The Art of the Deal

Like they all had read Donald Trump’s seminal tome “Art of the Deal,” Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, state Sen. Louise Lucas, and Speaker of the House Don Scott had us all believing that the Virginia Democrats were in disarray. Then, as Lee Corso used to say on ESPN “College GameDay,” “Not so fast, my friend!”

First, Spanberger agrees to put the marijuana retail market she vetoed in the budget. This was something she was decrying just a week ago!

Then, somehow, the owner of that big THC store in Portsmouth—aka Lucas—drops her insistence that data centers in Virginia “pay their fair share” by reneging on $1.6 billion worth of sales tax relief on computers and peripherals purchased for their operations in the commonwealth.

Did they think just because Lucas didn’t announce it that we would miss Tuesday’s “new” Senate budget proposal with mitigatable “impact fees” and not a word about the “Data Center Diva” or “Amazon Don,” who had just announced that stores like Ms. Lucas’ could start selling “whacky tobacky” next year?

Everyone gets what they want.

What? Didn’t Lucas start a crusade against the evil data center scourge? No, like Saul Alinsky’s Rule 9, “The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.” Just two years earlier, there was a member of the General Assembly battling with Lucas over the data center sales tax relief, but it was Del. Tom Garrett, and he was the one trying to end it, while she had filed for its reauthorization.

Tom Clancy couldn’t write this into a Jack Ryan novel.

What did happen, again, was the Republicans missed an opportunity to present their own option of a spending plan while the street theater was still being played out—to make a statement on principles regarding priorities and good governance.

“Go on the record and get some press coverage. Then next year we would have had something to run on,” Garrett told me.

I guess next time, right?

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