Democrats in Disarray: A Comprehensive Update! – Geary Higgins

Posted :

Jun 2, 2026

in : Blog, Geary Higgins

by :

FauquierGOP

Email from Geary Higgins

Dear FCRC,

Democrats in Richmond are showing us one of the worst displays of incompetence we have ever seen.

Infighting galore, unconstitutional bills, a failed gerrymander, threats to fire the Supreme Court, and STILL NO BUDGET!

Where is the affordability and stability we were promised all of last year?

After their loss in the redistricting fight, Democrats in the General Assembly and Abigail Spanberger are at war over control of their party’s far-left agenda.

As a result of this fight, Spanberger vetoed nearly all of the Democrats’ crowning achievements, sending the party into disarray.

Key vetoes include: collective bargaining for public employees, a retail marijuana marketplace, and the Tyson’s casino.

STILL NO BUDGET

The General Assembly MUST pass a balanced budget by July 1 in order to avoid a shutdown.

Yet it is June 1st, and we are no closer to a budget than we were months ago.

Nearly every time we hear of a budget stalemate and looming government shutdown, it’s because of divided government.

Well this time Democrats have the House, the Senate, and the Governor’s Mansion and they are unable to agree amongst themselves.

Sheer incompetence on display!

⚠️ MCAULIFF WATCH ⚠️

Despite Democrats holding a near supermajority in the House, a majority in the Senate, and Spanberger in the Governor’s mansion…

John McAuliff only managed to get 5 of his 15 bills passed.

In a session where it seemed Democrats rubber-stamped every bad idea they could find, somehow, McAuliff came up short.

McAuliff is so ineffective that he can’t even get his own party to support his bills.

He promised the world and came through with nothing but definition changes, government overreach, and solar panels on farmland.

His big data center bill? It requires data centers to use the generators that they already use.

Just like the national Democratic party, all of his “success” is performative.

Not only did he fail to deliver, John McAuliff actually voted FOR these bills that were so crazy that Abigail Spanberger VETOED them:

Banning ICE from arresting criminal illegal immigrants at courthouses or voting sites
Preventing the cleaning of voter rolls
Collective bargaining for public employees (called the largest would-be tax increase in history)
Retail marijuana stores throughout the Commonwealth
Casino in Tyson’s Corner and increase the already terrible traffic there

THE CRAZINESS MCAULIFF VOTED FOR

Here’s a whole host of other terrible ideas that McAuliff rubber-stamped:

Anti-Safety/Pro-Illegal

Prohibiting law enforcement from cooperating with ICE
Spending taxpayer dollars teaching English to criminal illegal immigrants in jail and prison
Guaranteeing free education to illegal immigrants
Ensuring wage protections for illegal immigrants
Weakening punishment for robbery
Forcing the court to retry past convictions in order to consider prior record

Anti-Gun

“Assault weapons” ban
Forcing schools to instruct parents on how to store their firearms
Creating a government-sponsored center to push gun control

Anti-Conservation

Forcing solar arrays on agricultural land and forbidding local governments from requiring special exception permits
Expanding the authority of passenger rail to use eminent domain

Tax Hikes & Handouts

Subsidizing government employee housing
Forcing local governments to spend resources on an “environmental justice strategy”
Forcing the utility companies to pay for expensive “energy efficient” appliances for low-income residents, regardless of citizenship or legal status
Allowing unlimited taxpayer money to government employees for housing
Increasing the school board salaries for chairmen and vice-chairmen
Allowing localities to further raise taxes on tourism
New payroll tax to pay for other people’s family leave

Bad Economics & Anti-Jobs

Increasing the minimum wage to $15, eliminating countless jobs
Mandating “affordable housing”
Forcing private companies to pay for sick leave
Allowing state agencies to give hiring preference to former federal employees
Protecting the identity of fake whistleblowers

Anti-Christian

Mandating all insurance to pay for over-the-counter condoms
Creating right to contraception with no exemption for religious organizations

Indoctrination/Anti-Student

Forcing schools to teach that Jan. 6th was a violent attack on democracy
Mandating school-run mental health screenings with default opt-in
Making it more difficult for schools to expel students who misbehave

Anti-Election Integrity

Prohibiting the hand-counting of ballots
Giving away Virginia’s electoral votes to the national popular vote winner
Allowing ballots to be received and counted 3 days after election day
Expanding ranked choice voting to all local elections
Eliminating the ability to challenge a voter
Extending ballot curing for a week after the election
Making it easier for candidates to lie about their residency

General Bad Bills

Allowing environmental agencies to fly drones over your house
Mandating nurses take woke “racial bias training”
New red light cameras that penalize you for touching the crosswalk

SITTING ON THE SIDELINES

John McAuliff has missed 11% of all votes. He has one of the lowest participation records in the House.

This is not because he missed a day of session; this is because he purposely decided not to vote on difficult issues.

He was elected to represent us, but he’s given up his vote when it’s time to make a difficult decision, effectively giving up our representation to the rest of the Commonwealth.

In my two years, I never sat out on a single hard issue—because voters sent me to represent them. John McAuliff can’t say the same.

But don’t worry – he’s laser-focused on setting up his next campaign, because he strategically voted against a couple of crazy gun bills that passed anyway, so that he can boast about how moderate he is while raising your taxes, giving your tax dollars to criminal illegal immigrants, indoctrinating our children, and forcing solar arrays on our farmland.

BAD NEWS ON OAK HILL

Despite lofty promises from John McAuliff, it still appears he will be unsuccessful in getting the Oak Hill State Park Plan past the Democrat-controlled Senate.

In order to become a park, Oak Hill needs to get into the Senate budget, but the Senate has already rejected the new park once this year and three times last year.

We now await the final outcome by the end of this month.

During the last election, my opponent, John McAuliff, campaigned on a number of lies, one being that he falsely blamed me for the General Assembly’s failure to establish this historic site as a state park.

The reality is that I spent nearly two years working directly with Governor Youngkin, even engaging in what the Governor called “arm-twisting,” to ensure Oak Hill was included in the budget to protect this 1,240-acre treasure. Then, the Democrat leadership killed it in the Senate.

McAuliff said I couldn’t work across the aisle and promised he would get the deal across the finish line, but now that he is in Richmond, his promises have proven to be nothing more than empty rhetoric.

Despite Governor Youngkin including the plan in the budget and everything in place, the Senate Democrats have once again left the Oak Hill State Park plan out of the budget. While McAuliff’s bill managed to pass the House (as did the bill in 2025), he has utterly failed to convince his own party leadership in the Senate to stop playing games with an important part of our history.

The most frustrating part is that the Senate Democrats claim we can’t afford this park, yet they are simultaneously pushing a host of new far-left spending and radical tax proposals. They are even spending your tax dollars on healthcare, language services, and free education for illegal immigrants.

It is the height of hypocrisy: they are willing to hike your taxes to pay for a fringe agenda, yet they refuse to provide the minimal support needed for a state park that is being gifted to the Commonwealth. Oak Hill was set to be entirely supported by private donors, non-profits, and a $22 million grant from Loudoun County, along with an endowment so there would be no cost to the Commonwealth for maintenance. Every delay created by this absurd partisanship puts the park at risk.

It is clear that John McAuliff cannot deliver for this district (even when he actually decides to vote), and his allies in the Senate are more interested in obstruction than in preservation. Our community deserves a representative who gets results, not one who makes excuses for his party’s failures.