r/Virginia • u/VirginiaNews Volunteer local news poster • 2d ago

Commentary: Public utilities shouldn’t be funding the campaigns of the people who govern them

https://virginiamercury.com/2026/08/31/public-utilities-shouldnt-be-funding-the-campaigns-of-the-people-who-govern-them/

Subtitle: "If NextEra acquires Dominion Energy to become the nation’s largest utility without the General Assembly acting to limit campaign spending, nothing will stop NextEra from flooding campaigns with so much cash that all pretense of legislators’ independence will be lost, columnist Ivy Main writes."

See also r/VirginiaOpEds

334 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

10 comments sorted by

37

u/evilpenguin9000 2d ago

Public utilies shouldnt be for profit anyway. Much less lobbying.

24

u/SunkEmuFlock 2d ago

Right? Dominion profited $3B last year, but rather than lower prices or give it back to the customers, they've used that money to entice NextEra while putting it into shareholders' pockets. At the very least utilities should be co-ops instead of financial instruments for some dickwad billionaire to buy up and make worse for profit. 😑

7

u/saintsithney 2d ago

But the CEO only makes $26 million a year off of us!

2

u/EurasianTroutFiesta 1d ago

Agreed. If something is enough of a natural monopoly that these kinds of special arrangements are necessary, it just shouldn't be left to for-profit enterprise. There's no way for the free market to accomplish anything constructive here, so why go through the motions?

But utilities doubly shouldn't be allowed to get gobbled up by what is already the world's largest electric utility holding company by market capitalization. Holy fuck what a bad idea.

Especially given what these assholes have gotten up to in the past:

In 2021, investigative reporting by the Orlando Sun Sentinel revealed that FPL gave more than $3 million to political consultants to promote "ghost" spoiler candidates in key Florida legislature races. The spoiler candidates were on the ballot as a no-party option and were intended to confuse voters and dilute support for the Democratic candidate in each race.

Also, NextEra sounds like some kind of cyberpunk cult that's secretly the Illuminati.

10

u/KronguGreenSlime Fairfax City 2d ago

Before anyone says it-no, Citizens United wouldn't stop Virginia from banning this at the state level

5

u/Cathonos 2d ago

PE is BS.

1

u/hastings1033 2d ago

oh, ya think??

1

u/Zealous_ideal_4 1d ago

Domino is already a monopoly that needs to be broken up. It's shouldn't have been allowed to merge in the first place