Could DOGE backfire on Republicans? Virginia election is a test case.
| Richmond, Va.
When Elon Musk brandished a chain saw at a Republican conference over the weekend, he said it was coming “for bureaucracy.” But Democrats in Virginia say his chain saw could slash Republicans’ chances at a different target: the governor’s mansion in Richmond.
The Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an initiative to cut up to $2 trillion in federal spending led by billionaire Mr. Musk, has promised federal layoffs to achieve that goal. Thousands of federal employees have already been fired, and more cuts are coming: A memo issued Wednesday by the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management instructed department and agency heads to prepare for “large-scale reductions in force” and to develop reorganization plans by March 13.
And Virginia, one of the few states to hold elections this fall, will be disproportionately affected.
Why We Wrote This
The governor’s race in Virginia is often seen as a harbinger of national political trends. This year, the fallout from Department of Government Efficiency layoffs is shaking up the race as Republicans try to retain power and Democrats cite surging interest.
The commonwealth is home to one of the country’s largest federal workforces, behind only Washington, D.C., and California. Most of the state’s federal employees and contractors live in the counties surrounding the nation’s capital. But there is also a sizable military presence in the southeast corner of the state, which could be impacted by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s own recent request for budget cuts. Democratic leaders say the layoffs will be felt throughout the state, as friends and family members lose their jobs and trigger a domino effect through Virginia’s economy, just as the state’s elections are heating up.
Virginia’s off-year elections are always anticipated by politicos who read the results as a report card on a new presidential administration and a bellwether for the following year’s midterm elections. And this year the commonwealth will again be heavily analyzed, as Democrats try to rebound after a disastrous 2024 election and take back the governorship they lost in 2021. That defeat came, in part, because the Democratic nominee, Terry McAuliffe, underperformed in the northern Virginia suburbs compared with former President Biden’s 2020 margins.
With DOGE, Republicans in Washington may have motivated a subset of voters in the neighboring state who could tip the electoral scales in Democrats’ favor. After all, more than 144,000 federal employees live in Virginia, while Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin won in 2021 by fewer than 64,000 votes.
“We are so used to talking about national politics at a 30,000-foot level where it’s all theoretical, and we don’t see and feel the impact,” says Dominic Thompson, executive director of the Fairfax County Democratic Committee. “[The firings] are not just a theoretical thing here in northern Virginia. There are federal workers all over the place. … Every single person up here is talking about this.”
Just earlier this week, for example, Mr. Thompson was at Starbucks and said that he heard his barista talking about how one of her friends was fired from the U.S. Agency for International Development. For Jeff Person, chair of the Falls Church Democrats, the layoffs have been personal: His sister moved her family to Dakar, Senegal, in the fall for a job with USAID. She was officially placed on leave this week.
At the Arlington Democrats’ February meeting, which their Democratic congressman attended to discuss the cuts, close to 400 people – more than five times the typical crowd size – attended either in person or virtually, says Chair Steve Baker. Located just across the Potomac River from Washington, Arlington is home to about 28,000 federal employees and contractors.
The Arlington Democrats hosted a town hall for federal workers this past week at a local library where they were invited to share their stories. It was standing room only with an overflow crowd in the hallway. “This cuts across partisan lines, certainly in the suburbs,” says Mr. Baker.
“Federal workers are coming out in droves looking for any kind of support they can find,” says Mr. Thompson. “Our party hears them, and they’ll remember that when November comes around.”
“Virginia Has Jobs”
Virginia Republicans are aware of what the cuts would mean for their state: They have offered their own support for workers, while also showing their support for the Trump administration and DOGE’s efforts.
“I don’t believe that the federal government downsizing is wrong, and in fact, we need to press forward and drive efficiencies in our federal government,’’ said Governor Youngkin at an event in Tysons Corner on Monday where he launched a new job initiative in the state. “And as a result of driving those efficiencies, I do expect that some Virginians will lose their jobs.’’
Through a new website called “Virginia Has Jobs,” workers impacted by the “federal government transition” can sign up for virtual job fairs and apply for unemployment benefits. The site also has links to LinkedIn and Indeed job listings and tips for how workers can update their resumes. (“Federal resumes are often lengthy. ... Aim for 1–2 pages for the private sector.”)
“I am glad that President Trump is getting to the bottom of all of this,” said Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, who is running to be the Republican gubernatorial nominee against former Democratic Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, at a campaign event in Bowling Green last week. Like Mr. Youngkin, she suggested that Virginia’s private sector job opportunities could absorb the blow.
