A Closer Look at Sally Hudson, Delegate and UVA Professor

(Cover Image Courtesy of Sally for Virginia)

On December 4, 2018, Sally Hudson, a professor of public policy at the University of Virginia, declared her candidacy for the 57th District of the Virginia House of Delegates. A resident of Charlottesville since 2016, Hudson would be challenging long-time incumbent David Toscano, who had been minority leader from 2011 to 2018. Local activists, many of whom she had gotten to know through organizations like Indivisible and Women of the Fifth, quickly rallied behind her. A successful primary bid by Hudson in the deep-blue district (a Republican has not run in the general election since 2005) provided a chance to both move the Democratic Party of Virginia further left and seat a strong progressive in the House. But more fundamentally, Hudson’s candidacy presented an opportunity to confront the unwritten system of power that suggested she should not challenge an incumbent in the first place: The assorted traditions and mores that guide Virginia politics known as the “Virginia Way.” 

A tradition favorably referenced by Virginia politicians on both sides of the aisle, the Virginia Way typically refers to a fabled system of civility, honor, and decency. When Ralph Northam was elected governor in 2017, he said, “We will always agree that it is okay to disagree as we move forward, but at the end of the day, this is about the Virginia Way.” In other words, it is an agreeable, traditional, and distinctly Southern custom of politics championed by the powerful. For critics, this practice enforces an insulated political aristocracy. In interviews with the Review, Hudson defined it as a “deference to tradition” consisting of a “small set of people at the table” where civility is maintained “by only including the people who are already okay in the conversation.” Others note that a crucial function of the Virginia Way is to protect business interests. Jeff Thomas, author of The Virginia Way: Democracy and Power After 2016, defines the Virginia Way as a system largely guided by a “corporate-centric philosophy,” pointing to Dominion Energy, the state’s largest energy utility, to underscore this idea. Dominion, previously a prominent contributor to Toscano’s campaigns, has spent at least $59 million influencing politics over the past two decades, forging deep bipartisan ties that promote favorable regulations for the company. (In 2019, Dominion Energy ranked in the top 10 for donations to both major political parties in the Virginia elections.) 

Considering Toscano’s past ties to Dominion, activists were eager for a candidate they could trust to forcefully oppose corporate power, and Hudson emerged to challenge him. She joined a growing caucus of Democratic candidates and legislators who refused to accept donations from the energy supplier, as well as from the smaller but highly influential Appalachian Power. Although Toscano had recently bucked Dominion in the General Assembly, he took the additional step of proposing a ban on its ability to make campaign contributions shortly after Hudson entered the race. Her announcement was unexpected. Former Charlottesville Mayor Bitsy Waters told C-VILLE Weekly in an article published May 22, 2019, that it came as “a political surprise.” It also defied norms. As C-VILLE Weekly noted in the piece, her candidacy “upended the tradition of politely waiting until the incumbent decides not to seek reelection.” Hudson said she entered the race with the support of “friends and colleagues,” but, in a curious oversight for a public policy professor, she said she was “a little bit blissfully unaware” of the “norms and boundaries” she was upsetting by primarying a prominent incumbent. Hudson added that the 2016 election was a pivotal moment that eventually led to her decision to run. With the ascendancy of Donald Trump, the world looked to her like it was “off the rails.” She felt immensely frustrated, as if she was constantly “banging [her] head against the wall.”

Her campaign began with significant financial support. In Virginia, candidates are free to accept unlimited contributions from any source, with the only requirement being disclosure of donors who give more than $100. Within weeks of Hudson’s announcement, local Democratic mega-donor Sonjia Smith gave $100,000 to her campaign. Smith’s donation to Hudson reflected a larger effort, as she and her husband, Michael Bills, have become the two largest individual donors in the Commonwealth, pouring millions of dollars into progressive challengers to curb Dominion’s influence. The confrontation between Hudson and Toscano never transpired. On February 23, 2019, Toscano announced that he would not seek re-election, and soon endorsed Charlottesville City Councilor Kathy Galvin, who declared her candidacy a few weeks following his withdrawal from the race. Democrats supportive of Galvin remained critical of Smith’s influence. As Waters, the former Charlottesville mayor, said in the May C-VILLE Weekly piece, “I’m a campaign reform person. I don’t like the idea people can buy elections.” Smith’s early investment gave Hudson a leg up on experienced opponents. As Hudson would tell C-VILLE Weekly, “That donation brought a lot of noise. It was like dropping a rock in a pond.”

