Steve Helber/AP Photo
Environmental activists carry signs as they protest against Dominion outside the State Corporation Commission in Richmond, Virginia, May 8, 2012.
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.
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.
Dominion has increasingly come under fire for overcharging ratepayers, shielding itself from accountability, and hobbling the state’s clean-energy transition away from fossil fuels.
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. In the 2019 election cycle, it 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 has since denounced them and updated their guidelines to include honoring “the integrity of the Democratic process.” The PAC gave money to three Republicans in this election cycle.
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.
