal and the location.”
Jackie Glass says the lack of a competitive bidding process for establishing the casino should give voters pause.
Glass is one of the organizers of a citizens group opposed to the casino. The group has been receiving free assistance from the Washington, D.C., office of Florida-based public relations firm Red Banyan. Glass says she wasn’t aware who was funding the PR company’s work, but a report by WAVY 10 revealed that it’s being funded by a rival casino developer, Baltimore-based Cordish Co. The operator of Norfolk’s Waterside District, Cordish threatened the city with legal action early in 2020, claiming Cordish’s existing agreements with the city should have given it priority to build a casino.
In Danville, the only locality that used a competitive bidding process to select its preferred casino operator, local opponents to the casino are concerned about the potential for traffic jams and crime. (The 2019 JLARC report found that crimes such as credit card theft and burglary tend to increase “in the immediate vicinity of casinos, due primarily to the increase in visitors to an area,” similar to increases associated with other large venues such as malls or sports stadiums.)
“I think it’s a bad location,” says Terry McPeak Jr., who lives near the proposed casino site. “You’re putting it right in the middle of a middle-class community. I wish they’d have put it out on the bypass, with highway infrastructure right there.”
Danville resident Terry McPeak Jr., who lives in a neighborhood just blocks from the proposed casino site, is worried it will increase traffic and crime.
If any of the four referendums fail, those cities can go back to the General Assembly and request another chance during the 2021 legislative session. Richmond, which is taking more time to research the idea and choose a preferred casino operator, may hold a referendum next year as well. (The Pamunkey tribe has also proposed building a casino in
South Richmond.)
If this November’s local referendums succeed, the casino operators will formally submit applications to the Virginia Lottery, which will be responsible for licensing and regulating the casinos. (The Virginia Lottery also regulates the newly legalized sports-betting industry in
the commonwealth.)
No strings attached?
Should Danville voters approve the deal with Caesars Entertainment, the casino’s 1,300 jobs would immediately make it one of the city’s top five employers. (The city’s largest employer is Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., which employs about 2,300 people.)
“Based on what we’ve seen and what we expect to happen, here are the benefits that the community can expect to see,” says former Caesars Entertainment CEO Tony Rodio, who now serves as strategic adviser to Caesars Entertainment CEO Tom Reeg. “First of all, 900 to 1,000 construction jobs over the course of two years. We think the business will operate with approximately 1,300 jobs. The average salary will be $50,000, and the lowest will be around $15 an hour. There’s going to be tax revenue generated for the cityof Danville, as well as for the state
of Virginia.”
According to JLARC, casino jobs in Virginia are expected to pay a median wage of $33,086, with about 19% of the jobs comprised of managerial and supervisory positions paying more
than $60,000.
Casino boosters emphasize that the multiple amenities that come with the project — which includes 300 hotel rooms; multiple restaurants and bars; 35,000 square feet of conference space; a 2,500-seat entertainment venue; a spa; and a casino with slot machines, table games, a poker room and a sports book — will attract visitors in such volume that there will be ancillary benefits to other regional businesses.
“There will be dozens or hundreds of local businesses who will benefit,” Rodio says. “Whenever we can source something from a local supplier, we do that first. There will be other local businesses that we don’t formally partner with, but they get the benefit of the additional traffic: restaurateurs, gas stations, other hotels.”
Casino backers in the other three cities promise similarly big benefits, with no strings attached.
“We’re one of those industries that shows up and says, ‘We’re going to create a lot of great jobs and great pay with tips and benefits, and on top of that, we’re not asking for anything. In fact, what can we pay you?’” says Jacob Oberman, senior vice president of development for Rush Street Gaming, the partner for Portsmouth.
Rush Street Gaming has opened six casinos since it started in the late ’90s, and it still operates four in Chicago, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and upstate New York. Oberman says the company is excited about the opportunity in Portsmouth.
“These projects don’t come along very often,” Oberman says. “Virginia is such an important market. Not only is this a strong, economically growing area, but it also has access to attract visitation from North Carolina and South Carolina.”
Much of that enthusiasm stems from the proposed site: 52 acres just off Interstate 264, adjacent to Tidewater Community College.
“We really think it’s going to be a draw because of its central location in Hampton Roads, its accessibility to workforce and training opportunities through Tidewater Community College and the way it can become entrenched in the community,” says Robert D. Moore, Portsmouth’s economic development director.
The Portsmouth casino could be expected to generate $167 million in annual revenue, more than 1,380 permanent jobs and $45 million in annual gaming taxes, according to JLARC.
