Fears of economic disruption, political instability and mass deportations are on the minds of Arlington elected officials following the re-election of Donald Trump.
The local economy’s extensive ties to the federal government leave some local leaders deeply worried about the president elect’s talk of relocating tens of thousands of government jobs.
This, combined with the direct impact of D.C. politics on Arlington and the keen difference between Trump’s and the county’s approaches to undocumented immigrants, raises numerous questions about the fate of the county in years to come, officials say.
In election night conversations with ARLnow, a few hours before Donald Trump emerged as the winner, Arlington County Board members and state representatives warned of four years of “chaos,” “dysfunction” and “unpredictable” governance under a Trump presidency.
“Shaking up the fundamental construction of the Republic, its institutions, is affecting us in the worst possible way — because we are the center of the Republic and its institutions,” County Board Vice-Chair Takis Karantonis told ARLnow.
The majority of Arlington voters appear to agree with their elected officials, as 78% cast ballots for Kamala Harris. Still, some observers note that Trump slightly outperformed in Arlington compared to 2020 — with possible factors including President Joe Biden’s low approval ratings and more organization on the part of local Republicans.
‘No idea what Trump is going to do’
Depending on how closely Trump holds to his own words, his second term could have resounding effects on Arlington’s economy.
“Tens of thousands of federal workers have been threatened by the Trump campaign and by Donald Trump that they will be fired,” Del. Alfonso Lopez (D) told ARLnow. “Those are the stakes.”
One of Trump’s stated goals as president is to “continue Trump administration effort to move parts of the federal bureaucracy outside of the Washington Swamp.” His campaign website discusses potentially relocating “up to 100,000 government jobs” out of the D.C. area to “places filled with patriots who love America.”
Local officials have been voicing anxieties about the prospect of relocating and reducing federal jobs for months. However, State Sen. Barbara Favola pointed out, Trump is famously unpredictable.
“We have no idea what Trump is going to do — and if he’s going to reduce the federal workforce, what does that mean?” she said.
Favola said her constituents in the national defense sector are especially concerned about this and other unanswered questions. She pointed out that Virginia is a top recipient of federal defense dollars, with the Department of Defense spending $68.5 billion in the Commonwealth in Fiscal Year 2023.
Indeed, over the past 24 hours on social media and on podcasts, the effect of Trump’s election on Arlington specifically has been discussed.
“Biggest winners from last night: MOVING COMPANIES in Washington DC,” wrote one user on X (formerly Twitter). “You can already hear the engines warming up and the for sale / for rent signs posted on all the Arlington / Alexandria town homes.”
“Have you ever wondered why when you go to Arlington, why is it that everyone there lives in $10 million homes?” asked Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) last night on a livestream of the popular All-In podcast, overstating the actual value of most Arlington real estate. “Why is that, next to Silicon Valley, the richest part of America? It’s because there’s a system of defense contractors.”
Karantonis, meanwhile, foretold “dysfunction of the federal government” and “political chaos in the nation’s capital.” He warned of delays in approving federal budgets, which could “drag the region down economically” while taking an emotional toll on residents whose livelihoods hinge on federal dollars.
“All of this starts here and can be disrupted,” he said, referring to federal agencies with offices in Arlington. “If it is disrupted, then there is a lot of uncertainty on the other end for us.”
Effects of deportations
While uncertainty surrounds many aspects of a Trump presidency, in Arlington, Karantonis said “the most straightforward, predictable effects” of his election will fall on immigrant communities.
The Trump campaign has vowed to implement a mass deportation campaign removing millions of immigrants living in the United States without documentation. This is a realm where local governments have relatively little power.
“I’ve always said federal law trumps state, and then state trumps local jurisdiction,” Karantonis said.
In keeping with the county’s official stance on immigration, he said “we are not going to police on behalf” of the federal government. But even in a county as left-leaning as Arlington, Karantonis — who earlier this year opined that “crossing a border, documented or undocumented, should never be a crime” — said a Trump presidency may have sweeping effects.
Even if Trump is unable to achieve his stated goal of dramatically expanding the federal government’s deportation apparatus, the County Board member predicted fear and intimidation among tens of thousands of immigrants in Northern Virginia, both with and without paperwork.
“It’s obscene to allow that this kind of stress is imposed on any human being, so our job is to do whatever we can to protect this community — within our jurisdiction, of course,” he said. “But we cannot alleviate the stress and the fear [of] this rhetoric and, actually, open animosity.”
Lopez predicted effects on Arlington residents of all walks of life.
“If he is able to execute the plans he is advocating for from the stump, it will have a direct impact on our neighbors, our friends and our students’ classmates,” he said.
Election watchers weigh in
Margaret Tseng, a professor at Marymount University whose specialties include the presidency and voting behavior, said that the circumstances of the 2024 race created a complicated election dynamic.
“It made it very challenging for pollsters and pundits to make accurate predictions,” she said.
Voters, Tseng told ARLnow, primarily exercise “retrospective voting” — meaning “we ask ourselves if we are better off than we were four years ago.” Harris in particular may have faced an uphill battle as Biden’s approval rating dipped as low as 36% in the weeks before he dropped out of the race in July.
“While he was not on the ticket, VP Harris represented his administration, and voters noted that when they went to the polling stations,” Tseng said.
In the face of what Favola called “the most consequential election of my lifetime,” Arlington political groups battled to impact results.
As part of the Arlington County Democratic Committee’s “Beyond Arlington” initiative, local Democrats descended regularly in the last month of the campaign on the battleground states of North Carolina and Pennsylvania to lend support to the Democratic slates there.
This may have involved a tradeoff when it came to campaigning locally, opined Matthew Hurtt, chair of the Arlington County Republican Committee.
“Arlington Democrats diverted grass-roots resources away from Arlington to try to salvage Kamala Harris’s flailing campaign,” he told ARLnow. “Not only did Kamala Harris lose ‘bigly’ to Donald Trump in North Carolina, it looks like Trump will take Pennsylvania by 2-plus points when all is said and done.”
Lowell Feld, who runs the long-time local progressive blog Blue Virginia, depicted the return of a “pariah, felon president” in terms bordering on the apocalyptic.
“One of the worst days in American history, for sure,” he wrote.
“America made an enormous, quite possibly disastrous or even fatal mistake, choosing a convicted felon who has threatened to be a dictator, suspend the Constitution, round up millions of people and deport them, and a million other things that seem too outlandish to possibly be true, let alone that 10s of millions of Americans would, of their own free wills, vote FOR that … what the next step will be, who knows, as we enter into a very uncertain and dark future.”
Faced with stark political polarization, County Board member Susan Cunningham said she hopes to preserve the fabric of the Arlington community in coming years.
“Making sure that we come out of this still talking to each other at the local level, to me personally as the mother of two adolescent girls, I feel very strongly about,” she said.
Unfolding political impacts
Republicans have won a majority in the U.S. Senate. One of the lingering questions coming out of Election Day is which party will control the U.S. House of Representatives.
If the GOP holds the presidency and both houses of Congress, Tseng said, Trump should have an easier time getting measures enacted at the outset of his new term.
“The first 100 days are critical for a new administration in terms of setting the agenda and gaining momentum to pass legislation,” she said.
But even if Democrats wrest control of the House from Republicans, the incoming president would derive significant benefit from having the Senate in friendly hands.
“If I were elected president, I would choose to have the majority in the Senate, because I would need their support for critical political appointments as I start to build my administration,” the professor said.
