Pay-for-Play on Full Display

 

Friends and Neighbors,

In light of the shameless Devlin Technology Park betrayal (UPDATED: Prince William Supervisors OK Devlin data centers despite residents' objections | News | princewilliamtimes.com), how many of you have been wondering how public officials sworn to represent your interests can not only be indifferent to your welfare, but actually take the side of predatory corporations determined to exploit you?

Peruse the multiple tabs of the spreadsheet at: Donations Driving Data Centers - Google Sheets and wonder no more.  Instead, wonder why any of us ever thought we might get the time-of-day from blatant political prostitutes masquerading as supervisors.  If you want their attention, you’re going to need a bigger suitcase full of cash.  If the obscene amount of money showered on our current crop of Democratic supervisors isn’t a corrupting influence, I don’t know what is.  

Now prepare yourselves for the next public fleecing, queued up for December 12^th.

• The first tab of the spreadsheet shows land parcels within the Prince William Digital Gateway CPA area.  They are sorted by which parcels are under which rezoning application, and which are not part of any rezoning application. 
• Use this a checklist during the upcoming public hearing to keep track of the few salivating opportunists speaking in support of this project.  Landowners’ feigned interest in the county they will be fleeing is directly proportional to the acreage they will be selling to the developer, should their pet project be approved.
• Scroll down for the developer’s bait and switch on evaporating parkland promises.  Does this mean citizens won’t be able to ride their horses between the data centers?
• The second tab lists almost a quarter million dollars in political donations from PWDG landowners alone.  These donations supplement a well-heeled marketing machine spewing misinformation (Data Centers Bring Opportunity to PWC | PW Digital Gateway). This project is a pay-for-play sham in the most audacious sense.
• The third tab lists other major donors to the incumbent Democratic supervisors. 
• Prodigious campaign donations from both Stanley Martin and the International Brotherhood of Electrical workers were instrumental in eliciting the Devlin Technology Park approval over the universal opposition of affected residents.  Those residents should have realized that, with such ethical stalwarts as our Democratic supervisors, no donations = no influence.
• The fourth tab shows the lopsided campaign spending advantages of the donor-beholden incumbent Democratic supervisors in the last election cycle.
• Ann Wheeler’s $357,531 expenditure in her losing primary race does not even include an additional $84,938 in direct mail assistance from a PAC called Moving Virginia Forward.  Those mailers touted her dubious environmental creds (see details in the 13^th tab).  Was that somebody’s idea of a cruel joke?  Funnier still was her spending over $36 per vote for the privilege of getting kicked to the curb.
• Note that Kenny Boddye spent $351,685, almost as much as Wheeler spent county-wide, in a single district.  He took $47,500 in donations from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers alone.  Did he get his entire neighborhood rewired?  Kenny says anything improper he might have done was Jeanine Lawson’s fault.
• How much of what Margaret Franklin raised for her supervisor race was squirrelled away to bankroll her Congressional ambitions?  Since those ambitions clearly exceed her accomplishments, she’ll need plenty.
• Look at how Andrea Bailey outspent her opponent Verndell Robinson by a margin of almost 30 to 1 ($265,812 to $8,925).  Do you think she was worried?
• Did Victor Angry really spend $181,262 to run unopposed?  That is a tidy sum just to burnish your image (though his could certainly use it).  I guess money is no object as long as it’s somebody else’s.
• The fifth through ninth tabs break out individual supervisor fundraising hauls.
• The tenth through fifteenth tabs show key PAC donors and their beneficiaries.
• The sixteenth tab is an example of how money was funneled to incumbent Democratic supervisors through other candidates.  Luke Torian was the most prevalent launderer, but smaller donations were re-routed from other candidates like Jeremy McPike and Jennifer Carroll Foy.

Fellow Virginian George Washington foresaw the risk of factionalism in his farewell address letter of September 19, 1796.  Factionalism encouraged the electorate to vote based on party loyalty rather than the common good. Washington feared that partisanship would lead to a “spirit of revenge” in which party men would not govern for the good of the people, but only to obtain and maintain their grip on power.  He wrote:

“However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”

Poor George would drop his dentures over the sordid conduct of Wheeler, Boddye, Franklin, Bailey and Angry.  You are witnessing the brazen abuse of political power, as enabled by corruption being practiced in broad daylight. 

Why isn’t the Virginia Attorney General’s office (mailoag@oag.state.va.us) employing its resources more productively by investigating such an obvious case of corruption rather than groundless election fraud claims (Charges of corruption, lying dropped against Virginia election official - The Washington Post)?