When asked about Smith’s donations, Hudson told the Review that the $100,000 figure was “several contributions that added up” in one reporting period, from a donor “who got excited about the race early on and saw us making good use of her investment and then contributed more, which is something I think is often not understood about that donation.” (Hudson’s campaign disclosures list Smith as donating $50,000 on December 10 and an equal amount again on December 24.) She said donations like Smith’s were meant to put her campaign “in a position to have enough money to get [her] message out,” considering that Toscano was, “an incumbent with several hundred thousand dollars in the bank from corporate sources.” She added that “if it had been an open seat from the start,” she does not “think those donors would have offered nor would [she] have accepted such a big contribution.” When asked in a follow-up email if she considered returning Smith’s donations after Toscano withdrew from the race, Hudson said she did but had already committed to staff and mailing expenses, the two largest expenditures for the campaign. She also cited the possibility of Toscano transferring funds from his own war chest to Galvin’s, saying that “large, late-breaking contributions from incumbents aren’t uncommon, so we still had to run like they might happen.” 

Though by her account she retained Smith’s donations out of fear that another large contribution could be made to Galvin, tipping the scales in her opponent’s favor, she ultimately felt that “In the end, the money really wasn't a huge factor.” It is difficult to quantify the impact of money in a campaign, but Hudson seemed to put hers to good use: At the end of the final filing period of the primary, Hudson’s campaign disclosed that it had spent virtually all of its cash on hand, leaving a $46 balance. As C-VILLE Weekly noted in the May 22, piece, “Hudson has used her war chest to invest in a heavy field operation.” Hudson then stated in the follow-up email to the Review that, “I ran December-June and spent just shy of $200K. Councilor Galvin ran for 1/2 as long and spent 1/2 as much.” She also elaborated on the impact of Smith’s donations, saying that they enabled her to “hire staff right away to run daily operations so I could work full-time at UVA and spend my campaign hours talking with voters about the work we want to do in Richmond.” She pointed to her relative lack of fundraising in the first filing period of 2019, writing, “You'll notice I didn't do much fundraising in Q1 of 2019. That's what I mean when I say the money let me get my message out. It bought me time talking with voters about their policy priorities, not calling donors and asking for money.” While Hudson’s description of her spending compared to Galvin’s is technically true, it also wrongly suggests that raw dollars are more important than timing. Hudson may have run twice as long as Galvin, but she consistently outspent her after Galvin announced her candidacy. In the filing period prior to Galvin’s entrance into the race, July 1 to December 31, Hudson spent $4,534. Galvin announced her bid on March 14 near the end of the following reporting period, January 1 to March 31. During this time, Hudson’s campaign reported $39,541 in expenses, compared to Galvin’s spending $8,276. As the primary election approached, spending increased. In the filing period stretching from April 1 to May 30, Hudson spent $102,206, more than double Galvin’s $47,059. In the final reporting period of the primary season, May 31 to June 30, Hudson spent $62,115 to Galvin’s $38,487. By filing period, Hudson regularly outspent Galvin by considerable amounts. And with $208,396 spent and $208,438 in receipts covering the filing periods from December through June, Smith’s donations alone accounted for approximately 48 percent of both Hudson’s campaign expenditures and fundraising haul. (Galvin didn’t respond to requests for comment.)

