CAMPAIGN PLATFORM

Virginia is among the wealthiest states in the wealthiest country in world history. Yet for many Alexandrians, a dignified middle-class life is increasingly at risk no matter how hard we work — and for many others it remains entirely out of reach.

Glen has a plan to make Virginia permanently affordable by directly addressing our rigged economy head-on. The plan rests on three pillars: empowering workers, creating quality affordable housing, and making taxation truly progressive.

Empowering Workers

Supporting labor organizing must be at the very center of any long-term effort for bold progressive change.

Fighting for universal public sector collective bargaining rights will be one of Glen’s top priorities in office. The shameful 2026 veto of legislation that would have established and protected collective bargaining rights for Virginia’s public sector workers was a big step in the wrong direction. Recognizing public university and homecare workers' right to organize is, right now, the single most important way to grow the labor movement (and in turn progressive politics) in Virginia.

Another of Virginia's fundamental obstacles to dignified working conditions is the state’s so-called “right-to-work” laws, which starve unions, and Glen will make repealing them a top priority. He’ll also build support for federal efforts like the PRO Act, which would enable unions and employers to negotiate fair share agreements and override “right-to-work” laws at the national level, including for public sector workers.

Federal workers illegally or unfairly fired by the Trump administration have suffered grievances and need to be made whole. Virginia can do more to ensure all impacted workers receive comparable positions with the commonwealth wherever possible, as well as provide meaningful tax relief and trainings. He also supports all efforts to reinstate federal workers to their former positions — and to reinstate pension credit for lost time.

Where Glen lives in Alexandria, a living wage for a single adult with no children is $29/hour. The minimum wage in Virginia is $12.77. Glen believes that if you are working a full-time job in Virginia, you should be able to afford to live close to where you work. He supports legislation to tie Virginia’s minimum wage to the inflation-adjusted living wage on an annual basis.

Large corporations can afford to pay their workers a living wage, period. Small businesses like family-run shops and restaurants, street vendors, and immigrant-owned storefronts are vital to the culture, character, and economy of our communities. Glen supports a suite of subsidies and regulations to ensure that small businesses thrive more than ever before, while still paying all employees a living wage.

Quality, Affordable Housing

Everyone in Virginia deserves a safe and livable home. But in Northern Virginia and elsewhere, housing costs have spiraled out of control. Hardworking renters and their families need protection from bad landlords. Glen supports a rent freeze in Northern Virginia and legislation to prevent rent gouging. He will proactively work with community organizations to build a regional movement of renters fighting for better conditions and protections — one that can wield the power needed to pass anti-rent-gouging legislation and more. He also backs the right of first refusal for mobile home owners.

Glen supports legislation to hold landlords responsible for the conditions of their buildings. He calls for a state-wide hotline and web portal to allow tenants to schedule and track inspections. If a landlord refuses to make repairs, the state of Virginia should do it and send them the bill. And if needed, Virginia must be ready to step in and control properties to put the worst landlords out of business.

Glen supports the creation of extensive new affordable housing in places like Northern Virginia that need it the most. He'll back that through a suite of approaches that empower Virginians to live dignified lives. He calls for improved tax incentives and subsidies for affordable-only housing developments. He supports inclusionary zoning as well as mandates for localities to produce comprehensive plans that include affordable housing. He supports using the state's preemption power to override local ordinances that restrict affordable housing. And Virginia has the authority to scale up affordable construction itself through the Virginia Housing Trust Fund (VHTF) and the Virginia Housing Development Authority (VHDA); Glen will fight for new social housing.

Virginia state law explicitly prohibits local governments from passing ordinances to cap rent increases. This means that tenants in Northern Virginia have significantly less power than our neighbors in Maryland or DC to push for rent stabilization or even a basic expansion of tenant protections. A strong statewide campaign of tenants, tenant organizers, and housing advocates is going to be necessary to stop rent-gouging. So beyond supporting legislation, Glen will use the Virginia Delegate seat to organize. He would proactively work with community organizations to build a regional movement of renters fighting for better conditions and protections that can wield power needed to pass this legislation and more. We know that the rights tenants in DC and Maryland enjoy were won by organizing, and Glen is committed to supporting the same organizing in Virginia.

Make the Wealthiest Pay Their Fair Share

Virginia’s wealthiest residents pay lower state and local effective tax rates than everyone else in the commonwealth. And its most profitable corporations pay lower tax rates than neighboring DC and Maryland. That leads to outcomes like Virginia providing 18% less state-level funding to its public schools than the national average.

Glen wants to make Virginia affordable for everyone. We need bold legislation to fund great public schools, universal childcare, publicly owned housing, universal healthcare, and much more. We can afford all of it, but only with legislators who will fight to raise taxes on the most profitable corporations and the richest individuals.

Glen calls for raising the tax rate on the biggest corporations from 6% to 8.5%, matching our neighbors in D.C. and Maryland. And he is for closing the separate entity accounting tax loophole used by giant corporations to dodge taxes. Together this can create $700 million in state revenue each year. We should also tax the wealthiest Virginians an extra 8% on income over $600,000, and 10% on income over $1 million, generating $2.5 billion per year even if we remove the 1% tax on groceries. (Yes, the state is currently taxing us for buying groceries).