But Ms. Earle-Sears’ allegiance to DOGE has been challenged. Earlier this week a former Loudoun County delegate, Dave LaRock, filed papers to challenge Ms. Earle-Sears for the Republican nomination, promising to create a “VaDOGE” – “a bold initiative” aimed at cutting waste and “reducing bureaucracy” at the state level.
Republicans are offering nothing more than a “thoughts and prayers” approach, says Susan Swecker, chairwoman of the Virginia Democratic Party. Their response, through the Virginia Has Jobs website, is something that “a career coach would be fired for.”
Democrats have painted Republicans’ response as coldly pragmatic, blindly following the will of the president. A new ad from the Virginia House Democratic Caucus entitled “Chaos,” which targets 12 Republican-held districts, repeatedly shows images of Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump. Democrats hope to hold onto, or even build on, the narrow majorities they won in both houses of the General Assembly in 2021, despite losing the governorship.
But Ms. Swecker attributes much of Democrats’ 2021 gubernatorial loss to what she calls “the White House curse.” For decades, the party that won the White House went on to lose Virginia’s gubernatorial election the following year, save for 2013 when Mr. McAuliffe, a Democrat, won his first term as governor.
Prompting Mr. McAuliffe’s trend-bucking win, says Matthew Hurtt, Chairman of the Arlington County GOP, was the October 2013 government shutdown. Because of a budget impasse in Congress, as Republicans such as Sen. Ted Cruz tried to defund the Affordable Care Act, the federal government shut down for 16 days and about 850,000 federal employees were furloughed. The shutdown was massively unpopular among voters – with 8 in 10 Americans disapproving, including a majority of Republicans – and dinged Americans’ confidence with the GOP. Mr. McAuliffe tied his Republican opponent to the shutdown and won the race just a few weeks later.
Starkly different reactions
But Mr. Hurtt says he doesn’t see the frustration on the ground against DOGE cuts like he did against the government in 2013. Instead, he says Republicans “are even more fired up” than they were last year, when his county party raised more money than any other year since they started keeping record over a decade ago.
Earlier this week, Mr. Hurtt asked his email list of roughly 12,000 recipients across Northern Virginia if they, or anyone they knew, were affected by the cuts. “I got two emails back in response,” says Mr. Hurtt.
Mr. Hurtt acknowledges, however, that his cohorts at the Arlington Democrats likely have more members who are federal employees. And he is probably correct. A 2021 study from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that Democrats make the plurality of all career civil servants, with a Democratic overrepresentation “in nearly every department.” Between 1997 and 2019, around 50% of federal employees were identified as Democratic, while the share of Republican federal employees decreased from 32% to 26%.
This divide could help explain the dramatically different responses from local parties on the ground. Whereas the Fairfax County Democrats have been collecting stories from fired or fearful Virginias through their website, where a form on the homepage instructs locals to share personal stories about how they have been affected by “Musk’s mass firings,” their Republican counterparts are of the mind that the personnel cuts in Virginia could actually help Republicans.
“The cuts are certainly being felt in northern Virginia ... but I think many more people are having their eyes opened by the waste, fraud, and abuse that Elon Musk has uncovered,” says Katie Gorka, chair of the Fairfax County GOP. “So if anything, it’s going to help us.”
Federal employees filing for unemployment
And all Republicans caution patience. November, in the political world, is years from now.
Republican Delegate Rob Bloxom, who represents part of Virginia’s eastern shore, says the current number of federal employees who have applied for unemployment in the state is somewhere between 70 and 300, according to a report he received from the Virginia Employment Commission. “Everybody is just guessing” the true percentage of Virginia workers who will be affected, he says.
“Is 10% the number? Is 50% the number? We don’t know. All of this is conjecture,” says Mr. Bloxom. “I think it’s prudent to be aware of [the cuts], but I think it’s premature to sound the alarm bells and say the sky is falling.”
Mr. Bloxom is the vice chair on an emergency committee created by Democratic House Speaker Don Scott to “study and understand the potential impacts of cuts to the federal civilian workforce” and assess any impacts to the state budget passed by the General Assembly last week. Virginia, which relies heavily on income taxes for its budget, is also constitutionally required to have a balanced budget. The General Assembly could be called back to pass a new budget if its projected revenue streams drop too far.
But he acknowledges that there could also be political motivations.
“It is an election year, so we might be called back to keep the issue stirred up and in front of everybody,” says Mr. Bloxom.