During the primary contest, after Toscano dropped out, Galvin called for a $10,000 cap on individual contributions (and also pledged to reject donations from Dominion). Hudson’s platform during the campaign proposed a ban on corporate campaign contributions and promoting public financing of elections, but did not specifically mention caps on individual contributions. Hudson told the Review prior to the November election that she supported measures like a cap on individual donations, which she said she had stated “repeatedly throughout the campaign,” and called the federal limit of $2,800 per election a “great starting place” in a follow-up email and that she “would be happy to see it go lower from there.” Though Hudson backs stricter campaign finance regulations, she has had to confront questions of undue influence. In the May 2019 C-VILLE Weekly piece, Hudson insisted that Smith was not looking to buy influence, saying, “there’s no way in a million years she’d come knocking on my door and ask for something.” A contentious proposition, given Hudson’s support of individual donation caps as well as corporate ones and criticism of money in Virginia politics. But for now, we’ll have to wait and see, as Hudson won the primary handily in June 2019, carrying nearly two-thirds of the vote. When Democrats took control of the General Assembly on November 5, Hudson joined a session of the House of Delegates where she has a greater chance of carrying out a range of goals, such as electoral reform, expanding affordable housing, and removing Confederate monuments. Hudson thinks the urgency of the current moment has fostered a passion for change. “If too many people are in pain,” Hudson said, “you will eventually upset the order of power. And I think we have reached that tipping point.”

From her youth, Hudson has shown the promise to rise to public office. She was born on June 19, 1988 in Iowa City, Iowa. Her mother, Ginny Gross, began her career as a journalist, having earned a journalism degree from Northern Illinois University before eventually receiving her master’s degree in comparative education from the University of Iowa, where she directed the school’s foreign admissions office. While in Iowa City, Gross met Fritz Hudson, a former labor lawyer and community organizer turned Unitarian minister. Like Gross, he had a strong academic pedigree, having previously studied English at Cornell College in Iowa before graduating from Harvard Divinity School and UNC Chapel Hill School of Law. They married in 1987 and Gross gave birth to Sally the next year. (Gross had another child, Eric, from a previous marriage.) 

Hudson’s family moved to Arizona for her father’s ministry in 1991, then settled in Lincoln, Nebraska, where Hudson’s father became a minister at the Unitarian Church of Lincoln in 1998. Her father was involved in church building and community organizing, which Hudson said familiarized her with grassroots work and equipped her with the tools to influence politics. It also cultivated religious convictions in Hudson, who is currently an active member of the First United Methodist Church in Charlottesville. While in Lincoln, her mother served as director of graduate admissions at the University of Nebraska, later becoming an English teacher for refugees and director at the YWCA. Hudson, frequently referring to herself as a “plain-state progressive,” said her upbringing greatly informs her values. Together with her UVA professorship, she had unique appeal as someone who could be an effective member of the General Assembly. When WUVA News interviewed Hudson in April 2019, she said that she “combine[s] two really important qualities that you need in a public servant.” The first is the “technical know-how of policy,” saying that, “I’m an economist, I understand the nuts and bolts of bureaucracy.” The second is that she “didn’t come up out of that world,” adding, “I’m not a wonk by birth by any stretch.”

Perhaps not. But by high school, Hudson had her sights set on the policy realm. She attended Lincoln East High School, a meritorious public school in Lincoln whose 2005 graduating class (when Hudson was a junior) was dubbed “magical,” producing “two presidential scholars, 17 Regents scholars, 10 National Merit semifinalists and 16 Nebraska distinguished scholars.” Between 2003 and 2019, Lincoln East High produced eight Presidential Scholars, including Hudson. Her Presidential Scholars biography states that she planned to study public health policy, ideally working for an international development agency like the World Health Organization or World Bank. A fierce competitor, Hudson thrived in extracurricular activities at Lincoln East. Her forensics coach, Matt Davis, whom Hudson described as “like another father” to her, fondly recalled Hudson’s time on the team, saying that her nickname was “ice pack Hudson,” since she would often arrive to forensics with an ice pack on her shoulder to ease soreness from softball practice. Anish Mitra, who described himself as a “close friend” of Hudson, participated in extemporaneous speaking alongside her at Lincoln East. Mitra, a member of the class of 2005, won the state championship for extemporaneous speaking three years in a row (2003-2005) and said that you could “pick the most esoteric topic out of a hat, and [Hudson] could give you a beautiful speech,” which she performed with “the impression that you heard a professor speak.” In her senior year of 2006, Hudson continued the school’s reign in extemporaneous speaking, winning the state championship. Hudson credits her experience in forensics as a key reason for her later confidence. Prevailing against students who came from wealthy, renowned private schools showed Hudson that she “could belong in any room.” 

