WaPo’s Gregory Schneider (“Va. Gov. Youngkin arrived like a GOP star, but arena failure clouds legacy“):
No Virginia governor has come into office with a deeper dealmaking background than Glenn Youngkin, who as former co-chief executive of the Carlyle Group made a fortune acquiring and merging companies around the globe.
But as the Republican chief executive of a purple state, Youngkin has struggled to translate that business acumen into political success — or even economic development success, with the demise Wednesday of his much-touted plan to bring the Washington Wizards and Capitals to Alexandria.
While Youngkin and his group of financial experts had negotiated with team owner Ted Leonsis to cut what the governor called “the single largest economic development deal in Virginia’s history,” the governor was never able to work the same magic with members of the General Assembly who had to sign off on the $2 billion project.
The plan’s failure wipes out a significant legacy-making opportunity for a novice politician who burst onto the scene in 2021 and drew national attention as a fresh Republican face. In his first two years in office, Youngkin enjoyed state coffers overflowing with federal pandemic relief funds and a friendly GOP-controlled House of Delegates. But as the clock winds down on his four-year term, the governor has lost the legislature to Democrats and seen his priorities slip away.
“He’s a total lame duck right now,” said Robert Holsworth, a Richmond political analyst who has studied Virginia governors for decades. “He has shown tremendous political inexperience.”
Bringing the Caps and Wizards to Alexandria was a no-brainer and I blame the state senate, not Youngkin, for this own-goal. Still, he is just the latest example of success in business not translating to a high-level political job.
“I so fundamentally believe that this is a giant mistake that we didn’t have to make. The Senate didn’t have to do this,” he said. Led by Finance and Appropriations Committee Chairwoman L. Louise Lucas (D-Portsmouth), the Senate blocked a bill that would have authorized the arena and stripped language from the state budget. Though some House Democrats initially voted for the arena, the project was unpopular in Alexandria and never built a strong constituency in the General Assembly, where even some Republicans did not support it.
Youngkin said he was disappointed but not surprised when Leonsis called Wednesday to say he was going to stay in the District instead. “I suspected that he was worried,” Youngkin said. “He had options — and listen, all companies have options. … I always knew he could go someplace else if we didn’t say yes and do the work.”
Youngkin had warned lawmakers that failure to approve the arena deal could harm the state’s vaunted reputation as a good place to do business. Leonsis said as much on Wednesday in an interview with The Post: “My experience was that I had a better experience on the business side in D.C. than I just did in Virginia, which was really, really surprising and eye-opening.”
While bringing the DC NBA and NHL teams would have been an economic coup for the state, there’s always massive resistance from Northern Virginia residents to big projects. The area is already overpopulated and traffic can be a nightmare, so adding in further delays during the construction phase and during game days is problematic. Additionally, the current incarnation of partisan politics is such that a Democratic legislature does not want to give a Republican governor—even one limited to a single term—a big win.
But others have overcome such odds.
Those words sting in a Virginia that boasts of being twice named by CNBC as the best state for business under Youngkin’s Democratic predecessor, Ralph Northam. It finished at No. 2 last year.
“The last governor who made us number one for business two years in a row was probably a lot more collaborative on these projects,” House Speaker Don L. Scott Jr. (D-Portsmouth) said in an interview. Though Scott has developed an unlikely camaraderie with Youngkin — sharing a weekly morning Bible study during the legislative session — he faulted the governor for not doing enough to build support among lawmakers.
“I think leadership matters and style matters, and we did not have the leadership and style that it takes to get a project like that done with so much at stake,” Scott said.
Now, dropping from #1 to #2 on a ranking by a business website is not a particularly meaningful measure. But Northam was a seasoned politician, having spent six years in the state senate and four as lieutenant governor before becoming governor. That means he understood how Richmond operates and had built relationships; Youngkin was a complete neophyte.
So, for example, Northam was able to get Amazon’s “HQ2” built in Arlington despite the same sort of heavy local opposition that the Caps/Wizards deal had. He managed to overcome it, even while embroiled in an embarrassing scandal over appearing in blackface in a decades-old college yearbook.
Despite his success in the private sector, Youngkin as governor has had some noteworthy misses in the economic development realm. He failed to persuade the Biden administration to locate the new headquarters for the FBI in Virginia, with Maryland winning even though the agency itself favored a site in Springfield. And when Ford Motor Co. expressed interest in locating a major battery plant in Southside Virginia to supply electric vehicles, Youngkin himself blocked the deal, citing concern that the operation was a front for a Chinese manufacturer.
The plant went to Michigan instead; the Virginia site, in a region desperate for jobs, remains unused.
I don’t blame Youngkin for losing the FBI headquarters. Rather clearly, the Biden administration overrode the Bureau’s own recommendation to reward a reliably Democratic state and the expense of one with a Republican governor. (And gave weight to putting it in a predominantly Black area.) I haven’t read enough about the battery plant to have an opinion.
But Youngkin has announced deals for the massive $1 billion Lego plant in Chesterfield County as well as headquarters relocations for Boeing and Raytheon. Asked if he sees a difference between public and private dealmaking, or whether he’s learned any lessons, Youngkin said that “it requires a General Assembly that wants to work with us.”
His responsibility, he said, lies in presenting good opportunities. And Youngkin said he believes his administration worked “tirelessly” to educate lawmakers and engage with them about the arena.
Others disagree with that assessment.
But Holsworth, the political analyst, said he saw a significant difference in the way Youngkin approaches big initiatives compared with previous governors. When Republican George Allen wanted to impose new education standards in the 1990s and had a Democratic legislature, he said, the governor appointed prominent Virginia educators to key administration roles and mounted a campaign around the state to build support from lawmakers and local officials — all before any votes were taken.
Similarly, in the 2000s, Democrat Mark R. Warner logged miles around the state and made endless PowerPoint presentations to persuade business groups and a GOP legislature that Virginia had to raise taxes to preserve its high bond rating.
Youngkin made no such broad effort to pave the way for the arena, Holsworth said, or for a proposed overhaul of the state tax system that the governor rolled out in December. Instead, Youngkin began touring the state after the General Assembly adjourned March 9, campaigning to handpicked Republican crowds against what he dismisses as the “backward budget” passed by lawmakers and condemning the Senate for not supporting the arena. At the same time, he is rolling out scores of vetoes of Democratic legislation — including Thursday, when he vetoed bills to create a legal cannabis market and increase the minimum wage, two of Democrats’ top priorities.
“It’s just not a very keen understanding of the political dynamics of Virginia,” Holsworth said.
It’s probably unfair to compare Youngkin’s situation to Allen’s, or even Warner’s. Allen was governor from 1994 to 1998, when the state was very Republican. In those days, Virginia Democrats were relatively conservative. The state was definitely trending purple during Warner’s tenure (2002-2006) but the atmosphere was much less contentious. But, again, both were comparatively seasoned. Allen had spent a decade in the state legislature and, while Warner was primarily a businessman, he had deep political experience, sitting on numerous appointed boards and serving as chair of the state Democratic Party.
Running a state or a country really shouldn’t be one’s first job in politics. Indeed, it’s hard to think of a success story in the modern era.