Moore says that the relationships that Rush Street Gaming has built with other cities gave Portsmouth confidence in moving forward with this project. Additionally, Rush Street has pledged to solicit 5% of the equity or $5 million, whichever is greater, from local minority-owned businesses or private investors who are minorities and accredited investors.
“Rush Street Gaming has a track record of giving back to the community, being a part of the community, and being engaged in the community, and not just a business here,” Moore says. “That’s a big thing for us. We want a true partner. We want someone who’s here for the long haul.”
‘We have to find something new’
The Pamunkey casino planned for Norfolk also aims to raise the naval and port city’s profile as a premier destination for East Coast vacationers.
“Having this allows us to compete with Pittsburgh and Nashville and Cincinnati. We’re going to get more conventions and really enhance our tourism attraction [ability],” says Smith, the Pamunkey spokesperson. “We see our project as being an economic boost to [Norfolk] and really the region. People don’t just go to a casino for three days and never leave the walls of the resort. They get out, they explore.”
The Pamunkey tribe is partnering with Tennessee billionaire Jon Yarbrough to build the $500 million casino, which is projected to attract an additional 6.2 million visitors to Norfolk each year, with a $754 million annual economic impact on the city, according to the tribe. All without any taxpayer-funded incentives.
The Norfolk casino would create about 1,500 permanent jobs and generate $185 million in annual revenue, with $50 million in annual taxes, according to JLARC projections.
“This is a $500 million investment with not a single penny of government subsidy or a tax break,” Smith says.
That proposition is attractive in most places — especially so in Bristol, a city on the Tennessee border that has been hurt by the coal industry’s downturn.
“I don’t see coal coming back,” says Jim McGlothlin, a longtime coal magnate and local businessman who is leading the casino effort in Bristol. “It means we have to find something new.”
Recent years have seen the closure of major employers such as Bristol Compressors Inc. The city’s experiment investing in destination retail at The Falls struggled to attract big-name tenants and left it mired in debt. Bristol’s tourism economy, built on its revitalized downtown and the Birthplace of Country Music Museum, has been a bright spot.
McGlothlin, CEO of The United Co., and his friend and business partner Clyde Stacy, president of Par Ventures LLC, plan to build on that momentum by partnering with Hard Rock International on the Bristol casino and destination resort. Hard Rock says the $400 million development would bring more than 2,000 jobs and between $16 million and $21 million in annual tax revenues for Bristol. (JLARC estimates the Bristol casino would create at least 1,070 jobs and generate about $130 million in annual revenue and $35 million in annual taxes.)
“As a destination-scale resort, the project will be a catalyst for economic development growth across the region, in Southwest Virginia and the Tri-Cities,” says Andy Poarch, spokesperson for the proposed casino. “Communities and residents on both sides of the border will benefit from the tourism dollars that 4 million annual visitors will spend with local entertainment, hospitality, retail and dining businesses in Bristol and across the region.”
Looming over all four casino proposals has been the coronavirus pandemic, which has devastated the tourism, lodging and restaurant industries. From July 2019 to July 2020, Virginia’s leisure and hospitality sector lost 91,300 jobs — more than a fifth of its workforce.
The gaming industry wasn’t spared the effects of the pandemic. Commercial gaming revenues fell 79% in the second quarter of 2020 compared to the year before, according to the American Gaming Association. By late September, 92 of the United States’ 993 casinos remained closed — a little less than a tenth. The rest had reopened with measures designed to maintain hygiene and social distancing.
The casino operators in Virginia say that the pandemic likely won’t factor heavily into their plans, since they’re eyeing buildouts that will extend at least a few years into the future — at which point COVID-19 will presumably be under control.
Says Rodio: “We look at this from a long-term perspective.”
Several candidates have already jumped into the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial race, and several more likely entrants are waiting to declare their candidacies until the 2020 election concludes.
Virginia’s constitution limits governors to nonconsecutive four-year terms, so incumbent Gov. Ralph Northam can’t run for reelection. Republicans haven’t won a statewide election in Virginia since 2009, and the Democratic field is more crowded than the Republican side so far.
Among the Democrats, Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, state Sen. Jennifer McClellan, D-Richmond, and Del. Jennifer Carroll Foy, D-Prince William, have declared their candidacies.
Former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who served as governor from 2014 to 2018, filed paperwork to create a gubernatorial campaign committee but says he won’t announce whether he’ll run until after the 2020 election. McAuliffe is serving as a surrogate for Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.
The only declared Republican candidate for governor so far is state Sen. Amanda Chase, R-Chesterfield. Others, including former state Sen. Bill Carrico, R-Grayson, longtime delegate and former Speaker of the House Kirk Cox, R-Colonial Heights, and Charlottesville entrepreneur Pete Snyder, who lost the GOP primary for lieutenant governor in 2013, are considering runs as well.
