OPINION: In Donuts and Electricity, Monopolies Should Stay Out of Politics
"In the real world, we could live without donuts if the prices got too high... Electricity is a different story."
By Eric Bonds
CONTRIBUTOR
Columnist Eric Bonds imagines that a donut monopoly has overtaken Fredericksburg. It’s overcharging for pastries and meddling in our democracy. The scenario isn’t so different from Dominion Energy’s grip on Virginia. But the General Assembly, he writes, can pass legislation to reduce Dominion’s influence in politics.
In Fredericksburg, we love our donuts. We practically live in a donut utopia with establishments such as Paul’s, Freddy’s, Krispy Kreme, and Duck Donuts.
While no one wants our donut variety to go away, imagine if you will that there is an economy of scale for bakeries, and that we could make donuts more affordable and abundant if we consolidated all our different shops into one superstore. Let’s call it Donut King.
In this imagined scenario, consumers have the potential to benefit from new efficiencies. But all of Fredericksburg is now a captured market. What would prevent Donut King—given that all competition is now gone—from jacking up the prices and providing substandard pastries? We would need our government to step in and determine fair prices and basic rules to protect us.
While this certainly helps, Donut King is also making a whole lot of money supplying sweet treats to our community, and it starts using some of that money—a penny from every donut sold—to fund political campaigns and lobbyists. In fact, Donut King might become the biggest political spender in the whole region because, as a regulated monopoly, its profits directly depend upon government policy.
All of us unsuspecting donut lovers would be paying to fund Donut King’s political activity, which may very well be working against our own interests as consumers.
From Donut King’s perspective, purchasing political access and having the right people in power helps ensure that donut prices are set high enough and that rules and consumer protections are low enough to maximize profitability.
In the real world, we could live without donuts if the prices got too high. It might be a sad day in Fredericksburg, but it would probably be better for our overall health. Electricity is a different story. It’s something we can’t do without. And across most of Virginia, it’s provided by an actual monopoly, Dominion Energy.
On a yearly basis, Dominion spends more money to influence elections than any other business in the state. In just 2025 alone, though the year isn’t even over and we still have plenty of days left before the big election, Dominion has already spent more than ten million dollars to influence elections across the Commonwealth, according to the Virginia Public Access Project. It gives to both political action committees and directly to candidates running for office.
Dominion Energy’s spending is nonpartisan. This past year, while it gave generously to both parties, it contributed about a million more dollars to the Democrats. This is probably not due to an ideological preference, but because Democrats hold majorities in the House of Delegates and the Senate. If Republicans held more seats in the General Assembly, their campaigns might instead be taking in more Dominion money.
In other words, it’s not a question of which party—Democrat or Republican—wins for Dominion Energy. Rather, it’s a question of what kind of Democrat and what kind of Republican gets into office.
We can see this in Dominion’s political spending for the office of Attorney General, which voters will decide in November. It’s given almost a million and a half dollars to candidates in that race. Dominion must have really wanted candidate Shannon Taylor to win the Democratic primary, because it contributed $775,000 to her campaign war chest.
Taylor did not prevail, being beaten by Jay Jones. It’s a good lesson that a candidate is not ensured victory by having more money than his or her opponent. But it definitely helps. All other things being equal, a political candidate is advantaged with more cash on hand for campaigning.
Even though Taylor lost her primary, Dominion still has another preferred candidate left in the race for Attorney General. It’s given $700,000 so far this year to support Republican Jason Miyares’ electoral campaign.
It doesn’t need to be this way. Last legislative session, Delegate Rozia Henson—who represents the Woodbridge region in the House—introduced legislation that would prohibit Dominion Energy from using ratepayer money for private jets, advertising, lobbying, and campaigning. Unfortunately, this bill didn’t make it out of committee.
But other states, like Colorado and Maine, passed similar legislation in 2023. After the November election, a new legislative session lies ahead for Virginians, and we can follow these states’ lead.
Independent, Democrat, or Republican, most all of us love donuts. We want them cheap, plentiful, and delicious. We won’t let any Donut King stand in the way.
And we can all agree that we want our electricity affordable and clean for the environment. Legislation to prohibit Dominion from using ratepayer money for lobbying and political spending is an important step that will help get us there.
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