Virginia state Sen. L. Louise Lucas, the 82-year-old president pro tempore of the state Senate, escalated a public feud with Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger on Monday, calling her "a diva" during a televised interview with CBS affiliate 7News and explaining, with evident relish, how she coined the nickname.
The spat is not a personality clash dressed up as policy. At its center sits roughly $1.6 billion in lost state revenue: the price Virginia pays each year to exempt data centers from sales and use taxes, the Daily Caller reported. That figure comes from the Virginia Department of Accounts' Annual Comprehensive Financial Report for fiscal year 2025. Spanberger wants to preserve the exemption. Lucas wants to kill it, years ahead of its scheduled 2035 expiration.
The result is an intra-party brawl that exposes a fault line running through the Virginia Democratic coalition: who benefits when the state hands billion-dollar corporations a pass on taxes that fund schools and public safety?
Lucas told 7News reporter Nick Minock that the label arrived as a flash of inspiration during a budget meeting on what she described as the 13th floor.
"You know, I just happened to be sitting up on the 13th floor, and all of the sudden I got this epiphany. Data center, she's a diva."
The senator first deployed the phrase publicly in a June 5 post on X, where she tagged both Spanberger and Virginia House of Delegates Speaker Don Scott. That post left nothing to the imagination.
"Amazon Don and Data Center Diva, you are making a MONUMENTAL MISTAKE! Maybe you should ask Glenn Youngkin how that worked out for him!"
The reference to former Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin was pointed, Lucas appeared to warn that siding with corporate interests carries political consequences regardless of party.
Virginia's data center sales and use tax exemption is set to expire in 2035, but Lucas has no interest in waiting. She has said she hopes to end the break by January 2027 and has been barnstorming the state on a "Data Center Listening Tour" with fellow state senators.
In a May 2026 post on X, Lucas laid out her position plainly:
"I believe there should be an expiration date for data center sales and use tax exemption. Those companies can afford to pay their fair share."
In another post, she argued that Spanberger "should be honest" and accused the governor of refusing to "tax billion dollar corporations to provide long term revenue to help pay for K12 and public safety."
Spanberger, for her part, is fighting to keep the tax breaks intact as part of the state's fiscal year 2027, 2028 budget. The governor's office has not been quoted responding to Lucas's comments. Speaker Scott is also named in the feud but his specific position on the exemption was not detailed.
The dispute raises a question conservatives have asked for years: when Democrats talk about making corporations "pay their fair share," do they mean it, or only when the corporations aren't filling their donors' districts with jobs? Spanberger's defense of the exemption puts her squarely on the side of Big Tech, while Lucas frames herself as the populist willing to claw back the revenue.
The governor is no stranger to controversy within her own party or with the broader Virginia electorate. Spanberger has drawn sharp criticism from conservatives for signing a sweeping gun ban that triggered immediate legal challenges from the NRA, the Trump Department of Justice, and Second Amendment organizations.
That law has since faced open defiance from within the state's own law enforcement apparatus. Multiple Virginia prosecutors have refused to enforce the assault weapons ban, calling it unconstitutional, a remarkable rebuke from officials sworn to uphold state law.
And the governor's troubles extend beyond firearms policy. She faced pointed backlash after an ignored ICE detainer preceded sexual assault charges against an illegal immigrant in the state, raising questions about whether her administration's sanctuary-friendly posture endangered Virginians.
Now the hits are coming from inside the house. Lucas is not a gadfly backbencher. She is the president pro tempore of the state Senate, the highest-ranking Democrat in that chamber, and she is publicly mocking the governor by name on social media and cable television.
Lucas's moral authority on fiscal accountability carries a significant asterisk. The FBI raided her Portsmouth home and office in May as part of a federal probe connected to a cannabis dispensary she owns. No charges have been reported, but the investigation hangs over her crusade against data center tax breaks like an uninvited guest at a fundraiser.
Some Virginia Democrats have rushed to blame the Trump administration for the FBI raid, but reporting has indicated the probe began under the Biden administration, making the partisan deflection harder to sustain.
That context matters. Lucas is simultaneously positioning herself as a champion of taxpayer interests while facing a federal investigation into her own business dealings. Whether the probe produces charges or fizzles out, it gives Spanberger's allies an obvious line of counterattack, and it gives neutral observers reason to watch the senator's populist turn with a skeptical eye.
Virginia's Democratic Party has been fracturing on multiple fronts. The data center feud is only the latest crack. The state's progressive wing and its establishment center have clashed over criminal justice, immigration enforcement, and gun policy, all issues where the party's national brand collides with the realities Virginia voters face.
The DOJ probe into a Soros-backed Fairfax County prosecutor over plea deals for illegal immigrants offered another window into those divisions, with some Democrats defending the prosecutor and others quietly distancing themselves.
Lucas's public broadside against Spanberger fits the pattern. The party controls the governorship, the state Senate, and the House of Delegates, and still cannot agree on whether to hand $1.6 billion a year to some of the wealthiest companies on the planet.
The budget fight over the fiscal year 2027, 2028 cycle will determine whether the data center exemption survives, shrinks, or dies early. Lucas is pressing for a January 2027 end date. Spanberger wants the breaks preserved. Speaker Scott's role remains unclear.
Lucas's listening tour suggests she is building a public case, and public pressure, to force the issue before the legislature reconvenes. Her willingness to brand the governor with a nickname on television signals she is not interested in quiet negotiation.
The open questions are real. Can Lucas hold enough Senate votes to override the governor if it comes to that? Will the FBI investigation undercut her leverage? And will Spanberger's alliance with Big Tech data centers cost her support among the populist wing of her own party?
None of those questions have clean answers yet. But the spectacle itself tells a story. Virginia Democrats hold every lever of power in Richmond and still cannot agree on who should pay the bills. When the party that promises government can solve everything cannot govern itself, taxpayers are the ones left holding the tab.