Fairfax and Foy were part of a Democratic statewide sweep with Gov. Ralph Northam in 2017. Fairfax and Northam were caught up in 2019 scandals. Northam came under heavy criticism for a blackface photo that appeared on his 1984 Eastern Virginia Medical School yearbook page. (The governor has denied he was in the photo, which also depicted a person in a Ku Klux Klan costume.) Two women have alleged that Fairfax sexually assaulted them in the early 2000s, but Fairfax has said the incidents were consensual.
McClellan won election to the House of Delegates in 2005 and served there until 2017, when she won a special election to fill Donald McEachin’s state Senate seat after he was elected to Congress.
Foy was a public defender until she was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates in 2017.
Either McClellan or Foy would be the first woman governor in Virginia, as well as the first Black woman governor in the United States.
On the Republican side, Chase is running as a renegade Republican who refused to caucus with her fellow party senators in 2020. She was elected to the Virginia Senate in 2015 after defeating two primary opponents, including a 22-year incumbent, and winning the general election. She’s drawn attention for open carrying a .38 caliber firearm during the General Assembly session and for reportedly cursing at a Capitol Police officer during a parking dispute.
Other Republicans appear to be waiting to announce until after the 2020 election.
“My goal has been not to interfere with the 2020 race,” says Carrico, who served in the House of Delegates from 2002 to 2012 and the Virginia Senate from 2012 to 2020. “I don’t want to confuse the electorate. One of the things I felt about Amanda coming out [for governor] in February is that she takes focus off of what people need to be looking at.”
Chase has no apologies.
“I tell people I can chew gum and walk at the same time,” Chase says. “Some people want to criticize me for starting early. I’m going to win. People can criticize me, but at the end they’ll be calling me governor.”
President Donald Trump entered the White House in 2017 with no political experience but a lifetime spent in business.
Nearly four years later, with the incumbent Republican president up for reelection against Democrat Joe Biden, a former vice president who has been in politics for 50 years, Virginia voters are asking themselves: Is Donald Trump good for business in the commonwealth?
The answer, of course, varies by sector, geography, worldview and — perhaps most importantly — political identity. And it depends on what lens you use to answer the question.
Sabato
“With Trump more than most presidents, you have to separate his personality from his policy,” says Larry Sabato, founder and director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “We all know the personality — the offensiveness to so many people and groups and states. But the policies, I would say, have certainly favored business — mainly big business, but also small businesses to some degree.”
Many businesspeople give Trump “a very high grade on policy that affects them,” Sabato says, “and a very low grade on character and personality.”
Saxman
Most businesses now are focused on recovery from the coronavirus pandemic and the accompanying economic cratering, says Chris Saxman, executive director of the nonpartisan, business advocacy nonprofit Virginia FREE.
“It’s hard to suggest otherwise that Trump wasn’t good for business,” says Saxman, a former Republican state delegate. “On the regulatory front, he’s been a help to a lot of businesses. He’s certainly helped out certain sectors over others. The operative question is, is he going to be better than Biden? It’s tough to tell. Either one as president will want a pro-growth platform to get the economy growing out of the coronavirus pandemic. Regardless of Biden or Trump, the No. 1 priority is the virus.”
Many businesses that Virginia Business contacted for this report declined to comment, expressing concerns about triggering a backlash among pro- or anti-Trump customers, which they feared could have repercussions for their bottom lines. Some worried they could be called out in one of Trump’s tweets.
Ask Democrats and Republicans about whether Trump has been good for Virginia business, and the answer is predictably partisan.
“With President Trump in the White House, business has been booming in Virginia, despite Gov. [Ralph] Northam’s constant caving to the radical left,” says Samantha Zager, the Trump campaign’s deputy national press secretary. “The president’s tax cuts, deregulation and pro-growth policies have strengthened Virginia’s economy and created new jobs that have benefited workers and middle class families in the state.”
Davis
“There hasn’t been a president in the last couple of decades that has been as good on the economy as President Trump,” opines Landon “Tucker” Davis, a Southwest Virginia Republican and ardent Trump supporter who is executive director of the state branch of the America Rising political action committee.
“He’s kept his promises made in 2016,” said Davis, who served on Trump’s 2016 campaign and inaugural committee and was a Trump appointee in the Department of the Interior. “People said they were lofty and couldn’t be done, but he grabbed the bull by the horns and kept his promise to the hardworking men and women in America.”
Democrats have an entirely different take on the last four years.
“The Trump administration has failed Virginia’s small businesses and working families,” says Chris Bolling, the Biden campaign’s Virginia state director. “From his trillion-dollar tax cut for the rich to his disastrous trade wars to his reckless mishandling of the pandemic, which has disproportionately hurt Black and Latino Virginians, Trump has only brought pain to our communities and our economy.”
