Glenn Youngkin said his proposed $2 billion sportsplex for Alexandria — now dead — would produce 30,000 jobs and pump $12 billion into the local economy over 40 years. In other words, he argued, the arena was a game changer.
The Republican governor, fast running out of time to fashion a legacy founded on compromise with Democrats, rather than combat, had already changed two other games — to the dismay of communities on opposite ends of the state.
There was that electric-vehicle battery plant in the former tobacco belt along the state’s rural southern tier and a new headquarters for the FBI in the Northern Virginia suburbs, a short drive from the former rail yard where the arena would rise as a monument to Youngkin.
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Youngkin was adamant about the arena, would be built at taxpayer expense for his billionaire friend, Ted Leonsis, as the home of two teams owned by Leonsis — the Washington Wizards of the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League’s Washington Capitals.
The proposal, financed with bonds guaranteed by the state, is done for, finished,kaput.
Late Wednesday afternoon, Alexandria — initially committed to the arena — dispensed the coup de grace, announcing that it was ending negotiations on the project. Referring to Youngkin’s failure to win legislative approval, the city said, “We trusted this process and are disappointed in what occurred between the governor and General Assembly.”
In a statement, Youngkin pinned the blame on Democratic legislative leaders, led by the chairwoman of the Senate budget committee, Louise Lucas of Portsmouth:
“This transformational project would have driven investment to every corner of the commonwealth. This should have been our deal and our opportunity, all the General Assembly had to do was say: ‘thank you, Monumental, for wanting to come to Virginia and create $12 billion of economic investment, let’s work it out.
“But no, personal and political agendas drove away a deal with no upfront general fund money and no tax increases, that created tens of thousands of new jobs and billions in revenue for Virginia.”
Lucas contends Youngkin was peddling a bad deal; that it relied on flawed revenue assumptions and wouldn’t generate sufficient cash to pay off all that debt and interest. This, Lucas warned, would threaten the state’s highest-possible, triple-A credit rating — a gold-plated distinction Virginia’s held since Wall Street started assessing debt-worthiness in the late 1920s.
Never mind, per a report in The Washington Post earlier this week, that a fellow senator — Democratic Majority Leader Scott Surovell of Fairfax — and Lucas strategist Ben Tribbett, who dumps snark on X in her name, suggested to Youngkin and Leonsis that the arena could be resuscitated.
However, it would have to be built at Tysons Corner, an edge city in Fairfax County, northwest of Alexandria, and paired with a casino, a business of which Lucas is quite fond, having landed a glittery gambling parlor for Portsmouth. Youngkin and Leonsis said no dice.
The governor was as determined to erect the sports and entertainment palace as he was to wreck the EV battery plant in Pittsylvania County, claiming it was a front for our Communist Chinese adversaries.
And Youngkin was as anxious the arena be an emblem of his administration as he sometimes seemed ambivalent that the FBI — in his view, a truncheon with which Democrats wrongly menace an alleged criminal, former President Donald Trump — consolidate its offices in Northern Virginia.
Ford, now facing with its competitors slowing demand for electric vehicles, opted to erect that factory in its home state, Michigan.
But not before a presumed apparatchik for Youngkin — then still toying with a presidential bid and eager to buff up his anti-communist bona fides — anonymously leaked ahead of Christmas 2022 to a right-wing news site started by Tucker Carlson that Virginia wanted no part of the $3.5 billion enterprise.
Talk about coal in your stocking. The factory would have meant 2,500 jobs for a region where there aren’t a lot of them because of the collapse of its traditional industries — tobacco, textiles and furniture.
As for the FBI headquarters — it would have brought 7,500 jobs to Northern Virginia — it’s going to Greenbelt, Maryland, outside Washington, D.C.
That, despite recommendations to the Biden White House by the director of the FBI — a Trump appointee, by the way — and the federal government’s landlord, the General Services Administration, that the $4.1 billion complex be located in Springfield. It would be within spitting distance of the FBI’s crime laboratory and training center.
If only because he has to — publicly, that is — Youngkin, who reportedly left a state sales pitch for the FBI HQ in March 2023 to prep for a much-anticipated, prime-time appearance on CNN, is joining Virginia’s Democratic senators and House members in both parties who represent Greater Northern Virginia in crying foul over the selection of Maryland.
They want an independent investigation that examines such issues as a possible conflict of interest by a participating GSA executive who previously worked for the transit agency that owns the Maryland site.
With his arena dreams dashed, Youngkin is now 0 for 3 on marquee economic development ventures: One that he desperately wanted — the Glenn-dome. One that he deviously scuttled — the Ford battery factory. And one — the FBI headquarters — about which he didn’t seem particularly enthusiastic.
Maybe that’s because the FBI proposal called attention to a discomfiting truth for Youngkin: That he must show fealty to Trump without infuriating Democrats, disaffected Republicans and independents whose votes likely mean Trump suffers a third straight defeat in Virginia.
Youngkin’s enmity for the Ford plant — call it his China Syndrome — sharply contrasts with his embrace of the Chinese during his years as co-CEO of investment giant Carlyle Group. But that was then; this is now.
A reminder of his since-forsaken bullishness on China: Carlyle’s purchase of technology company ByteDance, parent of TikTok, the social media platform Youngkin ordered barred from state-owned mobile phones and other devices and which he wants banned for children.
You would think Youngkin’s supposed conversion on China would free him to speak with heightened credibility about its threat to the United States. But it would also expose Youngkin to questions about his consistency — or lack thereof — and other seemingly un-PC holdings in his multimillion-dollar portfolio.
Hostility for TikTok is an article of faith among Republicans, who see it as an eavesdropping tool for Beijing.
It’s a view that Democrats, including President Joe Biden, now embrace, if only for its supposed potency in an election year. Still, Democrats were content to let a GOP-proposed ban die in the House of Delegates this winter without a vote.
As for Virginia’s unconsummated romancing of the FBI, it was well underway before Youngkin took office in 2022.
He could make the argument that the matter was out of his hands; that it was for a Democratic White House to decide. Also, Youngkin could say the shunning of Virginia should be an embarrassment for, say, Democrat Tim Kaine, who’s up for reelection to the Senate this year.
But Youngkin didn’t hesitate in taking credit for other deals in the works ahead of his administration, such as toy-maker Lego’s $1 billion plant in Chesterfield County that is supposed to open next year, employing nearly 1,800 people.
If you take credit for the wins, you have to take blame for the losses.
It’s a rule of the game that you can’t change.