Today, ordinary Virginians are taxed at every turn just for trying to get to their jobs: a local tax on cars they already own, expensive metro fares, a “time tax” sitting in heavy traffic to get to work or using sparse mass transit, an exorbitant fee on the express “rich people lanes” if they are running late. Glen supports ambitious (and revenue-generating) transportation policies that will reduce or eliminate all of these regressive taxes.

Wealth is created by workers, but it keeps getting spent on foreign wars and subsidies for billionaires and mega-corporations. In one of the wealthiest states in the U.S., it's time we invest more of our money in improving the lives of ordinary Virginians.

Fund Our Community, Not Genocide

Israel's ongoing genocide has claimed well over a hundred thousand lives. Its terrifying aggression in Iran and elsewhere is damaging the global economy and risking a World War III.

The Virginia Israel Advisory Board (VIAB) is an Israeli business promotion entity embedded within the Virginia state government since 1996. Funded by Virginia taxpayers, VIAB funnels millions of dollars toward Israeli businesses and away from Virginia companies. No other country receives Virginia taxpayer funding for business promotion.

Glen is committed to dismantling VIAB, the only advisory board for a foreign government that is a taxpayer funded state agency. He supports fully divesting Virginia from genocide, including our funds in the Virginia Retirement System. This is both a moral imperative and an economic one; we see how these investments in genocide and domination have raised gas prices and made Virginia less affordable — while accelerating global warming and making us less safe in the process.

Glen is a Jewish American who has been a participant and leader in the struggle for Palestinian liberation for over 20 years. In November 2023, he joined the founding Steering Committee of Alexandria for Palestinian Human Rights, now among the most vibrant local organizing efforts in the U.S. The group has brought more than 300 Alexandria residents together to advocate for divestment from apartheid and genocide.

Divest from Genocide, Support our Jewish Community

A member of Jewish Voice for Peace, Glen understands that opposing genocide accords with Jewish values — and Jewish safety. He cares deeply about maintaining a welcoming environment for our state's vibrant Jewish community to thrive and practice their faith in peace and prosperity. He supports all efforts to combat the rising antisemitic threat from right-wing white supremacists and fascists, as well as conflation of Israel and the Jewish people.

Glen is committed to repealing the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which is used primarily to silence critics of the foreign country of Israel. And he supports First Amendment protections for students both in K-12 and at universities.

Wars for geopolitical dominance are deadly, unethical, environmentally toxic, and extremely expensive. They are a net cost to Virginians and make us less safe. Glen will fight hard to block any Virginian money and political support for imperialist invasions in Venezuela, Cuba, Sudan, Iran, Palestine, or anywhere else.  

The unchecked growth of hyper-scale AI data centers embodies so much of what is at stake for Virginia residents. Data centers pose a critical threat to our energy and water supply, our environment, our neighborhoods, and our democracy itself — and they are making Virginia less affordable in the process.

Virginian's electricity bills are going up as data center deals transfer costs to taxpayers, and all that energy usage is accelerating global warming. Data center growth has already created a Virginia freshwater crisis.

Meanwhile, hyper-scale data centers are more correctly called "surveillance centers." They are not improving Virginians' lives — and we didn't ask for them. But they are the infrastructure that lets the Trump Administration and dystopian corporations like Palantir harvest information to oppress not only marginalized groups and political opponents, but everyone who's not in the Epstein class. This is true about the genocide in Palestine, for which U.S.-owned data centers stored over 10 million gigabytes of surveilled phone calls; and it's true right here in Virginia, where centers track your entire online footprint, and your physical movements, to be run through AI and sent over to ICE.

Why is there so little red tape to build these toxic data centers, but so much red tape for reforms that improve workers' and tenants' daily lives?

Fueling AI to enrich billionaires and supercharge the surveillance state is less important than protecting the financial and environmental health of our residents. Our freshwater and clean air is precious and must be preserved and regulated.

Glen will fight for a moratorium on all new data center permits in Virginia, as well as the creation of strict regulatory hurdles to protect Virginia's environment and constitutional rights. He will also work to legislate nothing less than full transparency from data centers on energy use, water consumption, emissions, and expansion plans — empowering informed public discourse and policy that serves the people of Virginia.

Glen opposes the sales and use tax exemption for data centers, which cost Virginia $1.9 billion in foregone tax revenue in 2025 alone, and will rise year by year as the industry continues to grow. The companies that build and operate data centers must pay the full cost of their construction and operation, including taxes not only for sales and use, but for the full cost of their externalities related to environmental degradation.

We also need our energy utilities to put the people of Virginia over the irresponsible growth of data centers — and thus our electric bills. In other words, we need to regulate Dominion Energy, not the other way around. Glen backs all efforts to municipalize and nationalize Virginia's electric grid. We also need the chance to vote for more candidates who aren’t bought out by the Dominion Energy monopoly and its would-be parent company, NextEra. Glen supports matching funds for political candidates at all levels in Virginia, as well as efforts to repeal bans on local governments from implementing them. He also backs efforts to have county boards vote to use local funds for this purpose.