Economy

The Commonwealth of Virginia has some of the strictest liquor laws in the nation. The 45% minimum food sales requirement for liquor-serving establishments is a holdover from a bygone era that continues to strangle our local restaurants with expensive compliance paperwork and inflates the price of meals. This requirement is also applied unfairly, as racetracks and the new casino opening in Dumfries were granted exceptions. Arlington in particular loses out due to this onerous requirement: each weekend thousands of dollars are spent across the river in D.C. and Maryland at cocktail bars that are illegal to open here. I will fight to end these draconian requirements and bring back bars and bottomless brunches to our Commonwealth.

I also promise to introduce legislation that grants the full right of our distilleries, wineries, and breweries to directly sell and ship alcohol to anyone of age in Virginia.

Northern Virginia has already become the home to several campuses of some of the world’s largest tech companies. With AI poised to become the defining technology of this generation, I propose our Commonwealth take this one step further and create incentives for venture capital firms and technology startups to plant their flag here. In Arlington alone, we have the talent and capital to birth a booming tech industry of our own. 

As we begin to understand the risks inherent in relying on large language models (like ChatGPT) for decision making, as well as the hazards posed by deepfake technology, it is more critical than ever that tech experience be present in our House of Delegates. Appropriate AI policy must be narrowly tailored to avoid stifling innovation, while ensuring we are verifying potential LLM hallucinations and identifying impersonations.