Bolling
“First of all, it’s daily chaos at the White House: one decision today, another decision the next day. There’s no stability, no continuity,” says former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, speaking as a surrogate for the Biden campaign. “On a given day, you have no idea what this president is going to do, if he’s going to antagonize one of our allies, one of our trading partners. With Joe Biden, who’s got strong relationships on a global basis, first-name basis with almost every leader of the globe, we’ll have stability.”
Biden’s campaign is built largely around positioning himself as a stable, reasonable alternative to Trump, based on his experience as a vice president and seven-term U.S. senator. The central business-related plank in Biden’s platform is a comprehensive, $2 trillion infrastructure package based on clean energy and modernizing transportation — or in campaign marketing terms, to “Build Back Better.”
Biden is also trying to make the race into a referendum on Trump’s competency, with the Democrat criticizing Trump for “failures of judgment” and “repeated rejection of science” in the president’s response to the pandemic.
Trump’s campaign, on the other hand, argues that the president is tougher on law and order, attacking Biden by using video footage of Black Lives Matter protests and social unrest in cities around America to suggest that a Biden presidency would be disruptive, not stabilizing. The Trump campaign has sent texts warning that Antifa will “attack your homes if Joe’s elected.” Another Trump campaign ad called on voters “to stop Joe Biden and his rioters,” accompanied by a photo of Biden kneeling alongside Black leaders.
The president’s critics point out that all the unrest has happened under Trump’s watch and accuse him of fanning the flames of divisiveness and incivility.
Whose economy was it, anyway?
Making the case against Trump, U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine paraphrases Ronald Reagan’s closing 1980 debate argument against then-President Jimmy Carter, asking if Virginians are better off now than they were four years ago.
Kaine
“The number of people employed is lower. The unemployment rate is higher. The federal deficit is higher,” says Kaine, a former Virginia governor who was Hillary Clinton’s running mate during her 2016 presidential bid against Trump. “The only thing you put in this column that’s a plus, if you’re just measuring by results, is the stock market is also higher.”
The national debt is now at $26.8 trillion, up from $19.9 trillion when Trump entered office, and the annual budget deficit is projected to reach a record $3.3 trillion this year, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
When Trump was inaugurated in 2017, the United States had seen 75 months of consecutive job growth under President Barack Obama. In Virginia, 4.1 million people were employed; and the unemployment rate was 4%.
The U. S. saw an additional 38 months of job growth under Trump before the pandemic slammed the economy. In February, the last full month before COVID-19 shut down the economy, 4.3 million Virginians were employed, and the unemployment rate was 2.6%. The U.S. had seen more than 10 years of economic growth— the longest unbroken expansion in American history.
Economic growth averaged 2% during Obama’s eight years as president, including when the country was slowly climbing out of the Great Recession. Through January 2020, economic growth under Trump was 2.1% — slightly better than Obama, but less than Trump’s promise of 4% growth.
Despite these figures, Republicans credit the pre-pandemic economy to Trump.
Chase
“Whether you like him or not, everyone has prospered under Donald Trump,” says state Sen. Amanda Chase, a Chesterfield County Republican who is seeking the GOP nomination for governor. “Everyone can look at their bottom line. It’s been the most robust economy we’ve seen in decades.”
Financial meltdown
The pandemic has dominated 2020 in unexpected, unprecedented ways. Virginia’s unemployment rate skyrocketed to 11.2% in April as the economic shutdown took hold. The number of unemployed Virginians soared from 117,249 in February to 482,111 just two months later. As of late August, nearly 250,000 Virginians remained unemployed — more than twice as many as in August 2019.
The leisure and hospitality sectors took the biggest hits during the pandemic, followed by other service industries. Those sectors have led in job gains since April, but by July they employed 91,300 fewer workers in Virginia than the summer before — a 22% drop. In June, McKinsey & Co. projected that the hotel industry may not recover to pre-pandemic levels until 2023, or even later.
Christopher Nassetta, president and CEO of McLean-based Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc., has said that it may take a few years for the hotel industry to recover from the pandemic. Hilton, which recorded a $430 million net loss in the second quarter of 2020, laid off 22% of its global corporate workforce, or about 2,100 employees, in June.
Yet hospitality industry analyst STR Inc. also noted spots of hope, including the national hotel industry reaching 50% occupancy in mid-August for the first time since the economic shutdown started. (The industry was still down 30% from August 2019, however.)