She matriculated to Stanford in 2006, where she said she at one point dreamed of becoming the director of the Office of Management and Budget. She also served as a fellow with the Spirituality, Service and Social Change program at Stanford’s Haas Center, where she worked part-time for the chaplain of the Planned Parenthood Golden Gate in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco. After Stanford, she entered a Ph.D. program in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she wrote her dissertation on the economics of education. Hudson said she sought a Ph.D. to have the skills to independently evaluate other technical claims so that she “could never be held hostage by someone else’s fancy math.” Passing on a job at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau after graduating, she remained in academia and took a job as an assistant professor of public policy, education, and economics in the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at UVA, teaching causal inference econometrics, applying statistical concepts to infer cause and effect for economic problems.

Her students speak highly of her as a professor, often pointing to her ability to connect with students. On the first day of class of Research Methods and Data Analysis I in the fall of 2019, Hudson learned her students’ names by instructing them to write their names on a card and then tell the story of their name. At the end of the exercise, she told the room of around 50 students to flip their cards, and then one-by-one recited their names back to them. One of her students, Sarah Robinson, a postgraduate student in the Master of Public Policy program at the Batten School, described Hudson as a professor who challenges her students, as well as one who is “engaging and conscientious.” She said that Hudson’s class was “unlike any I have ever taken,” where if you “[took] advantage of your peers and knowledgeable professor, you could learn something you never imagined possible, which was the case for me.” 

According to her students, Hudson also drew a strict line between her duties as a professor and a candidate for office. Jack Larkin, a classmate of Robinson’s and double-accelerated student in the master’s program, said that Hudson briefly disclosed that she was running for office and told students that she would not discuss it in academic spaces, leaving Larkin “impressed by her dedication for keeping her academic and political life separate,” especially since the class frequently “analyz[ed] hot button policy issues.” Larkin said he enjoyed having Hudson as a professor and learned how to make precise claims, ones “that can be backed by data.”

In her spare time, Hudson likes to get away to the countryside. “My work keeps me pretty wired,” Hudson wrote to the Review in an email. “So I love anything that gets me off the grid: biking, backpacking, kayaking.” She added that “cooking with friends and hanging out by a fire is pretty much heaven for me.” This spring, Hudson will have a tight schedule: The General Assembly is in session 60 days this year (meeting for 30 days in odd-numbered years) and she will return to teach evening classes after the conclusion of the session, resuming full-time teaching in the fall.

As part of Virginia’s first Democratic “trifecta” (majority in both houses of the legislature and blue governorship) since 1993, Hudson has the opportunity to act on her top priority, a plan designed to “fi[x] democracy,” consisting of a “bundle of election reforms” including expanded early voting, automatic voter registration, and ranked-choice voting (RCV). She spoke with C-VILLE Weekly in January about the potential for change that exists in this moment, where she was quoted as saying, “the turnover in the majority makes some real progress possible. Possible, but by no means guaranteed.” Hudson said in an interview with the Review that electoral reform is necessary to pave the way for a larger agenda, stating that “elected officials who are not [being] responsive to the voters” will need to be fixed first. Otherwise, “a whole lot of other issues are going to stay on the backburner.” 

