Share with a friend

It’s a cool 61 degrees in Alexandria as I write this. My son and I bundled up on our walk to his school this morning. I’m typing this in my shed-office with a heavy jacket still on.

All of that is to say, it officially feels like fall in Virginia. Check out our guide to fall festivals here.

As pleasant as the changing of seasons is, especially this time of year, there is no sugarcoating the bleak realities facing so many people and communities in Virginia.

High diesel prices driven up by the Iran war are straining school divisions, Virginia faces record food insecurity as federal food assistance gets harder to access, and healthcare is becoming too expensive for more and more people.

Voter frustration with the Republican policies fueling these dynamics is helping improve the Democrats’ chances in this November’s midterm elections. Nationally, more registered voters say they’d prefer to elect a Democrat to Congress over a Republican by a 12-point margin, according to a new NPR/PBS News/Marist poll.

Here in Virginia, early voting got underway on Sept. 18 and is going gangbusters: turnout so far is nearly three times what it was in 2022. According to Virginia elections whiz Chaz Nuttycombe, the voting trends are pointing to a bluer electorate in Virginia’s three most competitive congressional races.

The Democrat in one of those races and the one with the longest odds, Tom Perriello in the 5th District, got a big endorsement today from US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.

“If we want a Congress that actually fights for working people, we must take back the House in November,” Ocasio-Cortez said on social media. “That is why I am endorsing Tom Perriello for Congress in Virginia’s 5th District. I would be proud to fight alongside Tom to rid Washington of corruption.”

Below, I report on a campaign event for a different Democrat in one of Virginia’s competitive House races.

And, I celebrate the 100th birthday of a jazz icon.

Michael O’Connor

Reporter, Dogwood

Elaine Luria speaks with voters in Virginia Beach at the Sundae Scoop ice cream shop on Sept. 23, 2026. (Michael O’Connor/Dogwood)

Tuesday night, my wife and I got the kids to bed and then, like Matt Damon’s Odysseus (sorry Homer), I braved the bad rains sweeping across Virginia for a three hour drive to Virginia Beach.

The reason for my sojourn was to catch a roundtable Wednesday morning with Democrat Elaine Luria at the Sundae Scoop, an ice cream shop, as its name suggests.

When I got there the next day, Luria was joined by 20-somethings in college, retirees, at least one veteran, and small business owners. Luria gave some opening remarks and opened up the floor for people to share their experiences.

Luria also rolled out a set of economic policy priorities, including a $15 an hour minimum wage tied to inflation, a federal 12-week paid family and medical leave program; and an $8,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers.

The discussion with Luria was a sobering mosaic of how people of different generations and different walks of life are confronting the challenges that come with life under the austerity policies of the Trump administration and his Republican allies in Congress.

It was a robust conversation given how campaigns often like to keep these kinds of events tightly scripted. But to Luria’s credit, the atmosphere in the room felt a bit more like a town hall than a roundtable.

Voters pressed her on how she would improve their lives and she gamely responded to their questions in her soft-spoken manner.

“In order to get things done, you have to build coalitions,” Luria said.

“Most faculty members from Virginia and Southern states say they would not recommend their state as a desirable place to work,” reports Nathaniel Cline at the Virginia Mercury.

Portsmouth’s city council voted to establish a collective bargaining framework for its public employees, Toby Cox at WHRO reports.

Firefighters in Roanoke are pushing for the city to become the first locality in southwest Virginia where public workers have the right to collective bargaining, Austin Hicks at WDBJ reports.

(Michael O’Connor/Dogwood)

The strike at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden hit three weeks on Wednesday, Sept. 23.

And rather than negotiate, the garden’s management has resorted to a lawsuit to remove striking employees from their picket line at the garden’s entrance. You can read more about the garden’s claims and the union’s response in this report by A.J. Nwoko at CBS6 in Richmond.

Of note: management has brought in temporary staff and declined to tell Nwoko how much it’s paying them.

“If the Garden wanted us to stop picketing everyday, they could have accepted our latest offer or come to the table and actually bargained in good faith, but instead they rejected our offer and chose to take our union to court,” Lewis Ginter Workers United said on social media today.

As this labor dispute continues, the online debate over it has been plentiful. But I was struck by this lengthy, detailed, and thoughtful post from former Lewis Ginter board member, Rachel Loughlin.

“This is not the first time I have watched Lewis Ginter celebrate ‘community’ publicly while people doing community-centered work felt expendable privately,” Loughlin said. “That is why I cannot dismiss this strike as a disagreement over a few dollars an hour.”

(John Coltrane/YouTube)

One of the best parts of living in the DMV is that when I jump in my car I can turn my FM tuner to 89.3 WPFW.

And yesterday, I caught a great program where a host was celebrating what would have been the 100th birthday of John William Coltrane, who was born Sept. 23, 1926 in North Carolina.

The host shared the favorite Coltrane songs of different artists. Their picks included the familiar and two tracks that were new to me: “Central Park West” and “Jimmy’s Mode.”

Happy Birthday, Mr. Coltrane. Rest in power.