By contrast, sectors connected to the federal government have continued with relatively little disruption, propelled by the $2.2 trillion CARES (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security) Act that Congress passed in March. According to the Virginia Employment Commission, federal government jobs increased 1.3% from July 2019 to July 2020, even as total nonfarm employment fell 7% over that same period.
“There’s a lot of money going to Northern Virginia,” Saxman says. “We put a lot of money into defense. Cybersecurity was built out. There’s a lot of financing through very cheap interest rates. The Federal Reserve has a lot to do with this. They’re printing money out the wazoo.”
Defense spending is a critical part of the Northern Virginia economy. Trump has increased annual defense spending from $606 billion to $738 billion. (By comparison, U.S. defense spending under the Obama administration peaked in 2011 at $711 billion.)
The buffering of government-related sectors and a still-thriving stock market can’t mask the fact that the pandemic and related economic downturn threaten the survival of businesses both big and small across Virginia, however. The nonprofit National Bureau of Economic Research estimated that by early May, about 110,000 U.S. small businesses closed permanently due to the pandemic.
“Our consulting business is hanging on by a thread,” says Carrie Ann Alford, co-founder of Alexandria-based Torii Coaching and Consulting. Alford served three years as an aide to then-state Sen. Linda “Toddy” Puller, a Northern Virginia Democrat, and five years in the Virginia Department of Veterans Services before leaving to form her business.
Alford
“The way the president and [U.S.] Senate have really let [the pandemic] get away from them, the way they just handed over all of the accountability and power to the states has really hindered businesses’ ability to get back on their feet,” Alford says. “We’re acting like 50 independent entities saying, ‘I’m going to take care of me. Screw you.’ It’s creating all this tension in the business community. I’m quite frankly very concerned about the future of our business.”
Republicans say Trump responded well to an atmosphere in which science and public health recommendations shifted directions over the course of the pandemic’s early weeks.
Carrico
“This thing changes in terms of what you need to do day by day,” says retired Republican state Sen. Bill Carrico, who’s considering a run for governor next year. “He’s allowed states to look at it and put policies in place for how it’s affecting them. I don’t think there’s a whole lot on the federal level that he could do other than offer assistance to the states to get them through the process.”
Democrats say Trump’s focus on shutting down travel was ineffective after the virus was already in America, and that his subsequent news conferences and tweets discouraged effective practices such as mask-wearing while spreading misinformation about unproven treatments such as hydroxychloroquine. He even wondered aloud during a news conference whether the coronavirus could be cured by injecting patients with bleach or irradiating them with ultraviolet light. (Doctors dismissed both of the latter ideas; Trump followed the suggestions by saying, “I’m not a doctor. But I’m, like, a person that has a good you-know-what.”)
During the Republican National Convention in August, several speakers referred to the pandemic in the past tense, praising Trump’s response to the crisis, despite the fact that as many as 250,000 Americans are projected to be dead from coronavirus by the November election. With just 4% of the world’s population, the U. S. accounts for 22% of global deaths from COVID-19.
In an August article in The New York Times, Dr. Peter J. Hotez, Baylor College of Medicine dean, said, “The Trump administration is responsible for the single worst public health failure in the past 100 years.”
McAuliffe
McAuliffe calls Trump’s handling of the pandemic “a disaster” and says small businesses have been “crippled” by the president’s inaction and poor administration of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which was part of the CARES Act.
Nearly 110,000 Virginia businesses received PPP loans, with roughly 93,000 receiving $150,000 or less, according to The Associated Press. Those businesses received somewhere between $9.5 billion and $18.2 billion — the Virginia Bankers Association (VBA) put the figure at more than $12.6 billion — out of $659 billion budgeted for the program.
Saxman allows that the Trump administration’s initial pandemic response was “ineffective” but says it has improved over time, lending a “ray of hope” to businesses trying to survive.
Taking care of business?
The first three years of Trump’s economic policy were marked largely by his approach to trade, which broke with the free trade approach of his White House predecessors.
Both the Virginia Farm Bureau and Virginia Chamber of Commerce endorsed Trump’s renegotiation of 1994’s North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) into the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which went into effect July 1.
“The overhaul of NAFTA into the USMCA trade agreement was completely necessary and could not have come at a better time,” says Ben Rowe, national affairs coordinator at the Virginia Farm Bureau.
While agriculture as an industry will benefit from the USMCA, it has suffered from Trump’s trade war with China, which has seen the U.S. impose tariffs on China for unfair trade practices, including intellectual property theft.
Before Trump, soybeans were Virginia’s top export. Soybean exports to China, however, fell 83% from 2017 to 2018 due to tariffs that China imposed in retaliation for Trump raising levies on Chinese imports. Soybean prices fell below $8 a bushel in 2019 and had increased only to $9.01 by August 2020 — a nearly 50% drop from 2012, when they were $17.58.