Virginia’s electoral system has long been antidemocratic. In 2018, a federal court held that Virginia’s legislative districts violated the due process clause of the 14th Amendment, citing “overwhelming evidence” that the Commonwealth “sorted voters into districts based on the color of their skin.” The court ruling and work of activists pushed the General Assembly in 2019 to overwhelmingly approve a constitutional amendment to create a bipartisan electoral redistricting commission, which must be passed by the General Assembly again this year and ratified by popular ballot in the November 2020 election to be adopted. Hudson, who has previously worked with OneVirginia2021, a statewide campaign that opposes gerrymandering, said she supports the amendment. Hudson has spent her relatively short time in Virginia working on electoral reform. In 2017, Hudson helped co-found FairVote Virginia, an organization dedicated to implementing RCV, which allows voters to rank candidates for office according to their preference. (If a voter’s first choice comes up short, their vote is transferred to their second choice, and further on if necessary, until a candidate emerges with majority support.) Her efforts with RCV are years in the making. She previously lobbied for two RCV bills, which were tabled in the 2018 and 2019 sessions of the General Assembly, respectively. And she has spared little time in advocating for the issue as a delegate, introducing a bill on her first day in office to allow localities to implement RCV for their elections. 

Hudson’s prioritization of electoral reform appears to be new, as she launched her campaign by saying that healthcare was the “first item” on her agenda, according to the Cavalier Daily. She reasoned at the time, in December 2018, that the most effective reforms would have to come from the federal government and states would have to step up to expand coverage until then. Hudson similarly told the Review that she supports a state-based public option that would permit individuals to purchase insurance plans subsidized by the Virginia government, but when revisiting her preference for healthcare reform at the federal level, she was light on specifics. Her inability to articulate concrete plans for reform, a problem present during discussions with the Review, undercut the notion that her policy expertise would benefit her as a delegate.

When asked about her position on the elimination of private insurance, a key point of contention among Democrats currently debating policies like Medicare for All, Hudson said she doesn’t “really have a strong dog in that fight,” noting that “there are many different forms of universal healthcare coverage” across countries, ranging from systems that have private supplemental insurance to state-owned hospitals and compensated doctors. Hudson seemed to minimize the debate, which carries many consequential distinctions. She added, “I think we do ourselves a disservice when we get stuck on debates like that” when instead, “the primary conversation right now in my mind should be: how do we start to expand public health insurance in the most practical way possible” to achieve “basic primary coverage inclusion for everyone.” She followed with a flip comment about the path forward for health insurance, saying, “If it turns out that that system has also effectively rendered private insurance or supplemental provider insurance irrelevant, cool.” This is a peculiar comment from a public policy professor. The other healthcare systems she references around the world are the product of deliberate policy choices, rather than a natural progression of healthcare forces. Hudson may not be responsible for legislating federal policy, but this does not diminish the need for her to have a position on the issue, since it will impact her constituents and likely require cooperation of state governments. These distinctions drive the passionate debate within the Democratic Party because private insurance imperils millions of Americans a year. Hudson’s push for a Virginia public option could help expand coverage, but her indifference to relevant policy distinctions on the federal level demonstrates a selective application of her academic credentials. Although a key appeal of Hudson’s is her status as an economist, her professional background does not always seem to translate into specific policy proposals. 

The same is true when she proposes changing Virginia’s tax code. Currently, Virginia has four income tax brackets, the highest consisting of income over $17,000, making the state income tax rate in Virginia the same for everyone making $17,001 a year and those making millions. Hudson campaigned on making Virginia’s tax code more progressive. Though when asked for specifics, she suggested her economic credentials precluded her from doing so. “I’m smart enough to know that before you roll out something like that you do it in great detail,” she said. She cited her status as an economist, adding, “I like to do my homework, I like to do things carefully.” But with Virginia’s conservative legislative calendar, she will have at most a few months each year to shape and vote on new policies. She added that, “even from a hardworking intrepid young legislator, I would be lying if I told you I had [a comprehensive tax bracket proposal],” or “it would be very poorly designed.” If true, one is left to wonder where her academic background can be of assistance, since, as she claims, she would need “the resources of a governor’s administration” to compile a full tax plan.

