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Breaking the Dominion Uniparty in Virginia

Clean Virginia and its opposition to the state's monopoly utility was
a hidden driver of election results.

On Tuesday, Virginia voters delivered a repudiation of Republican Gov.
Glenn Youngkin's efforts to transform the state into a right-wing
bastion. Going into Election Day, Democrats hoped to at least hold onto
their two-vote majority in the state Senate and block a Republican
trifecta, which would have cleared the way for a 15-week abortion ban,
among other conservative reforms.

Instead, Democrats not only kept the Senate but also took back the House
of Delegates by a thin margin.

On the national stage, those results have been interpreted as yet
another indicator of the salience of reproductive rights for voters. The
issue was frequently cited as a top concern for Virginians going into
the election, and abortion rights have been shown to be popular across
the country in the wake of the overturning of

**Roe v. Wade** by the Supreme Court.

But within Virginia, Democratic success signals another crucial trend at
play to curb corporate power. It represents a significant step toward
breaking the chokehold that the state's largest power utility
monopoly, Dominion Energy, has held over Richmond for decades.

A record number of candidates this election cycle, overwhelmingly
Democrats, pledged not to take money from the privately owned utility, a
longtime rainmaker for campaign contributions showered on both parties.
For most of its history, Dominion has held a vise grip over both the
state legislature and the state utility commission, making it able to
shape regulations to its liking through extensive lobbying, and even
frequently writing its own pieces of legislation.

The utility has increasingly come under fire for overcharging
ratepayers, shielding itself from accountability, and hobbling the
state's clean-energy transition away from fossil fuels. At the peak of
its influence, Dominion succeeded in passing a bill in 2015

that blocked the State Corporation Commission from reviewing its rate
hikes and ordering refunds to customers. After effectively gutting
regulations on rate hikes, Dominion collected nearly $3 billion in
overcharges over the past decade, according to numerous estimates
.

In 2017, a movement began to urge candidates to swear off Dominion
money, which grew significantly in the 2019 election. In large part, the
mobilization has been led by the nonpartisan PAC Clean Virginia, which
is run by a millionaire Charlottesville investor and renewable-energy
advocate named Michael Bills.

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This year, the pledge gained more momentum, with 58 candidates signing
on , the most in the
movement's history. A significant number of them were running in the
closest frontline districts and took a significant political risk, since
their opponents were getting funding from Dominion.

The majority of them still prevailed, providing the margin that put
Democrats on top in the Senate and the House of Delegates. Those
candidates included Democrats Schuyler VanValkenburg, Danica Roem, and
Russet Perry, who won their Senate elections, as well as Michael Feggans
in the House of Delegates.

"We see the results of this election as a major opportunity to begin
reforming corruption and that starts with Dominion," said Kendl
Kobbervig, an organizer and communications director for Clean Virginia,
which became a powerhouse political player in the state this election
cycle.

Clean Virginia's original charter vowed that it would explicitly act
as a countervailing force to Dominion's influence. If a candidate
pledged not to take Dominion money, then the nonprofit's PAC would arm
their campaign war chest. That's still the most important cornerstone,
though the nonprofit has added broader anti-corruption reforms as
another litmus test for candidates it supports.

This election cycle, between the Clean VA Fund along with Bills's and
his wife's personal campaign donations, they spent

$16.44 million in the 2023 races, more than Youngkin's Spirit PAC and
more than Dominion, which still spent

over $12 million to members of both parties, according to the Virginia
Public Access Project.

The PAC mostly funded Democrats in the state, though not exclusively. It
originally worked with two Republicans because of their opposition to
Dominion. After facing blowback because of those candidates' continued
support for former President Donald Trump, Clean Virginia denounced them
and updated

their guidelines to include honoring "the integrity of the Democratic
process."

Clean Virginia also wielded influence in the state's primaries, often
backing

progressive challengers who refused to take Dominion money over
incumbents. Those included Jennifer Carroll Foy in the House, who upset
incumbent Hala Ayala.

For this reason, the group has rankled leadership in both the Democratic
and Republican Parties.

"It's fair to say the party's relationship with [Bills] is complex
and strained," former Democratic delegate David Toscano, who served as
House minority leader until 2018, told

**The Washington Post**. "He has occasionally targeted Democratic
incumbents for no reasons other than they had taken some money from
Dominion." And well, that is kind of the entire point.

In the PAC's field campaigns alongside candidates, the group focused
primarily on connecting rising utility rates to the overall increase in
cost of living as well as inflation. Next to reproductive rights, cost
of living was listed as a top issue for Virginia voters in numerous
Roanoke College polls
, and Clean
Virginia seized on that.

"Rising costs for basic goods was the most underdiscussed issue in this
race that we consistently heard from voters on the ground," said
Kobbervig.

After the resounding success of Democrats who adopted its pledge in this
election, Clean Virginia sees an opportunity for Richmond to now begin
to rein in Dominion's power. That includes enforcement against rising
utility rates and also rebuffing Dominion's efforts to stymie the
development of clean-energy projects. Interestingly enough, the year's
biggest election spender has also made campaign finance reform a
priority, to curb its own influence in the legislature.

~ LUKE GOLDSTEIN, WRITING FELLOW

Follow Luke Goldstein on Twitter

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