Virginia Soybean Association President Mike Bryant farms this soybean field in Northumberland County. Soybean prices and exports dropped dramatically following Trump’s trade war with China. Photo by Sara Newcomb
Virginia’s agricultural exports to China fell from $700 million in 2016 to $235 million in 2018. And agriculture is just one front in a trade war that encompasses much of both countries’ economies.
Rowe says the trade war has cost farmers in the markets, but the Farm Bureau is optimistic about the Phase 1 trade deal, signed in January, which includes a Chinese commitment to purchase $200 billion in American goods above 2017 levels by the end of 2021.
The Trump administration also placed tariffs on steel from most countries. That hasn’t helped Virginia’s coal industry, which produces metallurgical coal used in steelmaking. The coal industry has suffered under a wave of bankruptcies. Blackjewel LLC’s abrupt closure in 2019 put 500 Virginia miners out of work.
Agriculture and coal significantly affect rural regions of Virginia that heavily supported Trump in the 2016 election, and which likely will do so again in 2020.
Over his career, Trump has cultivated the persona of a self-made billionaire who’s had a string of business triumphs — an image that persists in the minds of his supporters. But Trump received the equivalent of more than $400 million in today’s dollars from his father in payments that began at age 3. And he has taken his hotel and casino companies through six bankruptcies, not to mention failed ventures such as his Trump University real estate training program, which ended with Trump paying out $25 million in legal settlements.
“I’ve seen so many comments from people, average workers, who have been hurt during the Trump years, but disproportionately they say things like, ‘He’s trying. He’s fighting for me. Things aren’t good, but they’d be worse if the other side had won,’” Sabato said. “They think Trump is fighting on their behalf, no matter what he does.”
The Trump administration’s other big economic win was a 2017 tax cut package that was passed by Republican majorities in Congress. The Virginia Association of Counties called the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act the “largest federal tax reform legislation in over 30 years.”
Democrats argue that the tax cut’s most positive impacts were limited to those in the highest income brackets, while leaving the federal government fewer resources to respond during the pandemic and resulting recession.
The Trump presidency’s effects on the Virginia economy vary widely. But it’s unclear whether Trump’s business record will translate to votes, as people tend to base their votes more on social and emotional issues, as well as household economics.
“Business is very important to the economy for everybody,” says Sabato, “but it’s a relatively small piece of the overall electorate.”
Besides considering candidates for president, U.S. Senate and 11 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives on Nov. 3, Virginians will also vote on two ballot measures to amend the state constitution. And four cities will hold local referendums to legalize gambling at proposed casinos within their boundaries.
The statewide ballot measures include a proposal to modify the Virginia Constitution to create a 16-member redistricting commission to draw state and congressional districts after the U.S. Census is conducted every 10 years. The commission would consist of eight state lawmakers appointed by the General Assembly and eight Virginia citizens appointed by a panel of retired circuit court judges. If the commission couldn’t agree on new maps, the decision would be made by the Supreme Court of Virginia.
Creating a commission would take redistricting out of the hands of the governor and state legislators who have traditionally drawn districts, often to the advantage of the majority political party at that time.
The second ballot measure would change the state constitution to add a motor vehicle property tax exemption for disabled military veterans. Voters previously have approved various property tax exemptions for certain classes of people. This measure would add to that list veterans of the U.S. armed forces or Virginia National Guard who have a service-related, total disability.
Statewide, Virginians will choose between two-term incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Warner and his Republican challenger, Daniel Gade, a 25-year U.S. Army veteran and public affairs lecturer at American University.
Additionally, residents of Bristol, Danville, Norfolk and Portsmouth will vote on whether to allow proposed casinos operated by local government-approved partners within their respective city limits. Virginia lawmakers approved legislation during the 2020 session to legalize casino gaming in those cities, plus Richmond, if the locality partners with a qualifying entity to run the casino and voters subsequently approve the casino by referendum.
Bristol has partnered with local businessmen Jim McGlothlin and Clyde Stacy, who are working with Hard Rock International. Portsmouth is working with Rush Street Gaming of Chicago. Danville is partnering with Caesars Entertainment Inc.
Norfolk is partnering with the Pamunkey Indian Tribe. The only one of Virginia’s seven federally recognized tribes that can establish a casino under federal guidelines, the Pamunkey are working under the new state casino process, which is faster. The Pamunkey tribe also is interested in Richmond, but the state’s capital city won’t hold a referendum this year.