On college affordability and access, a topic informed by Hudson’s expertise in the economics of education, she observed that political rhetoric tends to keep the conversation in a “tiny little bandwidth” between “free and subsidized.” She said that “Chang[ing] the price” is “only one policy lever,” and sometimes Democrats “let the entirety of the debate be consumed by prices.” Indeed, costs drive the debate around colleges, in no small part because the more than $1.6 trillion in student debt is hamstringing students in ways that are stifling economic growth. “So much of the evidence is showing that the really high impact of public spending occurs on the instructional spending side of post-secondary policy,” she said, through steps like “lowering class sizes and offering tutors and remediation.” Hudson referenced the debates about free community college from the last governor’s race, saying that, “We could make community college free in Virginia. We could do that. At the same time, the graduation rate from associate’s degrees programs in Virginia’s community college system is 20 percent. Four out of five students drop out” for various reasons, such as “encounter[ing] what should be a hiccup, like an illness of a family member, or a broken down car that knocks them off track and they don’t get back on board.”

As a legislator and a professor, Hudson sometimes battles competing tendencies. “A lot of what economists are learning in variations in public investment in postsecondary education across the country is that dollar for dollar, you can do more to increase the actual attainment of education by investing in the quality of it,” she said. Hudson’s approach is seemingly colored by her policy background, which attempts to maximize every dollar spent. She worries that insufficient investment in the quality of education could diminish the actual attainment of it, pointing to “places around the world that have dramatically lowered tuition, and have found graduation rates have gone down, since they did not fight bigger, wonkier battles about investment in the supply side.” This is a fair observation, as scholars have cited examples of systems from places like England and Germany as a reason for precaution. Hudson clarified that she is not opposed to a dual approach of subsidizing tuition and investing in instructional spending, particularly for community colleges. “That’s not to say we should not do both,” she said, “but a lot of economists are concerned that if the goal posts are set at free tuition, then what we will do is induce greater enrollment in colleges without having fought the political battle of greater investment in instructional spending.” Notwithstanding the merits of a liberal arts education, a degree expands job opportunities and the leading reason for dropping out of college is financial (whether it is the direct cost of college or work combined with other obligations, like family commitments and emergencies). An effective measure, then, may be large grants, which Hudson supports. Asked in a separate interview by the Review about policies that could improve UVA’s relative lack of diversity, she said that UVA should strive to hire diverse faculty, but also stated, “one of the things that we can do is reduce the costs of attendance and particular[ly] ensure that we have grants front-loaded because a lot of folks who don’t have generational wealth to back them up are rightly worried about taking on debt to go to school.” 

Although Hudson ran to shake up the system, in many ways she is part of it. Asked whether she views herself as someone who works more comfortably outside the system or inside of it, she acknowledged that she is “fully in the system,” and is not “throwing a brick through any windows.” She credited her “plain-state progressivism” for instilling a “really strong inclination towards transparency,” and said it is a reason why she “value[s] evidence so much.” She then asked, “If what you’re doing or what you’re saying is motivated by the sincere concern for people and for good things, and you’ve worked hard to amass the evidence to support your case, then why should you be bashful about standing by that position?” She said that she has “yet to feel much of a tradeoff” between working inside the system or outside it. Asked whether she thinks that will last now that she is a delegate, she said, “We’ll see” and that, “I’m sure like anybody I’ll continue to learn and grow,” adding, “But I don’t know. I’m not sure I consider myself much of a rebel.”

The increasingly diverse wave of reformers that have recently joined the General Assembly reflects a larger cultural shift in Virginia’s politics, especially in light of recent events. In early 2019, Virginians were given an ugly reminder of the foundations upon which their political traditions were built. On February 1, 2019, photos from Governor Ralph Northam’s page in his medical school’s yearbook showing a man in a Klan robe standing next to a man in blackface resurfaced, along with the discovery that his nickname during his time there was “coonman.” It was a revealing moment for the governor, who previously touted the inherent decency of Virginia politics. Northam first apologized for the photos, then reneged by saying that they did not depict him, pleading ignorance as to how they had gone unnoticed by him for decades. Many were dissatisfied with Northam’s response and at the time, Hudson called for Northam’s resignation. Within days, a sexual assault allegation against Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax emerged, followed by another allegation a week later. Soon after, Attorney General Mark Herring faced a blackface scandal of his own when he admitted to donning it in 1980 for a Sigma Chi fraternity party at the University of Virginia, upending the gubernatorial line of succession while throwing the Commonwealth into chaos.

