RICHMOND — Don L. Scott (D-Portsmouth) became the first African American to serve as Virginia’s speaker of the House Wednesday, taking the oath of office before a chamber packed with people on hand for the historic occasion.
Scott was wiping away tears shortly before the session gaveled in at noon, making his way through a throng of well-wishers who shed tears of their own as they congratulated him and shook his hand. Scott’s mother was there to see her son’s big moment, saying she believes Scott will work to help all people.
He was elected to the position by a vote of 99-0.
“My first immediate emotion is just gratitude,” Scott said after taking the dais. “I know this is God’s favor.”
“The historic nature of my speakership is not lost on me …” he continued. “Think of all the people who never got their rights heard by people right here in this chamber. Thank God the Commonwealth has turned the page. Thank God.”
The historic selection came as Virginia’s General Assembly convenes a 60-day legislative session with new faces, a new office building and new Democratic leaders in the House of Delegates and state Senate.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) greeted them with his own effort at something new — a proposed state budget that features both tax cuts and tax hikes, as well as incentives to get a sports arena built in Alexandria to lure the Wizards and Capitals from the District.
“Our message must be clear: we are going to compete and win and ensure Virginians keep more of their hard-earned money — and to do this we must lead,” Youngkin told a joint session of the Assembly in the annual State of the Commonwealth speech, in remarks as prepared for delivery. He congratulated Scott on his historic position and called for lawmakers to work together to pass his priorities.
Whether all that change can translate into anything more than partisan posturing, though, is one of the key questions as the session gets underway.
Democrats won razor-thin majorities in both chambers during last fall’s elections, and turnover driven by redistricting, retirements and election losses has led to a generational change in leadership. Sen. Scott A. Surovell (D-Fairfax) will take the reins as Senate majority leader at 52 — the youngest to serve in that role in many years.
Roughly a third of the seats in House and Senate are occupied by rookies, and most committees will have new lawmakers in charge — making the power dynamics something of a mystery until work gets underway. Even the landscape is changed, with legislators occupying fresh offices in the newly completed General Assembly building, connected to the historic Capitol by a tunnel.
While the two chambers have traditionally been at odds with one another regardless of party control, Scott and Surovell have already signaled unusual willingness to work together to advance a Democratic agenda. That includes seeking constitutional amendments to enshrine protections for access to abortion, automatically restore voting rights to people who served time for felonies and guarantee protections for same-sex marriage.
Those amendment initiatives can get underway without the governor’s involvement, though they would have to be reenacted in two years before going to the public in a statewide vote. But other Democratic agenda items — such as a proposed ban on assault-style weapons and a bill that would raise the minimum wage — will have to go to Youngkin for approval.
The Senate was a sea of new faces. Nineteen of its 40 members were not here last year, although one, Sen. Glen Sturtevant (R-Colonial Heights) served one four-year term before losing reelection in 2019. One newcomer, Republican Tammy Brankley Mulchi, won a special election in Southside Virginia on Tuesday and will not be sworn in until Jan. 17, after results have been certified. She succeeds former senator Frank M. Ruff Jr. (R-Mecklenburg), who resigned after a cancer diagnosis.
Senators spent much of the day introducing the new members to the full chamber, who ranged from a Bangladesh-born financial consultant to a Shenandoah Valley farmer who raises chickens for Chick-fil-A and shares Sunday dinner every other week with about 100 cousins.
Their relatives were allowed on the Senate floor for a portion of the session, after Surovell made a motion “to grant the privileges of the floor to my mom and other distinguished persons.”
The good spirits continued as the business of organizing the chamber got underway, with Republicans thanking Democrats for moving away from the practice — begun by Republicans many years earlier — of heavily stacking committees with members of their own party. A few Republicans said they were disappointed that a few committees still did not reflect the chamber’s narrow partisan split. The powerful Finance and Appropriations Committee, for instance, will have 10 Democrats and five Republicans.
Sen. Ryan McDougle (R-Hanover), stepping into the minority leader role for the first time, even seconded the nomination of Sen. L. Louise Lucas (D-Portsmouth) to reprise her role as Senate president pro tempore. Lucas has been a fierce critic of Youngkin on X, formerly known as Twitter, but McDougle spun that into a compliment, saying she “dresses sharper than any of her tweets.”
For his part, Youngkin is gearing up to do battle over his tax overhaul plan. He has proposed cutting income taxes by 12 percent but raising the state sales tax to 5.2 percent from 4.3 percent — an effort to shift the burden to what people spend instead of what they own.
Youngkin argues that the change would make tax revenue more stable and make Virginia more competitive with other states to the south, but Democrats counter that the changes — among others — favor the wealthy at the expense of low-income residents.
Youngkin will lay out his reasoning in a State of the Commonwealth speech to the full General Assembly, scheduled for 4 p.m.
His other major initiative is the arena that Monumental Sports is proposing for the Potomac Yard site in Alexandria. The General Assembly will need to approve creation of a state sports authority to coordinate the project, but Metro funding is likely to play a large role in whether Democrats get on board with the governor’s proposal.
Youngkin has signaled that he is reluctant to chip in the state’s contribution to the regional Metro transit system, claiming that it’s being run inefficiently and that Northern Virginia localities can make payments from their own coffers. That won’t go down well with the region’s General Assembly delegation, many of whose members have already warned that transit and road congestion are make-or-break issues for their support of the arena.
This story is developing and will be updated.
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Don L. Scott Jr. sworn in as Virginia's first Black House speaker - The Washington Post
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