How did Virginians end up without gubernatorial primaries?

Competitive primaries strengthen democracy — they test candidates, build visibility, and give voters a real choice.

localcandidates.org/elections/ge...
#VAPolitics #Democracy

Media companies use the news cycle’s political content to capture our attention for profit.

This attention economy results in amplification of outrage, political polarization, and increasing social isolation, which in turn siphons off energy that could be used for civic engagement and action.

If you think outside the lines, the political industry is as big as it gets.

You could look at this 100 different ways (e.g. how much did Elon Musk pay for Twitter?).

There is massive amounts of money at stake here and I'd argue it's a mistake to look at successful political tech companies as the barometer for political tech as a whole.

Annual government spending
- $250M+...City of Charlottesville
- $80B+...Virginia
- $6.7T+...United States

Total cost of elections
- $15.9B (Federal elections, 2024, OpenSecrets)
- $15.2M+ (Top 10 donors in state and local elections, 2024-2025, VPAP)

Venture capital is skeptical of political technology. If I'm understanding correctly, it's partially because political tech is "niche" and not particularly profitable.

Morality withstanding, I'm skeptical of this belief. It doesn't line up with the data I'm seeing nor does it pass the smell test:

Industries like this are easily disrupted. It's already happened on the right. The left looks completely lost and it's only a matter of time.

In 'The Politics Industry,' Katherine Gehl and Michael Porter argue that American politics is a duopoly, dominated by the two parties in power.

If politics is an industry, it is at best a stale one. Seriously, just look at this website:

desperate for change -- but the status quo in politics, is, 1) hold on to power, 2) toe the party line, 3) don't try new things.

Mamdami won because he wasn't afraid of using common-sense strategy. He understands the internet and he knows how to use it.

There is tremendous opportunity for technology to engage Americans in democracy -- people are

critical issues: Virginia’s economy, abortion, and apparently UVA’s president. Not to mention the pipeline of future political leaders we could be building.

As it stands, the divisive attention economy is a black hole for outrage. We need technology that facilitates civic attention and engagement.

This “historic turnout” was 7.7%.

That number is reflective of our media environment which fails to engage Americans in democracy.

This is simply not good enough.

These elections impact...

If the free market is American, our elections are laughably un-American. Two choices, often predetermined without legitimate primaries.

While a handful of the most powerful people in America decide what we value, finance, and owe, we should strongly consider building technology that organizes what we (collectively, as Americans) want to value, finance, and owe.

Cause it sure as shit ain't gonna happen here.

To change politics, we need to change technology. BlueSky, X, and the attention economy as a whole divide Americans and fail to facilitate small-d democratic action.

We get caught up in the news cycle and when it comes time to actually change anything (voting) we barely know what's on the ballot.

I am tired and resentful of social media, yet here I am.