Virginia lawmakers considered an array of bills impacting businesses and the state economy. Here’s a look at some key actions taken during the 2020 session:
Casinos
Virginia lawmakers passed legislation opening the door for casinos but only in five localities: Bristol, Danville, Norfolk, Portsmouth and Richmond. A study by the Joint Legislative Audit & Review Commission found that casinos in those five places could generate $970 million in annual net gaming revenue and approximately $260 million in gaming tax revenue.
The bill allows each city to establish a casino but only if local voters approve it in a referendum this fall or next.
Bristol, Norfolk, Danville and Portsmouth each have contracted with partnering operators for casinos. Bristol has partnered with local businessmen Jim McGlothlin and Clyde Stacy, who are working with Hard Rock International. Portsmouth is working with Rush Street Gaming of Chicago. Danville has tapped Caesars Entertainment.
Norfolk is partnering with the Pamunkey Indian Tribe, the only one of Virginia’s seven federally recognized tribes that can establish a casino under federal guidelines. The tribe is also competing to build the casino in Richmond.
Family leave and sick leave
The General Assembly killed bills to establish a state-run, paid family leave program, as well as a bill that would have required businesses with 15 or more employees to provide up to five paid sick days per year.
Predatory lending
The General Assembly passed laws to reform consumer lending, including closing loopholes that allow lenders to charge excessively high rates for payday and car title loans. During the veto session, lawmakers accelerated their implementation by moving the effective date up to January 2021.
LGBTQ protections
The General Assembly passed a landmark bill to add sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of protected classes in housing, employment, and public accommodation. Some Virginia lawyers have warned the law significantly transforms the judicial process for employment cases and could cost smaller businesses lacking large human resource departments. Todd Leeson of Gentry Locke advises these businesses to “devote some time and energy to strengthen their anti-discrimination practices and processes,” including providing manager training.
Henry Watkins, spokesman for Sen. Adam Ebbin, D-Alexandria, the bill’s sponsor, defends the Virginia Values Act, saying that businesses acting in good faith according to procedures laid out by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission “won’t have a problem.”
Handheld mobile devices
Effective Jan. 1, 2021, Virginians will be prohibited from holding handheld devices like smartphones while driving.
Right to work
The General Assembly struck down a bill to repeal Virginia’s right-to-work law, which significantly weakens the power of unions.
Energy
The General Assembly passed the Clean Economy Act, which commits Virginia to eliminate the use of fossil fuels for generating electricity within 25 years. It sets goals to develop more solar and wind capacity, incentivizes development of renewable energy and energy efficiency projects, and loosens restrictions on rooftop solar and other distributed generation projects. Lawmakers also killed a bill to demonopolize the state’s electric energy market.
Health care
Legislators passed a bill to establish a state-run exchange for purchase of insurance plans. The General Assembly also passed bills to place restrictions on short-term health plans, also known as “junk plans.”
Northam vetoed bills that would have allowed small businesses to band together and buy insurance as associations.
Minimum wage
The legislature passed a law to increase the minimum wage, but rather than increasing it to $15 an hour — a national goal for progressives — lawmakers opted to increase it gradually, from $7.25 now to $9.50 an hour beginning in May 2021, then to $11 in 2022 and $12 in 2023. The bill also includes a study to consider implementing different minimum wages for different regions.
State holidays
The legislature ended recognition of a January holiday honoring Civil War generals Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson and Robert E. Lee. It also made Election Day a state holiday.
In the six weeks between the Virginia General Assembly’s March 12 adjournment and its April 22 veto session, the world changed.
The dramatic societal shifts brought on by the coronavirus pandemic were on display during the historic, surreal April meeting, in which the lawmakers gathered at unusual locations — the Senate at the Science Museum of Virginia, and the House in a large tent outside the Virginia State Capitol — where they could legislate while practicing social distancing.
As legislators debated and voted on Gov. Ralph Northam’s vetoes and amendments, protesting motorists drove in circles around Capitol Square, constantly honking their car horns for almost three hours as part of a “Reopen Virginia” rally. At one point, Speaker of the House Eileen Filler-Corn appeared to faint, collapsing behind her dais before quickly recovering. Sen. George Barker, D-Fairfax, recovering from open-heart surgery and pneumonia, participated at the Science Museum while sitting within a specially built Plexiglas cubicle.
The extraordinary session in Richmond memorably demonstrated the extent to which COVID-19 has disrupted Virginia and most of the world. During the veto session, the legislature delayed a planned increase in the minimum wage from January 2021 to May 2021 and also began grappling with the gaping hole the pandemic had blown into state revenue projections, necessitating a series of spending freezes.
Yet the drama somewhat obscured what had been a momentous 2020 General Assembly session — the first since the 1990s in which Democrats controlled both chambers of the legislature. The partisan flip and sweeping changes to Virginia law will be felt across the commonwealth — including among its businesses.
