Glenn Youngkin on governing like a CEO, the AI power crisis, and why every operator should run for office​

“Everywhere I go, every group I I speak with, I always tell everyone that when you go through your midlife crisis like I did, run for office. Run for office. The water is fine. It's extraordinary. I've never felt more purposeful in my life, other than other than when I found my faith and and when my wife said yes, when I asked her to marry me.”

“So much of that is the the ill fated, decision that was made to decommission base load power around the country. It was it was one of the dumbest decisions that has ever been made. Nuclear and nuclear and and gas and and and a lot of coal plants that are that need to be maintained. They're cleaner today, and we can have an all of the above approach.”

“I mean, Loudoun County gets in excess of 25% of their county tax base from the data center community, which is keeping real estate taxes down. It's building fire stations and schools. And, I mean, this is exactly what this big tax base is all about. They have some of the best schools in the world based on based on some of these things.”

“We worked for over three years, and we got 25% of Virginia's regulations streamlined. And then I said, well, no. I want 35%. And everybody asked the question, how are you gonna do that? And, and I said, let's go get let's go get some some really innovative AI thinkers here. And what we can do, we we brought in a company called Vulcan Technologies, a startup out of at Austin, Texas. And, and we worked with them for about three or four weeks... And lo and behold, within a few weeks, they came back and said, we think we can get another 15% out. And that now what I laughed about was I said, wait a minute. We worked for three years to get 25% out, and you're gonna work over the next six months, and you're gonna get another 15% out? And they even might have said 20. And I said, where were you guys three years ago? And they said, well, in high school.”

“I mean, the DMV, which is the second largest interaction with citizens, the the the the motor vehicles department, still runs off of a mainframe that's 30 years old that was, built and maintained by IBM who doesn't maintain it anymore. I mean, that's what we were dealing with.”

“Pace matters. And I don't, care whether you're a one term governor or two or you have unlimited terms. Pace matters in everything. The the greatest greatest detriment to success is going slow. And, in this case, in my term, it was it was reinforced by the fact that I had four years to try to get eight years of work done, and I think we delivered even more than that.”

“We put in an OKR system right out of the box, and we set objectives. We figured out what we were gonna measure, and we had rapid feedback for the entire state government organization. And there was huge resistance at the beginning, and then leadership began to understand that as they were running their agency or their department, they had a they had real guideposts on what success looks like. And when they were behind, we were able to recalibrate with more resources and to support. And when they were ahead, we were able to celebrate and then set even more challenging aspirations.”

“Chuseong Lee and I worked well together. We had a rhythm that I think is really important. We spoke every morning in order to clear what we were working on... part of working together and and leading is to make sure you have you have established rhythms, that force you to say, well, there's nothing for us to talk about today. Or listen, you know, there's seven things we gotta talk about, and here they are.”

“They're gonna go to Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Texas. I mean, this is the SEC in economic development. I mean, these guys these guys are winning everything. I mean, there are basically 10 states in The United States Of America that are driving the vast majority of job growth, driving the vast majority of economic growth. And by the way, those are the states that are getting the vast majority of population movements.”

“I am constantly telling everybody, run to the light. Do the do the problem solving. Get into the fact full zone, but don't reject change out of fear. Let's make sure we understand with great facts where we're going and how we get there.”