True to the Virginia Way, the status quo prevailed. Despite media turmoil and murmurs of impeachment swirling through the legislature, the General Assembly (then under Republican control) declined to pursue any further action against the three men. Hudson stood by her decision to call for Northam’s resignation, and said that concerning Herring, she believed he gave a “genuine, thoughtful apology” and pointed to “a lot of the really consistent work that he’s done” on issues of justice. “So do I think that that’s someone who should lose their job?” She asked. “Probably not. [He is] probably someone who should finish out his term and then find other ways to elevate new voices.” She contrasted Herring’s conduct with Fairfax’s, who characterized the allegations against him as “smears” and repeatedly claimed they are false. “I think it’s really frustrating,” Hudson said with a heavy tone. The lieutenant governor’s responsibilities of presiding over the Senate and breaking ties in the chamber are fairly mundane, making him “the easiest one to suggest that stepping down is the right course of action because [his] job can be played almost exactly the same by anyone in his party.” She stated that he should step down and instead devote his attention to the allegations made against him. “If the Lieutenant Governor were putting public service and the public first, I would think he would resign.”

In the time since the yearbook photo scandal, Northam has tried to repair his image by pledging to focus on racial reconciliation in his administration. Hudson welcomed his recent efforts but noted several places where he has fallen short. One example is how he “refuses to reckon with the racial division in so many policies that he already supports,” such as “the pipeline that’s cruising through Union Hill and Buckingham.” Illustrating how the corporate power of Virginia politics collides with interests of race and class, a pipeline and natural gas pumping station proposed by Dominion Energy, as part of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, was designed to run through Union Hill, a historically Black community. To mollify opposition, Dominion Energy promised $5.1 million to residents for improvements like an upgraded 911 service and entrepreneurial grants. Opponents sued to halt the construction, citing risks to nearby communities. Activists have frequently drawn attention to the racially disproportionate impacts of environmental policy, and this January, a federal court struck down Dominion’s permit in Union Hill. The court ruled that Dominion had insufficiently considered the impact of the station, reasoning that “environmental justice is not merely a box to be checked.”

The consequences of climate change have pushed many Democrats to embrace renewable energy with an eye toward environmental justice. With Republicans in power, Hudson said, it could sometimes be easier to question whether the General Assembly was blocking things like clean energy reforms because of their resistance to the evidence on climate change or refusal to confront Dominion. Now that Democrats are in charge, especially since many ran on climate change platforms, “it gets hard,” she said, to claim that clean energy policies are being thwarted by something other than the company’s influence. The Virginia government’s recent move toward renewable energy illustrates that in spite of growing focus on reform, traditional corporate influence can readily adapt. In October 2019, Northam revealed an initiative to power all state-owned buildings in Virginia with renewable energy by 2022. When it was announced, several figures, including Hudson, raised concerns about how the agreement was made. Besides a suspicious bidding process, it will only power about 45 percent of all energy consumed by state buildings and the price of wind energy will rise, eventually costing considerably more than solar. Businesses also worry that the agreement could monopolize the renewable energy market in Virginia and opponents point out that among the renewable energy resources that will be used, many still include carbon-emitting facilities. The company driving this deal, of course, is none other than Dominion Energy. 

When asked about issues like the questionable Dominion green energy contract and ways to curtail the company’s influence, Hudson said, “You can cut the money out,” referring to rejecting campaign spending, “but at some point it comes down to the relationships between specific people in power and Dominion executives.” Hudson is correct; with Democrats in charge, many of those in power who have relationships with Dominion executives will likely remain. The renewable energy deal with Dominion, after all, was cut by a Democratic governor. Hudson said she hopes, “with Democrats in power” they will “be responsible and responsive to evidence” such as the “plummeting cost of solar” and “benefits of increased competition between clean power producers.” Now that Hudson is a member of the General Assembly, she seems to have more faith in the party establishment she once defined her candidacy against. 

