BEST OF 2025: Opinion
From data centers and economic growth to elections and political power, 2025 offered much to opine about. But it was the simple plea of one man to recognize his American story that topped all others.
Opinion writing “requires reading, which, unlike passive grazing at an endless buffet of graphic distractions, is an activity. It demands one’s mental engagement.”
—George F. Will on his first 50 years of writing a column for The Post
Throughout 2025, readers of the Advance have engaged with columns that evoked thought, challenged ideas, and dared to ask people to see a larger world than the one they daily engage. And readers responded both by sharing these columns across the region and the commonwealth, and by bringing these writings into the broader public dialog.
Our guest columnists delivered powerful pieces on the struggles confronting the Fredericksburg City Public School system, challenged the community during one of the more-combative local elections in recent years to find a more-civil tone, introduced some good-natured common-sense levity into our day, introduced readers to the idea of “second-wave suburbanization” to explain Abigail Spanberger’s landslide victory in November, discussed the Hylton Tract and its effect on local elections
Commentary by the editor touched a number of issues this year. Among them, data centers drew spirited debate both for and against. Politics drew considerable attention, from the emergence of a new generation of leaders, the peculiarity of unchallenged seats in Fredericksburg, a really bad month for the Fredericksburg City School Board, and the significance of what happened in Stafford County in the 2025 election, to a raucous Stafford Board of Supervisors’ meeting that potentially undermined the county’s economic development. Homelessness was another issue that flared again in the city, and the Advance encouraged the community to take a much broader view of the problem. The Advance also encouraged the region to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and to appreciate the change that is coming to the region and the good it can do, if we’re bold enough to accept it.
One opinion piece this year stood out above all the others, however. In early November, facing an oddly-timed request to review his hiring records in the wake of an Iowa superintendent being arrested as an undocumented immigrant, Spotsylvania County Schools Superintendent Dr. Clint Mitchell came to the Board meeting to face those who were, in his words, carrying out an “inquisition … about my immigration status, as well as the validity of my degrees.” His accusers — predictably — did not show. Mitchell, however, delivered a master class on citizenship and respect that was as powerful in its defense of his standing and qualifications to lead one of the commonwealth’s largest school divisions as it was embarrassing to the community that a man whose only transgression was being a Black immigrant who dared reach for and obtain the American dream had to so publicly defend himself.
This is our opinion piece of the year.
FROM THE EDITOR: "I Am an American"
By Martin Davis
At Monday’s School Board meeting, Superintendent Clint Mitchell made clear that his immigration status and citizenship are not up for debate.
Read the full story
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