FROM THE EDITOR: Youngkin Never Learned to Connect
Youngkin strengthened the state's economy and weakened its cultural fiber. Consequently, he missed an opportunity to move Virginia's people, as well as its economy, forward.
By Martin Davis
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
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Gov. Glenn Youngkin rolls off the Richmond stage today when Abigail Spanberger takes the Oath of Office as Virginia’s 75th governor. He leaves office as much an enigma as he entered it four years ago.
The governor has certainly had his share of successes.
Education: Under Youngkin, state spending on public education has grown significantly, as has funding for teachers. Between 2022 and 2023, for example, state spending per student grew 6.8%.
Teacher salaries have also grown, and the rate of teacher vacancies has fallen. “Since 2023, teacher vacancies have declined by 35.9% percent,” according to the Virginia Department of Education, while teach salaries have increased “19.3% over the last 4 years.”
Young also brought about a long-needed overhaul to how the state measures student performance. The new system earns points for getting some things right — weightings for high school indicators are significantly different than they are for middle and elementary students — but there are a number of problems with the new system that have been spelled out in the pages of the Advance, and in the JLARC report.
And finally, he made cell-phone free schools the law of the land.
Economic Development: Locally, the effects of Youngkin’s “Open for business” mantra has been apparent. Amazon’s investment of $35 billion and the launch of a new training program at Germanna Community College that trains people for good-paying jobs in that industry was the tip of the iceberg of data center growth during Youngkin’s tenure. (See here, here, and here for examples of how data centers are revolutionizing the commonwealth’s economy.
Job growth also reached its highest rates since the early 1990s. Virginia had 4,004,600 when Youngkin took office in 2022. By June 2025, there were 4,268,300, according to the Federal Reserve.
And more: In his State of the Commonwealth address earlier this week, Youngkin highlighted many of these improvements, and more, including significant reductions in violent crime, a healthier Chesapeake Bay, and significant investments in mental health.
The Catch
Youngkin is first, last, and in the middle a business person. He brought perhaps the deepest understanding of business and investment to the Governor’s Mansion of any previous governor. And when he leaned into this, he generally found some level of success.
What Youngkin is not, however, is a good reader of people and moments.
He certainly caught the wave of parent dissatisfaction in 2021 when then-Gov. Terry McAuliff made one of the more-famous gaffes in a debate in Virginia history — “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what to teach.” But Youngkin misread the complexities of the issue, and people’s stomachs for culture wars.
Rather than leaning into economic development on Day One of his administration, Youngkin leaned into the culture wars with nary a sense for the landmines he was stepping on.
His Executive Order 1 was a model of ignorance and political blundering. Youngkin’s railing against “inherently divisive concepts” revealed only that the newly minted governor was woefully unaware of the history of race and civil rights in Virginia.
Rather than strengthen classroom learning, it set off a witch hunt to burn or ban books that included “critical race theory” — an academic concept Youngkin was clearly ignorant of. In practice, Executive Order 1 proved to be little more than a racial white-washing of U.S. history.
Perhaps his worst misstep that first year was his teacher tattle-tail line that encouraged parents to snitch on their children’s teachers. It was a Stasi-like move that badly backfired. The snitch line died a quiet death — the damage to people’s trust in the governor was longer lasting.
His inability to read people didn’t stop with education.
When DOGE started slashing jobs in Virginia, Youngkin’s response was to say how his dad had lost his job and the family had to move when he was younger. This left Virginians feeling cold and forgotten. It got worse when he put up a half-baked jobs board that was embarrassing in presentation and in the “jobs” it apparently scraped from Indeed.
Even though there was nothing Youngkin could have done to stop DOGE, there is something to being Comforter-in-Chief. It’s a lesson Youngkin never seemed to learn.
Youngkin’s staff was likely aware that Youngkin couldn’t connect with people.
He was kept at arms distance from the media. “Gaggles” — gatherings between a politician and the media before or after an event — became a thing of the past.
While Youngkin connected with his base, he was never able to expand much beyond that base. That was made evident during election years, as Republicans lost ground at the state house, and in Congressional races. The governor’s coattails, if he had any, were very, very short.
Missed Opportunity
Youngkin had skills that Virginia needed, and when he focused on those skills, Virginia won — to borrow the governor’s language.
But his inability to read people, to read moments, to spark voters with a vision they could embrace, led him to make decisions that divided, not united, the commonwealth.
Whether this inability to connect was due to personality, unease, bad advice, or something else is not known. It matters little.
Youngkin had an opportunity to strengthen the state’s economy, and unite its citizens around a bold vision for the future.
He enjoyed some notable success with the former. His decision to embrace divisive culture wars cost him the latter.
He missed an opportunity, and we are left wandering what might have been.
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This is a really sharp analysis of Youngkin's tenure. The business person vs people person distinction explains alot of what went wrong here. Youngkin's economic track record with data centers and job growth was solid, but that teacher tattle-tail line was just baffling from a political strategy standpoint. I've seen this pattern before where excutives bring strong operational skills to governorship but totally misjudge how cultural issues play out when they try moving from boardroom to statehouse, especialy on something as fraught as education policy.
Youngkin always benefited from people’s assumptions that this fleece vest wearing businessman must be a moderate. He reminded people of a suburban dad at a barbeque. But he was always a partisan in moderate’s clothing.
The vest came off in 2022 when 82-year-old Paul Pelosi was assaulted, had to be hospitalized, and underwent surgery to repair a skull fracture due to the force of the hammer blows.
Governor Youngkin’s response? Not to offer sympathy or best wishes for his recovery. Instead he decided to enjoy a little joke about having to send Speaker Pelosi back to be with him in California.
Maybe it seems like a small thing. But you get a good look at someone’s character in the moments after something terrible happens to a person they dislike.
Violence is just so funny, right governor? As long as it’s directed at political foes anyway.
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Glad we’re getting a new governor. Virginia deserves better than this.