Though a closer look at her campaign and inquiry into her approaches to policy suggests that elements of Hudson’s progressive appeal may have been overstated. From early on, local press facilitated her narrative as the progressive challenger, papering over her relatively conservative approach to decision-making. In the April 2019 interview with WUVA News, like other times throughout the campaign, she was able to tout her “technical know-how of policy” without any follow-up questions about how her academic credentials would translate to legislation. Over multiple interviews with the Review, it became clear that Hudson’s expertise often either didn’t prepare her to provide policy specifics or was used as a reason to withhold them. Throughout her campaign, Hudson cited her academic credentials as evidence she could personally legislate in Richmond. But when pressed for specifics, such as her ideas for tax bracket proposals, Hudson suggested she didn’t have the resources to make a decision on the issue. Even on matters Hudson made as centerpieces of her campaign, such as healthcare, she was able to evade more contentious elements of the issue. Hudson has consistently championed a state-based public option as a way to expand coverage, and she recently proposed a bill aimed at breaking up vertical integration in healthcare to slow cost increases and expand access. Yet, when she launched her campaign, the Cavalier Daily noted that she believed such measures serve as temporary relief until larger federal reforms can be enacted. When she was asked by the Review about her position on Medicare for All and current debates concerning the elimination of private insurance, she declined to take a position on something that causes sharp disagreement among Democrats. Instead, she said that too much focus on this debate can sometimes become a “disservice.” Hudson, like several other progressive challengers around the Commonwealth, also accepted significant donations from individual donors for the sake of making an even match. It may be true that the rules governing campaign finance in Virginia are broken, but they can become more difficult to change if candidates continue to play by them.

In some cases, potential conflicts of interest could have resulted in credulous coverage. Sally Hudson features heavily in C-VILLE Weekly’s January 2020 article, a comprehensive overview of the upcoming session. The author, Ben Hitchock, did not disclose that he was a paid member of Hudson’s campaign as recently as November 2019, less than two months before the article was published. When asked about this, C-VILLE Weekly Editor-in-Chief Laura Longhine told the Review that “perhaps we should have [included that disclosure] just to err on the side of complete transparency,” but she said she does not “see his previous job on Sally Hudson's campaign to be a conflict of interest in his story on the General Assembly, since the campaign is over and he does not work for her office in any capacity.” 

When the Review contacted two other local Charlottesville news outlets, the Daily Progress and Charlottesville Tomorrow, to inquire about their policies for covering candidates, both stated that they would strive to avoid having one of their journalists cover a candidate they previously worked for, but in extenuating circumstances or if another journalist was not available, a disclosure of that journalist’s previous political work would need to be included. “In a normal scenario, we absolutely would not have a news article that is authored by anyone who had worked on the political campaign of one of the subjects of a story,” wrote Elliot Robinson, news editor of Charlottesville Tomorrow, in an email to the Review. “But, if there were extenuating circumstances, we would disclose the potential conflict in the story because it is important for transparency.” Aaron Richardson, news editor at the Daily Progress, had a similar response. He stated that the Progress’s conflict of interest policy would typically not allow a journalist who previously worked in politics to cover the topic, especially if the story concerned a political figure that the journalist previously worked for. When asked why this decision would be made, he explained the Progress’s rationale: “I don’t want there to be even an appearance of a conflict of interest, and having a reporter who worked on a political campaign cover the politician for whom they worked is by definition a conflict of interest.”

In a follow-up email to Longhine, which noted the two editors’ responses, the Review requested more details of C-VILLE Weekly’s policy for disclosing potential conflicts of interest. Longhine replied, “I think I explained my reasoning pretty clearly in my responses to your first request for comment! I don’t feel the need to elaborate on that.” Hitchcock did not respond to direct requests for comment.