Even as they work through the tenuous and uncertain process of reopening, Virginia businesses face a raft of new laws taking effect on July 1. Taken collectively, these new laws will significantly affect the relationship between business owners and their workers.
“We’ve been so focused on the COVID-19 pandemic, trying to stay in business and thinking about returning to work, but now July 1 will be here before you know it, with a slew of very pro-employee employment laws taking effect,” says Todd Leeson, a partner at Roanoke-based Gentry Locke Attorneys. “Businesses need to understand there are some laws that will affect their business significantly if they don’t have their ducks in a row.”
A tale of two rankings
Two national rankings essentially tell the tale of the 2020 General Assembly session, says Matt Moran, who worked for former GOP Virginia House Speakers Kirk Cox and Bill Howell and is now government affairs director at Gentry Locke.
The first was CNBC’s selection of Virginia as America’s 2019 Top State for Business, announced in July 2019. One month later, anti-poverty organization Oxfam ranked Virginia as the worst state for workers.
“The two political parties in Virginia obviously have a very different perspective on how to address those things,” says Moran, “and you heard the mantra from newly elected Democrats saying, ‘We’re the best state for business, but we can also be the best state for workers.’”
While the new Democratic majority was eager to push through a legislative agenda that Republicans had blocked for decades, addressing issues such as gun control, abortion and protections for LGBTQ people, Democrats also set out to make the commonwealth friendlier to workers.
One of the first pieces of business was to reorder the nouns in the House business committee’s name to reflect its new priorities as the House Labor and Commerce Committee. On the other side of the Capitol, however, the Senate’s counterpart remained the Senate Commerce and Labor Committee — a notable difference foreshadowing the chamber’s role as a restraining influence on the House.
About 22,000 gun rights protesters assembled at the State Capitol on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in January. Photo AP Images/Mike Morones
Fear and moderation
The 2019 election of the new, Democratic-majority state legislature triggered a wave of uncertainty and even fear among conservatives, especially in rural Virginia.
Fear of restrictive gun control laws led to 145 localities adopting resolutions declaring themselves “Second Amendment sanctuaries,” under an initiative organized by the Virginia Citizens Defense League, a conservative gun rights group. The movement culminated in a rally on Martin Luther King Jr. Day that drew tens of thousands of gun advocates to protest outside the Capitol.
Yet many of the inflamed passions visible in January subsided by the end of the session. This was the case, too, for the business community, which feared more sweeping changes that did not come to pass.
“Initially, we had concerns that the session may negatively impact the commonwealth’s economic climate,” says Barry E. DuVal, president and CEO of the Virginia Chamber of Commerce, but “the results were more favorable than perhaps the early headlines led us to believe. There’s a governing core in the middle that addressed many of the business concerns we had going in.”
‘A cultural shift’
House Speaker Filler-Corn says the new Democratic majorities brought more fairness to the commonwealth.
“Our reforms will continue to keep Virginia as the top place in the nation to do business,” Filler-Corn says, “but we are now working to be the best for workers, with our incredible progress on minimum wage, collective bargaining for public employees and enacting protections against wage theft and employee misclassification. A fairer economy for working Virginians is also a stronger economy for business.”
Senate Majority Leader Richard L. “Dick” Saslaw, D-Fairfax County, calls the 2020 session “the most productive” of his 40 years in the Virginia Senate. Like Filler-Corn, Saslaw says lawmakers made significant progress for labor without harming prospects for commerce.
“We’ve got a huge economic disparity problem in this country; you can’t ignore it,” says Saslaw. “Look, we have been a big help to the business community, which is why we’re the No. 1 place to do business. We haven’t disturbed that.”
Not everyone agrees. Chris Saxman, a former Republican delegate who is now the executive director of Virginia Free, a nonpartisan business advocacy group, says the Oxfam study was poorly conducted and resulted in a series of new laws that will hurt business. He cited the minimum wage increase as an example.
“A lot of the bills that were passed are going to be injurious to the business community coming out of the pandemic,” Saxman says. “It’s going to be the cumulative effect of it all. We’re in for a cultural shift.”
The pandemic’s economic impact may also affect the new Democratic majority’s priorities. State general fund revenues fell 26.2% in April and 20.6% in May, compared with the year before, but Northam has said the impact on revenues hasn’t been as bad as anticipated.
Nevertheless, legislators plan to deal with budget revisions when they reconvene for another special session in August. However, that’s likely to be overshadowed by Democrats’ plans to introduce legislation during the August session dealing with policing and systemic racism, issues brought to the forefront by nationwide protests.
RELATED STORY: Legislative actions taken during the 2020 General Assembly session
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