Louise Lucas called Governor Abigail Spanberger the “Data Center Diva.” She called House Speaker Don Scott the “Amazon Don.” And she told a 7News reporter that the governor of her own party will not return her phone calls.
Lucas (D-Portsmouth) is not a backbencher. She chairs the Senate Finance Committee and is one of the most powerful Democrats in Virginia. She is at war with her own governor — and Virginia has until July 1 to avoid a government shutdown.
The Fairfax GOP said six days ago this is where one-party rule was heading: Democrats hold the governorship, the Senate, and the House, and still cannot pass a budget. It has only gotten uglier since.
The fight is over money. Senate Democrats want to end a sales-tax break for data centers that Lucas says has ballooned to $1.9 billion. Spanberger and the House Democrats want to keep it.
The governor backs the House budget. Lucas, as Finance chair, will not let it move without killing the tax break. Two factions of the same party, dug in, with a July 1 deadline closing fast.
Lucas is not hiding the contempt. She said of the governor: “At least he would call me on the phone and talk to me. Governor Spanberger won’t.” The last time she heard from her, she guessed, was “several weeks ago.”
Read that again. The chair of the Senate Finance Committee cannot get her own party’s governor on the phone — with the budget on fire.
A July 1 shutdown does not stay in the Capitol. The state budget funds the agencies, county governments, and school divisions that Virginians depend on — Fairfax among them.
While Lucas trades nicknames and Spanberger lets the calls go to voicemail, the people who would feel a shutdown are families, teachers, and county employees who had no part in the fight.
This is the bill that comes due under one-party rule. No opposition party sits in the room with the leverage to force a compromise — because that is exactly the arrangement Virginia Democrats built. The check is gone, and so is the discipline.
The record is plain. Democrats won the trifecta. Democrats wrote the dueling budgets. Democrats cannot agree. And Democrats own the shutdown if July 1 arrives without a deal.
Spanberger cannot run again. But Lucas, Speaker Scott, Delegate Luke Torian, and every General Assembly Democrat in this standoff are on the ballot in November 2027.
They asked for total control of Richmond. They got it. On July 1, every Virginian finds out what it cost.