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We are doing something different here at By the Ballot for this edition. We’re teaming up with Dogwood News [ [link removed] ] to bring you more perspectives on the state of the Commonwealth, our economy, and the Virginia workforce. Think of this as a trading places, since I will be writing over at Dogwood News for their newsletter. Make sure to check that out.
This week’s By the Ballot is written by Michael O’Connor from Dogwood News. [ [link removed] ] Michael is an award-winning journalist who started covering Virginia news in 2013 with reporting stints at the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Virginia Business, and Richmond BizSense. A graduate of William & Mary and Northern Virginia Community College, he also covered financial news for S&P Global Market Intelligence.
Michael is the author of the Virginia Capital, a two-times-a-week newsletter that explores the landscape of Virginia’s policy disputes and labor battles and why they matter. I highly encourage you all to subscribe if you haven’t already, to stay up to date, especially as we head into the 2026 Virginia. Sign up here. [ [link removed] ]
Without further ado, I’ll let Michael take it from here.
As the dust settles on Virginia’s historic elections earlier this month, one thing that’s becoming clear is that unions helped fuel significant gains for Democrats on election night, even as many of these winning candidates did not make expanding worker power a focus of their campaigns.
I witnessed this as a reporter covering campaign events leading up to Democrat Abigail Spanberger’s landslide 14-point victory [ [link removed] ] in the governor’s race over MAGA Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears.
Whether it was at the raucous Spanberger rally [ [link removed] ] in Norfolk headlined by former President Barack Obama, rallies in downtown Richmond [ [link removed] ], or small panel discussions featuring Democrats seeking seats in the House of Delegates: I could always spot union members, most often in the purple-and-yellow shirts of members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) or from the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), along with carpenters and kitchen workers.
And, as the publication NOTUS reported [ [link removed] ], federal layoffs, shutdown furloughs, and rising health care costs energized union members with AFGE, which endorsed Spanberger, to get out and vote and volunteer with campaigns in a massive way.
More often than not, these workers and unions got a shout-out from candidates, and they raised their concerns when they were allowed to do so.
But the question now is what pro-worker policy changes can we expect from Virginia Democrats now that they’ve been given full control of the General Assembly and Governor’s Mansion in historic fashion?
It’s worth noting that on Friday, Spanberger announced the members of her transition team’s policy committees.
The co-chairs of the labor committee are: Greg Akerman, president of the Baltimore-D.C. Metro Building Trades Council; Shawn Avery, president and CEO, Hampton Roads Workforce Council; David Broder, executive director, SEIU Virginia State Council; and Paige Shevlin, a former strategic advisor for infrastructure workforce development in the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Still, readers of By the Ballot are likely aware that Spanberger’s position on repealing “Right-to-Work” in Virginia is squishy, to put it politely.
As a candidate, she was clear that she didn’t support rolling back “Right-to-Work,” even though it’s a law that has been shown to hurt union power, and repealing it would strengthen [ [link removed] ] workers’ position at negotiating tables across the commonwealth. (P.S. If you want to learn more about the history of right-to-work and its roots in the Jim Crow South, I recommend this piece [ [link removed] ].)
And, despite the broad mandate voters handed him with a 13-seat gain in his chamber, Democratic House Speaker Don Scott was preaching restraint [ [link removed] ] the day after the election and warning against overreach.
Taken together, that probably doesn’t bode well for a “Right-to-Work” repeal in the upcoming session. I wouldn’t be surprised if a legislator filed a bill to do so, but odds are, and Matt can correct me if I’m wrong, it gets bogged down in debate and dies in committee.
However, such a debate, especially one spearheaded by an experienced legislator, could help set the stage for actually getting something to Spanberger’s desk before her term is up. What she would do with it at that point would almost certainly be a flashpoint in her tenure.
Much more likely in the near term is that Spanberger and Democrats will quickly raise the minimum wage.
Spanberger has always been on board with raising the minimum wage. The tougher question is by how much she will support doing so.
Anyone who’s been to the grocery store or pays rent can tell you that $15 an hour is not a living wage. Workers I’ve spoken to tell me they need “$25 to thrive.” (Democrat Leslie Mehta told me [ [link removed] ] she supported that goal before she went on to flip [ [link removed] ] her Chesterfield-area House seat).
The other thing workers, especially public school teachers and home care workers, need is a statewide right to collectively bargain. Right now, whether most public sector workers have that right is subject to the whims of local school boards and city councils that may be getting advice from anti-union consultants.
Candidate Spanberger said she would work with the General Assembly to expand collective bargaining rights, so odds are good that more Virginia workers will win this right.
Beyond fairness in the workplace, another area worth watching is creating fairness in the tax code. But it’s less clear, at least to me, how much political will there is around this. This could look like, as The Commonwealth Institute recently highlighted, raising taxes [ [link removed] ] on wealthy Virginians with a 10% tax on income over $1 million, something that was attempted in the previous session but failed.
Currently, Virginia’s top income tax rate of 5.75% applies to anyone making more than $17,001—so most Virginia taxpayers. That means the income of the average teacher in Virginia, making $70,441 in 2024, is taxed at the same rate as the income of, say, Robert Blue, the CEO of Dominion, whose base salary was $1.2 million last year.
It seems uncontroversial to try to change that, and a similar law proved successful [ [link removed] ] in Massachusetts without resulting in a mass exodus of wealthy New Englanders from the state.
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