Glenn Youngkin’s solid victory over Terry McAuliffe in the battle for the Virginia governorship was part of an overall triumph for the GOP, as the party also claimed the lieutenant governorship, the attorney general’s office, and a new majority in the House of Delegates.
Powering Youngkin’s victory was his relatively strong showing in the Washington metropolitan region. Last year, Donald Trump lost metro Washington by an astonishing 31% of the vote. In fact, Joe Biden’s entire margin of victory in Virginia came from the D.C. suburbs; Trump narrowly carried the rest of the state. Youngkin, on the other hand, lost the region by 19% of the vote, and his outsize hauls in the rest of the state, especially in the rural areas, made up the difference.
Situating Virginia’s election in context, it is remarkable to see how substantially the suburbs of the nation’s capital have shifted toward the Democrats. Ronald Reagan won them handily in 1980. Twenty years later, George W. Bush managed to eke out a 2-point victory there. But today, even with a candidate seemingly tailor-made for the region, it still swung heavily Democratic — just not enough to pull Terry McAuliffe across the finish line.
This is part of a national story, in which the suburbs in many northern and western cities — Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York — have gone from being solidly Republican to solidly Democratic. Republicans remain competitive because they still hold their own in the far suburbs (or exurbs) and have done increasingly well in rural areas. This is why Donald Trump handily won Iowa and Ohio but lost Virginia overwhelmingly.
Of course, Virginia is not just any other state. It is the Old Dominion — the first permanent colony settled by the English back in 1607, the largest colony and state for many years, and the home to many of the Founding Fathers. And seen from that perspective, there is a great irony. Many of them, especially James Madison, fought hard to place the nation’s capital next to Virginia as a way to keep an eye on the goings-on there. Instead, over the last century, the federal city has come to dominate Virginia politics. The nation’s government has grown by leaps and bounds, anchoring a massive metropolitan area that now numbers more than 6 million people across Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia.
As I point out in my new book, James Madison: America’s First Politician, Madison had principled reasons for wanting the capital to be placed on the Potomac River. In a September 1789 speech in the House, he argued, “Government is intended for the accommodation of the citizens at large; an equal facility to communicate with government is due to all ranks; whether to transmit their grievances or requests, or to receive those blessings which the government is intended to dispense.” This put him in opposition to some who wanted it placed near the center of wealth, which would have moved it to New York City or Philadelphia.
But Madison had parochial reasons as well. The Pennsylvanians had floated a plan to place the capital on the Susquehanna River, near present-day Philadelphia. This had the support of some in New England and New York, which preferred keeping the capital as close to them as possible. Yet Madison could not support this, for he and the Virginians wanted the capital on the Potomac River, so that it would be under the influence of the Old Dominion. Ultimately, the location was rolled into a grand bargain in the summer of 1790, in which Alexander Hamilton’s controversial plan to assume the debts of the states was accepted in exchange for placing the capital on the Potomac, after a 10-year, temporary stint in Philadelphia.
This part of Virginia was sparsely populated at the time of the founding, being home to sprawling plantations, like those of George Washington and George Mason. And for more than 150 years, that is the way it would stay. Washington, D.C., was a sleepy village that became miserably hot in the summer. And anyway, the federal government was comparatively tiny. There was little incentive for mass migration. In 1928, for instance, the Virginia counties and independent cities that make up metro Washington accounted for just 10% of the total statewide vote for president.
That began to change during the administration of Franklin Roosevelt, for two reasons. First, Roosevelt massively expanded the size and scope of the federal government, claiming authorities that had previously been the purview of the states. This necessitated a vast administrative state, run out of Washington, D.C., and accordingly growing to facilitate all the new government workers. Even more important was the decision by the nation after World War II to maintain a permanent wartime readiness. Up until then, the country demobilized its military after major conflicts. But no longer. While there are American military bases all across the country, and indeed the world, the central node is in metro D.C., again requiring a large number of uniformed and civilian staff and thus promoting the growth of the region all the more.
So, whereas Virginia once was able to keep a close watch on the federal government, it is now the federal government — or at least the economy and society that have sprung up around it — that dominates Virginia politics. What would Madison say about that? One wonders what would have happened if he had lost the battle to place the capital on the Potomac, and instead, it would be along the Susquehanna. Virginia would perhaps be a sleepily conservative state, and Pennsylvania a Democratic bastion.
Jay Cost is a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a visiting scholar at Grove City College.
